Movies: Watcher, Lucky
I wrote about misogyny in my recent review of Men, which is about how women are systematically blames, disbelieved, and gaslit by men.
*** (requisite "not all men" and "not all women" and "yes, women abuse/gaslight men too" and "not everyone identifies as a man or woman" and "queer people abuse/gaslight people too"...the rest of this review is going to focus on the larger culture as a whole, in which cisgender men are more statistically likely to harm, well, everyone, but cis and trans women in particular, moreso than the reverse)***
I watched two other films recently that really dig into the culture of not believing women and show the dire consequences when we don't believe women's experiences and when women are expected to go it alone.
Watcher, directed by Chloe Okuno, follows Julia (Maika Monroe), an American woman who moves from New York to Bucharest, Romania with her half-Romanian husband, Francis (Karl Glusman), for Francis' job. Julia is adapting to a city where she doesn't speak the language, doesn't have any friends, and spends long days by herself since her husband works late. She immediately notices that a man in the apartment across from her apartment seems to always be staring at her, but because she can only see his silhouette, she can't be sure. After a man follows her into a movie theatre and sits right behind her, and then follows her into a grocery store, she becomes increasingly convinced that the man who peeps at her every night and the man who followed her are one in the same.
It doesn't help that there's also a serial killer, known as "The Spider", on the loose, decapitating young women in their apartments! Is this man The Spider? Is he just a pervy creep? Is he even the same man, or are there multiple men following and staring at Julia? Of course, the police are no help and her husband only barely contains his condescension towards Julia.
Watcher was a very solid thriller because it doesn't reveal its secrets until the end, making us question Julia just like everyone else. Additionally, significant chunks of the film are in Romanian with no subtitles provided, making the non-Romanian speaking audience members feel as confused as Julia.
Lucky, directed by Natasha Kermani and written by and starring Brea Grant, has a slightly more fanciful take on disbelief of women. May (Brea Grant), a self-help author (the book is titled Go It Alone), awakens one night to the sounds of a man breaking into her home. When she wakes up her husband, Ted, he says "oh, it's the man who breaks in every night and tries to kill us". They successfully fight him off, and the intruder disappears. The next morning, when May questions her husband about what he meant, he again reiterates that a man tries to break in every night and kill them--well, May, specifically--and that this is just "how it is". When May, understandably, demands to know what the fuck he's talking about, Ted tells her he can't be with her when "she's like this" and leaves. Sure enough, the next night the same man breaks in and May fights him off. And the same thing happens the next night, and the next, and the next...
It gets to the point where May is killing this man every night, only for him to disappear the minute she turns her head. The police act like none of this is surprising and tell her to buy mace. Even her own friends simply reiterate that it sounds scary and May is "brave" to stay in the house. What in the actual fuck??
My main beef with Lucky is that it's REALLY obvious what the message is: the man who stalks her is representative of men who would harm women in general. The culture, man! So the reason that no one is surprised and people just keep saying this is "just how it is" is because...we currently live in that reality. I actually have to dock Lucky a few points here because the fact that May wrote a book titled Go It Alone and is one of these "lean in" bullshit-peddlers who encourages women to look after themselves first and foremost is never really brought to what I thought would be the obvious conclusion: that women (and men) need to NOT "go it alone". They need to help each other. But May specifically rejects that idea during a climatic scene in a parking garage where not only is she pursued by her stalker, she sees woman after woman pursued by their own stalkers. I think the film is telling us that May is wrong for trying to go it alone, but for a movie that really hits you on the head with its message, it never explicitly has May learning that lesson. In the end, Lucky just felt incomplete. It's a very short movie--83 minutes--and I think it would have benefited from and extra 20 minutes or so if it would have brought things to a more satisfying conclusion.
Between Men, Lucky, and Watcher, we understand the message to be "misogyny is everywhere in our culture and all over the world. And people still don't believe women". But all three movies are a touch fatalistic. All three female protagonists manage to save themselves by themselves, but none of the movies have a happy ending. Which I guess is appropriate because living in this misogynistic world doesn't have a satisfying conclusion, does it? Whether the film is fanciful, as Men and Lucky are, or more based in reality as Watcher is, the conclusion is the same: men will continue to hunt and haunt you, even if you defeat them. Kinda bleak! I guess this is why I like rape-revenge films. I want to see men who do bad things punished and punished harshly, and I want men in real life who are misogynists to be very, very scared of the fact that they might get their just desserts. But what's sad is that most misogynist men aren't scared because the odds of them being punished are slim. Sure, you'll get the dudes who are "terrified" of false rape accusations (I mean, if it keeps them away from women, good!) but most men I think know on some level that they can get away with a lot of shit because the system will support them, especially if they're white and rich.
I'm lucky (no pun intended!) that the men I'm closest to are non-violent, non-abusive, and encourage me to be myself and to be assertive and outspoken. Some of that is truly luck (I was born to a good dad) and some is a mixture of luck and learning (learning to avoid bad dudes and date good dudes). But make no mistake: shitty men are on my periphery...they're in my extended family, they're the husbands of my acquaintances, they're men I've dated in the past, etc. And anyone can become a victim of a shitty man. It's not a matter of being a "strong" or "weak" person...I know strong women who have been sucked into abusive relationships. I really could write a whole essay on my thoughts about all of this, but we're now well beyond the scope of a movie review.
I recommend all three movies: Men, Lucky, and Watcher. They vary in how polished they are, but all three films are a reminder that when we don't believe women, more women end up murdered. Which side do you want to be on?
Watcher: B+
Lucky: B-
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