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| Don Jon promotional poster. |
Written by Erin Tatum.
I’m a big Joseph Gordon-Levitt fan, so needless to say I’ve been eagerly awaiting the arrival of Don Jon, which he wrote, directed, and starred in. From its premise, Don Jon sounds like an edgy deconstruction of the typical Hollywood love story: Jon (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a porn addict, falls for Barbara (Scarlett Johansson), who is obsessed with romantic comedies. Naturally, both of them claim that the other’s fixation is unhealthy and fake. I was curious to see which genre would ultimately end up condemned, since these types of romances usually only work if one person “reforms” the other. The result is unexpected, but the film manages to pole vault over the stereotypical trappings of both the narrative and the genre.
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| Jon attends church with Barbara and his family. |
First and foremost, Jon is a Jersey boy to the core. His family is strictly Italian Catholic and almost never shown outside of church or having family dinner over pasta in the living room. In particular, the presence of the church is ubiquitous throughout the film. Jon diligently attends confession every week, despite having no intention or desire to change his porn habits. His punishment is always the same – reciting 20 prayers. Later on, he even expresses disappointment that the consequence remains unchanged even after he truthfully admits that he hasn’t masturbated all week. The faceless, monotone priest allegedly giving him moral guidance on the other side of the sliding grate is a clear commentary on the apathy of religious institutions in terms of the lack of investment in the individual. For all his swagger, Jon is a man who craves structure and validation. His disillusionment with the church is the catalyst to his realization that maybe he isn’t the only one who sees what they want to see.
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| Jon wastes no time with seducing Barbara. |
Jon’s porn addiction represents a merger between the instant gratification of the digital age with masculine entitlement, spawning his sexual existentialist crisis. He confesses to the audience he can’t understand why he doesn’t find real sex as satisfying as porn, even though he regularly gets laid. While he rationalizes this compulsion as a commonplace marker of manliness, his inability to get total pleasure from anything other than Internet clips also creates a distinct anxiety around his masculinity. As a result, Jon and his friends are predictably and almost methodically misogynistic as they routinely comb the clubs for the next conquest, rating women on a scale of one to the mythical perfect 10, which they call a “dime.” Barbara enters and captures Jon’s attention. She acts coquettish but resists Jon’s attempts to close the deal, leaving him intrigued. Of course, not immediately sleeping with someone signals a female character’s potential for exceptionalism to both the protagonist and the viewer, especially in a film where sex objects and exploitation are (excuse the pun) a dime a dozen. While the objectification of women rages unchecked, homophobia remains surprisingly absent or unmentioned, relegated to an offhand comment by Jon about how it’s annoying to accidentally climax right when the camera pans to the man.
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| Jon enjoys some “personal time.” |
As a brief side note, while the film is primarily a critique on society’s relationship to women, sex, and pornography, I do admire Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s consistent examination of male objectification in film. I fell in love with his dorky charm in (500) Days of Summer (more on that phenomenon in a minute) and his understated suaveness in Inception. For someone who is so damn attractive, the man sure has a knack for making moments of supposed erotic titillation consciously unsexy. He turns the cinematic gaze back on itself. While we get plenty of cleavage, short dresses, and backside shots from the women, the voyeurism of Jon only goes as far as repeatedly watching him masturbate. It’s true that you could chalk this up to typical Hollywood gender conventions, but it’s worth noting that Joseph Gordon-Levitt implicates the viewer in Jon’s passive absorption of porn. There’s something more than a little intrusive about being forced to watch his blank faced expression until he ejaculates without emotion. It has none of the intimacy or romance of idealized sex in Hollywood. Perhaps Joseph Gordon-Levitt is suggesting that the general moviegoing experience is somewhat masturbatory in that many of us watch movies to escape reality and disconnect our brains, just as Jon uses porn to fuel unrealistic expectations of women and avoid emotional vulnerability.
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| Cue cheesy music. |
Barbara retains her mystique as long as she continues to refuse to sleep with Jon, meaning that he actually has to put effort into courting her. Upon discovering her fascination with romantic comedies, Jon playfully gripes in the voiceover about how she’s delusional and those things never happen in real life. From that point onward, like any good self-deprecating genre film, the same swelling music plays any time Jon and Barbara share a romantic moment. Additionally, the same thumping club music pops up whenever Jon sizes up a new conquest. Jon and Barbara both use media as a crutch to validate fantasies about relationships, yet are comically incapable of recognizing their shared escapism because they insist that the other’s pastime is a bastardization of social dynamics, which neither of them actually understand. Oh, you two!
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| Never has a college discussion been this raunchy. |
Their relationship progresses quickly, with Jon even introducing Barbara to his family. A great Don Jon drinking game would be to take a shot every time Joseph Gordon-Levitt or especially Scarlett Johansson call each other “baby”. Mother of God, these two drop the B-word more than a Justin Bieber music video. For a while, the plot veers toward your typical “good woman reforms troubled man” fanfare as she compels him to alter his way of life through subtle encouragements. Some of them seem a bit controlling, like her insistence that Jon can’t clean his own apartment anymore and must hire a maid. Others point towards Barbara acting as cheerleading girlfriend wanting her boyfriend to better himself. She convinces Jon to take a night class to further his education during a steamy dry humping session in the hallway outside her apartment, working him up until he agrees and then rewarding him by deliberately causing him to jizz his pants. Barbara exposes the hypocrisy in Jon’s perception of the Madonna/whore dichotomy. She might withhold sex, but that doesn’t mean that she’s above using seduction to manipulate people into getting what she wants. I just like the idea that rushing into sex isn’t classy, but intentionally making your boyfriend ejaculate in public is totally okay with them. What is this, a middle school dance?
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| Esther introduces herself to Jon. |
Jon tries to hide his porn from Barbara even after they start sleeping together, knowing that she disapproves. She ultimately catches him in the act and dumps him. At the night class, Jon meets Esther (Julianne Moore), who mocks him for struggling to watch porn in secret on his phone. She gives him a classic German stag film in an attempt to broaden his horizons and increase his taste level. Given Esther’s aging flower child demeanor, I thought that she was just going to act as Jon’s porn Yoda until she rehabilitated him enough to send him running back to Barbara. Jon and Esther begin an unusual courtship that contains all of the physical spark and emotional intimacy that he was trying to convince himself he had with Barbara. Esther reminds him that sex is a two-way street and reveals that her husband and son recently died in a car accident. This confession leads into the most poignant sex scene of the film, signifying Jon finally “losing” himself and appreciating his partner. I can honestly say that I never thought I would see Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Julianne Moore in bed together, but they have excellent chemistry. It’s weird that Esther is the “true” love interest when the trailers largely never mentioned Moore.
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| Esther bonds with Jon. |
What’s really peculiar is the flat resolution of Barbara’s character. Don Jon almost feels like two different films sutured together because of the complete mood shift between leading ladies. Rather than Esther serving as an introspective fling or love triangle fodder, she helps Jon realize that he wants nothing to do with Barbara. The exes have a brief conversation for closure at a café, during which Barbara appears vapid and callous. Jon scolds her for expecting her partner to sacrifice everything and do whatever she wants, a criticism she brushes off with pouting indifference before vanishing for good. It is disappointing that Barbara’s infatuation with romantic comedies was only used to create a zany opposites attract vibe with Jon’s porn addiction. I was anticipating a story about a couple working through their misunderstood idiosyncrasies together. We don’t really see Barbara’s perspective at all and in fact she is vilified as the delusional, overly controlling girlfriend while Jon is vindicated and gets the girl, albeit a different one than he expected.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the ending because I genuinely didn’t see it coming (no pun intended). Pigeonholing Barbara felt a little lazy and unnecessarily misogynistic, but Jon’s romance with Esther is refreshing and endearing. The parallels in Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s creative career choices are an interesting commentary on the spectrum of cultural misinterpretations of relationships. Just as Tom believes he’s fallen in love with Summer in (500) Days of Summer, Jon believes he’s fallen in love with Barbara. Viewers sympathize endlessly with Tom as the lovelorn nice guy and it would be easy to write Jon off as a sleazy womanizer. However, the two characters might have more in common than we’d like to admit. The flaw in the logic of both men is that they’re allowing women to stand in for projections of a given ideal (Summer for love and Barbara for sex) instead of actually falling in love with the women themselves. We shouldn’t go into relationships expecting other people to function as mere extensions of ourselves and our desires. If boy meets girl, it doesn’t necessarily mandate that they stay together, even on the silver screen. Sometimes, as Jon and Barbara suggest, they’re better off growing apart.
Very interesting and well-written review Erin, thanks a lot.
Glad you enjoyed it, Ian!
Great review. Thanks!
“It’s weird that Esther is the “true” love interest when the trailers largely never mentioned Moore.” I believe this was done on purpose. It’s a nice surprise. And even so, I saw plenty of people complaining about the “stupid” ending. I guess they felt Jon was supposed to go crawling after Barbara because, after all, she’s hot, and that’s all that matters. (A good number of people really didn’t understand this movie.)
yeah, I was really disappointed that most people had that reaction. It shows how brainwashed we are in the ways that we are conditioned to process media. Almost as if any reality comes creeping into the conclusion (in this case, the couple not fitting standard rules of Hollywood sex appeal), all hell will break loose because Hollywood isn’t fulfilling our fantasies of what we wish reality was.
Thanks, Erin! I really enjoyed your review. I just saw the film and found it quite thought-provoking. I may see it again just to catch a few things that I missed the first time. But, I am left with a question/reservation. (This question has been bothering me all night, so I thought I’d send it out into the ether here and see if anyone has any thoughts…) The “most poignant sex scene” that reveals “Jon finally ‘losing’ himself and appreciating his partner” gave me pause. While we see Jon finally lose himself in another person, is Esther relegated to, as you feared, “porn Yoda” in this moment? Yes, he reaches transcendence, but in that scene I was left feeling like Esther sacrificed her own pleasure to help him find his. So I suppose that’s my unanswered question. Is Jon’s moment of sexual enlightenment a moment of mutual pleasure? And if not, does that cast a shadow over any shared pleasure that follows?