And the matter of representation here is so important. Little Black girls deserve to see themselves on screen, to try to be like Annie the way I tried to be like Punky Brewster when I was a kid. They deserve to see this kind of Cinderella story, where the benefactor is a successful Black businessman (Jamie Foxx as cell phone-mogul and mayoral candidate Will Stacks, the less-creepily named equivalent to Daddy Warbucks). Black parents deserve to take their kids to movies that will show families like theirs. And people of all ages and all races need to see Black actors star in movies like this so the gross privileged reaction of “but the star isn’t white OH NOES!” goes away.
Some conversations I have had about the 2014 remake of Annie, starring Quvenzhané Wallis:
“Got any exciting plans this weekend?”
“Yes! I’m finally going to get to see the new Annie!”
“Why are you excited about that?”
“Well I probably watched the old movie upwards of 100 times when I was a kid.”
“I would think then you’d want to avoid this one? It’s probably just going to ruin your childhood memories.”
“Is it weird that I feel weird about the new Annie being Black?”
“Yes.”
“But it’s just that my image of the character is a little redheaded girl with freckles.”
“Well the original image of the character didn’t have pupils in her eyes, so, things change.”
When an Annie remake was announced in 2011, produced by Will and Jada Pinkett-Smith with their daughter Willow attached to play the title character, the “Annie can’t be Black!” nonsense started up, and ebbed and flowed with every new development on the film. Oscar nominee Quvenzhané Wallis cast. “Annie can’t be Black!” Trailer released. “Annie can’t be Black!” Film opens and enjoys modest box office success. “ANNIE CAN’T BE BLACK!”
The remake brilliantly takes on this “controversy” by opening on a white curly-haired redheaded girl with freckles named Annie, who tapdances when she finishes giving her school report. The teacher then calls up “Annie B.” and out comes Quvenzhané Wallis with her charm cranked up to 11. She gets the classroom to participate in her report on FDR and the New Deal, and I can’t imagine anyone in the audience not being won over by the new Annie in this one scene, unless your racism is the Klan kind and not the internalized “but Annie NEEDS to be white” kind. (Which is still bad, and you should work on that.)
In fact, the new Annie being Black is a huge benefit to this film. First, it gives it a reason to exist. Family-friendly movies with Black protagonists are desperately lacking. Plus, an all-white crew of plucky foster kids (in this movie, Annie is very adamant she is a foster kid and not an orphan, because she believes her parents to be alive) in modern-day New York would be unbelievable. And it lets Quvenzhané Wallis star, and I defy you to name a more charming child actor working today.
And the matter of representation here is so important. Little Black girls deserve to see themselves on screen, to try to be like Annie the way I tried to be like Punky Brewster when I was a kid. They deserve to see this kind of Cinderella story, where the benefactor is a successful Black businessman (Jamie Foxx as cell phone-mogul and mayoral candidate Will Stacks, the less-creepily named equivalent to Daddy Warbucks). Black parents deserve to take their kids to movies that will show families like theirs. And people of all ages and all races need to see Black actors star in movies like this so the gross privileged reaction of “but the star isn’t white OH NOES!” goes away.
The movie itself? I liked it a lot! It has some issues: 1) Cameron Diaz can’t sing 2) everything sounds a little excessively auto-tuned (Jamie Foxx and Quvenzhané Wallis CAN sing, so that’s no excuse) 3) The new songs don’t blend in as well as they could have 4) The Obamas do not cameo in place of Annie meeting FDR 5) Rooster Hannigan doesn’t exist, and Traci Thoms as Lily St. Regis stand-in doesn’t get to sing “Easy Street,” so the best scene from the 1982 movie turns into one of the worst in the remake (Cameron Diaz really, really, REALLY can’t sing).
And here’s the thing: it could have been TERRIBLE and my childhood would be intact! It wouldn’t make the old movie cease to exist, wouldn’t change my memories of loving it as a child. Also my childhood was a lot more than one weird musical with a racist caricature named Punjab serving as the inexplicably mystical valet to a guy named, for realskies, Daddy Warbucks.
And embittered dudes out there, your childhoods were more than Ghostbusters as dudes. Lady Ghostbusters will NOT ruin your childhood unless the movie is actually about them time travelling to steal your lunch money and eat your homework (I would actually totally watch that movie).
Look. Every now and then they threaten to remake Casablanca. At one point there were rumors of a Bennifer (that’s the former power couple Ben Affleck and J.Lo for those with a short celeb culture memory) version. And yes, this gives me the “WHY!? NO! HANDS OFF!” reaction that I suppose people are having to new Annie and new Ghostbusters. So I’m trying to be sympathetic and give people the benefit of the doubt here, that they aren’t just being racist or sexist.
But keep this in mind, childhood-defenders who are particularly upset when their childhood faves stop being white or male: changing the demographic profile of the stars gives these remakes a reason to exist. Like, if they HAD remade Casablanca with Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, but made it about modern-day immigration issues (people forget that Casablanca was NOT a period piece) it might have been really interesting! Making the Ghostbusters women gives them the ability to create relatively original characters instead of awkwardly attempting to replicate the old ones. And the world needs more women-led comedy films, like it needs more Black family films.
The world absolutely does not need more movies starring white people, especially white dudes. I say this as a white person. I’ve had my fill. Hollywood relies on remakes and reboots an incredible amount, and thank goodness they’ve taken to changing the race or gender of some of these characters or we’d be in a never-ending cycle of universal white dudeliness.
So fellow white people, please keep in mind: you will still exist if you are not absurdly over-represented on screen. White dudes: Remember how upset you were when they made Starbuck a girl? Remember how that was awesome? It’s going to be OK.
Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town. She is an actual orphan so you should trust her take on Annie.
This cowboy motif is no accident, as it connects this film to the old John Ford Westerns and the nostalgia some folks feel about John Wayne flicks and the mythology of good white cowboys fighting off savage Indians who were keeping good white settlers from utilizing this “wilderness” that would become the U.S.A. Dehumanizing non-whites is the foundation for creating this nation. It’s the glue that holds apple pies and hot dogs together.
On Sept. 11, 2001, I was on the West Coast, living in the mountains of Southern Cali and preparing to go to work. A co-worker came running into our office screaming that the Twin Towers had fallen. Mind you, we were on West Coast time, and by the time I saw the attacks on television, the networks were on replay mode and editing footage deemed too gruesome for viewers.
Gathered around the one tiny TV in another office, my co-workers and I stared in disbelief, and the one thing I said out loud was something I remembered Malcolm X saying about chickens coming home to roost. “This is payback for something folks,” I said to them. While my co-workers were the flag-waving Patriotic types, I was already shaping this assault on American soil as retaliation for the untold dirt our military and government had done for years to countries who didn’t uphold our global agenda. This caused some ruffled feathers between me and some of my colleagues. It was a surreal moment. Our Pearl Harbor for the new millennia.
Looking back at the Sept. 11 attacks, it shouldn’t surprise me why American Sniper was such a big hit with the patriotic ‘muricah crowd. It is the military chicken soup of the soul cinema experience. It is propaganda of the highest order for viewers who need the Matrix blue pill to live with the lie of America’s War on Terror.
What makes American Sniper a disappointing viewing experience is not the ahistorical nature of the film, but quite frankly its generic storytelling. It’s downright boring. I may not agree with the politics of a film in order to enjoy it, but dammit, I have to be engaged with the content and its characters. The only time American Sniper really held my total interest was the appearance of a villainous character named Mustafa (played by Sammy Sheik), another sniper from Syria who we learn was a medal winning sharpshooter in the Olympics. He is for all intents and purposes Chris Kyle’s Arab counterpart. Sammy Sheik is riveting to watch in the brief moments we see him, although he never speaks. (Sidenote: every Arab character is a bad guy in this movie. There are no grays or complexity at all. Men, women, and children are all portrayed as evil, conniving, and dangerous. The idea that they could be defending their country from the cowboy antics of American soldiers is never even hinted at.)
Bradley Cooper’s portrayal of Chris Kyle as a good ole boy going off to defend American citizens from the new Boogie-Men-of-the-Moment is pretty cut and dry. Usually Cooper is quite engaging to watch with his big baby blues and mega-watt smile. But here he’s not captivating at all, despite his eagerness to be serious and Oscar-worthy. His Kyle comes off as a big dumb reactionary bloke trying to find his manhood through “masculine” pursuits like bronco busting in rodeos and later a trumped up war (lest we forget, the excuse for bludgeoning Iraq was because U.S. intel claimed there was proof of W.M.D.’s—Weapons of Mass Destruction. There were no W.M.D.’s, and the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, but I digress). This cowboy motif is no accident, as it connects this film to the old John Ford Westerns and the nostalgia some folks feel about John Wayne flicks and the mythology of good white cowboys fighting off savage Indians who were keeping good white settlers from utilizing this “wilderness” that would become the U.S.A. Dehumanizing non-whites is the foundation for creating this nation. It’s the glue that holds apple pies and hot dogs together.
Clint Eastwood, a veteran of old school cowboy flicks and the poster boy for conservative old boy politics, paints American Sniper as another addition to that long line of wild west nostalgia in contemporary war cinema. Unfortunately the script tells us nothing new or insightful about the American psyche in relation to war today. As it stands, the simplistic plot of American Sniper tells us what we already know. Men are war, and American men thrive on it under the guise of Democracy and helping other countries liberate themselves from tyranny–by ironically (maybe intentionally) becoming the new tyranny in places we are supposed to be helping. Every generation, America creates new evil henchmen: Native Americans on the frontier, The Yellow Peril, Red Scare Russians, Black people and Civil Rights, Communist Cuba, and renegade North Korea. Since the 90s and our first trumped-up invasion of Iraq, the Arab world is the new thing that goes bump in the night. Our penchant for war only teaches us that xenophobia and colonialism never went away. We just dress them up with new language like insurgents and failing diplomacy.
Kyle’s indoctrination into war comes when he sees the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Kenya on television, and he only feels bad when he learns some Americans were killed. When the Twin Towers drop, he is gung ho to go to war. Not to protect people, but really, just to have something to do. Before the war, Kyle appears aimless, searching for a purpose. War gives him purpose. He gets married because that seems to be what he is supposed to do. He goes through life following a script pre-written for him. There are obligatory flashback scenes to show his stern father and the simplistic philosophy he was raised to believe in. That there is evil in the world at all times. That there are three types of people in the world: Wolves, sheep, and sheepdogs. And of course, a real man uses a gun and beats the crap out of people. Kyle internalizes these ideals, and carries them with him throughout the rest of his life.
The introduction of his wife, Taya (Sienna Miller), adds no meat to the story. She is regulated to being the good wife, the baby maker, the nagging spouse crying on the phone with an infant swinging off her breasts. (Let me say that the fake animatronic baby was creepy as hell and so distracting.) Although it probably wasn’t intended in the writing, you get the impression that Kyle preferred to be away from home not because he wanted to be a war hero, but because being a husband/father was a real drag for him.
We are taken through Kyle’s four tour of duties, and each tour builds Kyle up as the sniper with the most kills. There are two scenes, one in the very beginning of the movie, and one later on, where Kyle is faced with the task of killing a child or not. These scenes are meant to show a moral dilemma, but they rang false to me because if someone is the deadliest sniper in American military history, they didn’t get that high body count by worrying about shooting children. There are no children in the Arab world according to this story. Just little insurgents ready to make war.
In the theater that I watched the film, a rotund older white gentleman (probably retired military by his crew cut) was actually rooting for Kyle to shoot a child. Because all the Arabs in the movie were considered “savages,” I have no doubt that Kyle never questioned or worried about assassinating children. They weren’t Americans, and therefore not human. (In real life, Chris Kyle bragged about shooting 30 Black people right after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. He bragged about killing fellow American citizens who I’m sure he didn’t view as human. His Katrina shootings were said to be a lie he made up, but his lies spoke volumes about his character. So his fictional quandary regarding Arab children rang false to me because we are never shown a man who questions anything ever. He’s just an unthinking workhorse used by the military.)
The concept of showing a man who just goes along with the war machine could be enhanced dramatically by having side characters who offer a different viewpoint. Unfortunately, we never spend too much time with side characters. The one character who does begin to question the meaning of this war, Marc ( Luke Grimes—who needs to be in more movies), barely registers a blip on Kyle’s radar of understanding. The plot drags on for over two hours until there’s a stand-off between Kyle and Mustafa. By then, when he’s about to get his ass handed to him by death, Kyle calls his wife and says he finally wants to come home. Not because war has changed his consciousness or philosophy, but because he’s losing a skirmish that he created by not following orders. He went rogue, it backfired, and now he wants out. That was the realest moment in the entire film. Not heroic, just honest human self-preservation.
Watching an audience root for snipers to kill humans defending their right to exist on their own land reminded me of images of American snipers here in the states pointing guns at Black American citizens and their supporters protesting murders by cops in the United States. This same audience that cheered the heroics of Bradley Cooper as Chris Kyle probably cheered the actions of police forces on American streets aiming gun sights on folks with extra melanin. Cognitive dissonance is entrenched in the Patriotic American psyche. It allows Americans to rally around American Sniper, turning it into a blockbuster, while ignoring the home grown terrorism white Americans perpetuated against Black Americans that was depicted in the film Selma. I saw Americans of all colors streaming in to view Selma. American Sniper was vanilla heavy. Not a big surprise to me. Because, history.
Clint Eastwood made spurious claims that American Sniper is an anti-war film. This disingenuous claim falls flat given the simplistic story-line, and the film’s ending dripping with flag waving from real-life footage of Kyle’s funeral. Had Eastwood really wanted to impress upon an audience the agonies of war, then he would be better off showing actual wounded veterans recovering from the various body traumas they come home with. A lot of flag-waving might become less vigorous when we see war up close and personal. Americans don’t know war. Not really. We watch it on TV like video games. We don’t sleep, eat, go to work, or go to school worrying about unmanned drones and bombs falling out of the sky from some hopped up dudebro with a military computer joystick thousands of miles away.
Unlike the rest of the world, Americans are spared from these continuous horrors and daily PTSD. We are coddled like babies, and this coddling has made us immature children in regards to war. So we deserve a movie like American Sniper. The only message it gives us (like it did Chris Kyle in real life), is that the war you perpetuate abroad will come back to haunt you in another form. Chickens coming home to roost indeed.
‘Foxcatcher’ is very serious meditation on men and masculinities, male relationships, and the white male experience of the class system in America. And I am so fucking bored with those subjects, even when they aren’t presented with a deliberately slow pace, sterile tone, and distracting amounts of face putty.
Have you heard of “misandry”? If you read un-moderated comments on feminist websites you probably have. Misandry is the theoretical inverse of misogyny, so a systematic prejudice against and hatred of men. In a world chock full of systematic prejudices and hatreds, this is maybe the ONE form of oppression that doesn’t exist. Misandry is the unicorn of the kyriarchy: it isn’t real, but people still won’t shut up about it.
Because misandry is bogus, I know I can’t be a misandrist. But I really, really didn’t like Foxcatcher, a widely acclaimed film, and in my efforts to articulate why, the best I’ve really got is, “Ugh, men.”
Foxcatcher is very serious meditation on men and masculinities, male relationships, and the white male experience of the class system in America. And I am so fucking bored with those subjects, even when they aren’t presented with a deliberately slow pace, sterile tone, and distracting amounts of face putty.
And I KNOW that masculinity is a feminist issue, and that the narrative of male greatness that shapes the neuroses of Steve Carell’s John Du Pont and Channing Tatum’s Mark Schultz is a byproduct of the patriarchy. I also feel that as a feminist I should also have some interest in whatever this movie was trying to say about the psychosexual component to their relationship. (Have you ever noticed that a lot of wrestling holds look like sex positions? Because Foxcatcher would like to make sure you are aware of this. Really, absolutely, 100 percent clear. WRESTLING LOOKS LIKE BONING, YOU GUYS. DUDES BONING. IN A GAY WAY.)
But I’m just so boooooooored by it. I’m tired of movies that are all about dudes, and movies that act like their characters’ very dudehood is the most interesting possible thing about them. I wasn’t planning on commenting on the controversy regarding Foxcatcher‘s departures from the facts of its true crime story, but I do think it is worth noting that John Du Pont’s schizophrenia was not included in the film. Maybe they were just trying to avoid the hoary cliche of mental illness as a catalyst for murder? (So they went with the incredibly novel repressed homosexuality motive instead… hm.) Or was mental illness just not MANLY enough of a subject for Foxcatcher?
One of the first movies I reviewed for Bitch Flicks was Moneyball, also from Foxcatcher director Bennett Miller. It is another movie that is almost entirely about dudes. And at that time, I said:
Which is fine! There are stories, stories worth telling, that are just about men. (Likewise, there are stories worth telling that only involve women, but it’s hard to get Hollywood to bankroll those.) Telling a story about men in a men’s world isn’t inherently sexist.
Hmm, 2012 Robin sounds a lot mellower than 2015 Robin.
But I ALSO said in my Moneyball review that “I think it is fair to subject whatever scraps of portrayal of women we get in these male-dominated films to a slightly higher scrutiny.”
Well, this will be impossible with Foxcatcher, because it has exactly three female characters: 1) Vanessa Redgrave as Du Pont’s Ice Queen Mom (another example of the cutting-edge psychology Foxcatcher prefers to exploring the actual diagnosed condition Du Pont had), 2) Sienna Miller as Mom Jeans, and 3) The Maid.
Wait, I misspoke when I said there were three female characters (and not because one of Dave Schultz’s kids was a girl). There are three women (and one girl) in Foxcatcher. There are no female characters.
Which, like 2012 Robin said, is maybe OK. And maybe 2015 Robin IS a misandrist for finding Foxcatcher’s fascination with masculinity boring at best and annoying at worst. (No, I’m not. Misandry isn’t real.) But I need a movie by and about women STAT as a palette cleanser. Please offer suggestions in the comments!
Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town who does not actually hate men. In fact, she lives with a man, works with men, and even allows men to ride in the same elevator car as her.
Prince-Bythewood’s ability to draw commentary about the Black family experience in America is so well-integrated we, as the audience, are able to enjoy the emotional ride the characters take us on without the feeling that we’re watching a heavy-handed representation of the social issues of the time.
This guest post by Alize Emme appears as part of our theme week on Black Families.
“I’m gonna be the first girl in the NBA,” proclaims a young Monica (Kyla Pratt). “No, I’m gonna be in the NBA,” replies a young Quincy (Glendonn Chatman). “You’re gonna be my cheerleader.” Breaking down the idea that women can’t play sports, can’t do the same things men can (like in that late 90’s commercial) is the overarching theme of Gina Prince-Bythewood’s debut feature film Love & Basketball (2000). This is the kind of movie you can watch, like I did as a teenager, and think, “what a nice love story” and it’s not really about anything more. Or, you can take a step back, and with a more seasoned eye, find a story that is rich with nuances about race, gender, and relationship roles and realize Prince-Bythewood’s artful commentary is so subtle you’ve spent the past 15 years just really enjoying this movie about a sports romance.
As a film that revolves around 12 years in the lives of two African-American basketball stars, Monica Wright (Sanaa Lathan) and Quincy McCall (Omar Epps) and their neighboring families, it’s not really about basketball. “It’s about emotion,” as Robin Roberts says during a brief cameo. Prince-Bythewood’s ability to draw commentary about the Black family experience in America is so well-integrated we, as the audience, are able to enjoy the emotional ride the characters take us on without the feeling that we’re watching a heavy-handed representation of the social issues of the time.
This isn’t a Black film either. This is the Grey’s Anatomy approach to storytelling before Grey’s Anatomy existed. You look at these characters with a colorblind eye, only seeing their passion and emotion for basketball and each other. Race is directly mentioned a grand total of one time: at the start of the film when the two family’s matriarchs first meet. Nona McCall (Debbi Morgan), mother of Quincy, has just brought over a “freshly baked” cake for her new neighbors and Camille Wright (Alfre Woodard), mother of Monica, is happy to receive her. Nona explains their neighborhood at one time was “a little more mixed,” and jokes, “that was before the Black people down the street became the Black people next door, OK!” Camille, dutifully playing the role of good little domesticated housewife, looks at Nona with utter confusion – OK what? – before an embarrassed Nona quickly switches gears and that’s that.
Economic status is also never mentioned though it’s clear that both families are affluent. Both homes are spacious and have pools; the McCalls have a basketball court in the backyard. These are not struggling families; the passion Monica and Quincy share for the game comes from the heart, not the motivation to achieve a better life.
For the majority of the film, we see this very strained relationship between Monica and Camille. Monica is a basketball-obsessed, jersey wearing, make-up free tomboy whose mother “doesn’t know where [she] came from” because she “acts different” than her dress wearing, hair-styling sister and Camille, the classic country homemaker. Monica is our feminist heroine who personifies the idea that feminist women look down on women who choose more traditional roles. Camille has a longstanding belief that her daughter is disappointed in her “prissy” lifestyle, telling Monica she’s “a female superstar athlete whose mother is nothing more than a housewife.”
Misconstrued thinking creates nearly a decade of strife for these two women until it finally arises that Monica’s only shame for her mother lies in Camille’s inability to stand up for herself at home. Indeed, we see Camille falling deep into a submissive role with her husband. Camille has spent a lifetime silencing herself so her “husband can feel like a man.” The flip side of this coin is that Camille consciously put her life dreams on hold so she could “be there” for her family and create a loving home environment. But most importantly, we learn each woman was merely seeking the approval of the other. While Monica would rather “wear a jersey than an apron,” she wanted her mother’s approval both on and off the court.
Next-door to the Wrights, across a small grassy patch of lawn, resides the McCall family. Led by patriarch Zeke McCall (Dennis Haysbert) we find here another relationship being tested. From a young age Zeke has instilled in Quincy a resilience and confidencegeared toward shaping a boy into a man he can be proud of one day. Quincy treats his father’s words as gospel and views him like “he [is] god.” Prince-Bythewood introduces this theme of “My Father Was a God”early and often throughout the film. Quincy wants to be just like his father, play for the same pro ball team, and wear the same number on his jersey and around his neck. But it is tantamount to Zeke that Quincy not be like him, to focus on school and not “care about the team.”
The crumbling of this immortal facade, the fall from grace, comes from the affirmation that all the years Zeke spent being the hyper-masculine bread winner, shutting out his wife, and running to business meeting after business meeting, were all actions masking a love affair which has now evolved into a paternity suit. What really gets to Quincy is that his father, his hero, addresses the accusation of infidelity head-on with a bold face lie. A lie their relationship will never recover from. The outcome is a harsh unveiling for the young phenom; he loses trust in all around him and no longer has an accurate idea of who his father was, and by extension, who he is himself. It’s clear to us that Zeke’s steadfast molding of Quincy was deeply rooted in the mentality that Zeke “just couldn’t” be that man himself. Quincy’s big revelation, and arguably a revelation many young men face, is that he can no longer try to be his father. He “needed ball when [he] was trying to be like [his] pop,” and now that the curtain has lifted, he must redefine himself on his own terms.
The relationship between Monica and Quincy, while romantic and passionate at times, is Prince-Bythewood’s way of knocking down long enduring stereotypes about women in sports. Monica challenges everything Quincy thinks he knows about girls and life in general. He has never met a girl who not only knows how to ball, but balls better than he does. Monica won’t ride on the back of his bike and would rather have Twinkies than his apology flowers.
Monica is a ball player, and she knows how to “show emotion” on the court. But she continuously finds that those around her view her passion as aggression. If Monica were a guy, she’d “get a pat on the ass,” but because she’s “a female” she gets told to “calm down and act like a lady.” There is a huge double standard exposed here. Not only are men, on and off the court, encouraged to be aggressors, they are rewarded for it. But when a woman does the same, she’s seen as this negative force, a beast that needs to be tamed, which those around Monica try to accomplish.
Despite Quincy being a serial offender of treating women like objects, he does share this very specific friendship, turned romance, with Monica. She gets him like no one else can. But the double standards in their relationship become clear when they arrive at USC to start their basketball careers. Quincy expects Monica to handle the spoils of his success, i.e., the friendly female fans eager to cheer him on, but he will not let her off the hook when she chooses a starting spot in her game versus “being there” for him. He’s already told her it doesn’t matter if she’s “not known as the first girl in the NBA,” she’ll “get more play” being “Quincy McCall’s girl anyway,” so it’s not surprising when he further diminishes her dreams by forcing her to make this decision.
Monica has spent her freshman year struggling on the court, she hasn’t had the “red carpet” treatment like Quincy, and when an opportunity finally does arise, her boyfriend guilt trips her. The idea that women must make this sacrifice between career and relationship is so antiquated but still so accurate. In a great twist of irony, Quincy, who has spent his childhood hearing Mom complain about how Dad doesn’t make time for her and always puts basketball first, accuses Monica of the same behavior and uses that as the catalyst in his hasty decision to break-up with her. Equally interesting, Monica at this point has fallen into a more submissive role in their relationship and blames herself for its demise, pleading, “Whatever I did, we can fix this.”
As someone who grew up going to sports camps, I heard girls comment daily that they wanted to play in the NBA. So, it was completely lost on me that Monica’s constant repetition of “I’m gonna be the first girl in the NBA,” was because there wasno WNBA at the time. There is this prevailing idea throughout the film that these female players are good enough to be playing with their male counterparts, but instead are relegated overseas where, as Monica finds, it’s alienating, uninspiring, and also, unfair.
At the end of the film, Prince-Bythewood has shown us the struggles a Black woman faces when entering a highly competitive arena, the breakdown of a Black father/son relationship, a Black mother who has finally given herself a voice, and a Black relationship that through time and maturity is able to advance into its own sort of “Destiny,” all while never feeling like these are Black issues. But mostly she has taught us that women can do anything men can do. This could be any woman’s triumphant story. The film’s final scene shows Monica as the starting guard in the newly formed WNBA while Quincy and their young daughter clap for her on the sidelines, begging the question: Who’s your cheerleader now?
Alize Emme is a writer and filmmaker living in Los Angeles. She holds a B.A. in Film & Television from NYU and tweets at @alizeemme.
What works beyond a shadow of a doubt is Moore herself. For a long time now, she has demonstrated an uncanny range and power without ever subjecting us to a shred of vanity. Here, she outdoes herself, channeling Alice’s physical, mental, and emotional devolution with an alchemy that is as thrilling as it is harrowing. Her luminous features slacken, her cadences falter, her life force fades. Scenes with Stewart are especially heartbreaking.
This guest post by Lisa Rosman originally appeared at Word and Film, as well as on her website Signs and Sirens. Cross-posted with permission.
Without Julianne Moore, Still Alice might not be much of a film. This is not to say the adaptation of Lisa Genova’s 2007 novel about a 50-year-old woman stricken with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease is otherwise mediocre, although it is so unobtrusively constructed that its virtues may be overlooked. But because it focuses on the perspective of a person with Alzheimer’s rather than on the perspective of her caregivers, a uniquely gifted actor is required in the titular role. Who but Moore, with her radiant fusion of fortitude and empathy, could soldier us through a narrative whose unhappy ending is as inevitable as that of the Titanic?
Initially, Alice Howland seems like she has it all. A celebrated Columbia University linguistics professor, she is happily married to fellow academic John (an unusually muted Alec Baldwin), and the couple enjoys their three grown children as well as their well-appointed Long Island beach house and NYC brownstone. If she is a tad thorny when things don’t go her way – her youngest daughter, Lydia (Kristen Stewart), an aspiring actor, bears the brunt of her mother’s tenacity – it’s nothing extraordinary in a modern Type A woman. But when Alice can no longer write off her memory loss and growing confusion as mere middle-aged malaise (read: menopause side effects), her worst fears are outstripped: She is diagnosed with a rare strain of Alzheimer’s that is inherited and can be transmitted. “I wish I had cancer,” she weeps, and although some might take umbrage with her disease comparison-shopping, we understand what she means. Especially in her line of work, she does not know who she will be without her formidable brain.
Although this film is unwaveringly linear, we are quickly discombobulated. The film’s progression mirrors Alice’s decline so that time itself seems to dissolve, like all the rituals and goals to which she clings with a devastating inefficacy. Daily runs become impossible; soon she can no longer remember regular appointments without the aid of her smartphone. Sooner still she forgets the layout of her own house. One afternoon, she soils herself before she can find the bathroom. Every time Alice finds a way to manage a new set of limitations, the ground beneath her feet crumbles again, and we live right inside her growing panic and sorrow. As her ability to perceive her surroundings deteriorates, even the film’s clean lines grow fuzzy.
Because of Alice’s high intelligence, her Alzheimer’s has likely gone undiagnosed longer than it would have had she possessed fewer compensatory resources (ways to remember what she did not remember). The irony is she and her family possess very few “compensatory resources” once her now-rapid degeneration becomes evident; as cerebral people, they are especially ill-equipped to navigate her ever-increasing mental challenges. John, in particular, proves disappointing. “You are the smartest woman I know,” he tells her early on, and when their shared value of independence proves no longer possible, we learn that objectifying a woman for her brain is as problematic as objectifying her for her beauty. Marriage on any contingency plan is precarious.
It can be argued that Still Alice is too Lifetime-for-TV neat, that its secondary characters are too two-dimensional. While I’d never claim this film was avant-garde, I admire directors and screenwriters Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland’s resistance to “fake stakes,” the peaks and valleys that normally shape a film narrative. Instead, the hurdles that Alice clears – an instance in which she successfully collects herself after dropping her notes during a speech, an aborted suicide attempt – only pave the way for our growing acceptance that there is no way to subvert her ultimate obstacle. Similarly, it makes sense that Alice’s family and friends don’t feel quite real; long before she actually forgets their names, her ability to distinguish personality nuance has been compromised. We’re there with her. Of course, this doesn’t excuse everything: a linguistics professor who loses her words is admittedly a smack on the nose, as is the discovery of Alice’s genetic disorder just as her eldest daughter (Kate Bosworth) is attempting to get pregnant.
What works beyond a shadow of a doubt is Moore herself. For a long time now, she has demonstrated an uncanny range and power without ever subjecting us to a shred of vanity. Here, she outdoes herself, channeling Alice’s physical, mental, and emotional devolution with an alchemy that is as thrilling as it is harrowing. Her luminous features slacken, her cadences falter, her life force fades. Scenes with Stewart are especially heartbreaking. The younger actor is finally returning to form after all that mucking about with vampires, and the careful attentiveness she displays as Alice’s daughter is key to the one hope that this film offers us: By definition, true love never changes form.
A former labor organizer, Lisa Rosman has reviewed film for such outlets as Time Out New York, Salon, Us Magazine, Flavorwire, LA Weekly, RogerEbert.com, and CBS News. She appears weekly on the NY1 film review show Talking Pictures and writes on film, feminism, and eavesdropping for SignsandSirens.com. Most notably, she once served as an assistant for Elmo on Sesame Street.
So what about ‘Better Call Saul’? Will Gilligan and Gould offer us more female characters (to either love or hate)? So far I see only one major female role being advertised, that of Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn), a tough lawyer foil for Saul. At this stage, it just feels thin, and we all know that Gilligan and Gould can absolutely produce some interesting female characters to add to their Alberquerque setting; the question is, will they?
It’s a well-known fact that the second a studio or network creates something successful, they sit there like greedy yuppies, desperately trying to milk the last ounce of financial profit they can. Will the AMC Breaking Bad spin-off Better Call Saul be the same? A tired reiteration of characters we’ve already left behind? A collection of cameos and winks to the audience about Walt and Jesse? Lots of shots in a Los Pollos Hermanos?
Or will it bring us all back to New Mexico and settle us deep into another round of rich character storytelling? Since the premiere for Better Call Saul is on Feb. 8, only a few short weeks away, we won’t have to wait long to find out. I think it’s fair to say that with the amount of popularity and cultural significance assigned to its predecessor that critics and fans alike will fall upon it the minute it airs, condemning or rejoicing.
So far, the critical response has been cautious but favorable. The New York Times did an amazing write-up a few days ago and in the end, it appears that Better Call Saul isn’t aiming to be the next Breaking Bad, dark and anxious with a few big gulps of humor to break up the destruction of our hero; rather Better Call Saul looks to be a slower, more “writerly” exploration of characters we’ve already met. (Also, did everyone already know that this website existed?) And considering the way that Albuquerque (originally mostly chosen for its significant tax breaks to films) became such an ingrained, central part of the Breaking Bad narrative, I hope that Albuquerque becomes even more of a shining star.
A nuanced, often comedic character exploration thoroughly grounded in the stark, mythical landscape of New Mexico is promising, and hopefully takes this “prequel” out of an ill-fated spin-off and into some strong, revolutionary territory of its own. In this way, hopefully Better Call Saul can evolve into its own kind of show, maybe even manage to distance itself from the big brother shadows of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman.
However, Breaking Bad was an action-driven biopic that featured only three prominent women: Skyler (Anna Gunn), Marie (Betsy Brandt) and Lydia (Laura Fraser). And while everyone desperately, twistedly, wanted Walt to become “the one who knocks,” wanted to see him plot, manipulate, and ultimately win, Skyler was his nagging wife, hated by millions of fans for her disruption of Walt’s illegal activities (things got so bad, she actually wrote an op-ed for The New York Times about it).
Naturally, looking back it’s easy to see the important role that Skyler especially facilitated in the series, as well as Marie and Lydia, all of them with their moments of contradictions and complexity. However, the three female characters seem sparse when compared to the robust male cast.
So what about Better Call Saul? Will Gilligan and Gould offer us more female characters (to either love or hate)? So far I see only one major female role being advertised, that of Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn), a tough lawyer foil for Saul. At this stage, it just feels thin, and we all know that Gilligan and Gould can absolutely produce some interesting female characters to add to their Alberquerque setting; the question is, will they?
We won’t find out for at least two weeks, but in the meantime, let’s dream of exciting new shows featuring amazing and interesting female characters. What have you got?
There is so much potential within ‘Mr. Jones,’ and yet so little awesomeness, resulting in a convoluted found footage misfire, another tired story about a Male Protagonist and his Girlfriend.
Lest you think I fall in love with everyfoundfootagefilm I see, I offer you my review of Mr. Jones — a film that takes fascinating approaches to its mythology, camerawork, and representations of gender, then smashes them on the ground into a boring, convoluted mess.
Written and directed by first-time writer/director Karl Mueller, Mr. Jones (2013) failed to impress reviewers:
Given the sloppiness of Karl Mueller’s directorial debut, it feels less like innovation and more like an attempt to cover up shortcomings, as if he had the kernel of an idea and only begrudgingly filled it out. (The Playlist)
Writer-director Karl Mueller has put in a lot of effort to make sure Mr. Jones looks different and is constructed differently from any contemporaneous indie-horror project and/or mockumentary. And that’s what makes Mr. Jones such a bummer. So much work, so much thought, put into something so shitty. (The Dissolve)
It’s difficult to write about Mr. Jones without revealing spoilers or my utter disdain for the two main characters, so here’s a recap:
A young, white, financially secure, beautiful, heterosexual, able-bodied, cis couple move to The Woods to live in a Cabin, isolated from society.
Scott has this vague but enthusiastic notion that he’ll create the most super best amazing nature documentary of all time, revive his relationship with Penny, and reinvent his entire life. This lasts for approximately one minute of the exposition, voiced by Scott as a narration for his documentary:
Scott: Do you ever dream of waking up to birds instead of your alarm clock? Have you ever wanted to blow all your money on extremely nice camera equipment to make a nature documentary so beautiful people who saw it would never want to watch another movie again?…Do you ever wish you could kiss your wife the way you did on the night you first met?
Then he reveals that he’s stopped taking his unspecified meds and has no idea what the hell he’s doing with this project. He worries that he has dragged his girlfriend away from her successful career and her emotional support system on a half-baked fame-seeking whim:
Scott: Have you ever started to suspect you made a huge mistake?…Have you ever moved to the woods for a whole year to work on your relationship, only a month in you missed your TV more than you thought?…What if Penny put her photography career on hold for you, so you are too ashamed to admit that the documentary you moved here to make wasn’t that well thought out anyway?
Scott spends his days immobile in a hammock while Penny encourages him to take up his camera and make an effort to film. After a month and a half of this behavior, Penny is understandably upset about Scott’s neglect of the project for which she has made so many sacrifices:
Penny: I gave up everything to come out here with you, I left my job, my friends. And you promised me, you PROMISED me that you would be responsible.
But we are asked to forget about Penny’s frustration with Scott when birds start flying smack into their cabin in the middle of the night. (Do you ever dream of waking up to birds instead of your alarm clock?)
Then Scott encounters a creepy figure creeping around creating freaky scarecrow-like statues out of natural elements:
Scott’s like, Woah, dude’s a psychopath! And Penny’s like, He’s Mr. Jones — a famous reclusive artistic genius living off the grid! Let’s make him the subject of your documentary and hey — I’ll make a coffee table book!
Penny makes a list for Scott of all the Mr. Jones experts in the world — conveniently, every one of them happens to live in New York! Here the film takes a more formal approach to the documentary style and gives us several interviews with one woman (art historian) and five men (art dealer, anthropologist, newspaper reporter, metaphysical author guy, and an “Alleged Scarecrow Recipient” — seriously, that’s how he’s titled in the doc).
Thus proceeds a convoluted download of Mr. Jones info, and while some of it is truly creepy, lots of it just don’t make sense. (More on this later.)
Meanwhile, Penny is in The Woods, taking pictures of Mr. Jones’s statues for her book.
She has an awkward encounter with Mr. Jones during the day, then has a scary night in The Woods. Her takeaway from the experience, as she documents it, is a sense that Mr. Jones helped her get home to safety:
Penny: I just feel like I need to record this before I forget, ’cause I feel like I just woke up from a dream…You know how in a dream you can tell if someone is trying to hurt you or help you?…It’s like I could feel his intentions…and I don’t feel scared.
Scott returns to The Woods and he and Penny decide together that the obvious next step here is to break into Mr. Jones’s abode and film his home, his studio, and his art without his consent.
Yes, they’ve just learned that this guy is not only a respected figure in the art world, but also a potentially dangerous (but maybe also protective?) magic man, and their response is to break in to his home and touch and film his things.
I understand that as a horror fan there are times when I must forgive a character’s blatant stupidity. Horror is a genre built on the backs of bad ideas. But the decision to violate Mr. Jones’s privacy and document his work without his consent is not only stupid, it’s disrespectful and douchey. Scott wants to make a famous documentary, Penny want to make a huge coffee table book; they want to create their own art, so they feel entitled to access his art and the space in which he creates it.
Their stupid and entitled plan gets even stupider and more entitled when Scott the brainiac decides to swipe one of Mr. Jones’s smaller creations. It just happens to be the creepy center piece in a huge creepy underground shrine, no big deal, he simply blows out its eye candles and shoves it in his backpack.
Scott and Penny make it back to their cabin safely, but now their car won’t start and the sun won’t rise and they’re trapped in a nightmare world in which alternate versions of themselves are evil enemies.
Mr. Jones inexplicably gets sucked up into the sky (I THINK???). Ultimately, Scott must return to the shrine and replace the stolen figure, then don Mr. Jones’s mask and take on the role of creepy protector.
The only way to defeat the nightmare world is to don the trappings of nightmares and create nightmarish images — I love this concept, but alas! I found the execution super boring…
We watch Scott stumble around for a while, chased by his nightmare self, then — TA-DA!! — he’s the hero and he rescues his girlfriend! The Male Protagonist does it again: he makes a bunch of bad decisions and then he saves the day! Great job, Scott!
Scott maybe becomes the next Mr. Jones??? I’m not really sure because of the confusing final scenes and the mind-scramblingly frustrating mythology we’re offered throughout the film.
Let’s talk about the Mr. Jones mythology. First, the aspects I thought were great:
I love the concept of the Mr. Jones character: this amorphous being who is creepy as fuck in both aspect and artistry, and yet whose creepy creations actually offer protection from that which is truly terrifying, the real monster of this movie: the fear haunting our minds.
Mr. Jones suggests that creating something scary has the power to ward away fear. There’s a delicious paradox embedded in that idea, and a jumping off point for a conversation about the creation and consumption of horror movies. Why are horror fans drawn to scary stories? What purpose do they serve in our minds, our lives, our culture? Do we seek horrific images in order to confront and reject our fears?
Unfortunately, all of this is ruined by the sloppy slap-together of the convoluted, contradictory mythology presented in the film’s documentary-style interviews.
For example: In one of the interview-with-the-experts clips, we’re informed by the art dealer that “[t]here are nine verified Jones pieces in the world — nine.”
Yet in other clips, other experts make it sound like there are far more than nine Jones statues in existence:
Author: It is hard to believe that one person, after so many years, could be responsible for building all of these totems and sending them all over the world. So there’s some that posit that perhaps there is a secret group or a sect at work here, building these things and sending them out for ceremonial purposes.
So which is it? Are there nine Jones pieces, or dozens? And what exactly is the deal with the recipients of these statues? What is the impact of the Mr. Jones statues on their lives?
One of the experts, the art dealer, was a recipient of a Jones statue. He put it in his gallery window, experienced an uptick in gallery traffic for a while, then went back to life as usual.
Scott: So what happened next?
Art Dealer: Well, eventually they just stopped. And that was it. And I thought Mr. Jones was done.
Another expert, the metaphysical author guy, says that the people who received these statues went whackadoo and moved to The Woods.
Author: I met a lot of people that were mailed totems by Mr. Jones, and most of them just say that they were disturbed and moved on. But if you actually start talking to the people around them, their husbands, their wives, their friends, their colleagues, their parents — then you start to get a different story. And you dig deeper into the lives of these people, and you notice even more drastic changes, extreme personality shifts, disappearances, housewives leaving their families and moving into the woods, it’s disturbing.
The “Alleged Scarecrow Recipient” destroyed his Mr. Jones scarecrow, and now suffers from undisclosed life problems and ongoing nightmares that he’s chasing himself around and in danger of spilling evil out into the world:
Alleged Scarecrow Recipient: You have no idea what you’re dealing with, this guy — you don’t know what he’s capable of…You have no idea what these things do to your mind…they get inside your mind and they explode.
But according to the anthropologist, the scarecrows are protective figures:
Anthropologist: These talismans were created by the holy men to patrol the borders of these two worlds as they overlapped…to keep the chaos and insanity and nightmares of the dream world from entering our own.
So…are we to understand that the people who reject the scarecrow/dream-guardian figures go mad? Do they become the new versions of Mr. Jones? Is that what happens to Scott? If a recipient accepts the scarecrow, like the art dealer, nothing really happens? But if they are disturbed by the figures, then they abandon their families and move into the woods? And if they destroy the figures, then they live forever in a nightmare world of fear? Are we to understand that Mr. Jones is trying to protect the people to whom he sends his statues? Or is his aim to imbue more people with his magic powers and inspire them to create more creepy protective totems?
I can accept when a film refrains from explaining a major, obvious quandary — see, for example, my feelings about the final scenes of Mockingbird – but I cannot accept when a movie offers inconsistent, inconclusive explanations and paints a messy picture of its mythos. This shatters the credibility of the in-film documentary and craps on the interesting questions the movie raises about the creation and consumption of horrific images.
Speaking of horrific images, let’s talk about the camerawork in Mr. Jones.
First, the bad:
In the film’s exposition, we learn that Scott has rigged his camera so that it shoots both his POV and a close-up of his face, which Penny thinks is the most brilliant thing ever, and I think was a big mistake. Found footage films can be difficult enough to follow without jumping back and forth between a character’s POV shot and close up of the character. As one reviewer from The Dissolve puts it:
Also tedious: those two-way camera get-ups, which turn most of the action sequences in Mr. Jones into a hard-to-follow assemblage of “shaky face shot,” “shaky first-person shot,” “shaky face shot,” and so on, for minutes on end.
Found footage films get a lot of shit, but one of the coolest things they can do is put the viewer in the POV perspective of a character experiencing nightmare circumstances. The sequence with Scott in the tunnel system in particular would have been way more effective if Mueller had kept the POV shot through the entirety. This scene was an opportunity to offer viewers the nightmarish experience of navigating through an ever-changing underground maze. It could have been disorienting in a way that approximated the sensation of the maddening dream logic Scott is experiencing. Thanks to the shifting back and forth between POV and character close-up, it wasn’t.
I will generally tolerate confusing and/or uncomfortable camerawork if I think it’s trying to do something interesting or if it resonates meaningfully within the context of the larger horror in the story. But all this approach did was and take me out of the nightmarish nature of the tunnel sequence, and reinforce my feeling that Scott is a narcissistic dreamer who cares more about navel gazing than putting effort into creating something.
The good:
I appreciate that Mueller found a way to transition his found footage film from personal POV shots to something more flexible without smashing the film’s premise. (Another example of success with this is the use of telekeneticams in Josh Trank’s Chronicle.) The inclusion of the phantom film shot by the nightmare universe version of Scott is a clever way to explain the shift away from jerky-hand-cam character POV shots, the frequent downfall of many a found footage denouement.
Unfortunately, most of these phantom film shots consist of Scott stumbling around in fear and confusion, and Penny as alternately a scary nightmare universe version of herself and a helpless damsel in distress. Then Scott the Male Protagonist leads the way and saves the day!
So…lets talk about this film’s approach to representations of gender.
The good:
Penny, the main female character, has energy and agency, intelligence and ambition.
The bad:
Penny uses all of her energy and agency and intelligence and ambition to serve Scott and his project. Her project, the coffee table book, is a supplement to his creation. The Male Protagonist’s Girlfriend is a depressingly pervasive trope in film and television: she is a character who has no real purpose in a story except to support the Male Protagonist in his chosen journey. Penny gets Girlfriended from the get-go: from start to finish, she serves to support Scott. That’s all she is and all she does.
Scott is the impetus for the film, the creator of the documentary, the voice of the exposition, the hero in the resolution (I THINK???). We’re in Scott’s world, and Penny’s there to be supportive and get rescued. (Never mind that she has to be rescued because Scott was an idiot who stole from his creepy neighbor’s underground tunnel shrine.)
There is so much potential within this film, and yet so little awesomeness, resulting in a convoluted found footage misfire, another tired story about a Male Protagonist and his Girlfriend.
*Is Penny Scott’s girlfriend or his wife? In his expository voice over, he says “Do you ever wish you could kiss your wife the way you did on the night you first met?” But at one point in the film she calls him her “boyfriend.” Just one more confusing thing about this movie. I don’t think it really matters; the point is that they’re life partners but all that really seems to matter in the film is his life.
White and non-Black people can have a “bad hair day.” But only Black folks get labeled with bad hair for life, no matter how it is groomed. Especially Black women. Go to any retail store that sells hair products and the ethnic section (read:Black) has more hair creams, gels, mousse, sprays, relaxers, grease, puddings, pomades, hair butter, oils, lotions, to fry, dye and lay that bushy crown to the side. I won’t even get into the hot combs, wigs, weaves, lacefronts, extensions, and clip-ons used to hide a Black woman’s natural hair state. It’s one thing when little Black girls are indoctrinated early to hate their hair, but what about little Black boys who may also be genderqueer? How is this hair struggle tolerated by a homophobic mother struggling to keep her head above water?
There is nothing more purifying to the human psyche than when another human being sees you for who you really are and accepts you just as you are. And there’s nothing more soul-crushing than when they don’t. This is at the heart of writer/director Mariana Rondón’sPelo Malo as it follows the journey of a young Venezuelan boy named Junior (Samuel Lange Zambrano).
Junior is a 9-year-old boy living with his single mother, Marta (Samantha Castillo), and infant brother in a Caracas housing development that looks like an overpopulated urban nightmare. I will call the child Black despite differing racial categories between North America and South America. Every coded Black person on the planet knows who the term “Bad Hair” was created for—persons of African descent with that extra curl in their DNA. Most descendants of enslaved Africans shipped to different parts of the “New World” are a mixture of African, Indigenous (Native), and European heritage. Hair textures will fall anywhere from straight, wavy, to extra thick and tightly curled. Or a mixture of all three.
White and non-Black people can have a “bad hair day.” But only Black folks get labeled with bad hair for life, no matter how it is groomed. Especially Black women. Go to any retail store that sells hair products and the ethnic section (read:Black) has more hair creams, gels, mousse, sprays, relaxers, grease, puddings, pomades, hair butter, oils, lotions, to fry, dye and lay that bushy crown to the side. I won’t even get into the hot combs, wigs, weaves, lacefronts, extensions, and clip-ons used to hide a Black woman’s natural hair state. It’s one thing when little Black girls are indoctrinated early to hate their hair, but what about little Black boys who may also be genderqueer? How is this hair struggle tolerated by a homophobic mother struggling to keep her head above water?
Most Black boys don’t have hair issues because they are typically shorn of their locks at an early age. I’ve often witnessed Black mothers and fathers letting their son’s hair grow freely while it is still soft baby hair, but the moment it kinks up a little too tight, they cut it off. As long as boys and men keep the scalp lined up right by the barber, and don’t let it get too overgrown and unkempt, the struggle is minimal. Some Black men (and boys) get “texturizers” (basically light relaxers for men), or sport a wave cap overnight to create spiral waves around their scalp. Back in the day it was the Jheri curl or the California curl, where often dark-skinned men suffered chemical treatments like women to get that glossy-curly look that some lighter-skinned men naturally had. Ironically, to me at least, Junior has the silky dream hair that some Black boys and girls in my part of the world would pray for. The boy is naturally beautiful; however, in his mind he knows that the ultimate beauty is straight, European-looking hair. Famous singers who he likes are his role models. They have straight hair. All his little heart desires in the movie is to take a yearbook picture for the new school year with straight hair. Dassit.
The antagonism stems from his mother Marta, who sees Junior’s fixation with his hair as a huge problem. Not only does her son fuss over his hair and appearance, but he is also effeminate. This is the most painful part of watching Pelo Malo. Marta is a beautiful woman, but her face takes on such ugliness every time she looks at Junior. This child loves his mother to death, spends a lot of time just staring at her, as if trying to figure out the laws of feminine allure. One day Junior sits on a couch watching TV with Marta. He looks over and gazes at her face with such adoration and deep love, but then she snaps on him, “Stop staring at me like that!” From her tone we know he does this often. And we get to witness this longing gaze many times. Marta spends most of her screen time projecting onto Junior her fears of having a gay son. She does some pretty damaging things to try and fix him too throughout the film.
Junior doesn’t break dance like the neighborhood kids, he does a trance-like inner groove with his eyes closed and she is disturbed by it. When she catches him doing this same dance on a city bus, she snatches him up, and Junior doesn’t understand why she is angry. It is literally painful to watch. She piles on the psychological and verbal child abuse. The more that Junior tries to get Marta to love him, she pushes him away. If Venus was a boy, she would be Junior. This fact frightens Marta.
Of course, part of Marta’s behavior is rooted in the harsh marginalized environment they live in that punishes perceived deviance. Her son’s burgeoning homosexuality is just one more problem she will have to deal with on top of being poor, single, begging for her underpaid job back, and raising two children, one of which is still nursing from her breasts. Every time she looks at her son, she sees the discrimination, danger, and ridicule they will both have to face against the outside world. But instead of being compassionate, she is angry and perturbed by his mere presence. Her face conveys so much deep-seated hatred for the boy, that at first I thought she was salty with the child because maybe he looked like his father and there was a bad break-up. However, later in the story we find out that she loved the boy’s Black father. Marta’s face softens just talking about him, so the audience has to search for other clues as to her lack of affection towards Junior. She’s constantly pushing/pulling him places, screaming at him outside their bathroom door whenever he locks himself in there to fix his hair in some kind of way that flattens it.
Marta is loving and affectionate with her white-skinned, straight-haired infant son. There is a tender moment where she is topless and bathing the little one. Junior watches (always watching), a sad yearning in his expression. I wondered. Did she ever hold him like that? Kiss him that way? Maybe when his father was alive?
At one point Marta lies on her bed exhausted from her job search, weary from being turned down for security work, something she is trained for. Junior crawls in next to her and tries to comfort her, and she shoves him away. I began to wonder if it was a combination of his non-conforming sexuality and his Blackness that she despised. There are plenty of non-Black women/men who find Black partners and have children, and yet still harbor racial prejudice. There are even Black-with-Black partners that harbor colorism issues regarding light and dark skin tones.
I admit the colorism/affection issue triggered me in this film. I also come from a single parent household where I am the oldest and darkest child, and the sibling I grew up with is fair-skinned, hazel-eyed, and bone-straight dishwater blonde. My mother was auburn-haired and light-skinned, and although she never had issues with my skin-tone, I was young enough to notice how other people (Black, White, Mexican, Asian, etc) reacted when the two of us went places with our mother. My sister was fawned over (her skin, her eyes, her hair), while I was referred to as the reader. Black children (and non-Black children) learn subconsciously (even before they begin to speak) that whiteness and proximity to whiteness is EVERYTHING, and the opposite is viewed as negative.
Throughout Pelo Malo there were uncomfortable re-rememberings of myself looking at myself in the mirror when I was Junior’s age, slathering Vaseline or Blue Magic Hair Grease on my hair, trying to slick all that stuff DOWN. Tame it. Control it. Essentially hide all that made me stand out as the really Black one in the family. So I was all in my feels watching Junior struggle to get that elusive straight hair. It’s not a comfortable experience to watch a film that basically shows you your childhood and how painful it was. I realized I had built up a lot of buffers around my own hair/skin color trauma.
Junior’s only saving grace is his Black paternal Grandmother Carmen (Nelly Ramos). The moment I see Carmen’s teeny-weeny ‘fro, I know this is a woman who embraces her natural beauty. She doesn’t sport a wig, or straighten her locks. She plays music and likes to dance. She even straightens Junior’s hair when he asks just so he can see what it would look like, but she admonishes him to wet it back up before his mother comes to get him. She spots right off what is evident about her grandson. He is not a hard boy. He is concerned with his appearance. He wants to be a singer. He wants straight hair for his yearbook picture. Grandma Carmen obliges by making him a suit that looks like something the singer Prince would wear. This time spent with Carmen is a respite for Junior, but unfortunately the need for Marta’s love and acceptance is so strong, Junior convinces himself that Grandma Carmen is trying to turn him into a girl. The frilly suit he found so delightful stitched from his grandmother’s hand becomes a suit of shame.
In the end, Marta tells Junior he can only stay with her if he cuts off all his curly ringlets. The hair has become a symbol of Black queerness for Marta. It must be vanquished. It’s a devastating blow, and the last shot we have of Junior is a gut-wrencher. He is in his school uniform wearing close-cropped hair. Unsmiling. It is the yearbook photo. But not the one he wanted.
Pelo Malo ends with no issues resolved, and no hints that life will change or be better for Junior. However, there is one ray of hope in the end credits. We get to see what Junior looks like wearing his grandmother’s Prince-like suit. His hair is blow-dried straight and he dances to his grandmother’s favorite song. He looks glorious. And free.
I left the theater thinking, “How many Juniors, male/female/gay/gender-neutral/genderfluid/transgender/non-binary are out there in the world?”
I know there are millions. And we must be vigilant in holding safe spaces for those children to grow, discover, and define themselves on their own terms. Children like Leelah Alcorn, who recently took her own life because she couldn’t be the person she needed to be. That is the lesson of Pelo Malo.
If nothing else, people should see this little gem just to gaze at the beautiful face of actor Samuel Lange Zambrano. The weight of this movie is carried on his thin little shoulders, and he handles it like a pro. He is perfection.
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Lisa Bolekaja is a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Workshop and a former Film Independent Fellow. She co-hosts a screenwriting podcast called “Hilliard Guess’ Screenwriters Rant Room” and her work has appeared in “Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History” (Crossed Genres Publishing), “The WisCon Chronicles: Volume 8″ (Aqueduct Press), and the SF/F anthology, “How to Live on Other Planets: A Handbook for Aspiring Aliens” (Upper Rubber Boot Books). Her latest SF story “Three Voices” will be forthcoming in Uncanny Magazine.
Quick! An avalanche is about to kill you and your family. Do you: A) Try to save your children, or B) Grab your phone and run away, leaving your loved-ones to perish? If you chose B, you may be the male lead of ‘Force Majeure,’ the sometimes-funny, sometimes-serious Swedish movie up for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2015 Golden Globe Awards.
Quick! An avalanche is about to kill you and your family. Do you:
A) Try to save your children, or
B) Grab your phone and run away, leaving your loved-ones to perish?
If you chose B, you may be the male lead of Force Majeure, the sometimes-funny, sometimes-serious Swedish movie up for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2015 Golden Globe Awards.
The story of Force Majeure – which is revealed in the trailers; I’m not giving anything away – is that a husband and wife, Tomas and Ebba, are enjoying a vacation with their two young children when what looks like an out-of-control avalanche comes barreling toward them. Believing they’re about to die, Ebba immediately tries to save the children, while Tomas abandons all three of them to save himself.
It turns out that the avalanche stops in time, so everyone’s all right, but the rest of the movie is about what it means – for Tomas and Ebba personally, and for their marriage – now that they know he’s a coward. From the moment the avalanche stops, they keep talking about it – and trying not to talk about it – as they try to decide whether it was a Big Deal, and whether it Means Something about the kind of person he is.
In real life, a “force majeure” is a clause in a contract that lets you out of your obligations in the event of a major catastrophe, such as a natural disaster. In Force Majeure, the question is whether Tomas – who generally has a good relationship with his family – can be forgiven for failing to be a good spouse and father, during extraordinary circumstances. What sounds like it could be a joke – man unexpectedly abandons family without a backward glance as soon as things get rough – becomes a very thoughtful and serious examination of what it means to be married to someone, what you have the right to expect from your spouse, and what the proper separation is between Self and Family.
As the film points out, women’s identities have traditionally been closely tied to their roles as wives and mothers, while men’s identities have been tied to their jobs and extra-familial achievements. It’s telling that, before the avalanche even arrives, Ebba (obliquely) accuses Tomas of focusing too much on work rather than his family. After the avalanche hits, the detail she zeroes in on is that he chose to save his phone – which he’s been using to check his work email – rather than helping her with the kids.
At the same time, the movie suggests that Ebba might be too wrapped up in her family. In one scene, she becomes disturbed and uncomfortable by the idea of polyamory, as explained to her by another tourist staying at the same resort. It isn’t just that she’s not poly herself – it’s that she can’t wrap her head around the idea that a polyamorous couple can lead separate lives while still being committed. When she’s separated from her family for an afternoon, she’s nearly catatonic without them, and bursts into tears when she sees them having fun without her.
By running away from the avalanche, Tomas separated himself from the we/us/ours that Ebba takes for granted as the centre of a meaningful relationship. There are lots of reasons why running away wasn’t the right thing to do, but the part that seems to bother her most is his selfishness.
For most of the film, Tomas and Ebba aren’t able to talk about what happened. It takes Ebba a long time to process what she’s feeling and, at first, she tries to pretend it’s OK. Tomas, on the other hand, at first tries to deny he was scared, and then denies he ran away. He retreats into a detached, intellectual position where he pretends to find it “interesting” that they have “different perspectives” on what happened, abandoning her a second time.
When they finally do talk about it, they drag in two of their friends, one of whom suggests that men from a certain generation were raised not to care about their children – something that starts a second argument about what it means to be a good father. Mats, the friend who’s been divorced already, defensively argues that he’s a good father because he provides financially for his children. His girlfriend points out that his children live with their mother, and suggests that he doesn’t put in enough face time to say he’s involved in their lives.
The disagreement spirals out in several different directions but, every direction it goes, it comes back to the idea that the roles we play in life, and the expectations we have of ourselves and each other, are coloured by gender.
Even though it’s not specifically discussed this way, there’s something gendered about the way Tomas initially refuses to admit that he was scared – about the way that he projects his feelings onto Ebba and tries to tell their friends that she was terrified while he stayed calm. There’s also something gendered about the way that Ebba can’t stop smiling when she’s angry – the way that she can’t stop talking about what happened, even when she hasn’t worked out what to say.
Force Majeure is about a world where men and women are supposed to be equal partners in marriage, but where we don’t yet know what that means. We’re watching an institution that used to mean one thing evolve to become something else. It’s exciting and confusing and the question, what does it mean to be a good partner or parent or woman or man, is one that gets more complicated as our notions of what’s possible expand.
Watching two people passive-aggressively argue about who did or didn’t run away when they were or weren’t about to die is a microcosm for the conflict at the heart of any union – what’s the separation between I and We?
No one knows. That’s what makes it riveting to watch.
Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies and TV on her blog.
Heathcliff illustrates the brutalization of the non-white male; his every attempt to integrate is rejected, so he grows embittered and alienated, forced to exploit others to achieve his goals. If Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom is often criticized for being implausibly forgiving and accommodating to racist slave-owners, then surely Heathcliff is the anti-Tom, an openly angry and defiant agent of revenge against the racist patriarchy that has killed his love.
Heathcliff is not white. Though his exact race is never defined, racial stigma is used to mark him as a threatening, “dark-skinned” outsider throughout Wuthering Heights. It is significant that this interracial aspect of the novel’s passionate romance wasn’t addressed on screen until Andrea Arnold’s 2011 adaptation, over 160 years after the book’s publication. Arnold foregrounds the issue of Heathcliff’s race by casting Black actors in the role, rather than the conventional “white-Anglo-Saxon-gypsy” dodge. The swearing, which was considered shocking by Brontë’s contemporaries, has been updated by Arnold to retain its impact for modern audiences, as has the racist language. Essentially, her film is a partial retelling of the novel, exclusively from Heathcliff’s perspective. Where Catherine makes a stray remark in the book about Heathcliff’s dull silence compared to Linton, Arnold’s film embodies that silence in wordless scenes on the Yorkshire moors. When Heathcliff is cast out of doors, Arnold’s camera forces us to share his exile and peer through windows at events within. When Heathcliff is beaten, we experience his pain in flinching close-up. When Heathcliff leaves in the middle of a dramatic speech, we are likewise denied its conclusion.
The result is fragmentary and sometimes frustrating, perhaps not satisfying as a standalone film. But it achieves what no previous adaptation has: to be a real enhancement to the book, rather than a pale reflection of it. Where Brontë’s novel filters our impression of Heathcliff through the narration of Lockwood’s smug, educated gentleman and Nelly’s commonsensical servant, each sometimes presenting him as incomprehensible, barbarous or threatening, Arnold flips this narrative to show us the incomprehensible barbarity and threatening cruelty of the dominant society itself, as seen through the outsider’s eyes. From this alienated perspective, Heathcliff’s descent into cruelty appears an inevitable and almost overdue reaction to the constant, painful brutality he suffers. Arnold’s interpretation might be compared to Steve McQueen’s approach to 12 Years A Slave, stripping away the rationalizing aimed at 19th century readers, to lay bare oppression in the most raw and physical way possible. In a world where an unarmed Black youth can be interpreted as more threatening than an armed representative of “mainstream” society, film’s potential to challenge our identification and flip our perspective is as timely as it is rarely used. By the time Mumford & Sons’ “The Enemy” plays over the film’s final moments, the song’s sentimental regret feels earned.
I Am Not the Enemy; It Isn’t Me, the Enemy
The question is, does Arnold’s sympathetic portrait of Heathcliff reflect Brontë’s own view of the character, or does it re-imagine the original author’s racist view, as reflected in Wuthering Heights’ narration? Firstly, it must be said that the story Arnold unearths is taken straight from the original book, although there it is diluted by the perspectives and interpretations of others. Perhaps the book’s most crucial speech is Catherine Earnshaw’s “whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same… Nelly, I am Heathcliff,” placing Brontë’s white heroine in absolute solidarity with the non-white hero, which Arnold highlights by letting Cathy’s “I am Heathcliff” echo after her film’s end credits. This is more than a declaration of love; it is a radical declaration of interchangeability. The fundamental similarity of Heathcliff and Catherine allows the book to present their divergent outcomes as a product of divergent treatment, linking the actions of their adult selves to the experiences of their childhoods. Catherine is Heathcliff, therefore their pairing allows Brontë to explore how differently the same behavior is interpreted, rewarded or punished, when acted by different bodies.
Heathcliff illustrates the brutalization of the non-white male; his every attempt to integrate is rejected, so he grows embittered and alienated, forced to exploit others to achieve his goals. If Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom is often criticized for being implausibly forgiving and accommodating to racist slave-owners, then surely Heathcliff is the anti-Tom, an openly angry and defiant agent of revenge against the racist patriarchy that has killed his love. His interchangeability with Catherine undermines easy dismissal of that anger as “natural” barbarity, while Arnold’s focus on Heathcliff’s rejection presents his anger as justified response.
Catherine, by contrast, illustrates the psychological pressures of the pedestalization of white womanhood. She is harshly punished for rebelling, roaming the moors or obeying her instincts, being explicitly told by her beloved father that his love is conditional on her being a “good lass,” while that father hypocritically rewards adopted son Heathcliff for the behavior he rejects in Catherine. Catherine is, however, extravagantly rewarded with social approval for acting traditionally feminine. Her fear of suffering the same degradation as Heathcliff forces her to attempt to assimilate as Linton’s wife, where she suffocates and dies from the frustrations of that role. Through its image of an oak tree struggling to thrive in a flower pot, the book attributes Catherine’s suffering to her entrapment, in contrast to her natural strength and potency. The novel’s portrait of Catherine’s existential struggles is glimpsed in Arnold’s adaptation but cannot be explored; we are not permitted to understand her reasons for marrying Linton because Heathcliff does not understand them. But the roots of Heathcliff’s alienation, as the direct result of his treatment, are exposed by Arnold with more clarity than ever before.
So Why Did You Choose to Lean on a Man You Knew Was Falling?
Wuthering Heights is a book intimately concerned with learned cycles of intergenerational abuse, a theme Arnold’s film captures by ending with the striking image of young Hareton hanging a dog in the same way Heathcliff did earlier in the film. The novel’s dainty and feminine Isabella and Catherine Linton become embittered and abusive in the dysfunctional environment of Wuthering Heights, just as Hindley, Hareton and Heathcliff do – Brontë rejects any limitation of abusive behavior to a single race or gender, attributing it rather to a toxic environment. The Isabella subplot in Wuthering Heights also offers a radical affirmation of a wife’s right to flee an abusive husband with her child, a century before the establishment of the first women’s shelters. This theme would be expanded in Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, where it caused a storm of controversy (it was possibly overlooked in Wuthering Heights because readers were distracted by the interracial necrophilia. Ellis Brontë: epic punk). To claim that Brontë’s portrait of Heathcliff romanticizes abusive behavior is to ignore the Isabella subplot’s explicit denial of a loving woman’s power to rescue an abusive man, which urges the reader to heed warning signs of cruelty (Heathcliff hanging Isabella’s dog) rather than satisfying their ego by struggling to redeem a lost soul. Heathcliff and Catherine share a profound love and affinity, but they are both too damaged to save each other; the novel demands the reader’s understanding of the roots of abusive behavior, and recognition of the human potential for love and unselfishness, but never demands approval of abuse itself.
The fundamental interchangeability of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw also lends the novel to transmasculine readings, where Heathcliff’s racial stigma might symbolize Catherine’s stigmatized masculinity, without which she cannot thrive and which she must sacrifice to conform to a traditional, wifely role. Ellis is recorded by Charlotte as the only Brontë sibling to oppose being publicly assigned a female name; Ellis’ masculinity is also suggested in Charlotte’s biographical sketches and her fictionalized portrait of her sibling as Shirley. Wuthering Heights’ potential as lesbian closeting drama may also be demonstrated by comparison with Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, dedicated to Woolf’s lover, Vita Sackville-West. Orlando asserts the interchangeability of the womanizing male Orlando and his female alter-ego (whose male lover Shelmerdine is distinctly feminized, and encountered while Orlando pledges herself to 19th century moors in an apparent nod to Wuthering Heights), allowing Orlando to maintain superficial heterosexuality while being both woman and lover of women. Wuthering Heights is preoccupied with Catherine Earnshaw’s interchangeability with both Heathcliff and Hareton Earnshaw, while her feminized lover Edgar Linton is variously incarnated as Heathcliff’s lover Isabella and Hareton’s lover Catherine Linton. The novel’s final reconciliation is only achieved by divorcing Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff from society, through death and ghostly dematerialization, and by whitewashing and re-gendering them as happy couple Hareton Earnshaw and Catherine Linton; this “happy ending” upholds its heroes’ ultimate incompatibility with a racist, sexist and heterosexist society, ending by contemplating their “unquiet slumbers.” As a heterosexual tomboy, however, I also found Wuthering Heights fully expressed my own teenaged frustrations and craving for passionate equality with a male lover (Heathcliff represents the primary love object in most heterosexual interpretations, but alter-ego in lesbian and transmasculine readings); Ellis’ recorded wish for an ungendered name might equally reflect perceived prejudice against female writing, rather than transmasculine identity. This multiplicity of meaning is one of the book’s enduring fascinations, indicating how deeply Brontë cuts to the universal, metaphysical bone of the struggle to love ourselves through the mirror of another. Arnold’s film must sacrifice some of this multiplicity; Heathcliff’s racial stigma might represent the stigma of female masculinity or lesbian sexuality, but the visceral impact of a Black body brutalized onscreen can represent only itself.
Give Me Hope in Silence; It’s Easier, It’s Kinder
Wuthering Heights is one of the greatest novels in the English language: enigmatic, passionately sincere, spare, and magnificently disregarding of social convention. It is also cunning in its use of the educated Lockwood to voice dominant ideology and disarm rationalizing criticism, and plainspoken Nelly to disarm common-sense objections. In resisting the judgments of these narrators, readers reach out towards Catherine and Heathcliff’s perspectives rather than defending against them. The fact that this is a first novel, by a writer not yet thirty, is mind-blowing. The book’s confrontation of racist and sexist ideologies feels incredibly modern; its unflinching portrait of the psychology of abuse retains its impact. Andrea Arnold’s brutal, stripped-down take on Wuthering Heights does justice to these elements, rather than fossilizing the book into a cozy classic or tamed romance.
Just as we must mentally resist the book’s judging narrators, so Wuthering Heights resists depicting Heathcliff and Catherine on the moors, allowing that image to haunt through suggestion alone. Arnold cannot avoid directly depicting the moors; rather, she complements the book by boldly visualizing the submerged spaces of Brontë’s novel. Arnold’s moors are an expressionist landscape, filled with the tumult of wind and rain like a storm of passions, and the harsh poetry of sex and death in animal life; the oppressively amplified sound resembles a cross between The Piano and Das Boot. In any other 19th century novel, the reader would demand whether Catherine and Heathcliff had sex during their unchaperoned time on the moors; it is one of Brontë’s achievements that Wuthering Heights makes this question simply irrelevant. It is a drama of love and being, not of sex and marriage. Arnold’s film follows the same oblique model; suggestive shots leave Catherine and Heathcliff’s physical relationship open-ended. The leap between child and adult actors is jarring (especially as it represents a gap of only three years), but it satisfyingly reflects the novel’s conceptual leap: Heathcliff and Catherine are victims of circumstance before Heathcliff’s departure; when he returns, they are adults who must wrestle with their childhoods’ legacy and suffer the consequences of their choices.
Nineteenth century writers used their romantic plots to explore diverse philosophical and political concerns. Just as Wuthering Heights confronts sexism, racism, and intergenerational abuse through a central love story, so Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South uses its love plot to propose a progressive model of industrial revolution, combining libertarian profit incentive with social welfare investment, with women as equal business partners and strikes averted through bilateral negotiation between masters and union leaders, while pioneering African-American writer Frances Harper’s Iola Leroy flips the trope of the “tragic mulatto” by using a love plot to affirm Iola’s positive choice of Black identity.
Andrea Arnold’s 2011 adaptation of Wuthering Heights points the way for more challenging and political exploration of the female canon’s classic authors, revitalizing them by blowing the cobwebs from safe romantic cliché. Bravo.
Brigit McCone refuses to be embarrassed by the emo associations of Wuthering Heights fandom, writes and directs short films, radio dramas, and The Erotic Adventures of Vivica (as cabaret pseudonym Voluptua von Temptitillatrix). Her hobbies include doodling and eating sushi.
What were the biggest challenges in making a feature film? How do people see compulsory military service in Israel? Was that Russian girl really possessed by a ghost? Writer/director Talya Lavie answers our questions about her award-winning film.
What were the biggest challenges in making a feature film? How do people see compulsory military service in Israel? Was that Russian girl really possessed by a ghost? Writer/director Talya Lavie answers our questions about her award-winning film.
Zero Motivation, which won Best Narrative Feature at the Tribeca Film Festival, is a dark slacker comedy set in the Israeli military. You can read our review of it here.
The first feature-length film from writer-director Talya Lavie, Zero Motivation was inspired by her own military service. In the Director’s Note found in the movie’s press kit, Lavie writes that “Israeli women may of course serve in more glamorous roles, like pilots or tank crew instructors. But I wanted to focus on us office girls, the unseen and mostly ignored majority whose contribution is lacking any social or symbolic value.”
While promoting the film’s release in New York, she took the time to follow up on that statement, and to answer a few of our questions.
Bitch Flicks: Most of our readers are from the US and Canada, where the concept of mandatory military service is a little bit foreign, so I’m wondering if you could expand on that statement and talk about how you see the role of female conscripts in the Israeli military.
Lavie: Israel is one of the only countries that has mandatory military service for women as well as men. It creates a paradox because, on the one hand, it’s a symbol of equality but, at the same time, the IDF… still demonstrates real gender discrimination. There are women in combat roles but, as I said, the majority of women are still doing secretarial jobs. I believe this may change only if the army becomes less central in Israeli society – hopefully one day.
BF: In many ways, this is a coming of age story, but one that takes place within a very specific setting. (How) do you think that serving in the military has influenced the way these characters define themselves and develop as individuals?
Lavie: In a way, the army for those characters is what college is for Americans. Everyone participates and accepts it as a fact. It is, though, challenging to define your individual identity while having to wear the same uniform as everyone else, and to [live under these] rules. I guess it influences each person in a different way, like every other thing in life.
BF: While the film is very funny, there are a few darker moments in the story. How did you go about managing the changes in tone in the film?
Lavie: The film is defined as a “dark comedy” but, while writing the script, I didn’t want to lock myself into a specific genre. I put a large [range] of emotions in it, and was interested in mixing different spirits. Ultimately, my greatest challenge was to maintain the specific subtle tone of the film; to balance the transitions between humor, sadness, nonsense and seriousness. I felt like an acrobat in a circus walking on a rope, trying not to fall off, and yet to keep the film’s free spirit.
BF: I think the sequence where Irena is “possessed” by the spirit of the dead girl works really well on a metaphorical level, but inquiring minds want to know – was she really possessed by a ghost?
Lavie: All of the characters in the film have a very detailed biography that is not told in the movie – none of them gives a personal monologue. But their background is hinted at in many ways. In Irena’s character, we tried to hint that she has a history of violence. And when she sees Zohar nearly raped, it brings a very strong reaction out of her. Is she really possessed? I leave it for each viewer to decide for himself.
BF: What were some of the biggest challenges you faced in making this film, and do you have any advice for aspiring filmmakers?
Lavie: The biggest challenge was raising the budget for the film. It took several years. That stage in the creation of a film can be very frustrating for any first time filmmaker. My advice for filmmakers at this point is, in addition to applying anywhere you can, use that waiting time for learning and preparing for shooting. Eventually, when I look back on the process, that waiting period was frustrating but also useful for rewriting and studying. I came to the set very prepared. And since we had a very short time for shooting, [being prepared] was significant.
Thank you to Talya Lavie for taking the time to speak with us. Zero Motivation is currently playing in New York, San Francisco, Toronto, and other select cities in North America.
2. Nightcrawler is one of the most honest depictions of the White Fear Narrative on film.
Gyllenhaal plays Louis Bloom, a thief, a liar, and from my observations, a man on the spectrum of some form of neurodiversity. Obsessive compulsive perhaps, or living with some form of high functioning autism. (It was fascinating to watch Gyllenhaal’s face transmit so much dubious thinking behind those intense detail-oriented eyes.) Bloom is a lonely man who scrapes by on the underbelly of society. His white male privilege allows him to steal, beat up people, and sabotage competitors without fear of repercussions from the police. As the renowned comedian Paul Mooney would say, Bloom has “the complexion for the protection.”
Bloom lives in what appears to be an average working-class L.A. neighborhood (his basic studio apartment is as meticulous as his choice of words when speaking), but his only source of income and his only real viable skill is stealing from others. To the casual observer, his freshly pressed clothes, average white guy looks, and cheap car render him almost invisible. He is perceived to be a normal white person. And this perception of “normal” is crucial to his eventual rise in the world of crime journalism—nightcrawling, capturing horrific images of the worst of humanity and selling them to the highest TV network bidder. The bloodier the images the better. These “stringer” clips of film can bring in hundreds and upwards of thousands of dollars depending on who captures the images first and uploads them to the TV station the fastest. The mantra of “if it bleeds it leads” can now be given a dollar value. And the clock is always ticking.
Bloom stumbles across a car accident on the freeway one late night, and for some inexplicable reason, decides to pull over and watch the rescue of a woman from her burning car. As some police officers try to save the woman, a freelance stringer arrives (Bill Paxton in a small but compelling role) and begins filming the rescue operation. Bloom is introduced to his new obsession, TV crime news, and in his compulsive fashion, steals a high-end bike and sells it to get his hands on a cheap video recorder. A TV news starter kit.
Bloom sells his first piece of shaky footage to Nina Romina (Rene Russo), a jaded veteran TV news producer who works at the lowest-rated TV station in Los Angeles. Nina tells Bloom that he has a good eye, and with this bit of encouragement (and his intense obsessive nature) Bloom sets off to take crime journalism by storm. He buys a police scanner and even hires his first crew member (Riz Ahmed in a heartbreaking role as a marginalized Guy Friday just desperate enough to endure Bloom’s reckless behavior).
Bloom is heckled by Paxton for being slow to big stories, and this disrespect spurns Bloom to be the best in the biz. Being the best means manipulating the raw footage before Nina gets her hands on it. The film moves into even darker territory when the quest to impress Nina and one up Paxton taps into Bloom’s deceitful nature: he now begins staging crime scenes by moving bodies, rearranging evidence, and omitting images to play up white fears of crime from the urban areas creeping into lily white suburbs. Nina even tells Bloom that the best stories are “A woman running down the street with her throat cut.” The implication here is a preference for white women because they illicit the most sympathy from white mainstream audiences. White news producers play up the recycled white woman in distress angle so often that it has become banal today.
It’s a narrative used since the early 17th century. This narrative provides high viewership numbers, and Nina needs high ratings or she will be sacked by her bosses. Nina is unapologetic about framing whiteness as the center of the universe and churning out fear-based stories that disrupt the sanctity of white comfort. She is so apathetic about it, that she appears to dismiss how this narrative implicates her in upholding white supremacy, patriarchy, and the erroneous belief that whiteness is the be all to end all. This makes the film brutally honest. It does not sugarcoat what all non-white Americans understand from jump: the implicit bias of the American mainstream media. The centering of whiteness and white comfort are the only stories worth telling and protecting. And I applaud that honesty in this movie. It made me angry too since I am someone who comes from the margins of society trying not to be marginalized on a daily basis. At the same time, I give serious props to the writer/director Dan Gilroy. He gives it to you straight with no chaser. As much as I grew to loathe Bloom, I was still compelled to see him through to the end. He’s a real punch in the gut. And Gyllenhaal is simply brilliant in his portrayal of a man I want to see burn for his transgressions.
Eventually Bloom films the biggest story of his new career, a home invasion in an exclusive suburb, with plenty of blood, guns, and bodies, including a missing baby. He arrives at the scene before the police and enters the home filming every gory detail, including the murderers who escaped before Bloom entered the house. He withholds the footage of the killers and their SUV license plate. He has plans to keep the story going by following the so-called “Horror House” murderers and setting them up for a bigger news story– a future staged police shootout he will capture on film. He will control and manipulate white public fear. Because he can.
When Bloom shows the pre-edited Horror House footage to Nina, I swear her face appears orgasmic as she savors every bullet hole, and every inch of blood splatter. It seriously looks like she’s getting the best sex of her life. Nina calls in the newsroom lawyer to see how much she can get away with showing on live TV. As long as the victim’s faces are pixelated and the home address isn’t given out, it’s a go.
This move spins the story into a new direction with the appearance of the police who want to confiscate all the footage of the Horror House crime scene. Nina sends them to Bloom’s home, and no-nonsense Detective Fronteiri (Michael Hyatt) is determined to solve this case. From the moment she enters Bloom’s apartment, Detective Fronteiri knows he’s a conniving liar.
Later, when Bloom sets into motion the tragic events that will net him his biggest stringer payday yet, Detective Fronteiri has to concede that she can never prove Bloom’s willful obfuscation, but she lets him know that she is aware of his deceit. He withheld crucial evidence to make a name for himself. And there are chalk lines on the ground for unnecessary deaths because of this deceit. In her eyes we see that she understands that he is controlling the false narrative of events. He has painted himself as a white victim who feared for his life and safety, and only called the police when he thought some big bad Latinos were following him. In reality, he planned to capitalize on the script he had pre-written for others to play out, including the Latino bad guys. He is the puppet master who pulls the strings. Detective Fronteiri knows this but is unable to take Bloom down. And Bloom gets to prosper in the end and continue nightcrawling with a brand new crew of underlings who have no idea that he has sociopathic tendencies. He just looks like a clean cut articulate white man with ambition. Y’know, the good guy.
The core story of Nightcrawler is how the media, TV news in particular, controls and manipulates the cultural discourse that portrays whiteness and white privilege as tangible things to be protected in America. Whiteness takes preeminence over non-white individuals and cultures. Non-white individuals in news stories are always seen as the scary Other, disrupting the comfort of good white folks–especially good white folks who live within high income zip codes. Fear-based media sells and it goes hand-in-hand with the threat of white comfort. Any challenge to the white comfort narrative is an assault on the perception that whiteness is the norm. Challenges to that white comfort norm are often rendered meaningless and worse, pathological. Look at real life TV news. Black Americans like Trayvon Martin, Renisha McBride, Marissa Alexander, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Jordan Davis, Eric Garner et al, are victims of police violence, violent anti-Black citizens, majority white jurors with irrational fears of Black skin, and the racist court of public opinion that puts Black victims on trial with immediate character assassinations. This violence done to Black Americans is used to uphold the sanctity of white comfort, and the delusions that white privilege perpetuates. Nothing in the media is happenstance. It is created, shaped, edited, and shared on television and the internet to protect a perceived white normality. All hail Hydra, darkies be damned.
Perceptions of fear-based news do not match reality. Recently, Rudy Giuliani (in a television debate with Professor Michael Eric Dyson) tried to conflate Black-on-Black crime as an excuse to ignore state sanctioned violence on Black bodies, many of whom are children. He failed to mention white-on-white crime, or how most violent crimes are perpetuated by loved ones people already know. He misused facts to be obtuse and to derail the #BlackLivesMatter conversation on social media, once again centering the white fear narrative, and painting Black people for the zillionth time as the monstrous Other, the boogie man that has to be kept in check by more police crackdowns on Blackness. He became part of the media-created frenzy used to frighten good suburban white folk. The perception he tried to paint didn’t match the reality of the discussion. Much like the TV producer Nina, when faced with a counter-narrative that didn’t match the story she was trying to sell, Giuliani stuck to his erroneous script to fan the flames of white centered fear. Truth is more fucked up than fiction.
The power dynamics between Bloom and Nina is an engaging interplay of sexual tension, and sexual manipulation. At the start of the film, Bloom is Nina’s subordinate, her little free-lance worker bee. Halfway through there’s a shift in the relationship, not quite equal, but Nina does treat him like a colleague. Bloom wants Nina sexually, and when he’s done his painstaking research on her career failures and her desperate need to keep her job, he calculates that he is worth more to her professionally than she lets on and uses this truth to pressure her into a date, and soon after, a sexual relationship.
One reading of this sexual coercion can be viewed as blackmail and harassment. But Rene Russo imbues Nina with a calculated agency that can also be interpreted as a woman who also knows her worth to Bloom, and uses his desire for her to get what she wants. I also sense that Nina actually finds Bloom attractive, especially when he makes demands of her. The same sexual look she gives bloody images is the same look she gives Bloom when he tries to dominate her. A lesser script would’ve used this tension as a subplot for Nina to rise above Bloom’s coercion. Instead, Nina concedes, has an off-screen relationship with him that we don’t see, and it is a stunning tête-à-tête to witness. It may very well gain Rene Russo her own Supporting Actor nod come Oscar season.
Nightcrawler is a wonderful respite from the big budget tent-pole films dominating the cinema. Original, daring, infuriating, and honest about ugly truths, I expect Jake Gyllenhaal to see his name on the Best Actor Oscar Ballot. He might even walk away with that gold statuette. And I would applaud him for it.
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Lisa Bolekaja is a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Workshop and was named an Octavia E. Butler Scholar by the Carl Brandon Society. She co-hosts a screenwriting podcast called “Hilliard Guess’ Screenwriters Rant Room” and her work has appeared in “Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History” (Crossed Genres Publishing), “The WisCon Chronicles: Volume 8″ (Aqueduct Press), and the SF/F anthology, “How to Live on Other Planets: A Handbook for Aspiring Aliens” (Upper Rubber Boot Books). An associate member of the Horror Writers Association, and a former Film Independent Fellow. She is a profesional agitator on Twitter @LisaBolekaja