Molly Shannon – Bitch Flicks

Lies The Government–and Movies–Tell Us: ‘(T)ERROR’ and ‘Me and Earl and the Dying Girl’

To see a portrait of the inner workings of the FBI we have to look to films like the new documentary, ‘(T)ERROR’ co-directed by Lyric R. Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe, showing this Sunday, June 14 as part of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival. In a highly unusual coup, an FBI informant Saeed aka “Shariff” (who used to be Cabral’s neighbor) agrees to be followed by the camera (though he complains to Cabral during closeups “You’re always getting the fucking headshots”) as he talks about his past cases and sets up a current one.

In most movies, US government agents, whether they are from the FBI, like Mulder and Scully, or from the CIA, like Melissa McCarthy’s character in Spy, invariably play the hero (or heroine) thoughtful, competent, and above all, ethical. The news tells a different story; FBI protection was a key factor in organized crime head Whitey Bulger escaping prosecution for his crimes (which included murder) for decades. When the FBI was investigating the Boston Marathon bombing they interrogated an unarmed immigrant friend of the bombers, and even though he was not implicated in the crime they shot and killed him. Just last week, after targeting a Boston-area Muslim man with surveillance for a number of months, the FBI (teaming with local police) stopped him near a CVS parking lot to “talk” to him. They ended up shooting him dead right there–at 7 a.m. on a workday morning.

To see a portrait of the inner workings of the FBI we have to look to films like the new documentary, (T)ERROR, co-directed by Lyric R. Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe, showing this Sunday, June 14 as part of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival. In a highly unusual coup, an FBI informant Saeed aka “Shariff” (who used to be Cabral’s neighbor) agrees to be followed by the camera (though he complains to Cabral during closeups, “You’re always getting the fucking headshots”) as he talks about his past cases and sets up a current one.

Saeed is an older Black American Muslim whom we see pull up stakes from his home (so he is away from his young son) and his job as a cook in a high school cafeteria to move to a strange city with his dog and his weed, working on getting entrée into the life of a younger American jihadi who makes inflammatory YouTube videos but seems not to do much else. We see Saeed haggling with the FBI about money (he does not seem to earn much–at all–for his efforts) and admonishing them to stop being so obvious about setting this guy up.

Meanwhile, the jihadi, using Google and a piece of mail he sees on Saeed’s car dashboard figures out his FBI connection early in their acquaintance. We find out later that Saeed started his career with the FBI because he himself was charged with a crime, and then set up a man who was a friend of his to escape punishment, a chilling reminder of the questionable use of informants in the US justice system. This cycle perpetuates to the end of the film–someone barely getting by (the jihadi lives in public housing and does not to have a car) preyed upon by someone nearly as desperate, Saeed, as the FBI eggs him on. Saeed seems unrepentant about his targets, saying, “I don’t have no feelings for them. You making the Islam look bad, you gotta go,” but as he smokes blunts and bakes a succession of cakes he seems bent on convincing not just the directors and us, but himself too.

The lie the designated Sundance “breakout” movie Me And Earl And The Dying Girl (which opens this Friday, June 12) tells is familiar–that the experiences of white, straight guys are the only important ones; the main white guy can learn valuable lessons thanks to women and people of color, but nothing they do or say could possibly be as fascinating to us. The “me” of the title is Greg (Thomas Mann) a senior in high school, quirky in that cliché movie way that never crosses into weird or creepy and creative (he makes films at home with pun titles of famous works). His only friend is Earl (RJ Cyler), the Black best friend as stereotype: Earl’s main attribute is his repetition in more than one scene of the word, “titties.” Greg’s mother (Connie Britton) (she along with Nick Offerman who plays Greg’s Dad and Molly Shannon, who also plays a parent in this film, wrest what they can out of the script which bestows no human qualities on them, just more quirks) commands him to visit a girl, Rachel (Olivia Cooke), newly diagnosed with cancer, saying, “You might be someone who could make Rachel feel better.” He hasn’t hung out with Rachel since grade school and she greets him at her house by saying, “I don’t need your stupid pity,” but the two begin a friendship anyway.

Too bad Rachel is really the manic, pixie, dying girl (the one way the movie doesn’t fall into predictability is that she and Greg never embark on a romance) since we find out, too late, she is an artist as well, but her aspirations and thoughts get short shrift. Olivia Cooke does well with a limited role and gives us a glimpse of how much better the movie could have been in one scene when she gives Greg a pep-talk about his future, but when he asks about hers, she suddenly goes quiet.

Alfonso Gomez-Rejon directed the script by Jesse Andrews based on his own YA novel; future filmmakers of similar material should note that no one over 20 gives a shit about high school social hierarchy. The film has great art direction and soundtrack selection (with artists like Brian Eno and vintage Velvet Underground), but nothing can disguise or improve its white-guy narrative of “Person unlike me who changed my life for the better,” which seems more fitting for an undergrad college entrance essay than the basis for a film.

Earl has received puzzlingly decent reviews and its trailer seems to have piqued the interest of people who should know better, To try to understand how retrograde this film is, think if it were instead Me, The Girl and Dying Earl. The “me” would still be the white guy, his best friend a white girl who says “balls” a lot (which actually would make her a more nuanced character than most teenaged girls in movies, including this one) and Earl would be a variation of The Magical Negro, this one with terminal cancer who, as a last good deed, gives Greg precious guidance–and a plot that shows us all what a great guy Greg is. No one would hesitate to call bullshit on that film, so I’m unsure why no one is complaining about this one. I was also disappointed that a contemporary film that takes place in the suburb of a large American city doesn’t include any queer students in its high school especially since Greg, Rachel, and Earl would all be more interesting–and their sexless bond more true-to-life–if one or more of them were queer.

As I sat through Me and Earl I couldn’t help thinking of the Sufjan Stevens song “Casimir Pulaski Day” which covers some of the same ground–dying high school girl, quirkiness and a straight-guy narrator–but in less than six minutes reaches depths of feeling this film never comes close to. To equal the duration of this film you could instead listen to that song about 17 times–and save yourself $12.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qfmAllbYC8″ iv_load_policy=”3″]

___________________________________________________

Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing, besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender

‘Life After Beth’ and the Trouble With Absent Presence

Poster for Life After Beth — Poster for *Life After Beth*

Horror-comedy Life After Beth is the kind of movie that’s very easy to explain.

Girl dumps Boy, Girl dies and comes back as a zombie with no memory of the break-up, Boy continues to date her even though he’s a little afraid of her.

But there’s not a lot else. Even the titular character is scarcely more than a name. After sitting through the slim 89 minutes of I Heart Huckabees writer Jeff Baena’s directorial debut, I’m still left wondering who Beth is. And what did she care about besides her boyfriend and sex?

Aubrey Plaza plays the dear departed Beth Slocum, cut down by a snake bite during a solo hike, leaving behind her stalker ex-boyfriend, Zach (Dane DeHaan). Zach hasn’t taken her death very well. He dresses in black and ignores his parents and brother, preferring to spend time with Beth’s grieving parents (John C. Reilly and Molly Shannon) who treat him like a son. When the Slocums stop contacting him, he stalks and spies on them to find out why. Quickly, he discovers they have been hiding Beth, who has mysteriously returned from the grave, unaware of her own death.

A scheme is hatched. Beth’s parents will continue to cherish “the miracle” of her resurrection and Zach will get his girlfriend back and have a second chance to get it right and take her dancing and on hikes like she always wanted. Keeping Beth a secret is crucial, they will continue to hid her return and keep her in the dark about what had happened to her. But her sudden fits of rage, rotting body, and crazy strength make things difficult.

From Beth’s perspective this would make an intriguing premise; she is confused, strange things are happening to her body, things she can’t control, and that’s the stuff horror movies are made of. Yet, despite her lone presence in the title, the poster, and Plaza’s top billing, the film is never about Beth. The story belongs to Zach.

Beth’s all-consuming lust for Zach is painted as monstrous

Though Plaza gives a committed physical performance, clearly having a ball in monster make-up, it’s really all she’s given to do. She isn’t even given much room to be funny in the supposed comedy. It’s as if Plaza has been cast in a feature length sketch-show, playing all manner of stereotypical “girlfriends from hell.” For a good while she’s the horny girlfriend who needs to be reminded not to rip her boyfriend’s clothes off at any opportunity, then she plays the jealous girlfriend who’s convinced any women her boyfriend talks to is sleeping with him, after that she’s briefly Linda Blair in The Exorcist, before finally ending the film as a rabid dog biting at anything that gets too close. I imagine it on Saturday Night Live: first a short musical theme, “The Girlfriend from Hell,” then Plaza making a snarky comment to her boyfriend and vomiting pea soup all over him.

But who was she when she was alive? What does Zach love so much about Beth that he couldn’t get over her, it had to have been more than just her potential to act as a sex robot. What kind of memories do her parents cherish about her?
None of these questions is answered.

To make a film that centers around a death, that death has to mean something to the audience. There are many ways to do this, from the inherently sad (child deaths) to the anguished (and unbefitting of a comedy) mental breakdown of the surviving characters. The main problem with Life After Beth is that the titular character never once felt like a real person, a once living girl who happened to be named Beth. Instead, she felt like a construct invented by writer and quickly named for a catchy title. All she is is a girl named Beth, no more fleshed out in the finished film than she would be in a rough plot line, this guy’s girlfriend and this couple’s daughter. She matters to people but she never achieves personhood herself and so is difficult to care about.

Beth and Zach finally go on the hike they always wanted

While the film opens with a brief glimpse of a scared (still living) Beth lost in the woods and looking for cell service, this is all we see of her. As we are never allowed to know Beth; her presence as a zombie is robbed of any sense of irony or tragedy, which would make it entertaining to watch. The short grief narrative the film opens with only serves to remind us that these stories are about absence. Even when Beth returns, she is absent, a dead girl given a flesh and blood presence, yet never a voice. Throughout the film, Beth is fetishized as a dead girl, and in one scene, Zach masturbates with a scarf she had left behind.

Zach keeps Beth’s scarf and uses it to masterbate — Zach keeps Beth’s scarf and uses it to masturbate

Beth’s constant desire for Zach is meant as a source of humour, notably as she pops out of the roof to ask him to go for a hike. Though he was originally the one obsessively in love with her, even stalking her family, she is seen as the pathetic one. Her lust is uncontrollable and as it morphs into murderous and cannibalistic impulses, and the high female libido is painted as monstrous. Moreover, the destruction of the attractive female body is intended as a source of dark comedy and Beth is de-personified to the point where, when she finally dies again, it’s with Zach shooting her in the head to put her down, again like a rabid dog.

In this light, there is something disturbing about seeing her tied up and chained to washing machine for the last act. In order to handle her, Beth must be trapped and contained, with her boyfriend, a person she had tried to break up with, in complete control and possession of her. The situation continues to be horrific for Beth, but but her character’s zombification means she is no longer a person with a perspective of her own. When Zach finally apologizes for how he treated her as a living person, she’s no longer there and the apology is more for him than her.

As she becomes less human, Beth is kept captive and watched over by Zach

Parts of the Life After Beth reminded me of 2012’s Ruby Sparks, another film about a girlfriend who exists only as a male fantasy and to tell us something about him. However, Ruby Sparks, whether successful or not, played with this idea to expose something troubling about the stories we tell in our culture. Life After Beth makes no such commentary. Sure Zach needs to come to terms with his girlfriend’s death but Beth’s return didn’t do much to change this central fact. Throughout the film he vacillates between refusing to give her up and feeling burdened by her presence. Narratively, the film would have worked better if Beth’s resurrection occurred because Zach made a selfish wish, as would have given both him and Beth room to grow.

Toward the end, the film changes gears completely, as people everywhere begin returning from the dead. This larger zombie apocalypse creates a rift in the narrative, and expects us to shift gears, stop caring about Beth and Zach, and start caring about the fates of Zach’s family and their fight to survive.

Plaza pays an unusual physical role and is allowed to be unattractive

As much as I disliked this movie, I can’t imagine how insufferable it would be without Aubrey Plaza as Beth. She’s obviously enjoying herself, playing a role so different from anything she’s done before, and it’s enjoyable to watch that. There’s definitely some fun in the role of Beth, which allows Plaza to be monstrous and unattractive.

Life After Beth tries to be a romantic comedy and a zombie movie, yet forgets how to deliver either laughs or scares. There are a few bright spots: Mrs. Slocum feeding her hands to her monster-daughter and Beth tumbling down a hill with a stove strapped to her back, but they are few and far between. The running gag, of zombies liking smooth jazz, is one of those touches that seems hilarious on paper but cloying when translated to the screen.

It’s always great to see fresh twists on old stories, but we can’t forget what made the old stories great in the first place. With no build-up of the relationship and no reason for the resurrection, there’s nothing left to care about.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.