Ladybird (2017)

Ladybird (2017)

Sacramento Dreamin’

It is generally supposed that Conservatives are usually old people, and that those in favor of change are the young. That is not quite correct. Usually, Conservatives are young people: those who want to live but who do not think about how to live, and have not time to think, and therefore take as a model for themselves a way of life that they have seen.

-Leo Tolstoy, The Devil

Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home,

Your house is on fire,

Your children shall burn!

- Nursery Rhyme

Don’t you worry about me. I’ll always come out on top.

- Pippi Longstocking

Greta Gerwig’s “Ladybird” is a high school, coming of age film featuring a heroine. Since the 1950s this genre has highlighted the male experience. In the seminal “Rebel Without a Cause”, the mid century paean to American teenage disaffection, Natalie Wood was a breathtaking side-show to James Dean’s brooding main event. There is no mistaking Gerwig, as writer/director, has given birth to a woman’s world. Christine, whose self chosen nom de guerre is ‘Ladybird’, is the centerpiece of a sorority that buffets against authority figures, who happen to be mostly women. Although the film focuses on adolescent self- realization, it manages to paint this struggle as both dignified and hilarious. It brings to mind “The Breakfast Club”, a less accomplished 1980s film about misfits breaking down the school’s caste system. “Ladybird”’s carefree zeitgeist is closer to an earlier feature, the cultural juggernaut “American Graffiti”, a hagiography to post-war Pax Americana. They share a protagonist’s small town California roots and the post senior year decision to follow their manifest destiny to a fancy East Coast college. These are very different films as the 1976  blockbuster stuck to lighter themes and relied on a catchy soundtrack of recycled hits from the previous decade. It was wonderful cultural candy and its mass appeal spawned the mega hit TV Show “Happy Days”. “Ladybird” is a quieter, more substantive work that abandons the fraternity without sacrificing fun. It pushes the envelope on what can be cinematically accomplished, both in and out of high school. There is scientific evidence that girls mature faster than boys (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/10529134/Girls-really-do-mature-quicker-than-boys-scientists-find.html ). Gerwig is proof that this truism leads to more satisfying dramas about the delicate twilight-zone of late childhood.

The opening sequence of “Ladybird” shows our hero and her mother in a car on the outskirts of their hometown Sacramento. They are returning from a tour of nearby colleges. They are sobbing as they listen to a the final scene in a books-on-tape reading of “The Grapes of Wrath”. It is a passing moment but it speaks to the ironies that are revealed as the film progresses. The Steinbeck classic features dust bowl refugees fleeing to the promise land of California. Ladybird’s family are the metaphorical children of those hardscrabble pioneers. Their existence is certainly better than depression era Oklahoma. They do not face starvation or locusts, but their economic and emotional status is precarious. The mother works two shifts as a psychiatric nurse. Her meager salary supports her husband, a laid off computer technician, their adult son and his live-in girlfriend, in addition to Ladybird.  Needless to say the matriarch is stressed. The daughter is oblivious to her family’s struggle. She is consumed by her world; or more precisely - the suggestion of wealthy, cosmopolitan living. 

On paper, the responsible mother would seem more sympathetic then a narcissistic teen daughter. Gerwig’s brilliant writing/directing combined with Saoirse Ronan’s embodiment of the character unleashes Ladybird’s charm. This performance is a tour-de-force rendered even more incredible when you consider the actress is able to completely hide her Irish brogue and European mannerisms. Her character’s ripostes, whether delivered by dialogue or gesture, overpowers the matriarch’s endless carping. Ditto for the attempts by siblings, teachers and counselors to temper her spirit. Ladybird is loveably defiant, even when she’s wrong. The numerous scenes with the parochial school authority figures highlight her uncompromising individualism. What makes these scenes memorable is the teachers stretch far beyond their habits and priest collars. They are part of the larger dynamic which goes against the conventional approach in this genre. The 1980s classic, “Fast Times at Ridgemount High", teachers are mere set-pieces that function to highlight the “real” drama surrounding the students. “Ladybird” contains numerous miniature sketches of the various faculty. Although these people are secondary to the drama, the audience cannot help being swept up in their own stories. The traumatized priest who directs the school plays is a histrionic man with a gothic backstory. There is a sense of comic grief when he exclaims, remarking on the audience reaction to his work, “they don’t get it”. Ditto when he exclaims “YES!” at the conclusion of The Tempest, which is directed by his stand-in, the football coach. That person’s one brief scene is comically mesmerizing as he applies sports metaphors to stage direction. Everyone is respectful as, unbeknownst to Ladybird, this is a caring institution. The adults in the audience realize, through life’s endless waves of institutional indifference, what a special cocoon our heroine is experiencing. The embodiment of this ideal is the headmistress. This cheerful old soul is gracious towards all of her charges. She is especially indulgent of Ladybird’s various tresspasses. She is the mirror image of the principle in Wes Anderson’s “Rushmore”. That character is the stock disciplinarian who expels the iconoclastic high school hero after a particularly grievous prank. In “Ladybird” the mother-superior laughs off the heroine’s grand misdeed, even adding a self-deprecating joke. This is part of the warm background in which two pivotal relationships ebb and flow. The arc of the film revolves around what it means to be a good daughter and faithful friend.

It is common in many dramas for mothers and female friends to be subjugated as background to the male love interest. Gerwig tenderly relegates boyfriends as comic relief to highlight the importance of sorority. More significantly it is the women who provide the critical mentoring. Ladybird’s brother’s girlfriend briefly shares a post Thanksgiving cigarette which subtly sheds light on the mother’s generosity. This plants the seed that behind being an annoying scold, this overburdened woman, has a heart. This is not a blanket pardon for her mistreatment of Ladybird, but rather an important plot point that shapes our understanding of the complicated mother/daughter strife. The most significant life lesson ironically comes from a truly awful character, the wealthy girl who briefly usurps her connection with her true friend. In both cases the writing is succinct but brimming with detail that would have exhausted pages of dialogue with a lesser writer/director. The pool scene is particularly well executed. The heretofore slick worldly classmate morphs into a provincial bore with a few pointed questions. Once again Gerwig, although employing stock characters, always manages to provide small, careful details to generate empathy. Ladybird’s second boyfriend is a rich pretentious, sophomoric, jerk, yet the brief shot of his father passed out in the chair in the middle of the day is a potent reminder of the limits of money can buy. One cannot help but contrast this sad drunk with Ladybird’s own unemployed father. He might have given up hope for himself, but carefully puts up a cheerful front. This is what real father do. Ladybird is startled to learn he is on anti-depression medication and that he notices her insistence that she drop him off, in his second hand car, at least a block away from school. She has her adolescent appearances to manage. Becoming an adult means recognizing the cruelty of your actions. This is coupled with the even more painful knowledge that others known your faults, but stay silent out of kindness. No doubt she has many such realizations which leads to her reconciliation with her true friend. Behaving properly is not to please others, but to be a better person. Good deeds are a heartfelt affirmation of what really matters in a world of harsh serendipity. 

The latter part of the film gravitates from the safety of adolescent adventure to the adult world of economic hardship. The emotional cost of being ambitious is played out on a number of fronts. Some characters are able to continue school, while others must work. Some get jobs and other remain unemployed. It is all handled without long speeches or maudlin outbursts. This film has a taught sense of storytelling. A small example is the brother who is a different race. This is never mentioned. Is he a step brother from a previous marriage? Is he adopted? The writer/director never touches the subject, which shows a confidence in mastering the material. Another example would be the brief eye-contact between two family members, who suddenly realize they are competing for the same job. The significant moment revealing raw emotion plays beautifully. A lesser artist would assume the need for emotional fireworks. Yet the pithy execution of these scenes and plot points are at the heart of the wonderful craftwork behind this film.

There is, however, a problem with the final sequence. The mis-fire centers around the moment Ladybird realizes a life long dream. Up to this point all the critical infrastructure of the storyline carried itself on it’s own weight. It was a seemingly lighthearted walk in a maze of adolescent self-indulgence, delivered with the crispness of an auteur at the top of her game. The closing of the film drifted into being an overt parable. Ironically the earlier sequence, when the class produces Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”, has a recitation of the closing monologue. Prospero breaks character and asked the audience to free him with applause. The reading comically contrasts the a ham-handed, high school reading, with the Bard’s magical words. It works because it doesn’t work. The inverse might be true for our heroine at the finish line. What is shown is the logical extension of the life’s lesson, and yet it “breaks character” with the rest of the film. A better choice might have been to borrow from the final scene in “American Graffiti.” Richard Dreyfuss looks out from the airplane and sees what he’s been chasing all along… the beautiful blond woman in the T-Bird Convertible. They both go their separate ways… but we know that’s the way it’s supposed to be. We are blessed in this film to have Ladybird as the protagonist. She would look out on Sacramento with a broader view and understand the limits of beautiful people and pretty cars. It’s a girl thing.

The Florida Project (2017)

The Florida Project

At the Gates of the Magic Kingdom

"Stymie, where are we going?" 

"I don't know, brother, but we're on our way!”

- Our Gang film "Free Wheeling

“It’s about drama”

- Christopher Rivera, child actor who played Scooty. Response to interview question, “what is “The Florida Project” about?”

Sean Baker’s “The Florida Project” takes its title from a play on words. Project” is US slang for public housing as well as being part of “working titles” while films are in production. The “project” in question is a series of motels for homeless families located on the outskirts of Disney World. The movie is a portrait of the “guests”. The single moms, grandmothers, children and elderly pass their days in the shadow of a heliport, which shuttles VIPs to the Magic Kingdom. The divide between the dispossessed and the state of the art amusement park is highlighted in the lapsarian landscape of crumbling buildings that suggest happier times. Disney World is chockablock with top notch hotels and period buildings representing many worlds. The shops on the other side are decorated in garish re-creations of their wares. The orange drink stand is in the shape of… an orange. The toy store has an oversized wizard jutting from the facade. These artistic troupes were in vogue decades ago at the dawn of the the automobile age, before established eye-catching symbols such as Mickey Mouse ears or McDonald’s Arches. There are no successful franchise businesses on these street, further cementing this neighborhood as a land that time forgot… or more precisely, would prefer to forget. The occupants are overt outcasts. The small businesses and coterie of motel and social service workers are bound by lack of opportunity rather than a burning desire to associate with their clientele. The exception might be the occasional visits from church groups distributing food. Aside of the angels of mercy, no one chooses to own, or check into, a faded purple colored motor-lodge named “Paradise”. Baker tells the story of economic refugees trapped in a cruel system. Despite the subject, this is a strangely joyous film.

Dramatic features about underclass children focus on pain and sorrow. One need only think of last year’s breakthrough movie “Moonlight”, also set in the slums of Florida. The first of that film’s three segments shows the terrified, exploited boy literally hiding from his tormentors. Over time he takes refuge in the nearby ocean, where his mentor teaches him to swim. Baker’s story is, metaphorically, built around that therapeutic beach. It is a portrait of the defiant, invincibility of children. His success is due largely to the young actress Brooklynn Prince, whose portrayal of the Moonee is the cornerstone of “The Florida Story”. The writer/director presents her and the other characters with the deftness of a beloved mentor touching on an unpleasant topic. The first fifteen minutes have the lightheartedness of a modern day “Little Rascals” episode, albeit with more explicit language and stronger defiance of authority figures. Moonee and her sidekick, a young boy named Scooty, are caught spitting on a car from a balcony of the motel. They are confronted by the vehicle’s owner, a grandmother caring for a young girl their age named Jancey. We are soon introduced to the authority figure Bobby , a benevolent hotel manger, brilliantly underplayed by Willem Dafoe (note: he is the only recognizable star amongst this exceptional cast). The reconciliation, brokered by Bobby, requires that the offending children clean up the mess. The grandmother and Moonee’s mother, Halley, taunt each other about their lack of parental ability while their charges clean up. Despite the adult discord Jancey is charmed by Moonee and Scooty. They become fast friends. The trio begin a series of adventures that capture life outside the kingdom. The director hides his laser focus on building sympathy for this unlikely group of heroes in an air of serendipity. The audience is lulled into caring, not just about the children.

Moonee’s mother, Halley, has no capacity for taking responsibility and acting as an adult. In the hands of a less talented filmmaker she might seem a caricature of the underclass. Thankfully the audience can see beyond her outrageous antics. Although, at times, it is a challenge. At one point she is angered by Bobby. She stands in front of the Motel office in full view of everyone. She reaches into her crotch and pastes her maxi pad on the glass window.  And yet… the audience takes her side in her meetings with the indifferent bureaucracy, mall cops or the unsympathetic neighboring hotel owner. In this last instance a middle aged East Indian woman refuses her entrance to her newly acquired motel. The genius of Baker is there is also empathy for the owner. We might make the same decision. This vignette also highlights the insanity of a system. Willem Dafoe must evict the residents every so often to prevent the tenant from establishing legal residency (i.e. are given rights to the motel property). There is a monthly ritual of the mother and daughter being brought down the street a $35 overnight stay in a neighboring motel. Things go off course when the new owner raises the rent to $45 and refuses Halley’s voucher. Bobby is called into to broker the dispute. He personally puts up the money. Unfortunately Halley’s insults have generated so much acrimony she is denied entrance…. leading to more cursing and her chef d’oeuvre, pouring soda all over the lobby. She and Moonee take refuge for the night in the grandmother’s room… the woman whose car was spat on in the opening sequence.

Baker never gives speeches but lets the intricacy of the alliances and absurdity of the rules tell the story. The genuineness of the interactions is fueled by careful preparation. This director has brought John Cassavetes improvisational prowess to a new generation. That pioneering filmmaker, with films such as “Shadows”, “A Woman Under the Influence”, “The Killing of a Chinese Bookie”, gave American cinema the dynamism of documentary with the thrill of a dramatic feature. Baker might sacrifice the crispness of a conventional fiction film cinematography, but the honesty of the performances more than makes up for the occasional obscured facial expression. Having the actors wired by radio microphones gives the filmmaker two basic choices for coverage. Baker employs a wide shot, in which the action unfolds in a panorama. The other approach is to have the camera operator follow the players. Generally the strategy worked, although there are moments that begged for standard camera “set ups”. The final scene with Moonee and Scooty would have been stronger had there been a clear view of the expression of the figure who triggered their estrangement. Overall, however, the rendering of the people in the many tableaus rank with the real life drama delivered by the seminal documentary about homeless children, “Streetwise”. There is a moment in Martin Bell’s masterpiece where a father places a soda can on the coffin of his dead son while he grieves his loss. Although Halley might rise to that level of inappropriateness, there are many adults who are paradigms of virtue. 

Willem Dafoe, the motel manager, is a force of quiet calm amidst the maelstrom of broken people and appliances. He fixes dishwashers, brokers disputes, protects the children from pedophiles, adheres to the owners demands, represents the “guest’s” interest…. all in a day’s work. He often sits looking at the old black and white surveillance monitors as a benevolent big brother/shrink/doctor/handyman. His gracious demeanor to society’s cast offs, for example the elderly woman who insists on drinking topless by the pool, channels a bodhisattva’s well of universal respect for all living things. He is even polite to a flock of large whooping cranes that meander in the parking lot. He gently shoos them away from the unforgiving human wildness into the comprehensible wilderness. He is not alone in his quiet decency. Ashley, the mother of Scooty, balances being a single parent and working as a waitress in a diner. She is repeatedly bringing food to Ashley and the children the through the back door of the restaurant. This is in return for Halley’s “babysitting”. Ashley is well aware of the limits of her friend’s abilities to supervise anyone, let alone a group of boisterous children. This is one of many tough choices she faces while trying to balance the demands of holding a job and raising a child.

Ashley falling out with Halley is a pivotal to the story. It illustrates the vulnerability of being on the cusp of losing everything. All the guests live by the whim of indifferent outside forces. Lives can be overturned by an angry motel owner, an anonymous phone call to the authorities (The Police or the Florida Department of Children and Families). The identity of who is responsible for an accidental fire leads to a potentially devastating revelation that could potentially jeopardizes Ashley’s custody and housing. In a middle class setting this event would provoke a heart to heart amongst the parents. In a world where blame can be weaponized to provoke and unforgiving bureaucracy, the only course of action is silence, coupled with seemingly cruel actions. Moonee and Scooty are no longer permitted to play and Ashley and Halley become mortal enemies. Halley’s lack of appropriateness is exponentially triggered by feeling slighted. She escalates the situation leading to disaster on all fronts. The director genius is showing all sides. The audience understands Ashley’s harsh isolation is born of shielding her housing and child. At the same time Halley’s livid reaction to suddenly being shunned is equally comprehensible. This is a woman who, in her heart, means well. She is capable of extraordinary acts of kindness. There is a sequence where she takes her charges to an overlook in the woods for a free view of the magic kingdom’s fireworks show. One of the children has a birthday and she tells the star-struck little girl that the pyrotechnics are all for her while giving her a cupcake with a candle. Does this act of love mitigate the choice of hitchhiking with two little girls to a remote wooded area? Probably not. But it is safe to say this child’s joy surpassed anything felt by the myriad of middle class kids on the other side of the wall. Ditto for the appreciation Moonee will feel for the buffet brunch, which her mother “arranges” when she realizes the end is near. Through a middle class lens this is a reckless act of theft. It is conceivable, however, that a middle aged Moonee will look back on her mother’s thievery in the light of kindness spurred on by desperation. This assumes she will live to see middle age.

It is important to note the fate of the child star of the extraordinary Brazilian film, “Pixote”, which documents the harrowing abuse of small children in the gritty favelas. The film was made with street children. Ironically there is a moment in “The Florida Project” where a wealthy Brazilian couple is accidentally booked into the wrong “Magic Castle” motel for their honeymoon. Moonee and Jancey grab their bags looking for tips. The new bride turns to her husband and screams in Portuguese, “you bring me to a place with stray children?”. It is hard to know if the sub title translation was accurate but certainly the attitude towards street kids was akin to our view of “stray cats.” Back in their native land the star of “Pixote” was dead at the age of 19. Killed by the police, who have been accused of outright extermination of dispossessed children. This is the pall that hovers over “The Florida Project” despite Moonee’s smile. 

The United States does not have sanctioned death squads, but the institutional treatment of the homeless might produce the same result. Despite the children’s levity, every unaccompanied adventure on busy streets, every exploration of an abandoned building, every foray into the alligator infested swamps,  every visit to an impaired neighbors’ room…  is a footstep away from abduction or serious injury. This stands in stark contrast to the shielded children on the other side of the “wall”. The final images of this film are the two best friends gleefully breaking on through to the other side. It is reminiscent of Dorothy and her misfits entering the Emerald City. The magic castle is the centerpiece, but the real action is the difference between the little girls and the other children. The pair runs by a phalanx of families posing together with the iconic fortress in the background. Moonee and Jancey are as exuberant as all the other kids. To a passerby everyone is indistinguishable…. and therein lies the tragedy. Hopefully these metaphorical sisters will live to be able to tell their children about the experience. If they are fortunate they will follow the wage slave drudgery of Ashley, rather than Halley’s drug-fueled hustle. Either way they will always have their afternoon in Disney World. We have been blessed to see their brief trip to heaven…. but we are cursed to know what keeps them outside the magic kingdom.    

Mother! (2017)

Mother! 

Who’s Afraid of Hieronymus Bosch?

“What a perfect escape the return to the womb was. Better by far than Religion or Art or the South Sea Islands. It was so snug and warm there, and the feeding was automatic.” 

― Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust

“The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is worth any number of old ladies”. 

-William Faulkner, Interview with The Paris Review

“Lee was such a fine, high-class boy. If my son killed the President he would have said so. That’s the way he was brought up.”

- Lee Harvey Oswald’s mother.

After viewing “Mother!” I considered contacting social services to report the writer/director Dareen Aronofsky for domestic abuse. Judging by the final cut of the film his off-screen romantic partner, Jennifer Lawerence, must have spent days screaming in pain at the top of her lungs as his ingenue . She is the consummate professional and shines as THE VICTIM! Not since the auteur Lars Von Trier’s “Breaking the Waves” has a heroine been so savagely beaten as a sacrificial lamb for the pleasure of a deranged spouse. Aronofsky’s villain has an Iago-like opaqueness. This is the problem with connecting to this dense allegory. The storyteller has descended to a private world of grimness and despair peppered by allusions to Catholicism, classic horror films and Star Trek Next Generation. There is one terrifying takeaway: Mr. Aronofsky might be so isolated as to believe that the nastiness of celebrity culture is something that is unknown to the public at large. How else can one explain the laboriousness of relentlessly hitting the same note for two hours? When you peel away the special effects and first rate performances, there is a dull realization: superstar artists are narcissistic socio-paths who feed off a deranged, vacant fanbase. However there is scarier thought: Aronofsky might enjoy this private power-trip to the dark side. 

Aronofsky put his heart into “Mother!”, along with the part of his brain that houses his “id” . It is a film filled with passion… signifying… what? It’s certainly chockablock with MEANING! The action of the film is entombed in a creepy mansion. It is a latter day “Long Days Journey into Night”. Eugene O’Neill’s mother was sacrificed for art and now Aronofsky’s partner will be. “Mother!”’s house invokes Norman Bates’ house… but on steroids. It is as isolated as an Edward Hopper mansion. There are no paths or roads - it simply springs from the landscape. It literally comes to life at the beginning of the film, then returns to a burned out shell amidst the ashen trunks of a charcoal forrest. Then it rises again. The talisman that makes this all possible is a crystal heart… found in the debris with each passing cycle. The film is bookended by highbrow camp, retrieving/restoring the the magical glass. The in-between is an a play about terror, which mistakes itself for horror.   Aronofsky is clever enough to understand the kistch. This director has produced first rate entertainment such as the “Black Swann”. ““Mother!” shows him to be as cut off from the world as the other lead in the story, a writer played by Javier Bardem. The idea of an isolated author twinned with a abused spouse in a spooky house might bring to mind Kubrick’s “The Shining”. They both use the trope of the house as a grand puppeteer and the characters as hapless marionettes. Aronofsky’s writer is a success with the general public whereas Kubrick’s author is a hack who is driven mad and ends up producing pathologically repetitive art. Strangely Aronofsky himself is stricken by the same affliction. The film endlessly oscillates between quiet family moments and the 9th circle of hell. Perhaps two scenes of a doting spouse morphing into an insatiable egoist would suffice. But after the 10th reenactment of Lawrence tolerating unforgivable abuse the action loses power and becomes boring. Bardem’s well played “werewolf” is less disquieting than Lawerence’s rendition of a beleaguered, bewildered and brutalized spouse. Add to this Mobius strip of dysfunction a never-ending stream of set piece characters. They are, like the director, imbued with passion and the suggestion of story. There is the “doctor” and his jaded wife played by Ed Harris and Michelle Pfieffer. They are a sort of matching pair of marriage gone awry akin to Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.” The difference is that their children, despite the alcoholic rage, are real… or as real as the parents. The siblings are a ready made Cain and Abel. The primordial murder reenactment in “Mother!” yields an army of one dimensional worshipers. They falsely claim to be funeral mourners but are revealed as celebrity-stalkers.  They grow and grow and disappear, then grown again and take over. They are a mob re-creation of the group that arrives at the end Nathanael West’s “The Day of the Locust.” Their “swarm” is markedly more destructive and, once again, completely opaque. West gives us a maddening crowd fueled by being swindled by a failed American Dream. He was making an honest statement about average people being devoured by a heartless ruling class. Aronofsky’s army are simply zombies, born of no particular grievance. They hate, devour and worship as automatons while they tear the mansion board by board. The audience is mesmerized by the first rate choreographed horror, but it unfortunately reveals itself as meaningless spectacle. Our poor heroine is the only thing that possesses any hint of humanity. Sadly her suffering is exhaustive, rather than redemptive. 

Jennifer Lawrence’s is a chimera of characters from various high/low neighborhoods in the cultural landscape. At times she is reminiscent of Catherine Deneuve in Polanski’s “Repulsion”. This horror classic portrays a beautician who finds those who are attracted to her… repulsive, in the extreme. Her mental illness creates a creepy meshing with her surroundings. Her apartment actually comes to life. Her dark manifestations are in her head but the body count, born of her slashing her suitors, is completely real. Aronofsky gives us a mirror image of the mad lady of swinging London. Jennifer Lawrence is beautiful, stand-by-your-man, modern spouse who is a cook and house contractor. She will take care of everything while Bardem tends to his literature. He has no appreciation of her slaving away as a baker, carpenter, plumber, caretaker… She, unlike Deneuve, wants to consummate her relationship not only with her aloof spouse, but, more importantly, with the house itself. Whereas the walls of the apartment in “Repulsion” grab and abuse, Lawrence spends many moments caressing the plaster. This leads to the revelation that the house itself has an actual beating heart. Lawrence, unlike her spiritual forebearer in London, is completely passive.. until the final scene.  Her timidity in face of the hordes of cannibalistic fans and worshipers brings those behind the fourth wall to the brink of exasperation. She is Penelope, in the Odyssey, failing to reign in the unruly suitors. That frustration is brought to an epic scale, without that epic’s greatness. The culmination of “Mother!” is, yet another, borrowed moment from a Polanski horror classic, “Rosemary’s baby”. Once again Aronofsky plays characters in reverse. Satan’s spawn becomes the sacrificial lamb. It takes the slaughter of the innocent for our heroine to put her foot down. This audience member felt the breaking point an hour and 45 minutes earlier. The claustrophobic, steady-cam cinematography had the feel of a National Geographic documentary about insects. It might be important to highlight the intricate mechanics of an ant’s mandible in the context of a science film. Unfortunately the super-close up camerawork obscured this cast of humans.  

This is not to say Lawrence et al weren’t fantastic. They were superb as was the supporting cast and technical crew. They did EXACTLY! what Aronofsky demanded. The problem is the director seemed possessed of the same pathological narcissism as Bardem’s character. There is no upside to throwing your lot with a deranged sociopath. The writer/director proves the point. Just not in the way he intended. “Worship the art, not the artist” is a lesson that requires a simple story rooted in familiar themes. “Mother!”’s aphorism is a completely abstract internal affair. It is as if the bible’s story of loaves and fishes was illustrated by a group of billionaires failing to secure the proper number of limousines for an A list event. Everyone experiences charismatic egoists who corrupt. Few people carry the burden of fandom. An even more exclusive group are romantically involved with the object of this misplaced adoration. Aronofsky, Lawrence and the supporting cast suffer these problems. The rest of us can only imagine the horror of waking every morning knowing that a crazed fan might smash your window in order to slice you to pieces. They might devour you on the spot or sell your morsels on Ebay. If you think this is hyperbole, consider the two gentleman who were arrested in the home of Joss Stone. They carried a samurai sword, hammers, knives and a body bag - the plan was to decapitate her and carry off the body. “Mother!” does nothing to forge a bond of empathy between us mortals and gods of stage and screen. 

An example of a thematically similar work that successfully bridges the gap would be a Star Trek Next Generation episode entitled, “Man of the People”. It features a magical diplomat with a god-like ability to charm and create peace. This correlates with Bardem’s literary seduction of his followers. Both character’s rely on psychically and physically devour a female partner to power their “beautiful” magic. Both callously dispose of their spouses after they have been sated. The difference between these two modern vampire tales is motivation. We can clearly see the reason behind the diplomat’s predilections because they are carefully delineated. He single-handedly untangles various Gordian knots of hatred and wins legions of fans for, literally, bringing peace to the world. Aronofky’s beloved villain reminds the audience of Kurt Cobain’s lyric, “I’ve found my friends, They’re in my head”. There are no clues to answer such questions as: Why does Bardem care about fame? What is at the heart of his writing that gives calm to the dystopia? Why is Lawrence so passive? Why are the hordes attacking his house?  The logic might have been self evident to superstars in the prison of privilege. The audience, however, is left as outsiders pushing their noses against the glass, desperately trying to decipher the entrails… at least for the first 15 minute. The cardinal question that goes answered is, what is this film about?

Boosters of “Mother!” see a brilliantly crafted warning against the current zeitgeist, where self-promotion and aggrandizement are mistaken for virtues. Others see it as a revival of an obscure French theatrical movement that centers around cruelty being a force to move the audience out of complacency. Aronofsky has stated the film is about global warming. This brings to mind Grant Wood’s managing of criticism of his painting “American Gothic”.

Eyebrows were raised when the public felt the woman was far too young to be the farmer’s spouse. Suddenly Mr. Wood spoke of a portrayal of a, “father and daughter”. “Aronofsky” is seeking cover, consciously or not, in the issue of our time, the destruction of the planet. It makes sense to want to hide the personal musings behind his creation. It seems self-evident the film has much more to do with male egos feeding off the subjugation of their partners. The structure of the house, with it’s heartbeat and menstrual cycle stained floors, stands as the matriarch whose indulgence gives rise to this diabolical “momma’s boy.” The house-mother is always forgiving, - no matter how many bodies are left strewn in the ruins. She graciously gives space so that the monster can begin the cycle again. It is a bleak topic that might have been interesting but the director seemed lost in reveling in the endless carnage. Imagine if Spielberg, when making “Lincoln”, extended the exquisitely rendered Civil War battle scenes, at the expense of Daniel Day Lewis’ performance as the President. Lawrence gives her soul to lifting the film from the grotesque.In the end she is overcome by her partner's myopic vision. 

The real problem with this film is honesty. When you are a powerful, well connected artist you can manipulate friends in high places to participate in private thrills that are better left behind closed doors. You can seduce your crowd with the promise of being included in your hip statement about the horror of being privileged. You can shield your selfishness with a panache of “making a grand statement”. Unfortunately the work speaks for itself. This should be a warning to all Hollywood executives regarding personal projects. Ask the question, “does your mother like your work”. If the answer is, “She’s my biggest fan”, just smile and say, “NO!”. "Mother!" is a tired Saturnalia of misogyny, gore and camp designed to please a very isolated artist. There is the old adage that “scoundrels take refuge in the flag”. It is also true that momma’s boys, no matter how seemingly tough and powerful, always end up screaming for….. MOTHER!

Menashe (2017)

Menashe (2017)

Shmegegge Schlemiel as Mensch

"And Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh, For God, said he, hath made me forget all my toil and all my father’s house." 

-Genesis 41, 51

Gitl: Goodbye. Go in good health.

Bernstein: Goodbye to the boy.

Gitl: May you have a boy of your own one day.

Bernstein: From your mouth to God’s ear. To have a son, a man must have a wife.

Gitl: A wife you can get.

Bernstein: To whom would that I ask? What if she would say no?

Gitl: What if she would say yes? 

- from the film “Hester Street”

American film audiences are unlikely to ever see a dramatic feature film spoken in yiddish, the lingua franca of Jews in pre-war Europe. Over four decades ago “Hester Street”, the story of an immigrant couple on the lower east side of Manhattan, took critics by storm. It was a fascinating glimpse of domestic turmoil brought on by the tension between the mores of the shtetl (village) and the unconstrained ways of the new world. “Menashe” is another story of family strife told in Yiddish with similar themes. “Hester Street” asked what it means to be a good spouse. “Menashe” adds a layer of fatherhood to that query. Imagine the great-great-grandchildren of the first wave of the lower east side refugees facing the stress of adhering to tradition. Unlike their forebears, this generation’s struggle is internecine. It is not a question of being seduced by the new, but managing the old. 

The plot lies around the conundrum of single parent families being verboten in Hasidic Jewish society. Menashe is the widower father of a tween boy. The story follows the power struggle between the son’s successful real estate agent uncle and the proud father, who works as a stock clerk in the local food store. Menashe refuses to remarry which jeopardizes his right to be the guardian of his child. His is warned the son will be taken out of the yeshiva (religious elementary school). This would separate they boy from the community and mark them both as outcasts.  The strength of the film lies in the intimate portrait of a way of life that rebels against the relentless fads and cults of celebrity that dominate American culture. “Menashe" can be seen as a safe harbor from mainstream commercial entertainment offerings, such as the wildly successful “Game of Thrones”. This sci-fi fantasy has just completed it’s breakthrough 7th season with 12 million viewers. One could not imagine a starker contrast. “Menashe” is a low budget feature whose distribution is relegated to art-house movie theaters and cable TV. It features a troubled, frumpy Hasid who lives in cramped, dreary tenement enduring life’s contumely. This is a galaxy far, far away from the flashy, sexy, triumphant heroism of waring kingdoms in a landscape of dragons. Ironically “Menashe’s” simple, primitive ‘slice of life’, holds it’s own in it’s portrayal of another world.  

The origins of the film are similar to Robert Duvall’s paean to Roma society, “Angelo My Love” which was inspired by a chance encounter with a precocious child from that community. The eponymous “Menashe" was born of the lead actor, Menashe Lustig’s own experience of marital discord while living as a Hasid. The director, Joshua Z. Weinstein, adopted a neorealist approach to portraying Borough Park Brooklyn through Lustig’s connections. Many of the cast are people from the neighbor. Mr. Lustig is a professional performer, as is Ruben Niborski, who portrays his son. Their expertise helps guide the amateur co-stars, who rise to the occasion. The film has rough patches. There are awkward pauses and misplayed plot twists, but the authenticity overcomes the odd unfolding of the story. 

The portrayal of Menashe at work is a metaphor for the meandering journey. The essence of his powerlessness, he is a debt ridden grocery clerk, is captured within moments of him kibitzing with his customers. Yet the scene goes on for many minutes…. but….. this isn’t a typical bodega or Korean deli. The young woman is shopping with her 6 (or 7) children… the men, including Maneshe, have strange haircuts, and bizarre clothes. Meashe’s argument with his boss about the lettuce has undertones. The ‘cleanliness' of the vegetables is more than a matter of dirt.  Everything is the same but, very different. The inner city background is recognizable, yet it is inhabited by the unfamiliar. Single parents in most American cities might turn to the internet for dating choices. Manashe’s friends turn to an actual “matchmaker”, a designated person in the community. That persons job’s sole consideration is appropriateness in light of building a family. Period. Love and passion take a backseat to upholding tradition. Life revolves around reading the Torah and following the law as interpreted by the rebbi. Quotes from scripture (Gemara) guide life. When pushing back against the idea of a new wife he is given the aphorism: “a man needs three things - a nice wife, a nice home and nice dishes”. Bowing to pressure Menashe meets a perspective date. This widow, with children, quizzes him on which rebbi he follows? She also states she would NEVER condone a religious leader who sanctioned female automobile drivers.  If that seems foreign consider Menashe's trip to the portrait gallery. Despite his penury, he MUST have an oil painting of a former religious figure for his wife’s one year memorial dinner. The 10 year old son weighs in on which image would be most appropriate.  This film is more than merely a touching family drama. It is an introduction to a world that combines 5,000 year old Middle Eastern tradition, 18th century European fashion and 21st century American economics. 

“Menashe” is a precise examination of the male side the culture. There is strict separation for the sexes, especially on social occasions. Men exclusively gather for a bonfire marking a religious holiday. This moment marks the cinematic highlight of the film, with the smoke, circles and singing. We are witnessing a joyous ritual that pierces the dreary small tenements and rigid way of life. It speaks to a spiritual bond that defies the vacancy of contemporary mainstream culture. The audience has a window into why some men choose to live a life rooted firmly in the past. This fraternity is a part of something ancient and enduring. It is critical to note that this film is about men. The women appear occasionally in the background and their story remains untold. There is one scene in which Menashe asks a neighbor for a recipe for Kugel (casserole) for the memorial. This strong matronly grandmother offers to do the chore herself indicating this is a wife’s job. Menashe refuses and insists on cooking himself. During the discussion they enter the woman’s kitchen. Sitting at a table is a young woman who is in the late stages of pregnancy. She appears completely forlorn in stark contrast to the older woman. One sensed a deep melancholy rooted in the same divide as Menashe’s family struggle. The societal demands cannot be met. Unfortunately both he and the young women know that they must seek solace from people of their own sex. The three of them all stand in the kitchen and pretend that this encounter is simply about seeking a recipe. The loneliness is countered by the fact that, in this community, you are never alone.

The never-ending group gatherings are illustrated in the scene in our hero attends a raucous dinner party. Despite his uncompromising views on re-marriage, he is warmly welcomed in the fold. This sequence also illustrates the film’s shortcoming in presenting a plot driven narrative. Menashe’s son is uncomfortable with his father’s drinking, which culminates in the father accidentally knocking over some china. The loud singing and joyous laughter stops dead as if Menashe pulled the power cable on the party. The son leaves the room to call his father’s nemesis, the uncle, in order to be rescued. On paper, it is believable. Unfortunately, in spite of fine acting by Lustig and Niborski, it is contrived. Ditto for the scene in which Menashe burns the Kugel at his wife’s memorial dinner. In reality this manufactured troupe, designed to highlight Menashe’s incompetence and general bad luck, was unnecessary. In fact it distracted from two central moments within the scene: the son singing in tribute to his mother and the rebbi showing appreciation of his struggle. The elder rebukes the uncle for complaining about the food. This latter gesture might not seem important but in this context of this community the rebbi’s blessing is akin to a nod from above. The director should have realized these moments had enough gravitas WITHOUT the smoke filled apartment. It would have been less opaque, literally, not to be distracted by the needless underlying of Menashe’s shortcomings. This is exhibited again in the sequence where his food delivery falls out of the back of the truck. The action is designed to exhibit the fault, and it shows.  This problem of overemphasis is, once again, exhibited in the dialogue. It only takes one heart to heart with the uncle and the boss to understand their relationships. The repetitive encounters with each were superfluous.  The filmmaker needed more faith in the quieter scenes that show the character’s deficits. Doubling down on exposition, pets dying, fish falling out of the back of trucks weighed down the magic of the small scenes of living life (e.g. praying, working, preparing for bed…) Perhaps an even more atmospheric, less plot driven narrative would have aided in building the bond between father and son. There is an odd feeling of relief in the denouement, rather than tears of separation. 

The critical moment that underpins the saga occurs in a late night drunken encounter with two goyim, non-jews from outside the community. Menashe is invited to join two hispanic stock clerks for an impromptu booze break in the storage area. Our hero is pulling a series of late night shifts and his is alone with his co-workers. They pass the bottle of cheap beer and question the troubled Hasid. The revelation is akin to Laurence Olivier in “Rebecca” spilling the beans on his relationship with his wife. Suddenly all the action is caste in a darker hue. Anger and guilt replace love as the driving force. The beloved father is also a mean-spirited spouse. Alfred Hitchock's film classic is more successful in using the unmasking to build sympathy for the protagonist. Menashe’s truth is, yet another, layer of ambiguity. The uncle’s anger is legitimized. It is the rightful wrath of wronged brother. The guardianship of the child is also put into question. However the mechanics of Menashe’s confession are also problematic. By having the inquiry come from the two co-workers, Menashe becomes reactive. In order to underscore his guilt, Menashe should have initiated the confession. The two outsiders, who have no standing within his community, would have been the perfect audience to unpack his heart. The director missed an opportunity. It is also unfortunate that this is one of the few moments where a full compliment of professional actors might have been more effective. The stock clerks hit their marks but the pivotal scene failed to rise to the occasion. This blemish, however, is merely a mis-step in a fascinating portrait of an over-looked community.

Menashe brings to mind an anti-hero, Igantius J. Reilly, in the classic, “A Confederacy of Dunces”, which tells the tale of a slovenly, intellectual, hot dog vendor in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Igantius gives us a portrait of a very specific, Southern, underclass culture. Menashe opens up the Hassdic Brooklyn enclave. These latter day Don Quixote’s are wonderful foils to highlight universal truths as they do battle with the forces of normalcy. The swashbuckling dragon slayers might draw cheers… but what about the nowhere men? In the opening sequence of “Menashe” we see our anti-hero standing out in the crowd by eschewing the traditional dress and simply wearing his white shirt. The closing of the film shows him in the same streetscape dressed, as all the other men, in a black coat. It is a victory that he alone will savor. Even his few intimate friends and family might see it as simply another quixotic gesture. The audience, however, having born witness to this disjointed journey, will understand that he has come to terms with the death of his wife and the loss of his role as father. It is a strange pyrrhic moment. Hopefully one will see this hapless man, in a strange outfit, in a bizarre neighborhood and think… to quote John Lennon, “Isn’t he a bit like you and me”. You don’t have to be Jewish to know what is kosher. 

Beatriz at Dinner (2017)

Beatriz at Dinner (2017)

The Great White Dope

“Now that highway’s coming through… and you all gotta move… this bottom rung ain’t no fun at all” -  “See How We Are” by X

Captain James T. Kirk: Be Careful. 

Dr. McCoy: Why? She seems harmless enough.

Mr. Spock: The sand-bats of Manark IV appear to be inanimate rock crystal, Doctor, until they attack. 

-The Empath, 1968 Original Star Trek Series.

“It the ends don’t justify the means, then what does?
-Robert Moses

Being topical is a mixed blessing when it comes to movies. Writers and directors strive to stand apart from the times and render an objective truth… most often this leads to unintentionally confirming that they are as blind as everyone else.  The poster-child for being imprisoned in the zeitgeist would be “Pray for the Wildcats”. Only a PhD in sociology or a rabid connoisseur of kitsch would recall this 1974 TV “movie of the week” which paired Andy Griffith, a fierce California industrialist, with William Shatner, a local advertising executive, on a motorcycle trip through the wilds of Baja Mexico. This journey becomes a exploration of raging rift between corporate aggressiveness  vs. counter-culture harmony with the denouement being the protagonist driving of a cliff to his demise. This work was made at the tail end of the disastrous Vietnam war when hippies and construction workers were squaring off in the the streets and many took refuge in a “back to the earth” movement. The filmmakers made a statement… just not the one they intended. This is a monument to artistic overreach and gives new meaning to the phrase “drive off a cliff”. The writers and directors were, metaphorically,  the uneasy riders in the wake of the seminal “Easy Rider”.  In the age of Trump, where the economic divide is front and center, we have the spiritual descendant of this forgettable TV adventure.

 “Beatriz at Dinner” is more weighty than “Wildcats” but it ends with the protagonist… well there was no motorcycle but… This is another social commentary with, yet another, California mogul squaring off against a child of a ‘south-of-the-border’ Eden. Her name is Beatriz… probably after Beatrice, Dante’s chosen guide to heaven in the The Divine Comedy. Beatriz has a shaman-like presence that suggests she experienced a Christian “Beatific Vision”… a personal, individual encounter with God. In this film our hero meets God’s nemesis, who takes the form of successful real estate developer, Doug Strutt, played by John Lithgow.  The setting is a posh Orange County gated community where, Beatriz, a beloved Central American masseuse, unwittingly becomes a foil against a group of caucasian establishment figures. Beatriz is victorious; or more correctly, Beatriz is victorious? The ambiguity is the weakness of this set-piece drama. It is a polemic that is uncomfortable being… a polemic. It wants to be a larger philosophical meditation where people stumble upon larger questions over a meal. The Louis Malle's 1981 feature film, “My Dinner with Andre”, managed to successfully portray two friends weighing life's journey while dining.  “Beatriz at Dinner” is, at heart, a more conventional political commentary. One thinks this as an non-action extended exploration of characters in political soap operas such as "House of Cards" or "The West Wing".

Director Miguel Arteta and writer Mike White side with Beatriz, however, judging by the character portraits, they are more at home with the ruling class. The wealthy white people and their servants are pitch perfect. There is the preppy cook who is pleasant, professional and cold as ice. There is the older Latina maid who is expert at not being noticed. There is the rare moment when the domestic breaks “character” to reach out to Beatriz - only to find the heroine is NOT a fellow traveler. The menus and drink options are appropriate and highlight Beatriz’s isolation from the world of scotch drinkers and meat eaters. She is gracefully given her water and vegetarian entree.. but this kindness is tinged with difference. The conversation and greetings also highlight the class/culture divide. The caucasians are put off by Beatriz’s full body hug and her inability to play along with the gossip. Beatriz is serious when the moment demands levity and insulted by what passes for mere banter. What is the big deal about Strutt showing off his photos from a hunting safari? There is the quick bit of dialogue, “Everyone knows those animals wouldn’t exist without the hunting revenue?”. Beatriz disagrees with this and other passing quips.  It would be easy to fall into the trap of making the rich representatives of the evils of their class (e.g. the neighbors in Mike Leigh’s “High Hopes). This group of successful strivers have feelings. The spouse of the businessman throwing the party is sympathetic and empathetic. She genuinely cares about Beatriz and credits her with saving her child from the ravages of cancer. Unfortunately she is unable to escape her rich-lady cocoon of insensitivity.  It takes her far too long to register that Beatriz is at the breaking point well before her car broke down. The Lady of the house rises to the occasion and INSISTS Beatriz stay the night including attending a dinner with her husband’s best client.  Her husband, Grant, is skeptical. His attitude towards Beatriz is akin to Czar Nichols’ tolerating Rasputin as his spouse believes he is responsible for their son’s recovery from certain death. Like the last Russian Royal, Grant reluctantly acquiesces ending in complete disaster. Everyone was expecting a quiet self-congratulatory evening celebrating the closing of a large real-estate transaction. Dinner turns into Cortes savaging Montezuma. 

This battle of civilization rests on the question posed by the lyricist Hal David in the classic song “Alfie”, “Are we meant to take more than we give?”. Doug Strutt doesn’t really understand the premise as, in his mind, the point of living is to MAKE SURE you take more than you give. The dinner party shows the guest of honor’s bleak world view. There are his asides about crushing those in his way and skirting tiresome rules. His joking about “not knowing you” if you get caught is met with laughter… but one wonders what the other guest-couple is thinking. The husband is a political fixer, a master of the political sausage making process. If one of his unsavory tactics was exposed it is clear Strutt would throw him under the bus. The fixer’s spouse’s grimace seems to grow broader as the evening unfolds. She understands Strutt sees the world as a place to be developed. Every encounter is a transaction to be measured in this lens. Friends are people who help Strutt get paid… until they don’t… then they become enemies.  Everyone else is an other overt or covert enemy. His pleasures consist of having sycophants fawn on him (including his partner) and killing large game animals. Beatriz gets under his skin… literally. There is a moment when she spontaneously give him a back massage. Here power is revealed. The beast is, momentarily, at rest. Strutt realizes she is a force.  In a rare moment towards the end of the film he lets down his guard and speaks genuinely about his agenda. His view: the ship is sinking… why fret? Just get as much as you can FOR YOURSELF. He seems to admonish Beatriz to grow up and stop pretending everyone else isn’t thinking the same way. Beatriz is having none of it. Her displaced family and long lost friends chose to path of righteousness, only to lose all their wordy possessions. They are on the  God’s side and no amount of demagogy will sway her. She will retain her dignity… but pay the price. Unfortunately the result is not even a pyrrhic victory. But does the film show defeat? The problem in representing the essence of goodness is how to defend against the ravages of evil. As one young Buddhist remarked: “The Dalai Lama has got 12 bodyguards around him when he travels. What do you think would happen if some butthead pulled a gun on HIs Holiness? Do you think those bodyguards would practice non-violence? No way man. Some dweeb with a gun shows up , he’s gonna pop a cap in his ass”*. And so it is with Beatriz… as a disciple of Gaia, how do you stop the rapist of mother earth? The filmmakers are very good at drawing the devil but are less successful when rendering the forces of good. 

Is Beatriz an failed exorcist? A disenchanted savior? Has the Archangel Gabriel laid down his sword? The first, and most successful, portion of the film, shows her as awkward observer with the veneer of being “a part of the family”. The matriarch is sincere in her love of Beatriz but is unable to fathom the chasm between her and this group of ruling-class strivers.  As the guests arrive she stands at a distance as an observer. Her gait and manner are stilted. She frets over her dress in the mirror. Then Strutt throws down the gauntlet, in error, by mistaking her for a servant and asking her to fetch another drink. The patriarch correct’s the tycoon’s faux pas but Beatrix comes alive and asks the host for a re-fill. The alcohol fuels an honesty and boldness that Strutt correctly views as a frontal assault on everything he holds dear. This begins a strange journey into understanding Beatriz as a foil for good. The oddness rests in not fully grasping her character. She is an odd amalgamation of having tremendous worldly insight cloaked in utter cluelessness. She can hold her own in the world. She has, against all odds, landed a good job, good apartment, good connections… She knows how to navigate the internet. Yet she seems a babe in the woods during the dinner party. She drips with sincerity and is lost at the cruel humor and ass-kissing. Her revulsion towards Strutt seems oddly inappropriate. He is a horror but she would seem to possess a better understanding of the rules of the game. Is it the alcohol that blurs her judgement? After hurling Strutt’s smartphone at him for showing off his kill (literally a rhino) she retreats to the cancer stricken daughter’s room for a timeout. Our innocent then “googles” Strutt via the internet… His nasty track record includes the revelation that he might be the force behind the destruction of her Eden-like childhood village. Her backstory’s brutality extends to her own family. Her father has some Strutt-like qualities. There is an aside where she describes enduring her rough-neck fisherman father begin her to kill and torture a rare animal. Her life work seems an answer to his cruelty. She reaches out, via her smartphone, to a life-long friend. This soul-mate never returns the call. The inscrutability of her character leads to wondering about the existence of this person. Is this a metaphorical “reaching out” or does Bestriz have real friends? The filmmakers show her only true companion to be a dead white goat…This unfortunate animal shares the fate of the poor creature whom her father kicked do death on the fishing peer. The buck is murdered by a neighbor who complained about the noise. Is this goat’s death the source of Beatriz’s inability to contain her rage towards Strutt?…. or, once again, was it the wine.. or both, or neither. 

The last third of the film takes refuge in abstraction. Beatriz returns to serenade the offended guests with a beautiful ballad. Her voice matches her touch in having an unworldly ability to calm and heal. Despite the respite there is a sense that something is going to happen… and it does…. Beatriz has a strange communion with a dark patch on the ocean. There is the encounter with Strutt, where he bares his soul followed by a bifurcation of action. Note to artists: having two endings creates no ending rather than a better one. (e.g. Mark Romanek’s “One Hour Photo”).  “Beatriz at Dinner” gives us a violent dream sequence, where revenge is exacted… followed by an almost Antonioni-like disappearance into the surf. This crisp set-piece devolves into pop ambiguity of incomprehensible rock songs. To quote the Cars: “It doesn’t matter where you’ve been, as long as it was deep, yeah”. 

It’s difficult to shift from straightforward class commentary to abstract musings about the fate of Gaia’s disciple. Part of the problem was invoking the tension between Central America the the United States. This is a gruesome, complicated history that has no place in a compact meditation on Trumpism. Last week a tower of skulls was discovered in the heart of the Aztec empire. The structure was built from victims of ritual sacrifice including women, children in addition to warriors. ( http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/07/05/535613480/aztec-tower-of-skulls-reveals-women-children-were-sacrificed ). Cortes’ men had described this terrifying building. For centuries it was thought to be merely a poetic flourish to highlight the brutishness of the supposed “heathens”. It turns out the imaginary prelapsarian native world was more Garden of Earthly Delights than Eden. This isn’t a justification for Cortes’ savagery but an illustration the difficulty shoe-horning Salma Hayek into being the beneficent magic negress. The incarnation of native righteousness might have sprung from life as another skull in the wall. Not exactly a comforting building block of paradise. Beatriz cannot be Dante’s tour guide of the heavens as she is NOT in a divine comedy. Her world is a solid, competently executed, well-made-play featuring contemporary political issues. Substituting divinity for partisanship is an attempt to place the artwork’s message is above the fray. Unfortunately the tree of knowledge isn’t planted in the well manicured lawns of Orange County… nor is it in  the amorphous haze of the pacific surf. 

The ambiguity of the ending covers a confusion about the weightiness of the drama. This is a set-piece which beautifully illustrates contemporary American political strife. The canonization of the Latina undercuts the power of the story. The terra-firma of direct action with a knife, one of the paths shown in the film, has clarity. This lies in contrast to the fog of imaginary friends in imaginary worlds communing with imaginary white goats. This film needed to stay the course of social commentary and concrete story-telling rather than attempt a universal truth. In short, Strutt needed to get his ass capped. Obviously the filmmakers were nervous about demonizing the heroin. This accounts for the artistic overreach. Ironically bestowing sainthood had the effect of distancing her from the audience. The nemesis, strangely, becomes dearer to our hearts by being real. John Lithgow is mesmerizing delivering his brief. Salma Hayek, with no makeup and ill fitting clothes, has never been more beautiful. It’s too bad the writer and director felt she needed a pedestal. They killed Beatriz thinking it would make her right, but it felt wrong. Ironically if Beatriz had killed Strutt, she would have been wrong, but the film would have felt right. We needed a murderer to argue about and they gave us a martyr… we need not pray to our lady of Beatriz. Her salvation would be in better art. Remember “Pray for the Wildcats” and the perils of going off the “cliff of deepness”. Knowing you’re mediocre is better than pretending you’re great. This is something people of all political stripes can rally around. One imagines Beatriz and Strutt in front of the TV. He has his scotch and she pets her goat. They are watching the opening of “Pray for the Wildcats”. She says this is ridiculous. He nods in agreement. Then they argue about what to watch. He kills her goat. She kills him. The cops are called and we all argue about who is right after seeing it on the evening news. 

* Music Downtown: Writing from the Village Voice by Kyle Gann, page 277

Get Out (2017)

Get Out (2017)

The Dark Humor of White Lies

“Ain't no lions or tigers ain't no mamba snake… Just the sweet watermelon and the buckwheat cake… Everybody is as happy as a man can be… climb aboard little one sail away with me”

-Sail Away, song written by Randy Newman, as sung by Ray Charles

“Have you forgotten, that once we were brought here, we were robbed of our names, robbed of our language, we lost our religion, our culture, our God, and many of us by the way we act, even lost our minds!” – Dr. Khalid Muhammad on Public Enemy’s ‘Night Of The Living Base Heads’

“If only we were amongst friends... or sane persons!”

-Janet, The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Jordan Peele of the TV sketch comedy duo, Key and Peele, has made an unlikely directorial debut on the big screen. “Get Out” has many funny moments. This is not surprising given Peele’s body of work. However he chose a genre not usually associated with comedians… horror. The director has an interest in the funny bone, but he is also focused on the smashing of skulls and blood spattering.  “Get Out” borrows from breakthrough films that expand conventional genre boundaries. “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers” can be seen as a parable of the 1950s McCarthyism. In 1975 “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” used standard horror film troupes to hilariously expound on sexual “normalcy”. The same year “The Stepford Wives” made monsters of the misogynist post war ideals of women. “Hannibal” gave a scientific veneer to the slasher flick. Imagine all these threads, and many more, coming together in a “black comedy” about race relations. The key to the films success is that it is a solidly crafted funny horror film, rather than a scold about our social deficits. 

Dave Chapelle just made the most financially successful comedy special ever recorded. He gives homage to Key & Peele for following in his footsteps. He also, casually, makes reference to the hard work of laughter. He told a short joke and mused how it was the best one OF THE 40 he had written on that minuscule topic. Note: this was merely less than a minute of a 4 part, multi-hour show. Yet, despite the substantial length, there was an effortless to every second of his performance. Peele has followed this rigorous attention to craft, albeit without the myopic attention to giggles. “Get Out” casually flows through the terror but with the added dimension of occasional laughter. It is only after reflection one realizes they are witness to an intricately detailed story that has careful exposition with many subtle jibes. Seemingly incidental references and props turn out to be part of a fine-tuned plot. A car collision with a deer on the trip to the parents house is tied to our protagonist’s loss of his own mother. Note: our hero uses mounted deer head as a weapon to slay his adversary.  The Jesse Owen’s mention upon meeting the overly friendly parents is another passing, yet vital, key to understanding the root of the white family’s relationship to African Americans. The father reveals: my grandfather ALMOST recovered from the loss to the great Olympian. The denouement of the story has a member of the nation’s most ridiculed police agency, the TSA, act as the “white” knight in shining armor.  Peele’s commentary on the cold foibles of the ruling class are etched with the knowledge of a keen observer. The writer/director knows that the race is a American is centered around a psychotic relationship.  People, literally, embody those they loath. All this speaks to someone whose mastery of the culture is pitch perfect to the point where racial question are merely a device, rather than the focus. This is a wonderful horror film, rather than a wonderful “black” horror film. 

The cast of  “Get Out” deserves credit for making the magic possible. Daniel Kaluuya and Allison Williams are exquisite in their roles as the lovers in an early stage of romance. Their fears and reactions to the strains of “meeting the family” are believable. The fact that they are an interracial couple meshes perfectly with the nervousness of making the “right” impression. The family has the benevolent upper class quirkiness of being educated elitists with a soft spot for underlings. The neurosurgeon patriarch, Bradley Whitford, has a funnyman/everyman quality akin to a white Dr. Huxtable. The therapist matriarch, Catherine Keener, has the warm friendliness of a den mother constantly apologizing for her overly social husband.  He says the right thing in a manner which makes it the wrong thing. The brother, Caleb Jones,  is the only overt hint that we might be on the sinister set of “Arsenic and Old Lace”, rather than the purely wacky world of “You Can’t Take it With You”. He’s a mean preppy drunk with an overt hatred of minorities. Then there are the servants, Marcus Henderson & Betty Gabriel. Not since Mrs. Danvers, in Hitchcock’s “Rebecca”, have house staff radiated such much pure creepiness. Danver’s is driven to cursing her new mistress before torching the mansion and leaping into the flames but at least she was fighting her own deranged battle. The element that makes Henderson & Gabriel so unsettling is a question of identity.

“Get Out” is about who we aren’t.  Race and class are vehicles for the horror/comic editorial on the state or altered state of America. The rigid caste system that undoubtedly exists is a subject that dare not speaks its name. This is perfect fodder for a dystopian comedy. There is only one character that is solidly lower-middle class. The protagonist’s best friend LilRel Howery, a TSA employee, is rooted in the black working class. He is chock-filled with bromides about race, class and acceptance that our “striving” hero chooses to ignore. Unfortunately Howery is, unintentionally, distanced from his friend’s narrative by a performance that is disjointed from the central narrative. He is playing a stand-up gig at home which is intercut with a carefully mannered parody. Howery is a wonderful as a singular performance. There is a jarring disconnect between his clear-headed, hard-nosed cell phone comedy club routine and the set-piece family nightmare. The audience is swept up in the bizarre twilight-zone antebellum country-club only to be whiplashed with a call from a brash stand up comedian. That sense of disconnect is also illustrated in the blood-soaked latter segment. “Get Out”  metaphorical verbal fisticuffs morph to, literally, breaking out the ax. The mind games turn to actual brain surgery.  Artistically speaking the audience is overcome by the turbulent mechanics of the narrative rather than the helter-skelter nature of the material.

Kaluuya, during the girlfriend family visit, is hit, full bore, with the schizophrenic love/hate of the ruling class toward, ‘the other’. How is he to respond to the family’s loss at the Nazi Olympics? Is the constant praise of African American physicality meant as a compliment? Would they WANT to be black? It is interesting to note that Jesse Owens, reflecting upon his moment revealed: "I wasn't invited up to shake hands with Hitler- but I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either.” The sequence in which our hero is forced into the Hades of submission by Keener’s hypnotic trance, has him seeing things from a bottomless abyss of powerlessness similar to another classic protagonist. Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” ended in basement room filled with bare light bulbs. That hero knew the bitter truth that was revealed in the note he is told never to open as he goes from employer to employer.  He eventually succumbs to curiosity and reads: “Keep This Nigger-Boy Running”. Kaluuya endures a backyard garden party where he encounters another African American fellow traveler who never opened the note. He is a bizarre, castrated, sex slave whose identity has been erased by a white body snatcher. Kaluuya might not know the truth, but he senses something is off. The TSA agent channels the title of the film, “GET OUT!”. It is a hysterical warning of imminent danger, not a sardonic quip of disbelief. Howery, with all his jocular home spun charm, knows the DEADLY seriousness of the situation. 

Gazes and gestures tell a thousand stories. The genius of this film is that they are exactly who they aren’t. When Kaluuya tries to strike up a conversation with Henderson he is the middle of splitting wood. There is no telling where the ax will land next, despite the cool politeness of the interaction. Allison Williams is another odd monster who oozes madness beneath the preppy veneer. Her trophy collection of photos of past conquests is akin to Shelly Duvall in the Shinning discovering her husbands novel is one sentence repeated ad infinitum. The demur, polite Allison is actually a big game warden with the terrifying laissez-faire morality of Daisy Buchanan in the Great Gatsby. Daisy committed manslaughter and let her love be murdered rather than face the music. Allison murders with the same disinterest. She is the mirror image of Howery, who is all heart. The TSA hero who, in his ill-fitting uniform covering his Twinkie filled frame, become the metaphorical white knight. He slays the pretty monsters and the Oreo imposters. Then there is Gabriel’s moment with Kaluuya . If the film could be summed up in one facial expression it would be this domestic servants penetrating, tearful, wide-eyed, glare. There is a quixotic, Mona Lisa quality that projects terror and ambiguity. Should she be embraced as an ally, or scorned as another of the monsters? In reality her place in the orchard of strange fruit, she is both the produce and the purveyor.  Even if she had the ability to reveal the truth, Kaluuya’s response would have been an incredulous, “GET OUT!” as in, “you can’t be serious”. Her deadpan response would have been, “while you can”. There is a monster. Not under your bed but directly in front of you. The horror is there… it is question of choosing to see it and responding appropriately.

In our current climate of vastly opposing opinions about the the racial divide it is important to remember that half a century ago interracial marriage was illegal in most of the United States. In the same year those laws were struck down “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” had its debut. The plot centered around a young wealthy caucasian woman’s parents meeting her African American fiancée’s counterparts. The prospect of different colors in the family trees forces an uncomfortable introspections on all sides. Even the white family’s trusted African American servant is against the nuptials as she feels the young man, a doctor, is trying to “get above himself”. Contrast her with the black maid in “Get Out”’. They are both prisoners of their station, but Peele’s servant is a chimera of commentary on race and class. The former is merely a pawn in a set piece drama about the foolishness of bigotry. Early forays into this difficult conversations are important, but they appear stilted in an age where Harper Lee’s “Go Set a Watchman” can be read as a companion to “To Kill a Mockingbird”. The paradigm character of social justice, Atticus Finch, is revealed as a more nuanced person informed by his segregationist surroundings. “Get Out” reeks of such ambiguity. Racism is real but it is fiction to believe in Atticus Finch. It is more appropriate to grimace and embrace at all the unsettling contradictions. Andrew Jackson, overseer of the trail of tears, had his life saved by a Native American. Get out! Muhammad Ali, the embodiment of black power, based his public persona on a white 1950s professional wrestler. Get out! The Senate leader of the modern segregationists had an African American daughter. Get out! The pilgrims kept the decapitated head of a Native American on a pike on the outskirts of their village to ward off unfriendly tribes. Get Out!  Families were known to attend lynching and postcards were made of the events. Get Out! The nice, white, rich, progressive, country club family are, in truth, depraved, murderous slaveholders. Get Out! Atticus Finch won’t save you… you have to wait for the TSA. Get Out! 

“Get Out” is a bloody, belch of uneasy truth. Peele’s gift is that he has shown us that the story of the American original sin lends itself to real tales of horror rather than the safe ghetto of polite conversation.  It is to be enjoyed from the slums of East St. Louis, to the art-houses of New York City, to the drive ins of San Diego, to the streaming feeds of Montana, Hawaii, Mississippi…. let horror ring. We can, as a big family…. squirm at last. We can squirm at last! Thank God Almighty we can squirm at last!