“I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.”- Dylan Thomas, A Child’s Christmas in Wales
“Your mother and her prayers can’t help us”― Antonio, Bicycle Thieves
“there are always in gatherings such as this sadder thoughts that will recur to our minds: thoughts of the past, of youth, of changes, of absent faces that we miss here tonight. Our path through life is strewn with many such sad memories: and were we to brood upon them always we could not find the heart to go on bravely with our work among the living. We have all of us living duties and living affections which claim, and rightly claim, our strenuous endeavors” ― James Joyce, The Dead
Alfonso Cuaron brings us back home; specifically to his home. Roma, the eponymous neighborhood in Mexico City, comes to life during the turbulent 1970s. But this is not The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, in which a noble family is insulated from political upheaval. The domestic trauma stays domestic unlike Cuaron’s last feature, an outer space thriller entitled Gravity. Ironically Roma wrestles with another primordial force in nature, the matriarch. Being a innovative story-teller the director bring a new definition of that sacred office. As a master technician he can breath life into all parts of the universe. The craft behind the colorful, captivating dazzle of an exploding space station is equally deployed in making a mesmerizing tableau of the steady, black and white, diurnal rhythms of an upper-middle-class Mexican family.
The opening credit sequence, a floor being slowly scrubbed, is a powerful mirror image of the space-age special effects of the last project. The titles flow while the aged mud bricks are slowly bathed in mop water. This banal description belies the evoking of a prelapsarian innocence. The quietness hides the demands of a bold director putting an audience on notice: put away the endless chatter of the present! You are entering a quieter era, but don’t be fooled into thinking it is less dramatic. Romais the story of women’s ability to endure the barbarity of male privilege; but it is not a polemic. It is the tale of real suffering and hardship, yet it fosters a nostalgia for a bygone era. Cuaron celebrates the joy of the past without hiding the hardship. He is a master craftsman who meticulously frets over the details of each frame. Paradoxically that exacting work gives birth to a seemingly simple tapestry of the truth of yesterday. Strangely this informs those facing the difficulty of today.
The film takes place during Mexico’s dirty war against the left. This time period coincidences with women, within the same family, facing betrayal by their partners. The protagonist, Cleo, is a beloved domestic who has a front row view to the disintegration of her employer’s marriage. She is also struggling with a surprise pregnancy. Cuaron’s decision to place a lowly servant at the center of the drama is revolutionary. This unremarkable nanny/housekeeper is a surprising match for the captivating familiar paterfamilias archetypes. The standard trope is to have the king preside over his castle; Big Daddy pontificates in Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the Prince rules in Visconti’s The Leopard, Don Corleoni terrorizes in Coppola’s The Godfather… Cuaron’s matriarch is playing a quieter, longer game while the men strut and squawk.
We first meet the head of the household, a physician, as he pulls his car into the narrow driveway. He rolls his vehicle over the same tiled floor we see in the opening credits. The focus of the sequence is on his arm fastidiously shifting gears as an extended cigarette smolders between his fingers and classical music blares from the radio. There is pomp as his absurdly large, shiny, American limousine-like car barely squeezes against the ancient stone walls. The chrome mirror is nearly severed as the smoke settles and the orchestra plays on. The king of this castle is an officious tyrant; not so much evil as ridiculous.
This knave, however, is a giant compared to Cleo’s paramour. We first meet him in a hotel room where he has just made love. He comes out of the bathroom delivering the only moment of nudity in the film. Men bearing their parts delivers a comedic touch and Cuaron plays it to the hilt. The doctor, in his flashy car, was a pompous ass but he fails to compete with the absurdity of a man, in the raw, showing off his martial arts “skills” by twirling a shower rod. Cleo hides her guffaws under the covers but our big little man is too much of a narcissist to understand she is laughing AT him. His cut body only amplifies his foolishness. If youtube had existed he would, no doubt, be featured in a number of cringeworthy videos. He goes on to join a right wing para-military group led by a TV personality who has pretensions of being… a superhero. He leads his army in calisthenics/yoga in a caped costume with a cowl. This is probably a nod to fellow Mexican director Inarritu’s Birdman, a wonderfully comic paean to the absurdity of stardom.
Cleo is the only person able to follow the ersatz shaman’s most difficult yoga pose. The army men stumble in place as she, rigidly, commands a perfect position while being completely ignored. The boyfriend finally stops pretending not to see her and reels-off violent invectives while denying parternity. He ads she is merely “a servant.” This comes from someone whose idea of showing his might consists of flashing martial arts moves in a mirror. His complete abdication of responsibility matches Cleo’s boss, the doctor, refusing any monetary support for his wife and four children. He has left them to pursue a young single woman. The physicians’s chef d’oeuvre, however, is emptying their former apartment of “his” furniture. Roma, however, revolves around women, rather than male boorishness.
Cuaron’s slowly crawling camera carefully uncovers the tribulations of Cleo and the titular matriarch of the house. Pain is the ink of this remarkable portrait and Cuaron uses it to delineate our heriones’ numerous journeys. One such outing is an amazing sequence in which the mother and nanny take their children to the movies. The heart of Mexico City bristled with the forgotten street energy before the ubiquitousness of chain stores and screen technology. Interestingly the family is heading to see the film Marooned. There is a small clip of an astronaut stranded in outer space, which is obviously the seed of Cuaron’s Gravity. Cleo anchors the scene as she rushes up the street in search of her wayward charges. They accidentally encounter their father on a date.
Cleo is the mainstay, once again, in another magnificent foray into the countryside. A rich friend has taken pity on the abandoned family and invited them for a getaway in his magical hacienda. Cuaron borrows a sequence from Malick’s magisterial biblical visual poem set in America’s rural heartland, Days of Heaven. A fire erupts in the sprawling forest. All the guests and their servants rush out and pitch a primordial battle against the rushing flames. There is the backdrop of class struggle as some dispossessed peasants are thought to have been behind the arson. The focus, however, is on Cleo and her boss and their emotional struggles. Despite the beauty and old world opulence, these two women desperately hold their own against awkward social constraints. Cleo is being introduced to men by supportive friends, despite being reluctant. Her counterpart fights off an advance from a fellow guest who sees an opportunity for a dalliance. Whereas Malick focused on the men’s burning passion, Cuaron sees through the smoke of objectification. He captures the point of view of the objects of desire.
There is a unforgettable moment when Cleo encounters a grotesque monument to subjugation that masquerades as a loving tribute. The Lords of this manor have a tradition of mounting the heads of all the dogs that have been a part of the family. They are exquisitely displayed, creating a fearsome uncanny-valley. One half expects these beloved canines to start wagging their tongues. Such is the fate of all who are given honorary membership in the family. Cuaron continiually illustrates the limits of this status. There is a scene in which Cleo is invited to watch TV with the parents and her charges. The children clutch her hand. They are genuinely more attached to her than their biological parents. The serenity of the group gathering is broken when the father directs Cleo to get him a beverage. The children object but the mother dutifully directs Cleo to her task,while quieting the children.The father knows that servants should expect the veneer of family, and nothing more. The most damning example of his cruel facade is exposed when Cleo is facing near death in the hospital. Rather than accompany the terrified woman, he gives Cleo’s female physician an excuse for being absent. The Doctor’s words are the metaphorical equivalent of the show of love for all those pets at his friend’s hacienda. Cleo is given the family script but, the male directors of this world, relegate her to being a prop. She is expected to do the heavy lifting, both physically and spiritually, but her reward is ending up as emotional taxidermy. Ditto for the Doctor’s wife, who, along with his children are metaphorically, forgotten trophies of a time gone by.
Cuaron endlessly points out the pomposity of male privilege and its mask of power. In reality the white flag of abandoment is flown every time trouble erupts. There is a recurring motif of an army band, made up of young cadets, who proudly march by the house in new uniforms. They are nowhere to be seen during civil unrest. The legions of thugs, made up of the same absurd fake ninjas who worship the fraudster TV superhero, are hired by the government execute the peaceful crowd. This spills over into the department store where Cleo is shopping for her crib. It is the GRANDMOTHER who comes to the rescue when the shots are fired and the water breaks. It is the MOTHER who comforts the children with strategic bromides until they are ready for the truth. She delivers the “Daddy is not coming home” speech with a masterful combination of restraint and compassion. This follows Cleo’s rescue of the children in the ocean despite not being able to swim. There is no basking in heroics. She is merely doing the right thing by pushing herself beyond what is humanly possible. This tour de force scene is a denouement of all the emotional turmoil and finally brings all, Cleo, mother and children, into that hug that binds for eternity. It is the antidote for the harrowing hospital birthing sequence. This showcases the best of male efficiency twinned with female compassion. It is a excruciating few minutes. It evokes the horror and pathos of E. Eugene Smith’s photo Tomoko Uemura in her bath, which portrays a mother cradling her poisoned daughter. It is a maelstrom of emotion and Cleo’s dignity and strength hold firm. Her power eclipses all the men, and most of the women. It is everlasting.
It is interesting to note that Cuaron is the son of a prominent international scientist yet Roma, is dedicated to Libo. Liboria “Libo” RodrÃguez, a domestic servant of Mixtec heritage who was hired into his family’s household when he was a child. She became his beloved spiritual mother, despite having no standing in the conventional sense. The memories of her tenderness, however, are the cornerstone of Roma. There is a brief interlude where a child is playing cowboys and Indians and is “shot.” The boy goes to his nanny. She is toiling amidst of the never-ending laundry lines which adorn the roof. She patiently breaks away from her chores and carefully plays along. They lie down at opposite sides of the table-like outcropping. The top of their heads are touching as they pretend to be dead. This is one of the myriad of life-affirming moments so delicately drawn by this careful director.
Given Cleo’s status as a nanny/washerwoman it would be easy for class to be the center of the narrative. The feature length social commentary Beatrice at Dinnershowcases the cauldron of rage fomented by a spoiled upper class elite towards those in their service. Cuaron eschews being a polemicist. His inspiration is a subtler rendering of the upstairs downstairs divide brilliantly brought to life Renior’s masterpiece The Rules of the Game. Romatakes Renoir’s vision of class and station and places the unseen in plain view. This might sound ponderous, but the slow focus on the ordinary leads to a paradigm shift in experiencing family life.
Strangely the children are a peripatetic blur of agreeable narcissists who tumble in and out of scenes unmindful of the mothers’ emotional mayhem. That is as it should be. Possessing an innate obliviousness to the burdens of adulthood is what it means to be a child. The adult Cuaron, however, embraces the mature perspective. He vividly illuminates all the sturm und drang but glorifies the selfless angels, rather than the myriad of showy devils. The fancy cars and kung fu moves are no match for Cleo. Children might be repulsed by her fastidiously scrubbing dog-shit from the cobblestone driveway. In adulthood, however, these same children might reflect on her work ethic combined with her emotional generosity. Rather than wallow in bitterness wrought by cruelty, Romabasks in a glow of gentleness. Cuaron reminds us childhood’s journey ends with a realization that cleverness and winning acclaim can never hold a candle to the calmness of being in the moment. Youngsters are consumed by flash and spectacle but sleep in the cacoon of knowing “mommy is there.” The film’s slow pans reveal the warmth of a home sustained by nurturing women. Cuaron asks us, as adults, to reflect on those who were always there to, metaphorically and physically, hold our hands. Romais a thank you to the unsung and unfashionable heroes of our youth.
Perhaps, through Cuaron’s efforts, the world is taking note. Now, for the first time in the history Mexico’s Vogue magazine, a native beauty is being showcased on their cover. It is none other than Yalitza Aparicio, the actress who plays Cleo. This small gesture shows the power of Roma’s vision. After all these years Cuaron has helped us all see the beauty of Cleo; or the real-life Libo. The half a century old, deceivingly slow, black and white, meandering tour of an old Mexico City neighborhood has the power to change our contemporary world view. He is putting capes and cowls on the unseen army of strong women languishing in the shadows. They are suddenly highlighted; or more precisely the glasses dissappear and we realize Clark Kent’s real identity.
These superhero matriarchs have grit that is lacking in the father’s ephemeral adrenaline rush. The power of Libo is embracing and eternal. The patriarchs tend to be fleeing and fleeting. In Roma, do as the women do. Boys will be… boys. Home is where mothers take care of business. A warm embrace is more powerful than an army of martial arts experts. Percy Shelley’s Ozymandiascaptures the folly of the those men who have the pretense of being the king of kings. The traveller reads the boasts carved into the stone ruins of a monument to the great leader. He then looks up to see the wreck and “lone and level sands” that “stretch far away.” Cuaron shows us Cleo is standing on the horizon in a plain dress. She is smiling with the sigh of someone who has seen it all before. You might miss her. You have to look closely. She holds no degrees or bank accounts. She is unable to pull strings or call-in favors. Don’t mistake her for being powerless or unwise. She never loses sight of what is important. Most critically, she can guide you home when you’re in the desert.
Cuaron, like all great artists, simply lifts the veil on what is always there. Cleo was in Damascus Syria 10,000 years ago, Mexico City in 1961 and probably within a few miles of where you are presently sitting. This film can be seen as an extension of the work of the biblical writer Sirach. I have adjusted the pronoun in the following excerpt of these holy passages. After all Romais the memorial for those ‘who have no memorial.’
And there are some who have no memorial, who have perished as though they had not lived; they have become as though they had not been born, and so have their children after them. But these were women of mercy, whose righteous deeds have not been forgotten; their prosperity will remain with their descendants, and their inheritance to their children’s children. Their descendants stand by the covenants; their children also, for their sake. Their posterity will continue for ever, and their glory will not be blotted out. Their bodies were buried in peace and their name lives to all generations. People will declare their wisdom, and the congregation proclaims their praise.
― Donovan, from the song “Susan on the West Coast Waiting”
Lynne Ramsay did something extraordinary. She mixed all the ingredients of an obvious blockbuster and produced a bomb. This film is a thriller, starring one of the most prominent actors of our time, chockablock with all manner of lurid, audience-grabbing violent spectacle. The box-office for the American theatrical release strangely aped the title, You Were Never Never Really Here. Ironically the strength of her abilities as a filmmaker will see this contemporary commercial debacle evolve into a cult classic.
All expectations in this genre were abandoned. She twinned Norman Bates from Psycho with Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver and placed them in a Hieronymus Bosch diorama. It is a stark world which oscillates from abstract, dark, extreme close ups to exquisitely rendered tableaus. The threadbare storyline is informed by snippets of non-sequential flashbacks. The most extreme moments of violence are seen through the deadpan view of security cameras. Unfortunately the trailer promoted a commonplace action drama, riddle with gore and suggesting a taught storyline. The audience was sold a boxing match and witnessed a ballet.
The tension in the first twenty minutes of You Were Never Really Here is spawned by an uncomfortable feeling of witnessing bad things as a bystander. The claustrophobic close ups turn the audience member into a perplexed eyewitness rather than a passive viewer. What are we to make of the burning of the photograph of the child? Who is the distraught bearded protagonist? (Joaquin Phoenix as Joe). Why is he in this dingy hotel in the Mid West? When he dispatches a mugger in a dark alley it brings to mind the avengers from the 1970s, echoes of Dirty Harry & Deathwish, but with a more psychotic dimension. The root of his demons is revealed. We arrive in the daylight of New York. His solidly middle class elderly mother is the key to the mystery. This genuinely loving relationship is peppered with him secretly engaging in self-asphyxiation in moments of repose. According to opaque flashbacks this is his personal antidote to the terrifying domestic violence of his youth, which has corroded the man. He failed to protect his mother years ago, but he has certainly made up for the physical deficits of being a child. One images the father has been metaphorical killed many times over in acts of vigilantism or targeting “Charlie” during his stint in the military. His domestic world is a dichotomy of saccharine family tenderness and grim acts of violence and self destruction. Such a person must turn to a vocation that is based not on money or standing, but a compulsion to right a wrong. The focus of his professional life is to rescue the most vulnerable, exploited class in our society: young girls who have been sold into the sex trade.
Joe frees child hostages abducted by pedophile rings. Think of the premise of the films series Taken but with Scorsese’ unhinged taxi driver instead of Liam Nielsen’s button down, white collar CIA operative. This avenger is an amalgamation of brute force born of raw emotion, rather than a purveyor of sophisticated spy techniques. You give him a picture and an address and he will bash his way into getting your the children. His weapon of choice is a ball-peen hammer. This tool is designed to smash metal but it does a very good job of crushing skulls and breaking bones. His one true friend, a fixer lawyer whom he might have met in the service, makes the arrangements. The rest unfolds as a calculated set piece. Anything that gets in his way receives a physical blow or a verbal lashing. This grim routine is upended when a mission to free an angelic blond child triggers a political scandal. The powers that be, like our avenging angel, have zero tolerance for missteps. Joe and his world must be terminated. The bulk of You Were Never Really Here’s narrative is consumed by this particular battle between the evil, all powerful, ruling male elite and our troubled lone wolf righter of wrongs.
The genius of this film lies in Ramsay making you believe the unbelievable. This angry deranged vet takes on an army of police and yet the absurdity of the story is never an issue. The film works as the director’s artistry in pulling the plot along with just the right amount of obscure flashback, clever daring-do and counterintuitive staging. Whereas a lesser director would highlight the fight scene with accented choreography and special effects, Ramsay gives us the terror of a silent CVT camera. There isn’t time to consider realism. We are caught in Ramsay’s world which showcases Joe’s prison of righteousness. One of the compelling elements of his character is the knowledge that most people are soldiers and not generals. Typically in this genre the protagonist exacts unspeakable revenge on hapless bit players. Joe is all business and channels all emotion to the task at hand. Nowhere is this more clear than when he confronts the agents who have taken the life of the person closest to him. Rather than an extended scene of torture (think Hannibal Lector engaging in cannibalism) Joe divvies-out a pain-killer while asking for information. It ends with the two lying on the floor singing a duet of a pop song which is playing in the background on the radio. Such is the demise of the foot soldiers in the battle of good and evil. Personal vengeance is a luxury reserved for the ruling class.
As grim as the setting can be there are numerous moments of tenderness. Ramsay reinterprets the canonical death scene of the woman under water from Night of the Hunter in a moving sequence where Joe buries the person most dear to him. You Were Never Really Here is filled with numerous extreme close ups that linger, rendering it a re-action movie, rather than action drama. The denouement comes when our hero rediscovers his charge. Unfortunately his baby has, metaphorically, grown up.
Joe’s mission in avenging the innocent is to safeguard their goodness. He fails. He contemplates the path of all true believers in complete despair. He demands perfection in others and it would be a sin to hold himself to a different standard. His associates are judged harshly: the gun runner who is late for an appointment is knocked unconscious; the trusted liaison defies a direct order and allows his child to see Joe’s face and is therefore banished forever. So what can we expect when his beloved charge follows his path of brutality? It is HIS fault. He has accidentally spawned a spiritual progeny, rather than a saintly child. All is not lost however as this silent young girl tames the beast. They are extremely damaged and no doubt face a lifetime of emotional torture, but they are together. Two blood soaked innocents joined as father and daughter. Their past might be exorcised with the hard work of being a family. Sex slaves are liberated. Oppressors are vanished. Guardians prevail. In the end they might ask the question: were we ever really there? That suggests a happy ending.
“A Report on the Banality of Evil” - Hannah Arendt, subtitle to Eichmann in Jerusalem
Hereditary, Ari Aster’s horror feature, casts a dark spell over reviewers. Many believe this to be a seminal masterpiece. Here are a smattering of accolades: “craft(s) its own scare vocabulary” (Slate), “new horror classic… Oscar calling” (Rolling Stone), “it’s own spin on terror” (The New York Post), “It’s pure emotional terrorism” (the AV Club)….. The last blurb might be true, but not in the way the critic intended. What does it mean when so many knowledgable people are moved by second rate writing, directing and storytelling? Hereditary is over-wrought, over-thought and derivative. It steals and butchers a genuine classic from half a century ago that features an innocent mother who is impregnated by the devil himself. Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby established this sub category of horror, it is unfortunate Aster has so little to add to this well worn genre.
Hereditary borrows the troupe of hosting the demon but the film, metaphorically, goes to hell in hand-basket. There is nothing in the Aster remake that improved upon Polanski’s work. In fact, just the opposite. Rosemary’s Baby and it’s spawn, The Exorcist & The Omen, gave us clearly delineated actions that made sense in the carefully constructed logic of the film. Hereditary is just a muddle. Rosemary’s husband’s betrayal is brought on by greed and vanity. This dovetails beautifully with the Christian exhortations against such indulgences. This also made the film a cultural touchstone at height of the 60s social chaos. Who can forget the pregnant Rosemary sitting her obstetricians office picking up a copy of Time Magazine entitled “Is God Dead?”. Hereditary sheds no light on the origin of the darkness. Why is the matriarch sacrificing her daughter, granddaughter, son-in-law and grandson to the demon? Her motivations are as opaque as most of the principles. What was the grandmother’s original association with the cult? Why does the husband indulge his wife when she has tried to kill their son? Pouring paint thinner on the boy and trying to light a match would be sign to most humans that it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to leave the two unattended. It would also be a red flag regarding joining the wife in forcing the son to participate in an impromptu seance to revive the dead sister. Did I mention that this young girl was killed in an auto mis-hap caused by the brother? That might have also prompted the father to forbid the wife from creating a miniature doll-house recreation of the event, complete with the daughter’s tiny decapitated head. Daddy seems to reason that Mommy is an artist by profession and therefore has license to torment the son. Incidentally that car tragedy was triggered by another bizarre decision. Why would a mother force a teenage boy to take his socially maladjusted younger sister to unchaperoned party? The plot conceits might be acceptable in a more thoughtfully constructed story. Unfortunately the twists and turns are made to showcase the horror. All the pressure builds for an obligatory feast of carnage during the last 10 minutes, replete with another decapitation. Mother mimics her daughters demise by losing her head by her own hand. This filmmaker felt all the “turn of screw” waiting is justified in a finale of immolation and mutilation. It was his chef d’oeuvres, but in a negative sense. In mature work the gruesome spectacle is an internal part of the story and not a showy bacchanalia of gore. The director Nicolas Roeg proves the point in his seminal horror film, Don’t Look Now. Roeg’s single display of a throat being slashed has infinitely more punch than Aster’s parade of horrors.
There are bright spots amongst the missed opportunities. Toni Collette’s rendering of the mother matches the brilliance of another tortured parent, Shelly Duvall in The Shinning. Alex Wolff, as the son, show an ability to channel emotion with simple gesture and expression. Aster borrows a trick from Joseph Losey’s Accident. In that film the facade of a country house accompanies the soundtrack of a car racing and crashing. The result amplifies the horror. Aster has audio the mother’s discovery of her daughter’s headless body being seen through the despondent dead-pan face of the young son. It is a beautifully rendered grizzly moment, made strong by Wolff’s grim visage of despair, guilt and shame. The sister, Milly Shapiro, is also effective as the embodiment creepiness. She brings to mind a sinister version of the 1970’s oddball child-actor Mason Reese. There is a discordant melding of wholesome innocence and weird deformity. You don’t have to be a child psychologist, priest or physiologist to know that something is wrong, in an unearthly way. The most famous member of the cast, Gabriel Byrne is the least interesting character and performance. One imagines the producers & director saying, “So Gabriel, lets try an American accent”. His response would have been in his natural brogue, “No, I’m just gonna just talk the way I talk”. I’m sure he took the part thinking no one would ever see a film based on the clunky script. Maybe this experience taught him the devil works in mysterious ways. On cannot blame the lack of effort as the character is, metaphorically, a castrated dimwit. What would motivate a talented actor to take the part of an unlikeable foil that allows his family to drift into disaster? Maybe money is the root of all evil.
One wonders if the dark forces are strong or whether the good guys are just too damn dumb. This illustrates the central problem with Hereditary. None of the set-pieces, such as the father, are rooted in the broader narrative. In Polanski’s precursor, all the side characters, the husband, the lady next door, the doctor are central to the cult and its agenda. The cast of Hereditary are primarily walk-ons pushing plot points, rather than furthering the devil’s work. The cadre of demons that appear in the finale, are completely absent from the central narrative with the except of the woman from the grief support group. Once again her role, inspiring the grieving mother to wake her family for an impromptu seance, is crippled by credulity. Perhaps the mother’s miniature dioramas should have come to life to push the mother along her path to madness and suicide. Unfortunately they woodenly reflect the mother’s psychological deterioration. All those oddly terrifying still life models never dynamically inform the story. Yes she recreates the accident, but the art needed to be a character in itself in the manner of the mansion in the Shinning. When you expend that amount of camera time on those little rooms and shrunken manikins, it should dovetail with the main event — i.e. the cult’s plan to raise one of the king’s of the underworld. In order for this to have resonance Aster needs to be more in touch with our present zeitgeist of evil. Who are our devils?
As the old saying goes, “we live in interesting times” and the list of dark forces grows with every news cycle. Even the weather has been cast in the battle of good and evil. Aster’s scenario, anti-Christ in the burbs, is old hat. Our tech titans, the ones that speak of living forever and doing no evil, are the perfect candidates for the modern Mephistopheles. Their forbidden fruit is the promise of a better tomorrow if you, painlessly, hand your every waking (and sleeping) moment. The challenge of the future is to rise above merely being algorithms in the service of commerce. The films Ex Machina and Her are recent features that illustrate the plight of man’s soul in the man vs. machine conundrum. Aster must be reminded, the devil is in the details. It is not enough to invoke the genuine article. It is the ingenuity of evil that it parades as goodness. The job of a director is to give reason for supping with a long spoon. Hereditary shows the specter of evil in our genes. Perhaps it’s really in our screens.
Glover’s This Is America: The 4 Minute Invisible Man
There will be time to murder, and create
-T.S. Elliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
It was not Martin Luther King who emancipated the modern Negro, but Stepin Fetchit. It was Step, who elevated the Negro to the dignity of a Hollywood star. I made the Negro a first-class citizen all over the world
-Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry, first black millionaire entertainer who played Stepin Fetchit
Donald Glover freezes his pose as the emptiness envelopes him. This is the first time, almost 3/4 of the way into his 4 minute, This Is Americavideo, that the man-himself is revealed. The person comes through the armor of performance. He catches his breath and holds his invisible pistol outstretched. The sheer act of doing nothing turns offense into defense. The gripping of a gun morphed into the the shackled hands of a slave being dragged. The bond is broken when the hands come down to his side. Glover catches his breath and smokes a joint. This fifteen seconds stretches into an eternity of repose. This is, as the Coca Cola company used to say, “the pause that refreshes”. Now Glover channels another great American performer, Bob Fosse. This multi-talented actor, performer, choreographer, singer, made an autobiographical feature, All That Jazz (1979), that highlighted the cost of even the most glorious showbiz career. Each day begins with the character facing the mirror and muttering “showtime”. Glover, a grammy winning vocalist in addition to being a television writer/actor/director, savors his break and takes Fosse’ cue for the video’s grand finale. Following an expansive intermission the lyric opens with “They gonna find you that blocka (blaow)” a reference to the drug used to revive opiate addicts who have fallen into a death spiral. This dire end seems to be the fate of the scores of people who appear in the background mimicking the harshness of underclass life and the never-ending carnage of the opioid crisis. Then comes a reprise of a grandmother’s admonishment of “get your money, BLACK MAN”. Followed by a message to those fans who follow him: “you motherfuckers owe me.” This is all encased in a tableaux of Glover dancing amidst a strange array of unstylish, out of date, automobiles. It is the mirror image of the boxing phenom Floyd Mayweather with his fleet of top of the line sports cars. It harkens back to Otis Redding’s riposte to Carla Thomas in the soul classic TRAMP, accusing him of being a hayseed. The man from the dock of the bay belts out his standing with a recitation of all his cars, “ I got six Cadillacs, five Lincolns, four Fords, Six Mecurys, Three T-Birds, Mustangs….” This ostentatious laundry list of vehicles confirms Otis’ underclass status. It is the same effect in Glover’s video as this moment, more than any other, merges him with the background of ghetto violence. In the somber closing number that follows, the lyrics use the metaphor of being a big dog, but chained in a backyard.
It’s hard to imagine Glover being restrained. This is someone who defines America in less time than it takes to cook a hard boiled egg. His nom de guerre, or more correctly nom de chanson, is “Childish Gambino”. It is an audacious moniker mashing callow innocence with one of New York’s most feared mafia families. There is ‘walk’ behind the ‘talk’. He has penned episodes of 30 Rock, as well as acting and producing his own much lauded shows. His side gig as a rapper has garnered a Grammy. Any one of these would have established a formidable career but this renaissance man of entertainment has one-upped himself with his definition of America. As of this writing, not even a month after its release, it has over 200 million views. What is everyone watching? Or, for that matter, who is everyone watching?
What is America? The video opens with a avuncular younger version of the Disney character, Uncle Remus, strumming a guitar. He isn’t singing his hallmark song of carefree slave-life, “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” but rather a modern palliative with an upbeat chorus about “partying”. Our anti-hero is revealed clad in the same outfit (no shirt, gold chains, white slacks) as an iconic 1970s image of Al Green, the romantic balladeer. It is a perfect set piece of escapist popular entertainment. Then the party ends rather abruptly. The camera glides back to the friendly guitarist. Now he is bound and gagged with a hood of white canvas. It brings to mind the the black clad Abu Ghraib Iraqi prison torture tableaux. Just as the scene is digested, Glover pulls out a pistol and executes him with one single shot to the back of the head. The music shifts into a discordant gangsta rap beat as someone steps off camera to retrieve the weapon with a red handkerchief. Our anti-hero dances and gives us his first lyrics, a hypnotic incantation of “This is America, Don’t Catch you slipping up”. It is an ironic puritanical call against the cardinal sin of LAZINESS but Glover is interested something more than being a scold against sloth.
Artistically This Is Americafollows the lead of other works of art that touch the zeitgeist by posing questions rather than giving answers. There is always danger mistaking the desire for understanding with a definitive version of the artist’s intent. Glover is clever enough not to be explicit or preach. He won’t talk about meaning. That is the job of the endless number of explanatory Youtube videos or bloggers such as myself. There is a sea of chatter regarding the closing moments of the video in which our anti-hero/hero is running in a tunnel of darkness. Is this a nod to the cocoon of darkness illustrated in Jordan Peele’s Get Out? Is it a reference to the thousands who ran down streets and through woods in their final moments before being lynched? Is this picking up themes from the prophetic novel Day of the Locust, which focuses onthe dark side of celebrity fandom? The questions mount as the images fade. Is the closing refrain “You just a Black man in this world” linked to Michael Kiwanuka’s “Black Man in a White World”? In that stunning video the singer/protagonist/antihero rises above a car crash caused by a police car as downtown LA loom in the background. Whatever the answers, the closing moments touch on the rarest commodity in entertainment, true emotion. The expression on Glover’s face is unabashed terror. It makes a lasting impression. The mob chasing him is amorphous lacking a specific grievance. Glover is guilty of being Glover but it would be a mistake to simply see him as a ‘stand in’ for people of color. This video has a larger resonance that the silos of race or gun control, to name just a few of the proposed cypher keys.
Jeff Wall: After Invisible Man, the prologue, by Ralph Ellison
Everyone wants a piece of Glover. The entertainment industry, the political class, the general public have THE answers. He is supposedly supporting/fighting THEIR agendas. He is having none of it. He is a latter day Ralph Ellison, whose Invisible Man, escortiates anyone who thinks they have the asnwer to his questions. Ellison escoriates the academics, cultural hustlers, left- wing ideologues and black nationalists who wish to mold his anti-hero to their varied truths. Glover shares this defiant individualism that goes beyond the tags of “rapper”, “writer”, “black man”, “hero”. He is the hip Jehovah’s Witness who knows how to play the game better than the city folk. Ellison’s hero ends up a safe-room stealing power to enlighten himself with hundreds of electric lightbulbs. It is the victory of an introvert. On the inside Glover might feel as alienated but he is going to channel his revenge in a much louder spectacle. Ellison wrote, “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me”. Glover counters with: I am invisible but people are going to see me because I’m going to light up the reality they don’t want to see.
During most of the vidoe Glover manages to carrying himself without expressing a particular of point of view. There are a panoply of emotional flashes of joy, laughter, surprise, horror, terror, menace… He is a empath channeling a background. A dull white industrial blankness that becomes peopled with figures committing various, crimes or hanging out in a stupor of unproductiveness. It is prize footage from our national daily diary, the local TV newscast. These are the moments of conception for our endless murders, riots car-jackings and mass shootings. Traditional gangsta rap videos might produce a chorus line of undulating seductive women clad in heels and bikinis. Always the contrarian, Glover gives us his cheerleading squad for this dystopian vision. It is a group of attractive young people of both sexes dressed in traditional gray toned private/charter/parochial school uniforms. This is the army of industry guiding our anti-hero along in his productivity. It is important to take note that these dancers are, unlike much of the eye candy that routinely fills these rolls, are expert performers with top notch choreography. The performers jump and undulate with Swiss-like precision which is masked behind seemingly genuine expressions of joy. There are moments that reprise the the ‘feel good’ vibe of the first minute, despite the urban riot erupting. Will we end this experience on a hopeful note? About half way through we know the answer is a definitive, NO! Glover enters a room filled with a traditional gospel choir. He acts coyly and sweetly admires these representatives of a storied African American institution. Their incantation is sung in an uplifting chorus but remains strangely foreboding: “Grandma told me, get your money black man”. Is Glover signaling Al Green’s path to redemption as a Gospel singing Reverend?
Unfortunately Gospel and R&B are dead. They were killed off by rap. Glover is going to get his own, HIS WAY. Suddenly he catches a machine gun thrown from off-camera. He shoots and the chorus’ blood is splattered on the white wall. As he casually walks away. Are we at the Sunday school at Emanuel AME in Charleston, where the Bible class was executed? Is this a reference to the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, where the congregation was slaughtered? Or maybe we are taking a trip to the Tower at the University of Texas or Columbine or Sandy Hook or U of VA….. or maybe we are mourning Sam Cooke, the sweet-voiced Gospel singer turned pop sensation. He bled to death of gunshot wounds lying naked in the hallway of a seedy motel. No matter the horror, a unsettling routine kicks in that institutionalizes the carnage. The red-hankerchiefed gun retriever reprises his cameo and the weapon is whisked away. The first responders dutifully play their part as our anti-hero walks in the opposite direction continuing his parade of opposing emotions. The violent background movement increases. We witness carjacking, fire, suicide and other pantomimes of horror. Is that the horse of the apocalypse or General Lee lifted from the side of stone mountain? The music swells and a mantra of ‘not slipping’ intensifies. There is a camera pans overhead to children taking cell phone footage of the conflagrations. The dancing becomes more intricate and intense mimicking Glover’s outrageous faces. One minute he caricatures Beyonce, the next he seems bound in an African Dance ceremony or a black college fraturnity initiation ceremony. The lyrics make reference to contraband and “hunnid bands” (band of hundred dollar bills). The materialistic frenzy ends with that histrionic pose mimicking the shooting of a pistol. The “trigger” is pulled; then silence.
One can imagine a young African American boy looking at images of Lincoln on Mount Rushmore. It would have reminded him of the centerpiece of his hometown; the mirror image bas-relief homage to General Lee. Instinctively he might have known they were created by the same artist, Gutzon “John” Borglum. This sculptor, born in Idaho before it was officially a State, was a child of a polygamous marriage. The son of Danish immigrants, who belonged to a controversial religious sect, is an unlikely choice as the father of significant totems of Americana. But it wouldn’t surprise Donald Glover; after all, this is America. Get out of bed, look in the mirror and say “Showtime”. As the song says “Get your money, black man”. But he’s not just talking about black men and he’s not just talking about money. He’s explaining who he is by showing us what we’re not.
Mr. Stoddard: You’re not going to use the story, Mr. Scott? Mr. Scott: No, sir. This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.― The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
“In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.”― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
“They fuck you up”― Philip Larkin, This Be The Verse
John Curran’s Chappaquiddick is the story of one of the great political scandals of the 20th century which began on the gateway to a small island off Cape Cod with this Native American name. A young Sen. Edward Kennedy drives off a bridge and leaves his passenger to die in the submerged car. It is a melodramatic plot. The married, sole surviving heir to a great political dynasty leaves the scene. He stays silent for nearly half a day while a beautiful, young, single woman dies a horrific death. Unfortunately the film is stagnant. This is an amazing achievement, in the worst possible way. One is given the grist of high drama and manages, through inept artistry, to produce the bland gruel of a public service announcement. Perhaps Curran, and the writers Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan, would defend their stylistic choices with bromides about “honesty”. Unfortunately not even the realism is “real”. None of the formidable women in the family, the matriarch or the Senator’s sisters, play any role whatsoever in guiding the response to the events. There are numerous encounters that serve as opportunities for plot exposition rather than a honest rendering. Are we to believe that the Senator, reeling from guilt and shame, manages to quote pithy family historical exposition when faced with his enraged father? Does it ring true that the bulk of the Senator’s encounter with the ingenue is composed of maudlin self-pity?
No, these creations shoehorn the story into an easy-to-consume narrative rather than an honest attempt at recreating events. This leads to speculation about the creative team’s motives. Is this, as the authors claim, a daring attempt to dramatize a story that has been suppressed by dark forces? Or it is a masquerade of righteousness hiding the overt monetizing a sensational story? There is a tale to be told about Chappadquiddick that rights the wrongs. This isn’t it.
There are brave moments amidst the morass of wooden plot twists and contrived dialogue. Jason Clarke deserves credit for a wonderful performance that delivers a balance of pathos and revulsion. He has mastered Sen. Kennedy’s physicality and blend of confidence/vulnerability. This film would be unwatchable save for Clarke giving this tortured figure a strange combination of being BOTH a scared little boy and a sociopathic bully. The risk of undertaking this role should also be noted. There are scores of very powerful people who take offense at a theatrical drama that raises troubling questions about the integrity of a beloved friend and those who support him. As an example Michael Chiklis spent years in career limbo after playing John Belushi in Wired, which documented the SNL star’s decent into drug abuse. Clarke is not alone in taking risks. One can only imagine Bruce Dern’s confidence in agreeing to play the stroke-victim-patriarch, Joe Kennedy who has, literally, half a dozen WORDS in the entire film. His mastery of expression and gesture is every bit an equal to the rendering of the beleaguered son. Despite being nearly mute and completely paralyzed, Dern creates an unforgiving stern master who will except nothing less than complete obedience. This is the stuff of ancient Greek myth, brought to life on Cape Cod. Never has a son confronted such a disappointed father since Jack Nicholson, the out of work rough-neck, faces his wheelchair- bound, music-conservatory-director dad in Five Easy Pieces. Clarke and Dern are diamonds amidst a sludge-pile of tailings, which comprises the rest of Chappaquiddick.
The creative team makes the unfortunate artistic choice of focusing on Sen. Kennedy’s defense against an overbearing father and the legacy of his three dead brothers. The title sequence covers the exposition of the elder siblings, each who died a martyr for their county. Joe was killed in a volunteer mission while a WW II pilot. John died while serving as President and Sen. Robert Kennedy was assassinated while pursuing the nation’s highest office. Any one of the three would have been a tough act to follow. Now imagine our anti-hero, having blotted the family name, facing the ultimate taskmaster, his fiercely self-made father. It is a compelling story, except everyone already knows it. There have been hundreds of books and films about the family. What does Chappaquiddick add to the often told story? Nothing. It is true that the collective memory of the incident has faded. The ticker taker at the movie theater, a man in his early thirties, referred to the film as “Chap-AQUATIC”. I asked if he was joking and his response was he had no knowledge of the water-bound scandal. Given the general amnesia, is there a purpose in highlighting the character-flaws of this renowned politician? One might have made that argument in the decades the senator was active. Unfortunately digging up the horror after half a century delves into tabloid voyeurism, rather than an honest assessment of the event.
A better film might have drawn on the larger story of what makes people follow such men, rather than the minutia of the accident. It is interesting gossip to see how the powerful family closed ranks, but is this surprising? It is titillating to ponder the relationship between Mary Joe and the emotionally overwhelmed young senator. Does it do justice to her story? Does the creative team fall into the trap of exploiting the tragedy? The filmmakers have let it be known that the surviving relatives of Ms. Kopechne approve of the film. Certainly one can understand the anger of a the family in light of Kennedy’s official punishment. He served no jail time and was given a suspended sentence for leaving the scene of the accident. It is not surprising that those who guard her memory would welcome revisiting this tragedy and highlighting the Senator’s abominable behavior. But are the filmmakers capitalizing on the family’s need for vengeance in the process of hawking their movie? Is the film’s treatment of Mary Jo, in reality, yet more victimization?
The interaction between the politician and the opaque young woman focuses on the Senator’s troubles. The audience is led to believe their brief time alone was spent with Sen. Kennedy’s bearing his soul due to the difficulty of his station. Her record as an effective political operative for RFK and her good standing with the rest of the family are indicated through clumsy exposition prior to their encounter. Yet when the two are together she is merely a foil for the Senator’s self-pity. One assumes her career was anchored in the zeitgeist of idealism which was sparked by the Senator’s older brothers. But what did she think of the Senator? There is the prurient question of whether there was attraction but, more to the point, did she view him with pity or pride? Was he a pale imitation of his older siblings burdened by carrying the torch? Did she feel he had the ability to proudly uphold the legacy? She barely knew him but what were her gut feelings prior to the tragic encounter? What was her standing with the other women who had been key strategists in the RFK Presidential run? They were all gathered at the cottage for a party when Ms. Kopechne and the Senator casually left on their fateful journey. How did these women react when it became apparent that their co worker was left to die while the Senator failed to call the authorities? These questions are the stuff of drama. They would have given shape to Mary Jo’s tragic demise. Instead the filmmaker’s centered on the least interesting, and not coincidentally most famous, group of people, the enablers.
When the crisis heats up the father’s old guard of advisors plucked from the best of JFK’s team, McNamara and Sorenson, lock horns with Sen. Kennedy’s callow staff. Curran chooses this as the heart of the “drama”. Each “team” out-does the other in mendacity. Righteousness is squeezed through a public relations sausage machine that places the family’s political prospects as the primary concern. In the end a compromise is struck whereby the Senator’s idea of giving a nationwide address is accepted but his words will be carefully crafted by the father’s allies. Meanwhile all the local law enforcement and judiciary officials are cowed into giving the Senator a suspended sentence. The Kopechne family acquiesces to the situation. Certainly the filmmakers are right to point to the injustice of special treatment for a privileged chosen son. It is unfortunate, however, that their was no shading of the motivations of the boosters. The larger crime is clearly the corruption of the system to the detriment of an innocent. Everyone rushed into the breach to save the Senator’s career at the expense of justice for this young woman. Is the creative team guilty of the same crime?
The quality of this drama would have been relegated to limited TV distribution were it not for the star power of the principles involved. By giving short-shrift to the seemingly incidental characters, the writers and director harness the spectacle of Mary Jo’s death for their own ends. The hordes of people who came to the Senator’s defense seem at best toadies, and at worst, enablers in a criminal enterprise. Revealing this within a reasonable period after the fact might have stirred the pot enough to assess blame. Unfortunately dragging this story up from obscurity after half a century is an act of self-aggrandizement, rather than some bold call for “justice”. The filmmakers are engaged in the suggestion of ‘truth-seeking’ when in fact it’s merely watching a slow motion car wreck. This falls inline with the great Hollywood tradition of making a “bold statement” after the dust has settled. The indictment of McCarthyism was made years after that Senator had lost his power with Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd. Lest we not for forget Kazan had indulged in A DEFENSE of this monstrous person with ironically a better film On the Waterfront at the hight of that Senator’s worst abuses. During the Vietnam War Hollywood tapped John Wayne to star in The Green Berets, a hagiography to these group of American Special Force soldiers. It was only after hostilities had concluded that mainstream features questioned the fighting with features such as Coming Home and Apocalypse Now. Curran, Allen and Logan take up the mantle against Sen. Kennedy five decades after the event with many of the principles long deceased. The deeply flawed best friend, Joseph Gargan, who supposedly tried to inspire the Senator to “do the right thing” died of old age a few months prior to the opening. Interesting that the filmmakers didn’t seek out comment from his family during the advertising blitz. That would require bravery, something lacking in the movie’s opportunistic creators.
The irony is that Chappaquiddick might have had bearing on contemporary events. Had the film bothered to look at the poor woman in the car or her friends or the legion of small town officials we might have a better handle on the perils of hero-worship within the context of politics. What makes people compartmentalize criminal behavior? Is this phenomena an obvious evil? Should the private foibles of office-holders be of concern? Perhaps there is a double edge to the legacy of JFK. Did his Presideny creat too much mystic around an institution that is truly more than a sum of its constitutional provisions. It is the only office, save the VEEP, in which every single American, from Hawaii to Maine, cast the same ballot. The elasticity of the emotional attachment to government officials has grown exponentially with the rise of mass media. We are in endless elections with 24/7 waves of tales of malfeasance. How does this effect not only those in office but the loyalists who defend their candidate?
I was an intern for Sen Kennedy after the events that took place in this film. While I worked in his office I focused on the policies and never questioned the events of a decade earlier. At the time there was rampant speculation of a Presidential run. Strangely, I am now bewildered by many of the current President’s supporters, who seem immune to the revelations of his transgressions. Perhaps we share something that I refuse to acknowledge. Maybe a better film about the people around the event might have expanded an understanding of our current politics. The name of the film turns out to have resonance beyond the incident. The area was named after a Native American word “cheppiaquidne”, which means “separated island”. That is a wonderful shorthand for the Senator’s predicament, as well as the one we all find ourselves in. We are adrift in a never-ending sea of separation. Maybe we can be linked by finding courage to do what is right even when the weight of the world pushes us in a different direction. Perhaps we can all form an alliance based on the universal respect for those who chose righteousness over expediency.
In looking back let us remember the woman who left the comfort of her small town to embrace the tumult of political upheaval. Her mentor was murdered, but she contemplated returning to the fray. Let us also reflect on the scores of regular folks whose lives were suddenly thrown in the harsh spotlight of public scrutiny. The friends, the bystanders, the provincial officials, the first responders who were all suddenly cast, through no fault of their own, as a nefarious bit players in a national tragedy. Their lives were forever judged by what happened on a summer night in July 1969. These stories have more resonance than the tawdry conduct of powerful people trying to spin a false narrative for self preservation. The filmmakers were seduced by celebrity. They might have produced a great tragedy but instead drew upon the siren call of gossip. This project might be a wise career move. However contemplate the fate of the protagonist. He ended up as the Lion of the Senate, but at what cost?
