Tár (2022)
I would never say that Todd Field's movies remind me of Terrence Malick's. I don't see a resemblance at all. But I'm inclined to notice this commonality: Just as Malick's first two feature films — Badlands and Days of Heaven — catapulted him into the conversation about the greatest living American filmmakers in the 1970s, so Todd Field's first two — In the Bedroom (2001) and Little Children (2006) — spotlighted him as a force to be reckoned with, an auteur of substantial gifts and unlimited potential. And then, like Malick, he vanished from the scene. Oh, his name kept popping up in exciting rumors — most noticeably in talk about a possible adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's notoriously difficult novel Blood Meridian. But nothing materialized. I've been hoping for his return. And, because of Malick, I've been optimistic. After all, Malick stayed gone for two decades before he returned with the awe-inspiring, all-star epic The Thin Red Line, a film so much greater in scope and complexity that it inspired volumes of critical perspectives and debate. And here, 16 years since Little Children stunned and troubled audiences, Field returns with a movie that represents a leap similar to Malick's in ambition, scale, and stylistic audacity.
Tár certainly looks like a movie that might have taken 16 years to make. It's the sort of event that some cinephiles have been starving for — a film that inspires an animated, wide-ranging discussion regarding all aspects of cinematic artistry, and it will probably keep critics busy ordering second and third rounds of drinks as they argue about its long takes, trouble its tangled web of characters and relationships, tease out its weighty themes, and then shout about whether or not they are frustrated or satisfied by its jarring climax and its lengthy epilogue.
In the cineplex men's room after the screening, I heard two men rush predictably to Oscar predictions. One voice said, "Wow — that was one heavy movie, right?" The other said, "Almost Best-Picture stuff! But there's no way it can win. It's too complicated. Too challenging for audiences. There will be walkouts." "But Cate Blanchett — surely she'll walk away with Best Actress!" "I don't know. Her character is so... so difficult. Even for Academy voters."
Whatever. Awards-talk is pretty much meaningless to me. What I want to know is this: Is the movie absorbing? Beautifully made? Meaningful? (In the Bedroom and Little Children certainly were.) Does it disrupt my suspension of disbelief? Or does it feel more like an ambitious director's appeal to be revered among greats like Paul Thomas Anderson and Stanley Kubrick (for whom Field acted in Eyes Wide Shut) — both of whom I thought about frequently while watching this movie?
And it's too early for me to offer my assessment of the film with any confidence. I can, however, recommend it without any reservations. It's a feast, and a memorable one. It's a feast I'll come back to savor again. But I'll come back because I'm uncertain, because I have questions, because I'm not sure everything here works for me.
Tár is ... a lot. As it follows the career of a rising star in the world of symphony conductors, it traces myriad narrative threads. We learn a lot about Lydia Tar's philosophy of art from an onstage interview with The New Yorker's Adam Gopnick (as himself), who celebrates her landmark achievement in becoming the first woman director of the Berlin Philharmonic. We learn of Lydia's adoration for the composer Gustav Mahler and the maestro Leonard Bernstein, whose flaws she acknowledges but whose achievements she covets. We watch how she approaches teaching Julliard students, an audacious and discomforting spectacle in which she earns wide-eyed fans and vengeful enemies. We piece together her history with her partner and concertmaster Sharon (the extraordinary Nina Hoss, whose supporting performance may be my favorite of 2022). We observe her unorthodox methods of parenting Sharon's adopted daughter Petra (Mila Bogojevic). We cringe as she exploits and abuses her assistant Francesca (Portrait of a Lady on Fire's Noémie Merlant). We watch her struggle with a fierce and sudden infatuation with young cellist Olga (Sophie Kauer). We watch her navigate and manipulate a variety of male colleagues, including an adoring colleague (Marc Strong, even stronger than usual), her predecessor (the inimitable Julian Glover, most famous for facing down Indiana Jones in a quest for the Holy Grail), and her assistant conductor (Alan Corduner). Then there's her insecurity as a composer, her dismissiveness about accusations against her, her obliviousness about the vulnerability of her position and reputation in the face of "cancel culture" attacks, and her fragile mental health. She has vivid nightmares and worse — at time she seems to be tormented by... what, evil spirits?
It's common for an Oscar-season film to run for two-and-a-half hours. It's uncommon for those films to demand such fierce attention from their audiences, to break so many prestige-piece conventions, to weave so many mysterious strands into such a complicated tapestry. Some arthouse films demand a second viewing before a viewer can speak with confidence about their experience. I suspect that we won't arrive at anything like a "critical consensus" on Tár for years. It's going to take two or three viewings before I feel confident writing about what I think of it. But do I love it enough to keep going back?The moviegoing experience that Tár most reminds me of is one of several Paul Thomas Anderson movies that I thought about while watching it. On Letterboxd, I joked that "I didn't know The Master was the beginning of a franchise." This films asks as much of Blanchett as that film asked of either Philip Seymour Hoffman or Joaquin Phoenix, and it tracks a similarly strange and complicated figure — a philosopher, a manipulator, an egomaniac obsessed with legacy — on a rise and a fall. And, like that film, it asks so much of its audience when it comes to making connections and filling in blanks that I suspect it will frustrate as many as it inspires.
But it also reminds me of Anderson's There Will Be Blood, as this performance will probably always be popularly remembered as the defining performance of the lead actor's already prestigious career. Blanchett has been inarguably great since she dominated the screen in Elizabeth (and probably since earlier than that). But the ferocity of her silences, her dominant confidence, and that indefinable characteristic that makes her always seem two or three steps ahead of everybody else on the screen — this has made it difficult for her to "blend in" to movies with casts that are anything less than outstanding. (She was perfect as Galadriel, but Galadriel is supposed to be a dominant and awe-inspiring character.) This role is custom-made for her. The only other actresses I can imagine in the role are Juliet Binoche or Tilda Swinton — no one else commands attention like they do.
And when the film nears its climax, I cannot compare it to anything except There Will Be Blood, as both the narrative and the performance become unhinged in ways that will divide audiences. I'm sorry to say that my suspension of disbelief is badly shaken, perhaps broken altogether, and the moment of peak energy. I can't say more without spoilers, but I'm eager to see it again if only to discover whether another journey with this character makes that dramatic turn more or less convincing. In the case of Anderson's film, I've come to love the conclusion and wouldn't have it any other way. I'm not confident that will be the case with this film.
But I also thought a lot about Anderson's Phantom Thread, as this is a movie about an artist who is uncompromising when it comes to their art but who makes all kinds of ethical compromises when it comes to relationships. But it's also a movie in which prominent mentions of the name "Alma" either directly or quietly make us think of other "difficult" artists who were supported by women named Alma — namely, Alfred Hitchcock and Gustav Mahler.
What other great films did I think about? I mentioned Binoche earlier, and there are several moments in which I think of Three Colors: Blue, which was also about a haunted composer of sorts who has to decide whether or not to make herself vulnerable. Certain moments throughout the film made me wonder if they were direct references or mere coincidences. For example, both films feature a moment in which a woman is drawn out of the safety of her apartment to contend with troubles happening in the apartment building late at night, and the door almost closes — or does close — behind her. I also thought about The Shining, but we'll see if you sense those resonances or not.
I haven't even begun to explore the provocative questions that the film poses — questions about the cost of greatness; the corrosive effect of ambition on relationships; the unnerving frequency with which sublime artistic vision seems inseparable from human cruelty; the naïveté, hypocrisy, and grossly judgmental spirit at the heart of "cancel culture"; and the insensitivity and hard-heartedness that often causes egomaniacs to dismiss their accusers rather than engaging in any self-examination, confession, or reconciliation. No movie I've seen yet in 2022 wrestles with so many of questions currently blazing in the zeitgeist. I will have to postpone my examination of the story's ideas about these questions for another time.
For now, I'll suffice it to say that I've come away from my first encounter with this film more impressed than frustrated. No, it doesn't all work for me — not this time, anyway. When the movie's pent up energy erupts, it loses me. It feels like a miscalculation. And from that point on I'm studying the film; I'm no longer absorbed in it.
I find Blanchett compelling. I find Field's directorial strategies exciting and sometimes virtuosic. What I enjoy most, though, is Nina Hoss's heartfelt performance as Sharon — a woman who, though she is content to let her loved one take the wheel, becomes increasingly troubled by Lydia's driving, and is forced to make difficult decisions regarding when to listen, when to be patient, when to offer quiet counsel, and when to put her foot down and demand to be let out of the car.
I came for the Blanchett greatness. I will come back for Hoss's subtle strengths.
And I'm eager to know what you think of it. You should see it, after all. Because audiences are going to talk. They're going to be argue.
There may not be many Friday-night, popcorn-munching fans. But believe me — there will be essays.
Looking Closer All-Stars: Sarah Welch-Larson on The Rings of Power
I'm aiming to increase my attention here to writers who are "carrying the fire" (to borrow a phrase from Cormac McCarthy's feel-good family-time storybook The Road), writers who are drawing our attention to meaningful blazes in a dark world, and who are doing so with wisdom and wit.
And I'm going to begin with Sarah Welch-Larson. If I see her name on an article, I drop everything to read it. She is influencing my own journey through the wilderness of the arts in meaningful ways.
Welch-Larson, author of Becoming Alien: The Beginning and End of Evil in Science Fiction's Most Idiosyncratic Film Franchise, is writing this week with insight and eloquence (as usual) at her Substack — The Dodgy Boffin — about the new Tolkien fan-fiction series The Rings of Power:
I wish I could quit The Rings of Power. I can’t quit The Rings of Power. The show infuriates me, and I can’t stop thinking about it.
...
I’m not going to get into the side-by-side comparisons between Tolkien’s lore and the show’s versions of events ... but I do think it’s worth getting into adaptations, and how they work, and why this show fails at the task it’s set out to do.
...
It’s possible to tell a complex story with an ensemble cast and multiple story lines woven into one, but The Rings of Power doesn’t do it. There are half a dozen threads in this season, and each one of them gets dropped by the wayside for multiple episodes for no good reason other than time. When those threads are dropped, I never felt the tug toward those characters. There’s no sense of tension about what’s happening off-stage and out of sight; it’s as though the dropped story lines have been left inert because the storytellers got bored with them.
Nothing Compares (2022)
"Do not quench the Spirit.
Do not despise prophecies,
but test everything;
hold fast what is good."
— 1 Thessalonians 5: 19–21
I've been waiting thirty years for this movie.
I've been waiting for an event in art and culture that would bring this inimitable Irish performer back into the spotlight so that the world would have to reckon with what we did to her: how we exalted her voice and image; how we welcomed her onto our stages and screens to thrill us; how we sought to exploit her for our own comfort and self-congratulation; how we rejected her truth when she spoke it; how we turned from her when her prophetic words made us uncomfortable; how we abused and condemned her and dragged her to the pop-culture equivalent of a crucifixion. I've been waiting for the movie that would preach the Gospel of Sinead O'Connor that so many of us have believed since we witnessed her rise (by pop-culture standards) and fall (by pop-culture standards) in the late '80s and early '90s.
I've been waiting for Kathryn Ferguson's Nothing Compares since October of 1992.
And lest that sound blasphemous, let me clarify: When I say "the Gospel of Sinead O'Connor," I mean the Gospel that she preached, the Gospel that she sang, the Gospel that she did her best to manifest. Yes, it's that Gospel — the liberating one at the center of which Jesus Christ shines. It should come as no surprise that O'Connor herself tells us that the record that seized and shook her, that compelled her to recognize her calling, was Bob Dylan's Slow Train Coming, which marks his formal baptism as a prophet in the line of David the Psalmist. O'Connor's Gospel is the Gospel of uncompromising love that speaks truth to power no matter the cost.
I am not here to make an idol of her, to praise her as an ideal; any such praise of any artist would do them an injustice and separate them from our human sphere. But I am saying that we should be grateful for, and reverent towards, how she has been faithful to her calling. For it is in the the mess of her mistakes that we can recognize her authenticity. She is a broken human being who never claimed to be anything different. And if we listen, if we look, we will learn the source of that voice that shakes us, that courage that helps her stand in a spotlight even when an entire arena is thunderous with mockery and hatred. We will learn of her childhood afflictions — the horrific psychological abuse she suffered. We will come to understand the unbridled outrage that offended so many of us, and see that it comes to us as evidence of our own sins. O'Connor has always been distinctive in her honesty. Shocking in her fearlessness. Ruthless in her dedication to making art for the sake of the poor, the neglected, the abused, and the forgotten.
And when, on a Saturday night in October 1992, while my friends and I watched in rapt attention in a Seattle Pacific University dormitory, Sinead O'Connor took that stage, trembling with righteous anger, and leaned into a live-television camera, then tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II, she was not expressing some petty grudge against Christianity. She was calling out the church for its hypocrisy — precisely because of her love for the church and its Gospel. She was shouting to a Christendom that had covered its ears. She was confronting our complacency, our ignorance, our irresponsibility. Most specifically, she was calling out the Catholic church's cover-up of sexual abuse, a truth that in recent years has become undeniable, wreaking havoc on the church's witness around the world in ways we will never be able to measure. I saw, reflected in how she laid down her career and even risked her life, Jesus calling out the "white-washed tombs" of the Pharisees' hearts, knowing where that would lead him.
It scared me. Gospel will do that, when it's done right.
I am so grateful for this film. It "kicks the darkness" until it "bleeds daylight," to borrow lyrics from another Holy Spirit-inspired prophet. What it captures in its net of images and interviews is both tragic and beautiful.
But that won't prevent me from acknowledging that the net itself — the work of filmmaking — is, as movies about artists go, fairly conventional in its craftsmanship. Nothing Compares is not a reinvention of the rock-star documentary. If anything, it's the most conventional release in what has become The Year of the Rock Star on the Big Screen. (See Baz Luhrmann's exhilarating Elvis, Andrew Dominick's daring and intimate Nick Cave doc This Much I Know to Be True, and Brett Morgen's transcendent IMAX Bowie celebration Moonage Daydream.) That is to say, like the party that director Edgar Wright threw in The Sparks Brothers last year, it's made of archival concert footage, intimate interviews, and excerpts from talk-show interviews, much of which will be familiar to O'Connor's fans. And, to fill in storytelling gaps, there are some unremarkable "re-enactments" — fleeting glimpses of models posing as Sinead in various stages of struggle and melancholy, from early childhood to crumpled figures wreathed in cigarette smoke.
Fortunately, the live performances that illustrate her "rise" and alleged "fall" are riveting. The live-TV interview excerpts, featuring the most idiotic of talk show hosts, are as cringe-inducing as any we've seen Bob Dylan suffer. And the overlay of various interviews with O'Connor and her close family, friends, and colleagues are all meaningful. One of the film's most startling aspects is the way in which O'Connor's voice, once such a clarion call, deepens and roughens, a document of the toll the times have taken — or, better, humankind has taken — on her.
But never mind the familiar filmmaking techniques: this form suits its purpose. This is not a fever dream like Moonage Daydream or a specific showcase of songs like This Much I Know to Be True. This film is an argument: a case for the defense. And the argument is a good one. It has taken a long, long time. But Sinead has come through a decades-long shit-show of religious trauma, music industry idiocy, pop culture abuse, and worse... and she’s shining like gold. Love wins — and love is, to all appearances, all that has ever been on her mind and heart.
This is fiercely meaningful stuff, right here, right now — and to me quite personally. I feel like this film is unlocking in me things I need to understand about myself: my own wounds, my own anger, my own grief. Songs I’ve always loved in a deeply personal way ("Troy," in particular) that have nevertheless seemed mysterious… I now understand them as if they’ve been translated into my language the first time. By God's grace, I've never suffered anything like the abuse O'Connor has suffered. But I have become increasingly aware of, and horrified by, the hypocrisy of the evangelical Christian communities in which I was raised. Look at the compromises they justify now. Look at the liars and misogynists and hatred they excuse now in order to make the world in their own image and call it "Christian." So, yes, I recognize something of the trauma, the grief, and the rage that is at the root of Sinead O'Connor's voice. No wonder I've always felt that her music felt more like prayer than rock-and-roll, even before I was awake enough to understand why. And when I did finally see her live in 1997 on the Seattle waterfront, and heard her sing "Fire on Babylon," I knew what it was like to stand in the presence of a prophet as the Holy Spirit does Her mighty work.
If you were between the ages of 16–22 when O’Connor was on magazine covers in the late '80s and early '90s, you should see this movie all the way through to understand yourself, your world, and O’Connor better.
If you’re that age now — I would be so pleased if you would watch this all the way through, to understand yourself, your world, and, perhaps, Billie Eilish better.
This is, in a way, Sinead O’Connor’s late, great triumph. Time reveals the truth slowly. And all those who hastily cursed and mocked her are hereby exposed for their hard-heartedness, their deafness, and their cowardice.
I believe in Sinead O’Connor. I think Jesus does too.
Two new essays in one week: The Enlightened Replicant and the Liberated Marionette
Wow — it's feeling like "the good old days" here at Looking Closer.
I've just had two new essays published in the span of one week, and I'm delighted that they are out in the world ready and waiting for readers.
One is an essay I've been working on for almost two years: "I've Seen Things You Wouldn't Believe: Death-Sentence Testimonies in Blade Runner, Wings of Desire, and Nomadland.
This essay begins as a meditation on aging and learning to accept one's mortality. But it very quickly becomes something else: a deep dive into three very different films that share, I've been delighted to discover, a strange commonality. They all feature scenes in which someone is dying, and that character chooses to spend their final moments reflecting on transcendent moments of vision, moments when they saw something unforgettable.
The second is a reflection on my history with what is often celebrated as Disney's greatest masterpiece: their 1940 animated feature Pinocchio — not to be confused with that awful new "live-action" version from Robert Zemeckis. In this film, too, I find profound meditations on what freedom really means.
I hope you enjoy these pieces. They represent a lot of work during a season of overwhelming responsibilities. I'm so glad I managed to finish them and hit "SEND."
Where Did My Community Go? Marcel the Shell Offers Insight at The Rabbit Room
As you may have noticed, I shared my first impressions of A24's beautiful new film Marcel the Shell With Shoes On a couple of weeks ago.
Then I heard from my friend Matt Conner at The Rabbit Room, the thriving arts-and-faith community that has grown up around the work of brothers Andrew and A.S. "Pete" Peterson. He wondered if I might write about the film for them too. I was thrilled, because my initial post had only scratched the surface of my questions and ideas about the film. And what's more—I miss my friends in the Rabbit Room community! Every time I've participated in their annual Hutchmoot arts festival, I've had a memorably joyous experience.
In fact, thinking about how much I miss that community ended up being the perfect focus for this article about Marcel the Shell.
The piece I composed for them is now front and center at The Rabbit Room. Here's the link. I hope you enjoy it.
The Duke (2022)
Art-theft movies are a popular genre unto themselves. But every movie about someone stealing a priceless work of art from a high-security art gallery must, of course, be measured against what is inarguably the genre's gold standard: No, not The Thomas Crown Affair — I'm talking about The Great Muppet Caper. How does The Duke, the final film from the director of Notting Hill, compare? Let's consider.
This time around, the stolen art is not really the "hook" that will draw audiences in. Who robbed London's National Gallery? Who stole Goya's portrait of the Duke of Wellington? Who cares? No... the hook is this: It's a true story. In 1961, Newcastle taxi driver Kempton Bunton decided to make a big noise about the indignity of being a London pensioner — particularly the fact that the elderly had to pay for access to television. How did he do it? The story is a little more complicated than you might suspect, but not much.
If you're like me, you'll find that there's a better hook than the "Based on a True Story" banner: You'll see this because it stars two of England's finest: the great Jim Broadbent as the irrepressible troublemaker, and Helen Mirren as his long-suffering wife Dorothy.
And even so, you may not be entirely satisfied.
Has any actor been more reliable and stable than Broadbent over the last 30 years? I'd be hard-pressed to think of even a few worth comparing to his consistent record. But Broadbent is in a familiar mode here: lovable, good-hearted, a little dopey, talking to almost everyone like a doting grandfather talks to his small grandchildren. I can't imagine he need to prep at all for this role. Kempton Bunton is a far simpler character, requiring a far simpler performance, than what we've seen Broadbent give as a large-hearted neighbor in Mike Leigh's Another Year, as the master of ceremonies in Moulin Rouge!, or as the resilient John Bayley in Richard Eyre's Iris (which won the actor an Oscar). I always enjoy watching him, but this material is too slight to be remembered as one of his best roles.
All I've said about Broadbent is even more true for Mirren. She's playing a far simpler version of the burdened housekeeper she played in Gosford Park, and while she does a lot with an almost thankless role, it's still not enough to be worth mentioning in a retrospective of her impressive career. I feel a bit sorry for her here. She should be investing in far stronger stuff than this.
And beyond that, well... other than Matthew Goode's reliable sincerity, there's no one here making enough of an impression to give us quotable moments or scenes we'll want to revisit.
It just doesn't feel like anybody is on their A-game here. Even for Michell, a pro at making witty, respectable entertainment, this feels a little too easygoing. It's not a grand finale to his career; it's like an encore where he plays an endearing crowdpleaser with a simple chorus about making the world a better place, one we can sing along to.
The screenplay by Richard Bean and Clive Coleman is amusing enough that this might make for a fine rainy-day Sunday afternoon streaming option for the Masterpiece Theatre crowd. I have no argument with Bunton's quixotic idealism, which leads him to seize his courtroom appearances as opportunities to campaign for a kinder, more generous London. As The Telegraph's Robbie Collin, addressing his fellow Brits, writes, "Although the England it depicts disappeared half a century ago, it speaks mindfully and movingly to our own divided times — asking how institutions should best serve the public that funds them, and speaking up for those who find themselves excluded by class, geography or birth." And I'm all but helpless when Michell ambushes us with the most shameless use of the hymn "Jerusalem" since Chariots of Fire.
"You could dine on nothing but lard for twenty years and still not develop the hardness of heart necessary to avoid being won over by [this film]," claims Jessica Kiang at The Playlist. Well, I don't want to give anyone the impression that I have a heart of stone. But I'm not thrilled I drove for 40 minutes through a torrential downpour on a Sunday afternoon to see this in a theater. If art-gallery shenanigans were what I wanted, I might've been wiser to stay home and watch Nicky Holiday (Charles Grodin) plot to steal the extravagant "Baseball Diamond" from his sister Lady Holiday (Diana Rigg) only to find his plans complicated by Kermit the Frog, Fozzie Bear, and a particularly agitated Miss Piggy. Now that's entertainment!
*Note: The title of my post might be misleading: Michell made a documentary about Queen Elizabeth II that has not yet been released. So, if you're counting non-fiction films, he still has one on the way!
Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (2022)
Stories of holy fools are tricky to tell.
Take Forrest Gump, for example. He waltzes through his broken world spouting platitudes, proposing that complex conundrums can be resolved with catchy quips and simplistic sincerity, and we are meant to conclude that he was some kind of genius who saw the Truth better than anyone else. Why can't we all be more like Forrest? As a result, the film seems too sentimental, made of too much wishful thinking.
By contrast, Parry of Terry Gilliam's The Fisher King and Johannes of Carl Dreyer's Ordet are clearly suffering from mental illness brought on by trauma. They are not well. And yet, in their not-wellness, they see some things more clearly than others, and we can find a silver lining in their troubled state: In their blindness to some things, they have become sharper in others. These films feel more truthful. They don't insult us by insisting that complicated things are really quite simple.
Anthony Fabian's new film Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris is about a simple woman who brings her smiling simplicity, her basic human decency, and her un-cynical perspectives from the dusty wardrobes of London apartments to the high-fashion world of Paris. And everywhere she goes, she comforts the afflicted and she afflicts the comfortable (or, at least, the seemingly comfortable). Like magic, the world begins correcting itself all around her.
This story, based on a novel called Mrs. 'arris Goes to Paris, has been filmed before, including a TV movie that starred Angela Lansbury, Diana Rigg, and Omar Sharif! I don't have any experience with the book or the earlier adaptations, and this film isn't inspiring me to invest my time in them — so I'll leave it to other writers to consider how this compares to previous manifestations.
The story told here follows Mrs. Harris (Leslie Manville), a war widow who works as a cleaning woman in 1950s London. The excellence in her work makes her seem irreplaceable to her clients, which include the dignified Giles (Christian McKay) and the haughty Lady Dant (Anna Chancellor). Nevertheless, she is not entirely satisfied with her life. When she discovers an extravagant dress with a Christian Dior label, its beauty takes up residence in her imagination so powerfully that when she stumbles into some good fortune she determines to make her way to Paris to buy one of those fancy dresses for herself.
The plan strikes her friends, including the loyal Vi (Ellen Thomas in the clearest example of tokenism I've seen in a movie in a while) and the charming Archie (Jason Isaacs), as audacious. But Mrs. Harris is done with living cautiously. She can't see any reason why she cannot waltz into Paris and claim such a classy commodity for herself. What she cannot imagine is that she will soon make as powerful an impression on the workers at Christian Dior as their artistry has made upon her. And, like the famous Mr. Smith who goes to Washington and comforts the afflicted while afflicting the comfortable, her moral character will spark a revolution.
Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris is somehow scoring 95% "fresh" with critics on Rotten Tomatoes even though Fabian's last film earned only 13% — and yet, reviews are using a lot of the same words to describe both films: "Hallmarky" and "saccharine," for example. I'm a bit baffled by the positive response. It's such broad-stroke entertainment, so eager to please, so well-meaning, that Paddington Bear could have a supporting role and audiences might not even blink.
But Paddington is meant for children. I don't mean that as a criticism — the film adaptations (expansions, really) of the classic children's stories have set such stunningly high standards in writing, acting, and all aspects of design that they're delighting children and adults alike and bringing all of them back for multiple viewings. They're excellent films that fulfill the highest potential of their genre.
This? I'm not sure who the intended audience for this is. It's as much of a well-meaning fantasy as Paddington, but it's rarely more than mildly amusing, and it's clearly not crafted for kids. If this had been released on Mother's Day, it would have been the perfect confection for adults to take their mother to... if their mother's taste in entertainment was such that an episode of PBS's Poirot would be too "grim and gritty" for her.
I went to see this because I love Leslie Manville. Her turns in Paul Thomas Anderson's Phantom Thread and Mike Leigh's Another Year are pure gold. She's great. She could replace Nicole Kidman in the AMC Theaters promo, read that same script, and convince me that she means it.
What's more – I love a good movie about an innocent character with good intentions... so long as the movie doesn't glorify ignorance and lie about the complexity of the world's problems. Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris has plenty of heart, but lacks the courage of its convictions. It doesn't have the guts to honestly represent any kind of problem, or to develop human characters with foibles that are any more than mildly and momentarily aggravating. It’s like Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky if it had been directed by Ron Howard at his sappiest. By comparison, Spielberg’s lovely The BFG — another film that dares to be childlike with adults in mind — seems dark, dangerous, and downright subversive. This movie practically dares you to scoff at it; it feels like a judge is watching you watch the movie, poised to find you guilty of cynicism if you flinch.
And just as Mrs. Harris, making notes about her savings, writes in huge letters and underlines them, so every moment in this movie is played like a major chord, and loudly, as if the filmmakers are straining to set some kind of Olympic record for sincerity. Minor chords register only as mild, fleeting variations in the tone — brief misunderstandings, the slightest bit of complication, the merest obstacle for Mrs. Harris to overcome — so that we can have a sense that a narrative is, in fact, progressing.
Another challenge to the viewer is the version of Paris on display here. If you saw Edgar Wright's Last Night in Soho, you saw a young woman suckered into a nostalgic vision of Paris, and then she paid the price by discovering that if you scratched those fantasies you'd expose horrific corruption festering under the skin. This movie insists on the idealistic fantasy, acknowledging real problems only as troubles that can be overcome as easily a puffing seeds off a dandelion. There’s not a spot in this film's Paris that hasn’t been polished to avoid offense. Come to think of it, it's like a Paris version of that pop-up book of London that figures largely in Paddington 2. This tourist's fantasy of the city so resolutely ignores — denies — any significant flaws, injustices, or dark sides that you’ll wait for Mrs. Harris to wake up and learn it’s all been a dream.
So — and brace yourself for a surprise twist here — it says something about how disappointing, lurid, corrosively violent, and cynical the world has become that the whole audience (including me!) enjoyed this film. At least, that's what it felt like in the theater. With the exception of one young man on a date who, sitting in front of me, recoiled from the screen as if suffering a severe allergy, the audience seemed under a spell. There were gasps of delirium at the revelations of the Christian Dior dresses. There were tears whenever Mrs. Harris was the slightest bit inconvenienced. There were cheers when the inevitable fairy-tale dreams came true.
This movie's like a very expensive wedding cake in which all of the money and effort has gone into the extravagant frosting, but when you cut into it, you find that it's just a few stacked cupcakes with little substance to speak of. And yet, somehow, it all manages to hold its shape without collapsing under the weight of the decoration. And you end up admiring it for what it is: an impressive artifice.
Who can begrudge audiences a plate of hyper-colored meringues after two excessively fatty, unbearably greasy Marvel movies this summer?
And, if you think about it, there’s no less wishful thinking and fantasizing and denial in Top Gun: Maverick than there is here. Different versions of the same thing: escapism that appeals to the most audacious dreamers among us, and that works overtime to keep us from asking any questions that might spoil the illusion.
Mrs. Harris is not my idea of a holy fool we can learn from and admire. She assures us that a very broken world can be repaired with just some common sense and kindness, and that's hard for me to stomach right now as I watch generations of blood-sweat-and-tears goodness erased by ignorance and cruelty.
But I'll bet Paddington Bear would love this film. He'd probably quietly admit, in his most Whishaw-ish half-whisper, that has now has a crush on Leslie Manville. He'd lean out his window at night and make a wish, and the BFG would show up and carry him off to Paris to see a Christian Dior runway show.
Did I mention that, adding to the "How does this movie exist?" mystery of it all, this thing includes fully committed performances from the great Isabelle Huppert and distinguished Lambert Wilson?!
- - -
Note: I wrote these impressions down in the theater as the credits rolled. Then I came home and, out of curiosity, looked up the New York Times review, only to be startled to see Paddington mentioned in their review's subheading! And here I thought I might have made an inspired comparison. (Sigh.) Oh well.
Shadow in the Cloud (2021)
The setup seems simple enough: Here's Maude: a determined young woman in a pilot's jacket, marching across a runway with a leather satchel. She climbs aboard a B-17 bomber — that oh-so-cinematic of warplanes — and insists that her package contents are classified. After the flight crew — all men — flare up predictably with with scorn and sexism, they begrudgingly accept her credentials. But they refuse her anything more than a flicker of respect. And soon, Maude's consigned to to the seat of a ball turret gunner — that spherical cell protruding beneath the plane like a barnacle on a ship.
If "ball turret gunner" sounds like a euphemism, it might as well be one: Poor Maude is subjected to a barrage of sexual harassment over her headphones to the point that we have to wonder who the real "enemies" are in this scenario. As we watch her suffer in close-up, she begins to resemble Falconetti's anguished Joan of Arc — tortured by her leering, satanic jury. Strapped into that claustrophobic's nightmare, Maude spends the first half of the movie barely able to move, which makes things seem so much worse when she is persecuted by a vicious gremlin.
What could go wrong? Will Maude be abused by her crew? Yes. Will they seek to discredit her? Yes. Will the crew become divided in their willingness to cooperate with her? Yes. Will that endanger their safety? Yes. Will the gremlin damage the plane? Yes. Will enemy planes attack them even though these bombers believe they're safely out of range? Uh-huh. Will the Mystery Box be opened against Maude's strict instructions? What do you think?
And I haven't really spoiled anything: Those are the turns you can see coming.
Okay — someone's probably still stuck on the fact that I dared mention this over-the-top action thriller in the same sentence as that most sacred of cinematic works: The Passion of Joan of Arc. Shadow in the Cloud is made in the tradition of Saturday-matinee cliffhangers that throw plausibility out the window in order to keep audience guessing and gasping, as if the theater is actually an amusement park ride. It's as ridiculous and excessive as Dreyer's art film is earnest and austere. But I stand by the comparison if only to highlight the remarkable commitment of actress Chloë Grace Moretz to the role of Maude. What makes this film unusually compelling is how Moretz brings such conviction to her performance that we want to see how she comes out of this even as the world around her poses greater and greater threats to our suspension of disbelief. If I were just describing the narrative, it would seem like one of those goofball “so-bad-it’s-good” entertainments. But Moretz makes it all worthwhile, treating this as the sort of audition that will expand the range of films she headlines in the future.
There are other things to admire here: Director Roseanne Liang and cinematographer Kit Fraser keep things compelling even during the hour that Maude's stuck in cramped quarters. Mahuia Bridgman-Cooper's synthesizers stir up good John Carpenter vibes. And when the gremlin is mysterious, a shadowy symbol of trauma, it's sufficiently creepy. (The more literal it becomes, and the more clearly we see it, the more disappointing and ridiculous it seems.) The special effects overall are just sharp enough to strike a balance between the convincing and the absurd. The sound design, while chaotic, works well to put us in mind of what the world must sometimes feel like to women forced to manage in contexts where men feel empowered to disrespect and abuse them.
One of the film's greatest strengths is that is is blessedly short — only 82 minutes. (And, frankly, the last ten minutes should have been either trimmed or reimagined, as they give the film a bumpy, cringe-inducing conclusion.) I suspect this erratic flight might lose a few viewers in its turbulence. But if you can accept that the movie isn't really interested in plausibility, and that it just wants to get audiences cheering for its persecuted heroine as she unleashes her inner Ripley — fighting misogynists, dismantling idiots, and punching gremlins in the face — well, I think you'll have fun with it.
Some of you may be wondering if this is some kind of remake. Haven't we seen a gremlin tormenting passengers and crew before? The film admits its inspirations, opening with footage from a classic animated short in which a monster haunts a warplane pilot. That concept has inspired other takes, including a well-known episode in the Steven Spielberg anthology series Amazing Stories. But this is the most elaborate version yet imagined for the screen.
The only real misgivings I have about the film stem from a name in the credits: Max Landis, who is listed as a co-writer with Liang. Landis has disgraced himself with abusive behavior towards women. And for a while I was worried that he might be trying to perform penance by making a movie about woman standing up to a gang of ugly misogynists. But it didn't take long to find details that set the record straight: Liang made this movie after rewriting whatever initial script Landis had written. I don't know how much of what we've seen came from his original draft, but I don't really care. This final product makes misogynists look wretched, and rightfully so.
Quite a few actors have given demanding performances in confined spaces — Tom Hardy in Locke, Colin Farrell in Phone Booth, Ryan Reynolds in Buried, Brie Larson in Room — making Shadow in the Cloud the latest entry in an unusual genre. But Moretz distinguishes herself impressively. While the narrative around her seems to have been designed by storytelling gremlins more interested in mischief than meaning, eager to bend everything to the breaking point, Moretz seems to be daring the screenwriters to come up with demands that she cannot handle. The farther this airplane hurtled through space, the more eager I was to see how far she was willing to go. And, almost as if she sensed me watching, Maude eventually growled at the screen "You have no idea how far I'll go!"
She was right.
Bonus: If you're riding the Kate Bush high provided by the latest season of Stranger Things, you'll love the end-credits sequence here.
Hit the Road (2022)
Are seasons still a thing? It's still July (for a few more hours anyway), but this Seattle heat wave has me yearning for autumn conditions.
Ever since I saw Panah Panahi's debut feature film, the dark road-movie comedy Hit the Road, I've imagined pulling my car off the hot Seattle streets, finding myself a patch of shade, and splaying my upper half out the window the way that the exhausted, exasperated driver Farid does in in this film. If you were to glimpse him as you drove past, you'd think that he might have been shot, or suffered heatstroke, or been attacked by carjackers who dragged him halfway out, knocked him unconscious, and then abandoned their gambit. Farid leans backward out the car window, his arms splayed as if pantomiming crucifixion, his face turned skyward. He might be praying. Or he might just be exhausted.
But Farid (Amin Simiar), the "big brother" of the road-tripping family, is feeling anxiety about more than the heat. Yes, he is driving his parents, who are difficult, and his younger brother, who is hyperactive, beneath cloudless skies on a mysterious trek to the Turkish border. So the typical stresses of being stuck in the car with a temperamental family are weighing on him. Moviegoers themselves should expect to feel a bit strained themselves by Farid's father's sullen, abrasive demeanor; his mother's spirited attempts to turn frowns upside-down; and his little brother's loudness and irrepressible energy.
But it's worse than that. The heat beating down on the car is literal enough, but it might also be a metaphor for the troubles from which Farid is running, and the daunting gamble he is about to make with his life.
I could say more, but much of the pleasure of Panahi's impressive first film is in the way we're kept guessing about what is really going on. This is Iran, and this is a movie made by the son of the great Jafar Panahi, an heroic Iranian artist who has nearly died in prison for resisting his government's cruelty and censorship and making art that challenges injustice. So we should not be surprised that the car at the center of the screen feels like a pressure cooker, and that while the comic chemistry of this anxious family may remind us of American family road-trip comedies like Little Miss Sunshine, this takes place in a much scarier world, where the wrong run-in with police could end with incarceration or even executions. (Come to think of it, many Americans do run that risk every day. So this film might be more "relatable" for some than others.)
Is Panahi the Younger thinking of his father by casting the wonderfully grouchy Hassan Madjooni as Farid's father Khosro, who has to accept his backseat position due to a broken leg, and who is further afflicted by an infected tooth? Madjooni looks at times like one of those big, hairy, cantankerous Muppets as he argues with his wife, wrestles with his flailing and flamboyant younger son, and rolls his eyes as his warnings and counsel go ignored. It would be easy just to take him as comic relief. But as the movie unfolds, we begin to sense that there is much more to this man than meets the eye, and that his troubles might be signs of sacrifices he has made for this family.
By contrast, Mother — played with radiance and affecting heartbreak by the beautiful Pantea Panahiha — is an icon of optimism, affection, and warmth for her whole family. And yet, for all of her bright smiles and songs, she cannot hide that the secret of this journey is tearing her apart inside. Watch, and you'll catch her turning away, shedding sudden tears, and then mustering the strength to turn back and brighten the weary travelers' spirits again.
And then there's the flamboyant six-year-old, played by Rayan Sarlak, who resembles the Tasmanian Devil from Looney Toons, and who will have moviegoing parents glancing at each other in sympathy as they recall their own toddlers' most hysterical behavior. He may test your patience, but I think you'll be thankful for him by the film's end. When the full details of Panahi's narrative are revealed, you'll be thankful for any source of levity.
Oh, I've almost forgotten to mention the fifth traveler — the ailing dog Jessy, who goes almost unseen for much of the movie, miserable and motionless in the rear of the vehicle. Jessy seems like a metaphor or a manifestation of — what? This family's troubles? Their hopes for their country? Their future? It's hard to say, but where dogs are usually useful as jokes in road-trip comedies (I'm particularly fond of the one in the Chevy Chase/Jon Candy classic The Great Outdoors), this one only triggers a few laughs, serving more as a sign of foreboding. There is a sense of desperation about this journey — the family has already lost their house for reasons that won't be revealed until late, so the prospect of losing any family member (even the dog) threatens to turn this comedy into a tragedy.
There are big surprises along the way, the biggest of which involve sudden catapults into fantasy. One in particular reminded me of Richard Linklater's Waking Life, in which characters philosophizing together across a patio table might suddenly morph into clouds drifting through space. This caught me off guard, as the director's style carries his father's comical take on realism forward with such confidence; I was never expecting special effects, images that play like waking dreams, or musical numbers sung to the audience. (I'll need to see it again to decide if these really "work" — they are brave choices, but they felt incongruous and discombobulating for me on this first viewing.)
But my favorite surprises come courtesy of cinematographer Amin Jafari, who occasionally pulls back for impressive long takes with the family and others appearing in the far distance, sometimes on the horizon as if figures in a shadowplay. These moments, revealing the winding line of the road zigzagging across golden hills as if uncertain about its own direction, seem to refer to masterworks by another legendary Iranian filmmaker: Abbas Kiarostami. I wouldn't have been surprised if characters from Kiarostami's Koker trilogy showed up at one of the roadside stops.
Even as you can feel governmental oppression constraining Iranian art, you have to marvel at the courage of the artists who risk their lives to bring their visions of suffering and hope to the world outside. I am sure that there are many aspects of this film — blatant and subtle — that I am missing due to my privilege: I've never walked these roads, suffered these limitations, or lived with such grim prospects. But as I sense my own country giving up its hard-won freedom to the schemes of con-men and fascists, I sense that I have much to learn from artists like the Panahis — both Senior and Junior — who suffer with eyes wide open, using what tools they have to fight the power, to tell the truth, to laugh despite their sufferings, and to hang on to hope... for future generations, if not for themselves.
In view of that, although I find its bittersweetness discomforting, and although its conclusion leaves me struggling to make sense of what I've seen, I am grateful for Hit the Road. In a year of so many excessive and almost-meaningless blockbusters, audiences need challenges like this one to remind them that art, at its best, is not just about entertainment: art afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted. Art isn't just what we watch; art is what gets us talking, struggling, arguing, and asking questions. Art makes us work in order to help us grow.
And Panah Panahi is, thank goodness, a true artist who is just getting started. May God bless the hard roads ahead of him. May he find attentive audiences. May he know safety. And may he find places to pull off the road, rest in the shade, and dream his way to even greater art for a world that needs it.
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
This post is dedicated to those whose contributions have significantly supported LookingCloser.org in recent years: the site's muse Laure Hittle, and executive producers Chris Angus, Benjamin Bronsink, Kimberly Fisher, Timothy Grant, Cynda Pierce, and Julie Silander. Thank you so much, my friends!
After living on a diet of Disney+ for years, film critic Cravis Frankly has returned — mostly because he's curious about Everything Everywhere All of the Time. I was happy to see him and encourage him to expand his cinematic horizons a little.
Frankly:
Why does this review look different from your usual reviews?
Overstreet:
What better way to review the year's best multi-verse movie than with multiple accounts of multiple viewings?
Frankly:
Okay, but I'm late getting to this movie because I always prioritize what the box office tells me to see. I'm a puppet you see. I go where the Mighty Hand of Marketing tells me to go. And I haven't seen much promotion for this one. But I'm curious because the Honest Trailers video for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness praised Everything Everywhere All at Once as the far superior multiverse movie. So, tell me: Will there be spoilers?
Overstreet:
The fourth part of this post will have spoilers — I will discuss the film's controversial conclusion, as I'm seeing interpretations that trouble me. I recommend that you skip that part until you've seen the film. Much of art's power lies within its capacity to surprise us. You don't want to miss out on surprises.
Frankly:
Proceed.
FIRST VIEWING
Overstreet:
Take the title as a warning: Everything Everywhere All at Once is what you will see, hear, feel, and think about during these two hours and nineteen minutes. For audiences who need hyperactivity to stay awake and engaged at the movies, this may be hard to beat for entertainment. In The New York Times, A.O. Scott describes it as a "swirl of genre anarchy." Daniels — that's what the filmmaking team of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert call themselves — have rocketed from the audacious and discomforting comedy of Swiss Army Man to a similarly audacious and discomforting superhero extravaganza that feels like the next ten Daniels movies playing... well... all at once.
Swiss Army Man was... weird. It was like Castaway if Wilson the volleyball was replaced with the farting corpse of Harry Potter. Is this movie as weird as that one?
Overstreet:
Oh, yeah. I found Swiss Army Man off-putting abrasive — sort of show-offy in its crass brashness. Everything Everywhere has moments like that too, but the highlights outshine the more cringe-worthy moments.
Frankly:
So... what happens?
Overstreet:
Okay, buckle up. I'll try to sum this up in one big sentence.
Frankly:
May I diagram the sentence when you're finished?
Overstreet:
Be my guest. Here goes:
Evelyn (played by the great Michelle Yeoh) lives an exasperating life of multi-tasking as a wife trying to save her marriage to Waymond (Ke Huy Quan); a mother trying to save her relationship with her despairing daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu); a laundromat manager trying to save the family business from an aggressive auditor (Jamie Lee Curtis); a daughter trying to take care of her declining father Gong Gong (James Hong); and a dreamer (a novelist, a singer, and more) trying to sustain her romantic hopes — but when she discovers that she is just one of countless Evelyns living different lives across an incomprehensibly complicated "multi-verse," she must learn to advance her multi-tasking skills exponentially in order to fight a demonic power called Jobu Tupaki, a black hole that threatens to suck all meaning from the universe, and that is rapidly corrupting her daughter.
That summary only scratches the surface of everything going on here.
Frankly:
May I change my mind and not diagram that sentence?
Overstreet:
I wouldn't blame you. Maybe one of our readers will try it. That'd be cool.
And you're telling me that the movie works, as busy as it sounds?
Overstreet:
For what it is, it works better than I would have dreamed. It's not "my kind of movie," mind you — I prefer movies that give me time to think, movies that do more "showing" than "telling," movies that prefer beauty to busy-ness. But, as fast-paced action extravaganzas go, this is pretty spectacular, and one of the best since The LEGO Movie, Mad Max: Fury Road, or Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. It's more of a rollercoaster than a book of poetry. Actually, it's more like a whole amusement park, celebrating its influences and innovating on the Marvel movie template.
Frankly:
You don't usually enjoy CGI fests.
Overstreet:
This isn't a CGI fest. That's one of its most distinctive achievements.
I haven't even begun to talk about the Daniels' technical achievements here. The movie moves at such high speed that viewers susceptible to seizures might want to take caution. Without much at all in the way of digital animation, the Daniels fill every inch of the screen with razzle-dazzle in a way that would probably leave Edgar Wright breathless and ecstatic. Collaborating with a small team of visual effects artists working in practical media, [Daniels] have achieved a joyous spectacle as exhausting as it is constantly surprising. There's an indieWire piece by Jim Hemphill that will blow your mind if you read it after you see the film. Hemphill writes that the film's feast of effects "are even more astonishing when one watches the end credits and realizes that they were not the work of a high-end post-production facility but a handful of craftspeople...." Basically, five people are responsible for most of film's sugar-high of special effects: Zak Stoltz, Ethan Feldbau, Benjamin Brewer, Jeff Desom, and Matthew Wauhkonen. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that there is more invention and imagination in fifteen minutes of this movie than there is in the entirety of any Marvel Universe movie I've seen.
On every other count, the film is impressive. The Son Lux score is effective, and the end-credits song by Mitski, David Byrne, André 3000, and Randy Newman — yes, you read that right — is really worth staying around for.
Frankly:
You haven't even mentioned the thing that got my attention in the first place: The return of Short Round from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom! He's really in this movie?
Overstreet:
He is, and he's fantastic. He even gets to say and do things that are clever references to that performance from, what? Almost forty years ago!
In fact, the whole cast is uniformly fantastic — a perfect ensemble. And that's remarkable, considering the original plan was for the film to star Jackie Chan, and then was reinvented to star Michelle Yeoh and Awkwafina. The final lineup — Yeoh, Quan, Hsu, Curtis — would all be worthy of the praise "awards-caliber work," if awards meant anything. I mean, we already knew Yeoh was great, but who would ever have thought she could do this?! And I sincerely hope Jamie Lee Curtis is remembered at next year's Oscar season — unlikely, but this is the funniest, bravest performance of her career.
It sounds like you really love this movie.
Overstreet:
There's a lot to love about it. And the sensory overload of it may translate to some as greatness. It doesn't for me — not yet, anyway. I'm not sure its adds up to much more than the sum of its parts. Its weaknesses are, for me, almost as significant as its strengths. The fast-forward action scenes are inventive and fun at first, but eventually, for me, they become headache-inducing. And it has so many jokes about butt plugs and penises and S&M that the amusement devolves into a recurring groan of "Why?!" It never pauses long enough to give us a chance to think or use our own imaginations.
Some of its all-caps messaging has me cheering — and even, in more than one scene, tearing up; this is a movie with its heart in the right place, emphasizing the importance of generational flexibility, with grandparents and parents learning to expand their worldviews in the name of love, and young people learning to hang on to hope in spite of the evidence. (Turns out, the grownups who have doomed the world might not be entirely irredeemable.) Watch for a moment when Waymond quietly reveals the secret of his strategies: "This is how I fight." In that moment, he becomes as inspiring to me as any superhero I've yet seen on the big screen.
But while I can endorse much of the movie's messaging — particularly the way in which Waymond influences Evelyn's perspective — I can't admire the heavy-handedness of it. For all of its imagination, this movie's finale feels overlong and preachy. As Calum Marsh wrote on Letterboxd: "In what dimension is it remotely justifiable to have a 40-minute emotional climax?"
Frankly:
Actually, you're making it sound like a lot of my favorites. Like Endgame.
Overstreet:
How did I know you were going to say that?
Frankly:
I go where I'm expected to go.
SECOND VIEWING
Frankly:
You went back for more?
Overstreet:
I knew I would eventually give this a second go. There was too much happening "all at once" for me to feel like I'd given it a fair assessment. So, I seized an opportunity to catch a Saturday afternoon matinee, and I'm glad I did.
I decided to focus on something other than the storytelling this time, and I was able to just relax and surrender to the waves of visual creativity. I originally rated this on my Letterboxd account at "3 1/2 stars," and those ratings are off-the-cuff and insignificant — but I'm going to go ahead and bump it up to "4 stars" now. While the storytelling is more sophisticated, layered, and thoughtful than any Marvel movies but Spider-verse, I would count this film up there with some of the greatest achievements in visual effects. I didn't notice a blip of digital animation — everything is done with clever editing, lots of festive and decorative props, and convincing camera tricks.
The amount of work invested here by Yeoh, Quan, Hsu, Curtis, and Hong in so many complicated action scenes, so many costume changes, so much makeup, so many stunts — it's hard for me to fathom. There's more visual and storytelling imagination in 15 minutes of this than in the whole of Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness. If Everything Everywhere this doesn't run away with the effects Oscar next year (and, let's face it, it probably won't), I'll wonder what qualifies Academy voters to vote on this matter.
Even so, it still feels too long. The Everything Bagel finale drags on interminably, and I find myself just wanting something, anything, to wrap it all up. That's why I'd still call Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse my favorite multi-verse movie of all time.
THIRD VIEWING
Overstreet:
[Singing.] "Sucked ... into... a baaaaaagel." I think I'm going to be singing that line along with Stephanie Hsu whenever the terrible headlines of the day get me down.
Frankly:
You went back yet again. Why, if it annoys you?
Overstreet:
Almost everyone we know is still talking about it and Anne hadn't seen it yet. She's a big Doctor Who fan, so I had a feeling she'd love this. And she did.
Frankly:
Did you change your mind about anything this time around?
Overstreet:
Still too preachy; still about 15 minutes too long.
But I'm finding that it's a great one to watch at home with someone who hasn't seen it before. How many movies deliver such consistent surprises, so many unexpected delights?
Each time I've seen this, I've enjoyed Stephanie Hsu's performance more. And although the movie is already overstuffed, I would have loved to see more of Jenny Slate as Debbie the Dog Mom. I know some folks are worked up about Dierdre's character strongly resembling a pre-existing character, but I'll never stop enjoying Jamie Lee Curtis's go-for-brokeness here.
For what it's worth, Yeoh's Evelyn showed up in Anne's dreams last night, after the movie.
Frankly:
Whoa. She's entered the multi-verse!
Overstreet:
It would seem so. She said that Evelyn, in the dream, was always at a distance. Anne and I were apparently trying to catch up with her. And then we realized that Evelyn was pregnant in this dimension. So... it'll be interesting to see if that figures in a sequel. Whatever the case — I wish Evelyn and her new baby well.
Thoughts on the Film's Conclusion
Frankly:
Okay, I've seen it now. I think the movie broke my brain.
Overstreet:
You mean... broke it worse than usual?
Frankly:
You said you have thoughts about the conclusion. I'm glad to hear that, as I found one particular line troubling.
Overstreet:
Is it the moment when Evelyn embraces Joy? When she says back to her daughter the same two despairing words that she herself, at her lowest point, was saying?
Frankly:
Yes. She says, "Nothing matters." That bothered me. Doesn't that make this movie... nihilistic?
Overstreet:
It bothered me when I saw it the first time. But I've thought about this during both the second and third viewing, and... no, I don't think so. In fact, I think Evelyn is turning those words upside down.
You're not the only one worrying about this. But, contrary to what some of my friends and colleagues have called "a nihilistic conclusion," I read Evelyn's utterance of "Nothing matters" not as a surrender to meaninglessness, but as quite the opposite. I read it as a reassurance from mother to daughter that, no matter what happens, nothing can break her love for her daughter. All of the hard feelings? All of the failures? All of the misunderstandings? All of the disagreement? None of it matters — she will still love her daughter, still pursue her, still desire to be with her. That strikes me as an ideal culmination of their struggles. Evelyn decides to "fight" the way that her large-hearted husband Waymond has been fighting — prioritizing unconditional love and embrace over every argument.
If I'm wrong, and Evelyn's line is meant as a surrender to the great Everything Bagel of meaninglessness, well... yes: That would mean that all of the movie's fuss over purpose and potential and love and forgiveness implodes at the last minute. That wouldn't make any sense to me at all. That would make it one of the bleakest and most despairing films I've ever seen. The film's epilogue — "All of the Time" — doesn't feel like that to me at all.
And thank God for that.
Anyway, thanks for the conversation, Cravis! Movies aren't worth much if we don't chew on them after they've been served to us.
Frankly:
I suppose. But may I say that my movie stomach hurts?