2/18/2008
The Silence of the Lambs (1991) 10/10
FBI trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) interviews Dr. Hannibal Lecter—”Hannibal the Cannibal” (Anthony Hopkins)—a psychiatrist who is one of the most dangerous incarcerated serial killers. Starling’s supervisor/mentor (Scott Glenn) believes that Lecter can help find another serial killer known as Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine) who skins his victims. Directed by Jonathan Demme.
As the final credits for The Silence of the Lambs roll, a character walks through a crowd. We are interested in watching him, but he walks away from us, off into the distance as the crane shot recedes. The credits obscure the scene, and when they briefly clear, he is gone. We cannot find him, our fear has disappeared into an ordinary, pretty street scene. The fear remains within.
Maybe everyone has already seen this movie, and there is no point in avoiding spoilers. Indeed, the movie is excellent, and watchable, and terrifying, even when thoroughly and completely spoiled. Yet out of respect for its genius, I think I’ll leave its mysteries intact.
Only three movies in history have swept the Oscars’ four major categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Actor. In 1934 it was It Happened One Night, in 1975 it was One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and in 1991 it was Silence of the Lambs. (All three also won Best Adapated Screenplay.) As it happens, I adore It Happened One Night and Cuckoo’s Nest. I’d seen Silence of the Lambs once before, but it was censored and cut up, and it hadn’t impressed me. I was determined to give it another go, and TCM’s recent uncut showing gave me the opportunity. So here I am, reviewing a movie everyone’s already seen. Go know.
People say “they don’t make ‘em like that anymore” with alarming disregard to what is and is not being made nowadays, or what was made in the past. Yet in regard to Silence of the Lambs, I have to say it’s probably true. They stopped making horror movies that scared by making you imagine, and not see, shortly after Psycho. Silence of the Lambs is about what we don’t see. It is the taut, tightly constrained body of Hannibal Lecter, who is sometimes straight-jacketed and muzzled, but always looks like he is even when his limbs are free. It is the expressive stare of Clarice Starling, who flinches even while not allowing herself to flinch. It is the derangement of Buffalo Bill, whom we barely ever see clearly at all; he is almost always in the side of a shot, or bent over so his face is obscured, or seen in so tight a close-up that his features are distorted, so that the one clear shot of him, bizarre, vulgar, intimately revealing, is actually more shocking, than the autopsy or the head in a jar.
The filming is deceptive in its apparent straightforwardness. Opening at the Quantico, Virginia FBI training facility, it has the grainy look of a made-for-TV movie. But look again. Starling works her ass off on the training course, and then diverges, leaving it incomplete. She runs inside, a small, slight woman, while a group of larger men runs in the opposite direction. And that’s Clarice: Smaller, running in the opposite direction, off-course, tough but out of breath. At the end of the movie, she’ll be in the same position; off-course, out of breath, relying on incomplete training while her compatriots move in the opposite direction. Jonathan Demme clearly studied his Hitchcock; symmetrical film-making of that sort is the kind of thing you learn from the master.
Much has been made of the chilling intimacy of the relationship between Clarice and Hannibal. He is the dark side of the mentoring relationship she seeks with Jack Crawford (Glenn). As she reveals her childhood losses, one can see why reaching towards mentors is appealing to her. And with Lecter, there’s also the sheer joy of winning; anything he reveals to her hasn’t been revealed to anyone else. She’s infinitely special and can reflect this success back to her real mentor.
There is also a feminist undercurrent to the film. Starling is a little bird, preyed upon everywhere by larger men. She is a surrogate for the female victims of Buffalo Bill, who likes large women whom he makes helpless. Instead she is a small woman who can fight back. She can connect to Lecter even though he terrifies her, because he is just the worst possible version of every man who surrounds her, looks down on her, judges her, and tries to victimize her. Like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, she’s the poor sexy little girl running away, who turns around and kicks ass.
1/30/2008
Apparently, Juno is all controversial. It’s unkind to people who were adopted as well as to birth mothers to create a comedy about adoption. There’s a lot of discussion about whether Juno is anti-choice.
Shut! Up!
This is where I part ways with many feminists and other activists; where they start criticizing or trying to restrict art based on content. It’s not better to object to a movie based on its supposed anti-choice values than it is to object to a movie based on its supposed liberal values. It all feels like Social Realism thinking to me. I get that a birth mother might not want to see Juno, and might find it painful. And I sympathize. But that doesn’t mean that the subject matter should be off-limits. There are definitely things I never want to see in movies, and movies I avoid as a result. Comedies that everyone loves that I’ve never seen because they feel like they would trigger some serious pain for me.
But that doesn’t mean those comedies shouldn’t be made, nor that they are “not funny” by some objective standard. There is no objectivity with humor.
The more touchy the subject, the harder to do it right. One of my problems with Waitress, which was basically very charming, was the attempt to have a humorous abusive husband. This wasn’t triggering for me; I’ve never been the victim of domestic violence, but it made me uncomfortable.
I didn’t come away from that movie thinking this subject should never be addressed in a comedy. I came away thinking that maybe it can’t be done well, and this movie definitely didn’t do it well. But who knows? If beautifully written and acted, maybe it could illuminate the characters without feeling way out of line. Maybe.
If so, some people will choose to skip that movie anyway, because it hurts too much, and it’s not funny for them. I get that. I just don’t feel like it should be censored in advance, and I don’t feel that people who do find it funny should be accused of being less enlightened or feminist or socially responsible than thou.
1/22/2008
Here’s a thing about “Blog for Choice:” It’s really important to ask what the choice is. What is being chosen?
I’m finally coming to terms with the notion that I’m aging. Like, getting older. Like, I had to see my gynecologist about perimenopause, because I was having some difficulties. The doctor ended up prescribing the Pill. And I said to him, “You know, I’m not going to be getting any of the ancillary benefits out of this thing. I’m not fertile.”
And he said, “There are so many benefits to the Pill, if it wasn’t birth control, everyone would take it.” (He probably didn’t mean everyone. He probably didn’t mean men. Or children. Or, I dunno, pregnant women.)
I’ve been thinking about that a lot, and then Blog for Choice day came around, and it all tied together.
Why does the Pill being birth control prevent it from being used more widely for other things? Okay, in some cases, it’s because someone is trying to get pregnant, but I’m sure that’s not what my doctor meant. It seems to me that it’s because there’s a stigma on birth control.
You would think that anti-abortion activists would be interested in doing the one thing that is statistically proven to reduce the number of abortions: Prevent unwanted pregnancy. And in doing the one thing that prevents unwanted pregnancy: Provide access to birth control and accurate information about preventing pregnancy. But in fact, anti-abortion activists repeatedly oppose these things. They spread misinformation about birth control, claim that Plan B is an abortifacient rather than birth control, promote abstinence-only education which has been repeatedly proven to be a failure, refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control and in other ways prevent access to it…in fact, go out of their way to promote unwanted pregnancies, thereby ensuring the demand for abortion cannot decrease.
This is because these activists are not anti-abortion. They are anti-choice. And the choice they are against is sex. Specifically, women choosing to be sexual. They are anti-female-sexual-choice.
I don’t think the anti-choice movement can ever show its hand in a more horrifying way than in its opposition to the HPV vaccine. Folks, they’re against preventing cancer. Think of that the next time you hear the phrase “pro-life.” Because, you know, the only way to get HPV is to have sex, and we musn’t prevent people from dying of sex!
Anti-choice-to-have-sex. Anti-female-choice-to-have-sex.
Slut shaming. Abstinence-only “education.” Lying about Plan B. Anti-abortion propaganda. It all ties together. It’s all about preventing women from choosing sex.
The Pill can help regulate perimenopausal changes. It can help with menorrhagia and dysfunctional uterine bleeding. It can help clear up adolescent acne. But access to the Pill for these things is problematic because the pill allows women to choose sex.
Beware the word “consequences” in this context. They want to say that the pill allows “sex without consequences,” but what they mean is “sex without punishment.” They want abortion to be inaccessible and HPV vaccines to be off the table, because unwanted pregnancy and cancer are just desserts for sluts who choose to get laid.
It’s so important to remember this. It’s so important to remember that only pro-choice candidates are actually interested in doing things that prevent abortion: Provide real access to preventing unwanted pregnancy through education and birth control.
12/31/2007
This week, I saw two movies that satisfy Bechdel’s Rule. It is remarkable to see women who seem real in the movies, and then again remarkable that it is so remarkable, if you know what I mean. The movies are a true-life drama (A Mighty Heart) and a ditzy, sexy romantic comedy (The Truth About Cats & Dogs). They share a deep feminist sensibility without ever doing that “I’m talking about feminism” thing (see: Something’s Gotta Give).
A Mighty Heart (2007) 8/10
When Daniel Pearl (Dan Futterman) is kidnapped in Pakistan, his wife Marianne (Angelina Jolie) and his colleague Asra Nomani (Archie Panjabi) work with the authorities to try to find and rescue him.
Asra Nomani has written that she is unhappy with the way A Mighty Heart is not about Danny Pearl; she felt betrayed by that. But the movie feels to me like it isn’t meant to be about Danny, who is, after all, off-stage for the drama being shown. Indeed, his story might be told, and told beautifully, but this is a different story.
I struggled with the chaos of the movie; a legitimate portrayal of what it felt like to be in that situation, or needlessly chaotic film techniques?
But in the center of the chaos are two remarkable women, and as I watched, I was struck by how not-movie these women were; they seemed like women I might know. They were smart, thoughtful, aggressive, angry, needy, analytical, focused, and compassionate. They were simply human. They were never “the women” cast in a movie to add a little color and costume and tits. There was nothing cliché about them. This was particularly striking for Marianne Pearl, who was never reduced to “the wife,” or “the pregnant wife,” and with that growing belly, that had to be a challenge to the filmmakers. Because yes, she was a pregnant wife, but also a journalist and, well, a human being.
And again, I reflected that this shouldn’t be so striking. That human women shouldn’t be such an oddity.
The Truth About Cats and Dogs (1996) 8/10
Dr. Abby Barnes (Janeane Garofalo) is a veterinarian with a pet advice radio show. When an attractive caller (Ben Chaplin) wants to meet her, she convinces him that she looks like her gorgeous neighbor Noelle (Uma Thurman). Complications ensue.
People kept telling me to see this movie, but the identity-switch plot made me cringe. I finally broke down, and yeah, there’s a couple of cringes, but it’s somehow nothing like the description sounds. First, because the self-consciousness of the cringey switch is a reflection of Abby’s own self-consciousness. Second, because there’s a crucial scene on the phone between Abby and Brian (Chaplin) that is so warm and lovely that it legitimizes the ensuing shenanigans, and finally, because the friendship that develops between Noelle and Abby as they weave their ridiculous lies is lovely and rare.
Seriously. Two women thrown together. Attracted to the same man. And…choosing friendship as a priority? Did you see that coming? And not necessarily, y’know, being martyrs, but recognizing the value of it. Considering it. Exactly as if they were human.
Because they are. Human women. In a script, get this, written by a woman. That includes female masturbation (and someday soon I’m writing a whole post on that subject).
Seeing these movies made me a little sadder about movies in general, because I shouldn’t be writing this post. It shouldn’t be, hey I saw movies in which women were actually friends. And human. And thoughtful. Two of them! Made only eleven years apart!
12/10/2007
The Namesake (2006) 6/10
Ashoke Ganguli (Irfan Khan), a Bengali professor living in New York, marries Ashima (Tabu) and brings her to the United States in 1974. Their American-born son Gogol (Kal Penn) struggles between his family’s traditionalism and his desire to assimilate. Directed by Mira Nair.
The Namesake is a movie struggling to find itself. Although I haven’t read the novel, and so have no idea how close it is to its source, it feels like a movie trying to slavishly follow a novel’s plot and pacing. It has a novels way of rising and falling around events, without a clear flow of character or narrative arc. I wanted to take it apart, shake off the loose pieces, and put it back together with a more sound structure. Almost everything about the movie is appealing except its inability to tell a story.
This is the sort of movie I see all the time and don’t bother to write a full review of. (After all, most weeks I see two or three movies and only review one here.) But it has some very good qualities that are worth discussing. First, of course, is the modern immigrant experience; arriving not on Ellis Island but at JFK International Airport, treated symbolically (if clumsily) in the movie as a sort of waystation; each time the Ganguli family passes through JFK they pass between worlds; between states of being. Ashoke and Ashima are always aliens in their adopted country, their traditions don’t fit in. And looking at it, you can certainly see how most of our traditions didn’t fit in at one point, and how the first generation born here struggled with a foot in each world.
There’s a fascinating anti-feminist feminist component about The Namesake. I realize that sounds contradictory, so hang in there.
In the course of the movie, there are two women in Gogol’s life. They are incredibly poorly-written characters, stereotypes of Evil Feminists or Evil Modernism or something else Evil and Female. Their evils are variously independence, informality, premarital sex, wearing short skirts, and disrespecting tradition. The feeling at the end of the movie, when the family comes to a particular sort of resolution but the Evil Women are cast aside, is of misogyny.
Rethinking my position involves spoilers about the end. Continue at your own risk.
(more…)
Next Page »
|
