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nothingneverforever · 1 year

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Marcella (Season 2,2018) and Dead to Me (Season 1, 2019): The flipside of two sympathetic, explosively volatile women and what it means for me

Before Season 3 of Dead to Me was released earlier in November, I rewatched seasons 1 and 2 and saw a crucial parallel to another series I’ve rewatched multiple times over: Marcella (only seasons 1 and 2 because season 3 wasn’t real tbh). I’m not reviewing these shows today, especially not Dead to Me because I can imagine that everything good to be said about it is already out there, and Marcella, well, because season 3 kind of made me not want to talk about the show ever again. But there is a small connecting thread between the lead characters Jen (Dead to Me) and Marcella (Marcella) that I’d like to talk a little about, especially because of how it relates to me and my expressions of self.

I believe one of the three people reading this blog has not seen these shows, so for some context, I looked for some description of these two characters where their anger or more socially unacceptable demeanors are described as their key traits:

Dead to Me

So, every aspect of the show is absolutely fucking phenomenal, but the writing and acting in particular are off-the-charts flawless. Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini play Jen Harding and Judy Hale, an unlikely pair united by a web of tragedy and bad decisions made by good people. Free-spirited Judy befriends cynical Jen at a grief group after Jen’s husband is hit and killed in a hit-and-run accident, and chaos ensues.

[...] I think the thing in Dead to Me I connect to more than anything else though, is Jen Harding’s unfettered rage. [...] She’s just generally over people’s bullshit and expresses it in ways most of us either can’t or won’t. I mean, at one point she literally bludgeons someone to death when he pushes her too far with his woman-hating bullshit. Is there a woman out there who hasn’t entertained this fantasy? Jen’s honest, naked fury is the reason I think so many have fallen in love with the show and with this character in particular.

https://www.scarymommy.com/jen-dead-to-me-unfiltered-rage-queen

Marcella

DS Marcella Backland, played with coiled spring intensity by Anna Friel – isn’t the chirpiest of characters. And nor is she all that fun loving or easy going, either. In fact, it’s a small wonder anyone in her life likes her at all, really.

Actually, come to think of it… No one really does. Her soon-to-be ex-husband Jason has now moved out properly and is due to marry his new girlfriend. Her children seem to tolerate more than love her. And she still runs about her place of work, barking at colleagues, undermining her boss and harassing suspects. Even her on/off boyfriend, colleague Jamie Bamber, seems to have a few issues with her behaviour.

In a way, it’s kind of reassuring to see that Marcella the person is still just as thoroughly brusque, surly and uncivil as ever. Just as reassuring as it is to see that Marcella the TV programme is still just as thoroughly dark, distressing and downright depressing as ever.

https://www.deadgoodbooks.co.uk/seasons/marcella-series-2-review/

So it is precisely in how ‘unlikable’ Jen and Marcella are that they charm and engage, where it is a welcome experience to bask in the fantasy of uncouth (yet highly successful), seething (but understandably so), feminist women. Aside from how they are generally in their day-to-day interactions and in their perspectives on the happenings in their lives, I am speaking specifically about how this ‘anger’ (generalising here because I can’t be bothered to explain all the way this manifests or all the different undercurrents, all the layers of the submerged iceberg beneath this anger, so just imagine a very very very deep and complicated and moving and sad and hurt compounded anger) led these two characters to committing irreversibly tragic actions. Jen, in a fit of misdirected hurt/rage/annoyance kills her best friend’s ex-boyfriend (as bolded in the text above), and Marcella, whose anger mostly seems self-directed, smashes the head of her loving, warm (and handsome hehe) colleague who had moments before just stopped her from attempting suicide, chains him to a toilet stall, cuts all her hair off and slices through the sides of her mouth (think Joker-but cooler idk I’ve never seen Joker or Batman lol), before living under a bridge for weeks in the cold. (See pic below for the shocking, terrifying iconicity of Marcella’s self-harm.) While the manifestations of these unprocessed, unmanaged unhelpful emotions are different, both Jen and Marcella are clearly volatile, “unhinged” women.

A few nights ago I was in the car giving my colleague a lift home after work, and it’s a long drive so we usually have good time to start and finish serious topics before she gets off, and this is a part of my week-day routines I have come to enjoy very much. So on this particular drive, my colleague gave a recent stressful experience in her life as an example of how anger does not sit well with her, both in her personal and professional selves, and how sadness is something she’d much rather languish in. And I commented that I am very much the opposite, not that I am avoidant of sadness, but rather anger feels comfortable and nature and very much like something core to who I am. I have thrown cups and bottles on the ground and my phone more times than I can remember, I have smushed my pen-tip into my diaries since I was a teenager causing ink to bleed out, and slamming doors is something so easy for me to resort to, any day any time. And I know that certain media makes it seem empowering for women, otherwise discouraged from expressing non-warm/loving emotions, to start showing these types of behaviours as a supposed reclamation of that which we have had to abstain from with much intentional restraint, but we know honestly that there are not healthy or respectful methods of coping / managing.

Back to Jen and Marcella, being me watching these two beautiful, strong, epic, swaggilicious women behave in the ways they do without thinking twice.... of course that’s immediately inspiring and relatable, right? Because it’s something I can already see myself doing, see myself being if given free rein. But my post today, the important point that has been on my mind for months, is why this isn’t okay. Doing the work that I have done (just for 2+ years but hopefully many many many more to come!!) and also just generally maturing as a young adult has shown me that it’s not cool for anyone to cause distress in others through such expressions; it’s not cool to “lost control” (itself a myth mostly), and it’s not cool to ummmm murder haha or to attempt it...

Which is precisely why Jen and Marcella had to go to such extreme lengths. Let’s imagine that these two women continued about with their lives as the cool, iconic, irreverent, highly intelligent, brave legends that they are, and express themselves with the rudeness/disrespect/”craziness” that they do, save for killing someone/attempting to kill others+themselves. If that was it, then it would really have been so, so so easy to continue to pedestalize them as the women most of us other women dream to be. It would be so easy to think hey I could be like that too, and in fact I should because I deserve to! And this is not wrong either. There are a million ways in which women can act that would likely benefit all of society, with such freedom of expression. But the peak of the mountain (murder, to generalize) should never be reached; that is not a height to be scaled and I think that’s why it was so important that it was. Do you know what I mean? What I mean when I say the shocking brutalities* are necessary is that audiences needed to realise that there is always a flipside to being this ‘cool angry bih’. And sometimes that can include awful awful awful tragedies. Me most of all, I needed to realise it too.

* - Dead to Me invested a lot into showing the hurt caused by Jen’s murderous action, where the shock and realisation of how immoral and unacceptable it was doesn’t come all at once, but slowly through the impact shown on many many lives. And ultimately we (and authorities) forgive her for it, but the weight is always known.

I might come back and add on to this in a while, but it’s a Sunday night now and as always I’m anxious about starting the work week because more often than not it includes weights I am not prepared to carry. But I’d like to say most importantly more so than the non-revolutionary singular point I’ve made in the too-many words above, that I love love love love love both of these shows. Finishing season 3 of Dead to Me last week, I cried on the way back home a few days later suddenly thinking about how sad and vast and simple it was.

Love you all!

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Update:

Omg I just realised something hilarious hahahaha I was scrolling through my few-and-far-between old posts and saw that I had very roughly talked about Dead to Me in May 2021, and omg... I am part of the fucking problem guys!!!

This is so funny omg.... ignore everything I said pls hahahahaha.... Killing an innocent man is not ok wtf!! Maya wake up!!!!

Ok but saying “you can die” when someone asks you what they can do to help is still quite iconic ngl.

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nothingneverforever · 2 years

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The Joy/Comfort of Rewatching Films/Series

I have always, my whole entire life, been a huge fan of rewatching films and TV shows. From start to end, or just halfway, sometimes watched with half an eye as it plays in the background and I multi-task some other activities in the meantime, etc etc. Previously, it would be more on whim, like when I need a movie to put on just for the sake of having some company / some noise / some entertainment. But more recently, it seems to have become a lot more, seriously, or almost obsessive.

It was a new feeling when the moment I finished watching Heartstopper (2022), I didn’t even give it a second of pause before I replayed the first episode from the start, and watched it through again over the next week.

I mean I licherally did not wait a SINGLE second. Is that bad? It is lazy? Does it speak to something dangerous, something lacking, about how instantly I need gratification? In any case, I Did That Sis. And it was great, and I cried again and always.

Shortly after, I also rewatched The Bold Type (2017-2021).

I think I first watched it in 2020ish, and as season 5 was not on Netflix, I had to watch it online and back then I remember giving up a few episodes in (without waiting for the final few episodes to be released) because there was some stupid drug use theme that was just fucking pathetic and lame and I did not have the emotional maturity to get over my distaste for their stupid lives. If it’s not already clear, I don’t even like this show that much dude. It’s much more than just that one singular drug use episode in the 5 entire seasons: there’s a lot of exposition about wokeness or ~feminism~ or other things that are just stupid and heavy-handed and entirely out of line with who i am, so, WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING REWATCHING IT OVER AND OVER, START TO END? Like, this experience was nothing like a Twilight series rewatch where each movie, each scene is giving and whole and evergreen. Rewatching shows that I never liked, I don’t like, such as The Bold Type often annoys me more than it entertains me and yet, there I am glued to my screen. So why do I do it?????

I guess the answer is not in the show or its content but about the ease that knowing what comes next offers. I know that my journey from happily relaxedly rewatching old shows transformed from that to a more obsessive, more intentional choice after I ended my first relationship. In the near-to-long period after, any and every plot point or conversation or characterisation in shows would trigger unhelpful, unhappy, unhealthy thoughts about the relationship and its painful end, so much so that my mood my day would be entirely ruined by one wrong word or one unfortunate trop I’d see. And so to avoid that, i stuck to the most saccharine PG nonsense (I love you Virgin River....), and similarly, rewatching old shows gave me that confident to go forth in my viewing without hovering over the pause/stop button or needing to immediately change the channel. So those are known roots to this obsessive rewatching phenomenon: the comfort I sought was much needed when I was a lot less able to go about my days as my genuine self back then.

But now, it seems to also be something of a test for myself. I like to see how much I can remember, I like to allow myself to feel new things and understand stories in entirely new ways.

There is no opening or conclusion to this post, just to detail this as an activity I have turned to once again for a new kind of comfort, different from what it was to me in 2019/2020.

And just this evening, today while on a short holiday in Perth, I rewatched Arrival (2016) for what must be the fifteenth time and again, I have a thousand new strands of reflection which I didn’t know would be possible. So I shall be re-re-re-reviewing this very soon :)

Also, the thirst for rewatching shall also never be limited to only movies and TV shows:

Fleeting film feelings forever <3 ... and love sports too so damn much......

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nothingneverforever · 2 years

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Candy Jar (2018)

Hmm I am trying to remember why at all I clicked on the thumbnail for this on Netflix much less saved it to my list to be watched, but I can’t. In any case, I clicked it, saved it, watched it, and cried through it (one part mainly).

I would almost always scroll past movies/shows with teens in them, because whether it’s nerdy teens (like Candy Jar) or wild teens (yea Euphoria can kindly go back in time and be unproduced and I do believe the world would be a better place for it, thank you), the viewing experience one can always trust to be absolutely cringe. So much of Candy Jar was, too, except:

1. Christina Hendricks is such a good actress <3 Love her

2. This scene (below), which stayed with me for so long and affected me a lot for how simple it was.

The same day I watched this film, I saw some Instagram stories mentioning the death of a young man my age, a man I presume I have some mutual friends with although I did not know him personally. Seeing the posts somehow hit hard, and reminded me of another close close friend (I don’t know if you are reading this anymore) who had lost his best friend in a tragic road accident. I can’t imagine how one copes with shocking news like that, and I have never myself been in the position and somehow, with the large offering of grief-related movies out there, this one random B-grade Netflix film so bland it hardly qualifies for any genre at all was the one that did it for me, that helped to put me in some state to empathise with the shock and pain.

Brief summary: one girl and one boy high school student are number one enemies, debate club/valedictorian rivals and they both receive rejection letters for their respective dream Ivy League schools on the same night. The next day in school, they head to look for their school guidance counsellor, the only person in school that either of them speak to/spend time with given that their busy crammed-with-homework-and-revision schedules allowed them no room to socialise with any peers ever. So these two teen enemies wait outside the office in silent, uncomfortable rivalry-fueled-commiseration as they acknowledge-without-acknowledging the reason they are both there, before their school principal reveals this:

I think because as the audience, we were so caught up with the boring dynamic between these the two students, caught up with the offering-nothing storyline that we severely underestimated where the film could go, that the shock of Kathy (guidance counsellor)’s death was truly an unexpected plot point. And that is how it is right, I suppose? We go along with our lives or whatever is offered to us and when such tragedy strikes, we cannot believe it because ... we just can’t. One of my friends told me before how she heard/read about how a lot of the time, individuals (in general, in the world) actually see dead human bodies eg. victims of violent crimes, in the woods or in the drain, wherever they have been disposed of, as such disposals are sometimes done in areas where there is some human traffic. Yet, it often takes a long time before the bodies are reported because as humans used to one kind of a reality, one where seeing dead bodies or perhaps recognising crimes and death before our eyes is not at all something wired into our brains, we cannot comprehend anything that veers too far off what we know. For examples based on the example my friend gave me (as I am typing this, I recall that she had heard it from some true crime related postcast I believe) - some people have seen a body and on some subsconcious level, acknowledged the sight as something unusual, before rationalising that it is just a mannequin, or a bag, or an animal, or something that somehow resembles a human body but isn’t.

Just like in this last screencap above, the girl (can’t remember any of the characters names like at all haha) instinctively rejects the principal’s explanation not because she’s in shock or denial but because it simply can’t be true, it simply isn’t true because what we don’t expect simply cannot be true right? How can it? Others are wrong, not us.

And so even though this movie was unoriginal, even though I didn't know the young man whose death my Instagram acquaintances were commemorating, even though I was one-year not in contact with my close friend by the time his best friend lost his life, all these incidents still shocked me and saddened me. I wonder when we will begin to accept on a daily basis that every day genuinely is our first and our last.

Rest in Peace to all.

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nothingneverforever · 2 years

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Home Team (2022)

I have almost nothing to say about this random movie other than 1) I literally don’t know why i watched it and what’s more stayed till the end, and 2) it was SOO nice seeing and hearing from Taylor Lautner again!!! I think he’s actually a super good actor for super real

Not just saying this because of undying Twilight stan reasons but seeing him felt so… normal? in all the best ways! His role was simple in this film and somehow it felt like some of the best supporting active I’ve seen in a while I’m not even kidding… and I don’t know if it’s because of Twilight reasons or because one of my brothers put on a lot of muscle and some fat weight in a similar manner in the last year but Taylor also looked like such a warm and familiar sight with his body and face and presence. Love him he rocks I am not kidding!! (And I wasn’t even the hugest fan of him or anything before because Team Edward heh) but jade pointed out that perhaps Taylor just has that kind of vibe…. Warm !!! Love!

But also ok fine let me say something else about the film for the sake of it - genuinely curious who it was made for because I don’t think it’s kids or adults or … hahahah literally what was this movie actually … usually there’s at leasttt some emotions involved in such underdog tales (was it even this idk) but why was my face literally just the two dots and straight line emoji throughout …

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nothingneverforever · 3 years

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Line of Duty (Season 6)

I was re-watching the last two episodes of season 6 of Line of Duty over the weekend and I suppose because for once I wasn’t focused on the plot points, something came to me with such great clarity that I was unable to think of the entire series with any other understanding besides what I am about to discuss…

First, some background: I’ve been watching British cop/crime dramas with my parents for at least the last 10 years, first on the channel called BBC entertainment on Starhub Cable, and then staying loyal even when the channel was converted to on-demand only BBC First, before turning, naturally, to Netflix. Honestly, name it and we’ve seen it (in no particular order) – Silent Witness, Wire in the Blood, Waking the Dead, Luther, Happy Valley, Collateral, Unforgotten, Broadchurch, Marcella, Bancroft, Liar, Giri Haji, River, Bodyguard, Paranoid, Doctor Foster, Save me, Top of the Lake, Safe, The Stranger, Temple, …. I’m sure there are at least 10 more we’ve devoured through the years but this is what I remember for now.

So this is the backdrop to where Line of Duty sits in our lives, the latest in a series of several very established dramas some of which have run for up to 23 seasons (Silent Witness), others which have spawned undyingly classic schticks burned into our minds forevermore (Luther), some which were so so so painfully, quietly moving that we were surprised the genre had more to offer yet (Unforgotten, River – btw, both of which star the unbelievably and geniusly perfect Nicola Walker) … What I mean for this prelude to show is that there was little we thought we hadn’t seen before, and imagined ourselves as weathered travelers of the genre. Then Line of Duty turned up with its 95% Rotten Tomatoes rating and we were hooked, obsessed, slain, to say the least.

I’m not actually here to talk about what has made all 6 seasons of the show special and epic and gripping and etc etc etc because we all know this as fact: the season finale of the sixth season (aired on 2 May 2021) attracted 12.8 million live viewers on BBC One, breaking some records or summin idk I don’t live in the UK so like… whatever haha and yea Jed Mercurio’s been crowned master genius storyteller enough times for me to not have to repeat any of it. I am hugely appreciative of the series though, don’t get me wrong – especially in seasons 1 through 5, there was so much that was honestly very thought-provoking and messages that were much needed and great moments of depth too and ya this series rocks la ok???

BUT

Also

Hmmmmmm

Ever wonder

Why

The men in the show look like this:

*crickets chirp* lol

While the women

Kinda be looking like the very most perfect specimens of female beauty every single second whilst on screen?:

No seriously I’m not making a frivolous point here, I mean look me in the eyes and tell me for real why the men are at the bottom quartile of attractiveness, while the women are at least in the 75th percentile?? Why the world b like dis where we gotta ignore this blatant fact and act like it’s normal and acceptable?

Tell me why the fuck women have to be good looking and possess some (HIGH) amount of sexual appeal before they’re allowed to be shown in public for their other, completely irrelevant-to-their-beauty skills to even get any attention, while men have from the first day of their fucking lives been allowed to go ahead and be as ugly and unattractive and neanderthal-looking as they are while successfully holding the attention of 12.8 million people??? Seriously think about how the unattractiveness of these men is purely incidental to their personhoods, think about how our minds don’t hover thinking precisely about how unattractive they are because we’ve been socialized to know that their sexiness is completely irrelevant. I’m not asking famous men to be better looking fyi, I’m asking that we begin to stop needing women to be pretty before we give them time of day. I’m asking to stop feeling such a deep sadness that womanhood is so so so so viscerally intertwined with sexual attractiveness that there is no other definition of what it means to be female in society.

I remember another time when I was struck in the same way, with this same pure disgust and unshakable depression, when we saw Aunt May from Spider-Man: Homecoming... I’m begging that someone, preferably someone who remembers that women exist outside of the pornverse, tell me why any woman has to exist in extreme forms of prettiness or beauty or sweetness or at the very fucking least some level of palatability to be seen? Tell me why this used to be the Aunt May we grew up with and loved:

and why this is how she is now???!

Again, I’m not asking women to stop being beautiful (cos how’s that possible right lol), I’m just hoping that it stop being a literal requirement and pathetically inescapable expectation that they be so.

Anyway back to Line of Duty, this realization came to me in a scene where printed pictures of past characters were pinned up in one of boards in the work rooms in the AC-12 office. Suddenly as they panned over each of these characters from all the past seasons, I realized with a shock that stark difference in what the women looked like vs what the men looked like, and suddenly I could literally focus on nothing else. I suppose because the pictures pinned on the board were all very close-up headshots that as the camera panned all I could think about was how model-esque every female character looked and how the men..... well yea you’ve seen for yourself lol

In any case, do watch the show, all 6 seasons of it lol it’s worth it I promise and production value is chefs kiss as fuck but just don’t ever forget that it’s a hellworld we’re living in, so do resist the urge to pretend like women just so happen to be beautiful sexy cute perfect while being respectable geniuses at their job and remember that none of this shit is by chance and everyday the pressure for women to be attractive to males gets more and more suffocating and the perfectly acceptable and ignorable ugliness of the men in this show is proof of just that!

Peace out bbs

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nothingneverforever · 3 years

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Women-directed/created/written films and shows

Hi all <3 I have reveled in relative freedom this six months as I continue to transition slowly into fully qualified staff at work so I naturally I have spent many many evenings watching a good mix of healthy rubbish and epic gems, and did my best to focus on productions with women-heavy crew and so here is a list of thoughts I had, put together mostly to make myself feel like I have some creative energy left within. Sending love to anyone who might be here :0)

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Set It Up

Director: Claire Scanlon, writer: Katie Silberman

Funny, I thought I’d written about this before but I suppose not.. I certainly have been toying with the idea of doing so for years though because the first time I watched it I already knew it would be a true and lasting favourite, and in the multiple viewings since this has only been confirmed.

Set it Up is respectful and fun, real and ideal. I love the female protagonists in Harper and Kirsten, who are assistant and editor of an online sports magazine. Because, I mean, I love sports, do you remember? Because sometimes I myself forget that part of me. I forget the uniquely obsessed 2015 – 2017 self who would read every single Dave Zirin article and who purchased every single one of his books, who underlined so many lines of Game Over: How Politics Has Turned the Sports World Upside Down and What's My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States, the self who posted the most fleeting of observations and instant reactions to the 2015-16 NBA season at https://lebronandsomeothers.tumblr.com/ and … yea, she hasn’t been around for a while. Anyway, I bring this up because in the movie Harper starts a conversation with someone she’s just matched on a dating app by asking “Any sport moments make you cry?”. And the answer is yes… Sports makes me cry: Kirani James’ 400m in 2011 in Daegu, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce’s 100m in 2019 in Doha, Clippers vs Spurs Game 7 on my birthday weekend in 2015, any of Julius Yego’s early throws, I could go on but I feel sad doing so because I wonder if I have the same capacity in me now to be filled up with such overwhelming appreciation for humanity that these moments of excellence and dedication would make me cry. All I want is to be someone who can still confidently answer affirmatively to Harper’s question. In many ways I’d like to be Harper too, and I think that’s what I’m doing with this blog that rears its sheepish head bi-annually or so. Keeping my ‘passion’ for films alive my blogging on my half-dead old-ass laptop = Harper sitting in the diner drinking free water finishing up her very first article.

Anyway, everyone’s acting in this film was so so so so enjoyable to behold, and Taye Diggs and Lucy Liu are both cutely perfect examples of what healthy ageing looks like.

One of my all-time favourite chick flicks, and most definitely my absolute favourite of the 2010s.

Firefly Lane

Creator: Maggie Friedman

Heh, I dunno, this was recommended to me because I have consumed much of the same ilk in the last year or so, and I suppose I don’t have much to say about this other than it’s nice, it’s cute, female friendships triumph everything, sexual trauma must last a lifetime and more, fathers have it about five million times easier than any mother, and the closest friends I have around me are ones I made less than 10 years ago, so I can’t relate to the romance of having real childhood friends but friendship is friendship regardless and I’m thankful for all of it. Also, have always loved Katherine Heigl and continue to love her lots even though she seems weirdly aloof and cold… it’s kinda funny lol

Virgin River (Season 1 and 2)

Creator: Sue Tenney

Like above, I have nothing much to say for this other than it rocks as fuhhhhhhh and umm Alexandra Breckenridge is so effin pretty I die…. Yea I didn’t know of her existence before this but now I do and I love her hehe

Sweet Magnolias

Creator: Sheryl J. Anderson

Yea umm if I had nothing to say about Virgin River then you can bet I have even less to say about this lol but it was fun and I loved it and uhh the guy that the main woman has a fling with totally looks 100% like Chan Chun Sing yea that’s about it

Good Girls (Season 1, 2, and 3)

Creator: Jenna Bans

I almost stopped at episode 1 (or 2, can’t remember) of this, because there was a scene that made me too uncomfortable and that discomfort was tied to understandings of real world circumstances that actually enable such scenes and exploitative and degrading and awful circumstances to playout but the need to find non-male-centered entertainment to consume while doing my daily evening cardio was too strong so I went back to this and I’m now almost done with all 3 seasons and it’s nice!

I can’t even remember which season much less episode this scene (below) was from but I’ve never in my entire life said the word “panty” because it feels disgustingly sexualised to me and my whole life I was conscious (thanks to the education from my mother) of the fact that it is used precisely to make girls (girls, not women, because this socialization starts from birth) aware that their undergarments have some sort of ~~*connotation*~~ to them and that there is something inherently sexual to something as basic as the cloth that covers our loins... Honestly whatever, I don’t know, you may think this is a reach and I certainly always have been made to feel like unlike what my gut tells me there is in fact no difference between “panty” and “underwear”, but thank fuck for this scene because I am now valid!!!

(sorry for the trash pics lol I took it while watching and am too lazy to go find the exact episode and timestamp again to take a proper screenshot)

Yea I call them underwear lmao sorry if that doesn’t titillate the senses of pedophiles and perverts as much as ‘panties’ does... I’m soo sorry!!

Nomadland

Writer and director: Chloé Zhao

This was a nice afternoon because it was a nice time in my life and not all too long ago and while that time has since passed I shall retain this memory in amber… I was not obsessed with this movie to be honest, mostly because I think I am so much, so often, desperately seeking company and routine and permanence and anything unadventurous that I simply could not identify with or even understand the colorful characters that were offered to us here

but I loved that I recognized Ludovico Einaudi’s iconic part to play in the film immediately because his style (which is familiar to me from The Intouchables – btw one of the best OSTs of all time imo!!!!) is so so instantly recognizable which uh I guess means I shouldn’t be too proud of myself after all because yea it’s pretty obvious it’s him for anyone with decent enough hearing I guess…

Anyway I liked Chloe Zhao’s red carpet look at the Oscars (2021) though hehe and congrats to her for being a winning queen

Dead to Me (Season 1 and 2)

Creator: Liz Feldman

I wanted to write about this properly, like very properly after the first season but I didn’t and I’ve since watched about 500 episodes of other things so I hope I’m still adequately expressing what I’d wanted to… I think most of all I wanted to say how relatable the character of Jen Harding was.

Okay so: Judy Hale accidentally kills Jen Harding’s husband (hit and run), before staging her own meet-cute with the latter in attempt to make up for the murder and slowly the two ladies form an actual and impenetrable friendship. Other things are revealed along the way, like the fact that Jen’s husband was cheating on her and also just a shitty crappy loser fuck (eg. his loss of sexual attraction to her because she had to be soooo evil as to de-sexify herself by getting a double mastectomy to prevent developing breast cancer as she had the gene for it). Then some time later on, Jen not-by-accident kills Judy’s ex-boyfriend, for whom Judy still had feelings etc etc etc it sounds crazy and it is, and the best part of all of it is not the absurdity and fun of the plot twists that keep coming but how absolutely and brilliantly real both their characters feel through all of it.

Jen has “anger issues” of sorts, she screams and curses and lashes out and hurts people close to her and says to someone who’s revealed to have hurt her “you can die” with complete conviction and honestly all of this couldn’t feel more relatable. And, yea, in a moment of sheer uncontrollable disgust for the misogyny she has faced her whole married life, she kills an “innocent” man. But honestly.... so what?

I like anger and I like expressing my wrath sometimes and I like thinking that I can make someone pay for the hurt they have brought unto me and I like later also feeling like ehhh it’s okay I’m angry at/with something/someone else now so it doesn’t matter anymore

Judy is nice too, Judy’s naivete and genuinely empathetic expressions of warmth and desire for closeness all make for somewhat relatable watching too if I’m willing to recognize the desperate-to-be-loved sides of me

I might get back to add to this some day, because I truly truly enjoyed this.More angry women on TV please!!!

The Holiday

Director: Nancy Meyers

Best movie ever nuff said! ^__^ Honestly that scene early on in the film where Iris and Amanda are chatting with each other in their own lovely homes over the home exchange website is so so so beautiful and pure

And yes I have seen this about 75 times so anytime anyone needs a line dropped from the movie to suit any situation, I’ll be there..

The Bold Type

Creator: Sarah Watson

Haha this was weirdly enjoyable, from the heavy-handed woke narratives and insertions that I could somehow ignore without too much irritation to the way-too-much-makeup characters in every single scene… this was nice. Some scenes where Jane reflects on and processes and handles Ryan’s cheating on her were actually probably unintentionally deep and thought provoking and I’m lazy to get into it but yea naturally, much of that part of the plot was relatable

Unbelievable

Directors and writers: Susannah Grant, Ayelet Waldman, and Michael Chabon

So this series is based off this article, An Unbelievable Story of Rape, by two male reporters but the real-life events of the article were translated onto the screen by two women and a man so therefore it qualifies for this list

Anyway what can be said about this series? The 98% Rotten Tomatoes rating should speak loudly enough. FYI my mother and I almost never, ever watch films or series about rapes or any kind of sexual assault at all because 90% of the time the direction is completely completely pathetically male and the sexploitation is so overt that you’d be shocked if the rape scenes from the show DIDN’T end up on porn sites because it’s so fucking obvious that that was what they were intended for in the first place. So yea we gave up on any show with this type of plot point (i.e. male violence toward women/girls) long ago but this was different from the onset, zero seconds dedicated to re-creating the crimes and focus only on the real and complicated and difficult characters coping with the impact etc

I’d like to focus on the character of Detective Karen Duvall more than anything else, because wow… what a character <3 I love her so, so much. I love her steady faith in Christ that could not be any more distant from my own stock, I love her patience, and most of all her almost-overwhelmingly, quietly powerful confidence… I know it sounds like I’m just stringing words together at this point but this is a character so so so inspiring and inspiring to me, specially, in my work now and in the future. She is steady where I trip and assured where I am insecure, and I do think I have a warmth in me that could one day be expressed as authentically as she does hers …

I suppose there are bits, especially certain heavily-charged monologues, that are very genre-specific, meaning they might seem out of place in a non-true-crime drama, but these scenes don’t take away from anything and to be honest when covering incidents like these (i.e. rape) it’s almost necessary to be heavy-handed tbh, so that no longer does anyone ever find it possible to NOT feel the outrage and pretend that these are bad apples in this world that otherwise is equal and fair.

Copying below a particular bit from Episode 5 which embodies the above. From a conversation between one of the detectives (Toni Colette) with Detective Duvall (bae):

Hypothetical scenario.

A study comes out showing 40 percent of female cops abuse their kids. What do you think would happen?

Forty percent of female cops would lose their job.

And that would be right. That would be appropriate.

Now, look at this. This is a study from Florida where, like, everywhere there are cops beating their wives.

Guess how many of them are still on the job?

Thirty percent.

Everyone knows, huge correlation between violence at home and violence against strangers, and even so, a third of wife-beating cops in Florida are still walking around with a badge and a gun.

I hear ya. I just don't think that's entirely Taggart's fault.

Well, it's no one's fault entirely. That's the problem, no one's accountable.

No one is looking at this data about violence against women.

I mean, what if men were raped at the rate women are?

What if Taggart was worried a stranger was gonna fuck him in the ass walking from the grocery store at night?

This man is helping us. This man is stepping up.

Okay! But where is his outrage? You know? Where is the voice looking at this pattern saying, "This is supremely fucked up!"

It is. But you sitting out here, screaming into the wind, does nothing to un-fuck it.

I like this because it’s obvious, because it’s decided, because it’s a misdirected wrath I relate to and enjoy being overcome by and actually find useful to keep one going and remind one of the important fights that must be personally taken on in life. It is precisely wrath that is directed not just at the root of issues but at every single remotely relevant piece in the puzzle that keeps the fire in our bellies alive I believe. Anger rocks! Outbursts are healthy! Go forth and scream into the cursed wind!

Most of all we (my mother and I) felt that this show was so so so well paced, so adequately representing lostness and strength by dedicating the perfect amount of time to everything. What the pace brought out was not just the immediate impact on these rape survivors - on top of how they cope through time, what was also a unique glimpse this show offered was how that coping changes and what might have started as seemingly well-adjusted acceptance can then morph into self-destructive, maladaptive practices, and then later end off as a mix of every imaginable human emotion and thought and behaviour. And actually, it wasn’t just the growth / changes in the survivors that we saw: we saw also how the two detectives sang different (personal) tunes as they went along the investigative process, how the sheer evil of the multiple rapes changed them and changed their working styles and changed the outcomes they were hoping for.

Happiest Season

Director and writer: Clea DuVall

All I can say is... how can anyone in this world NOT agree that Kristen Stewart is the most beautiful lady there ever was.......

It was a joyous and almost perfect experience watching this and I’d like to relive the entire moment again please

Derry Girls (Seasons 1 and 2)

Creator: Lisa McGee

Okay seriously someone tell me why this was the bestest shit to ever exist and why my mother and I were both sobbing and hyperventilating when James said “I’m a Derry Girl!” at the end of the last episode of the second season. More please!!!!!!!!!!!

Chambers

Creator: Leah Rachel

Okay this was actually so good (let’s pretend the last episode never happened) but I’ll need more time to get my thoughts together so do grant me that hehe brb eventually!

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Okie this is where I’ll get off for now <3 happy birthday leave day to me and happy June ahead I hope i hope i hope it’s great

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nothingneverforever · 3 years

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Captain Fantastic (2016)

Okay I avoided watching this for the longest time because I knew I’d hate it but also I just couldn’t find it in me to give a damn about an off-the-grid bearded man and his unsocialized children but then a friend asked me to watch it so okay fineeee challenge accepted or something I suppose

The first point I want to make about the film is also my main and most likely my only point: MALES. Literally – Captain Fantastic is only ever about males and nothing more. Middle-aged dad, elder granddad, adolescent boy, late-teens / young adult boy, fuck, we hear more about Noam Chomsky than we do about ANY female character. Males males MALES MALES MALES and that’s about it tbh

Hang on, sorry, the film is meant to be about the mom right? She’s the actual plot mover right? It’s meant to tell the story of how Viggo Mortensen’s wife dies, leaving things in disarray, it’s meant to be about her funeral and burial and subsequent excavation and cremation right? Funny that, cos the only time we EVER see her is in the few highly romanticized flashback scenes here and there, shown purely from her husband’s pov… hmm okay nvm

Oh wait, shit, the guy has three daughters too? Oh okay, hmm lets see, younger sister can climb roofs and stuff and older sister uhh says maybe 5 words during the whole film and youngest baby sis is obsessed with knives and likes to shank things I guess ? Ohh yea I just remembered - middle sis ROLLS AND TUMBLES AND FALLS OFF A FUCKING HOME ROOF and smashes down hard on the pavement driveway and just about nearly fuckin dies, but does it do anything for HER character arc? Does it add a single millimeter of depth to her personhood? Haha of course not!!!!!! Of course it’s a plot point that serves only to induce pathetically ego-centric reflection within her dumbass dad!!

Meanwhile, older son gets intimate shots and elaborate scenes where he confronts his burgeoning sexual desires and gets to scream at his dad to tell him that he does in fact want to go to college even if his dad thinks it’s a crap idea and we get to see him moved by the experience of his first kiss, get to se him passionate about his dreams for this life. Younger son too gets his screen time and we see how he wants to be free to yell at video games and eat sugared cereal and do everything a dumb little kid should have the privilege to do, and we see this conflict grow in him until it explodes and we are right there with him through it all. Each son gets their various “raw” conversations with their father, and in turn their grandfather gets involved BECAUSE HEY GUYS DID YALL KNOW, THIS ENTIRE FILM IS ABOUT MEN AND BOYS?!?!?!!?!???

Oh yea there’s a grandma character but it’s like she was literally created by screenwriters who sat together and said yo let’s throw out every single grandma stereotype we can think of, 3, 2, 1, okay go – gives good hugs, cries, loves her daughter, knows her husband is pigheaded but doesn’t really have the power to do anything differently, wants nothing more in this world than to be with her grandchildren cos she has absolutely zero fucking life or character or identity of her own… k done! Grandma character sorted, best movie ever.

By the way, I’m not saying any of these things because I feel compelled to or because I think society should have moved beyond giving so much of a fuck about a story written by men for men about men. These two points are accurate, but I’m saying these things because I genuinely could not find anything in this dumb film to emote or relate to, because I genuinely felt annoyed each time we heard about something from a male character’s perspective yet again, and because I could tell that it had no awareness that it was doing any of this at all – “wait, you mean our female characters got close to zero screen time and zero dialogue and zero character growth or exploration? Huh, I literally hadn’t noticed.”

I suppose to most people, this is a normal story. In fact, it’s not a normal story – it’s a cool one. It’s an epic one, it’s a unique one, it’s an inspiring one. It’s normal that we see a dead wife through her dumb husband’s eyes; it’s normal that daughters are stoic and predictable and unwavering in their loyalty; it’s normal that the male characters in the form of sons and fathers and grandfathers in families are given the most challenging conflicts they have to overcome and hey we’re all supposed to relate ok!!!! It’s the story of the human experience!!!

Oh lol also, the dad character uses the word “whore” and teaches his pre-teen children to parrot it as a metaphor and yea that scene was like at the 5 min mark or something so pardon me for not being able to give him one fucking second of respect or sympathy after

Anyway, I enjoyed this whole process, in case you thought the opposite. Watching the film and smashing this er, “review”, out in like the grand total of 5 minutes it has taken me helped bring me back to some parts of my 2016/2017 self that I’ve left dormant for a long time. Reminded me of all the things I am, and why. Overly-emotional hater and proud :’)

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nothingneverforever · 4 years

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The Haunting of Hill House (2018)

I remember sitting through the first episode of this series with my mom, thinking that it wasn't the best option for us to commit to, worrying that it would be a waste of our precious mother-daughter bonding time. The pacing of the first/second episode was too.. American, the emotional expressions too unsubtle, leaving little room for my audience participation, the acting too stilted, and the actors behaving too much like stage thespians .. and because I'd chosen the series after seeing rave reviews online, I remember sitting through the first episode thinking, huh, this is the shit people been losing their minds over?

And then.... suddenly, quickly, it became one of the most deeply affecting and disturbing shows I'd experienced, and thus eventually, one of my favourites. I'm deciding to write this now, about 9 months after I finished the series, because I've just started on The Haunting of Bly Manor, which is described as a "follow-up" series to Hill House. The narratives are not connected, but much of the cast and crew are the same, which is nice because I was so so so so so impressed with the acting of these specific returning actors in Hill House, and after reading a little more into the production process, I've been allowed to understand that the crew is fucking epic and genius as fuck too. I love this series!!!!!

The title of a Youtube video that I love a great deal on this series, by one of my absolute favourite film analysis video essayists, Ladyknightthebrave, is: Stretching Genre - A Haunting of Hill House Video Essay. And maybe this is what I'll talk about first - genre. I've never particularly cared for 'horror' because I'd rather be able to engage with themes and tropes I can relate to in my own life, stories that resemble my own world from my own ever-romantic perspectives. I've always wanted to delve into horror, to appreciate the elaborately designed surfaces as well as be affected in whatever ways by any depth of conversation or concept, but I don't think I've ever been able to achieve any of this. I've tried to enjoy both superficially (i.e. entertainment value) and also more real-ly many horror productions, but always left with a deep sense of meh. Crimson Peak (which I reviewed here back in 2016) might be the closest I've come to engaging genuinely with anything from this broad genre, but even then I think I liked it more for its kitsch value, its beautiful beautiful beautiful soundtrack, than for the genre-specific parts of the narrative. But I mean, everything makes a film right? The soundtrack and the costumes and the acting are the horror elements in themselves too, I know.

Even then, a lot of the simple reactions I've read for Hill House are ones of surprise, where audiences went in not realizing that a series with the words The Haunting of.. in its title would leave them feeling utterly heartbroken, distraught (sad), emotionally-invested as it were any other drama series. In that Ladyknightthebrave video I mentioned, at multiple points in her essay she says, simply, "hey,... I'm sad" when referencing a particular scene or conversation. And that was, too, my overwhelming reaction to the whole series.... I'm sad!!!!!

Perhaps I should describe the plot a little first.. so the Cranes are a family of 7, mother and father and 5 lovely children: in descending order of age, they are Steve, Shirley, Theo, and twins Luke and Eleanor (Nelly). Here is the official synopsis:

This modern reimagining of the Shirley Jackson novel follows siblings who, as children, grew up in what would go on to become the most famous haunted house in the country.. Now adults, they are forced back together in the face of tragedy and must finally confront the ghosts of their past. Some of those ghosts still lurk in their minds, while others may actually be stalking the shadows of Hill House.

And, from wikipedia, here are some of the notable reviews of the series:

Corrine Corrodus of The Telegraph graded the series with a 5/5 rating, calling it "the most complex and complete horror series of its time." Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com gave unanimous praise to the Netflix adaptation, describing it as "essential viewing," and stated that "[the show] contains some of the most unforgettable horror imagery in film or television in years." David Griffin of IGN gave the series a rating of 9.5 out of 10, calling it "a superb and terrifying family drama," and Paul Tassi of Forbes described it as "absolutely fantastic" and stated that "it may actually be Netflix's best original show ever."

Horror author Stephen King, who holds considerable admiration for Jackson's novel, tweeted about the series, "I don't usually care for this kind of revisionism, but this is great. Close to a work of genius, really. I think Shirley Jackson would approve, but who knows for sure."

Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, in interview with The Jerusalem Post said, "My favorite Netflix series, with no competition, is The Haunting of Hill House."

Due to obvious reasons I give zero fucks about what either King or Tarantino might have to say about, uhh, anything on this planet, but YASSSS RETWEET everything above!!! It is essential viewing!!! Indeed the most complex and complete series of its time!!! Unforgettable imagery!!!

Okie so now on to my own original thots...

My main learning was this: Horror, i.e. the presence of something horrific, for it's characters in the show/story, isn't about feeling frightened or them 'losing their minds' or being driven to questioning their own perceptions of reality or anything like what we've seen in the last 7 decades or so of seeing the genre develop and evolve. In Mike Flanagan's beautiful ode to Shirley Jackson's incredible story, we come to understand that horror is only ever about genuine trauma. I guess, like I talked about earlier, I never really understood what horror's raison d'etre was at all.. like... why?? What is the greater, lasting impact of having audiences shaking in their boots? What is intended by eliciting a gasp or a scream? WHAT IS THE MEANING OF ALL THIS?!

I asked, and I've been asking and asking for years, and finally Hill House provided: Horror is, in fact, about unspeakable pain.. Pain that has no outlet in a world that will only ever be skeptical of such experiences... it's about being genuinely haunted in such a way that you can never dream of stability in your life ever again; it's about developing into a closed-off, maladjusted adult, knowing that your experiences of early life cannot be related to anyone else's in any way, not even that of your siblings. I remember taking away this lesson very early on in the series, possibly midway through the second episode. Because the siblings (Steve, Shirley, Theo, Luke, Nelly) are all utterly flawed and thus 'real' characters, we're able to quickly why they are the ways they are. (Important note: the siblings are not flawed in ways that make them unlikable at all, or unrelatable, or downright unpleasant to watch - this is a flaw that other productions have definitely fallen prey to before in the name of achieving that 'realness' however Hill House judges things so perfectly that we are endeared to their flaws and never put off by them.) Their disparate experiences with Hill House growing up, their subsequent very personal meaning-making journeys (some looking more like denial, some resulting in substance dependency), their different levels of having access to the 'truths' about what went on in that cursed home, all of this meant that the siblings ended up, where we see them in 'current day', being broken adults with a lot of misplaced anger, unprocessed trauma, and resentment toward one another. It is the aloneness in all their experiences that is the true horror, and the horrors were a very personal, existential kind and so there was no room for mutual bonding and sharing until it was too late, until their babiest of baby sisters had lost herself to the pressures calling her ‘home’.

And suddenly, I realised: this is the true evil. Ghosts don't ruin lives by doing a good epic scare here and there or by turning your irises white by revealing some fucking scary shit: ghosts are seriously... so... fucking... evil because they ruin your whole entire lives..!!! Horrifying realities take the form of many different things, even if they all originate from one main source. The Crane siblings, as children, had to deal at once with their mother being predisposed to falling victim to the spirits of the house due to, as hinted, mental health conditions of her own, while also dealing with differently confusing aspects of a house and a home that taunted them by making them feel unsafe and secure all at once. Now I say all this from an.. artistic appreciation pov, because I am myself unconvinced that the 'supernatural' or anything of a spiritual realm influences our daily lives. Which is all the more significant, right? That a ""skeptic"" like myself (although I'm not an insensitive and stubborn over-rationalizing dumb male like Steve is in the show) could suddenly realise the tragic effects on many many vulnerable souls of a world that clutching on to its medical models and objective scientific truths.

From the series' wiki page: The Haunting of Hill House received critical acclaim, particularly for its acting, directing, and production values, with many calling it an "effective ghost story."

So yea... finally I know what that means. Finally I know what effect a ghost story can and should have. Finally I understand the potential of the genre!!! Sigh there is literally SO much I could say about how and why this is the best series in the world but maybe I'll stop here for now..? There would be no end if I were to discuss everything because it's one of those series that has 'easter eggs', in the form of hidden ghosts (visual) lurking in the dark or specific lines that foreshadow something else later on, but I've never really cared much to 'reveal' these things so yea, go forth and enjoy this best show everrrrr :-)

(For example there is a lot of discussion online about how each of the 5 siblings represent the 5 different stages of grief à la Kübler-Ross, with the eldest Steve being in complete denial that there was ever any supernatural presence to explain their experience, Shirley reacting with sheer anger to all around her, Theo bargaining her way through her own internal conflicts, Luke being surrounded by swirling depression fueling his drug dependency, and Nell eventually accepting the so-called inevitable, etc etc etc but this kinda analysis is a little too lowbrow and heavy-handed for me to get into so yea haha)

There is a specific dialogue that I want to reference however on my way out: when Nell's suicide/death is revealed early in the series, Shirley has the difficult talk with her young children about it. And these 2 simple lines umm basically summarize the entire plot:

Shirley's son: Why did she die? Shirley: I don't know.. I'm just so sad that she did

Everyone watching the show would relate to that immediately but also that sentiment rings more and more and more true as the episodes come to reveal what a painfully innocent and giving soul Nell was... :(

So sad !!!!!

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Edit: copying below my mom’s initial thoughts after I forced her to read this post hehe, because her words describe a lot of what I think and feel too, and because I want to remember our discussion and reflection forever!

Each of us - lives scarred at some time – in some private way – religion drowns it, cosmetises – but horror – is the Couch of reflection, reliving and something of a letting it out. Feeling again the horror/fear/anxiety/pain/aloneness of that real trauma – but in an shared room, even if only shared with an older, saner, wiser, learning you.

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nothingneverforever · 4 years

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The Good Place (2016)

I chose to start watching this only because I was at a very low point in my life in terms of facing a dearth of TV-derived entertainment, having just finished Virgin River (2019) and Sweet Magnolias (2020). Both Virgin and Sweet are not what you'd call .. uh... productions of any real calibre or value or perhaps worth at all, like you can be certain that no niches were filled when they were realsed into the Netflix ether... But they also happen to be epic masterpieces by sheer fact of how banal and predictable and PG and saccharine and inconsequential they are, the best of the suburban vanilla Hallmark Movie genre, and basically they rock af ok?? and so when I finished both first seasons of the two series I was left empty and thirsty. And it was in this lostness that I turned to The Good Place, thinking it would be as enriching in it's simplicity, as palatable in it's shallow distraction, qualities I generally look for in the fodder to keep my eyes engaged on something that isn't the clock when I do my daily evening indoor cardio.

So maybe I should first set the stage by establishing that I simply fucking hated this series lol. I couldn't get past episode 12 (I know, this makes it sound like i already gave it way more time than it deserved, which is the truth) of the first season, because once I decided I'd had enough, it was really fucking enough and I couldn't give it one more second.

As always, here's my shoddily written premise of the series; I don't want to put much effort into capturing it's essence well because idgaf about this dumb show seriously fucking hate it lol but anyway: Eleanor (Kristen Bell) dies on earth, and goes to 'The Good Place', where all souls who were much more good than bad while living on earth go to upon their death, as opposed to The Bad Place, where the bad people go. There’s some mathematical calculation for this heaven and hell allocation basically. So the good place (i can't be bothered to capitalize it every time i type it anymore lol sorry), is run by a head architect who has designed and is in charge of the neighbourhood our characters live in, and he has a female robot assistant, Janet, who is the omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient right-hand lady who can also be called up by any good place resident who has any question for her, anytime. Anyway Eleanor, after dying on earth, was actually sent to the good place by accident, because she was actually a completely irredeemable asshole but due to some dumb boring never-happened-before error, she was sent to the good place instead of the bad place where she actually was meant to end up. Here she makes a small group of friends, some to whom she is eventually honest about the fact that she does not actually belong in the good place, and it is because of this incorrect placement that the good place is crumbling and its inner workings are going haywire etc and everyone suffers from the consequences. So blah blah blah soon we find out that it is not just her, but also some other guy who is here by mistake, and so blah blah blah etc yupp

So here are the things that suck about this show:

So there’s this other guy who also doesn't belong in the good place and who was also sent there by accident, his name is Jason okay but umm it's complicated because the person he was mistaken as (and the actual 'good person' who was intended to be sent to the good place while Jason was meant to be directed to the bad place) is named Jian Yu, a Taiwanese monk. Jason however is a Filipino-American from Florida and I guess his character is meant to be a stereotypical 'White trash' character, but it's meant to be funny or some shit so we aren't meant to be deeply affected by fact that his life was fucking sad, like how his small-town dreams were meant to be comedic relief for us to laugh at how pathetic he is when ... i dunno, I feel very uncomfortable making a joke out of real-life situations that umm aren't funny at all idk whatever... Oh also the weird (dumb/shitty/lame/thoughtless) thing about the show is how even once it is revealed that Jason is in fact his Jason-y, oblivious, infantile, one-dimensionally-tropey self, the characters who know the truth still continue to call him Jianyu throughout...? But like.... he's not Jianyu lol?

So anyway, Jason is characterised quite disturbingly to be honest as an extremely immature dudebro, to the extent that one could call him child-like. In his unhappiness at being stuck in this weird world where he can't be himself and has to pretend to be Jianyu most of the time (which involves being a complete ascetic as well as silent because the real Jianyu had apparently taken a lifelong oath of silence), Jason latches on to Janet the robot assistant. He says she is the only one who has been kind to him, etc etc etc, and begins ummmm, falling in love with her. But because he's painted as a literal baby with absolutely no rational or critical thinking skills, him falling in love with her is meant to be uhh earnest and sweet or at the very least inconsequential and jokey I guess? But like... this isn't funny...? Not when sex robots are a real thing and will probably lead to the abuse, violation, murder of millions of women in time to come because men will be so used to putting their penises into awfully, scarily 'life-like' dolls whose limbs have been programmed to move and who can even utter words of affirmation to their degenerate users that actual human females will no doubt bear the brunt of being expected to perform in life and in bed similarly to our robotic counterparts...? Yea so the good place disturbingly first makes us almost forced to feel some endearment toward Jason for finding a kindred "soul" in robot Janet, glad that he finally has "someone" to "talk to" (quotation marks cos once again she's a fucking robot), and it's all very "pure" and "wholesome" at first because again, he's portrayed as a fucking kid (one piece I read describes the character as "a sweet ding-dong human"). And then suddenly, about one or two episodes after they fall in love or whatever, Jason says:

You guys have fun. This is me and Janet's honeymoon, so we're gonna go try and figure out how to have sex.

Yeah umm so once again, in case any of you forgot, Janet's a fucking robot. If I use a scale of human consciousness out of 100 where a regular human's sense of self and awareness and independent thinking and authonomy and whatever else makes us human is at 100, Janet is probably at .... 10? at most? So yea.... i guess rape jokes are okay these days? I dunno? Literally how the fuck were there 3 entire seasons of this dumb show after this

Anyway when I attempted to put in *some* effort before I gave up, realising this show wasn't worth my precious weekend downtime, I googled Jason and Janet's relationship to see if there were any other similar voices of dissent but umm apparently, according to the headlines of articles, this is instead public opinion:

The Unlikely Romance of The Good Place’s Janet and Jason

Why Janet And Jason Are The Good Place's Ultimate Love Story, According To The Actors

How Janet and Jason broke the infinite love mold on The Good Place

From these disgusting articles, here are some choice quotes by the actors and crew involved themselves:

And the fact that this should not happen but it does makes it very special. We think that their relationship is really sweet. There's something very innocent and real about their love even though that is insane

Yeah, I always talk about this whenever I get the question, “How does Janet and Jason work?” And my response is always — and I’ve thought about this a lot — Jason is slowly becoming a little bit more aware and intelligent. He’s evolving a little bit, and through Jason, Janet is able to become more emotionally intelligent. She’s feeling these things, whether it be good or bad, through Jason because that’s what Jason is. He’s all these different emotions that he can’t tame, and Janet’s learning that. They’re kind of evolving.

Okay so perhaps I should clarify that Janet the robot goes through a couple of 'deaths' in which she comes back as a rebooted version, and supposedly more 'human' each time. So yeah I guess it's okay to have sex with robots if they actually become 0.0000001% more human-like each time they come back to life though!!!!! Sorry for overreacting guys!!!!!

Seriously though how the fuck are they even using the word 'romance' in good conscience to describe the 'relationship'

Actually as I'm writing this I'm reminded of this video by Pop Culture Detective on youtube, titled "Abduction as Romance". Jonathan the host/video creator goes through various movies through history and from contemporary cinema of this unbelievably damaging and disturbing trope, where women are shown to eventually fall in love with men who have essentially, in some way or another, abducted them, annyway here it is if anyone's interested

youtube

I’m calling up this video because in the shows used as examples in Jonathan’s thesis, the female characters fall in love with the men just because the men happen to be the only choice they have. Okay I actually only managed to get through a quarter of the video because it was too disturbing and too awful to think about how frequently such plot points are used till today and how so much of the shitty love we see on screen is completely abusive in nature (he’s also made another video called Stalking for Love which I’m sure is as eye-opening, i haven’t watched it cos i don’t need to lol, i’m already woke thanks), but anyway the bit that I did manage to watch does remind me of this stupid love story from The Good Place that we’re supposed to be moved by. We’re seriously supposed to believe that Janet, through her reboots and whatever awakenings of consciousness she supposedly has, also has feelings for Jason just because he’s the only pathetic dumbass immature enough to think that he has feelings for her because she’s the only person who’s willing to listen and talk to him properly? When ummmm she’s only listening to you because she’s programmed to...?

Honestly I can't be bothered to talk about freaking Janet and Jason anymore

There are other things that suck about this dumb show

I don't know what kind of character development Eleanor (protagonist) goes through in the seasons that succeed that I shall never be audience to, but she remains unlikable in almost every way in season 1. This is even though the entire premise of the plot is that she learns to become a better person with each day, struggling to distance herself from her past (on earth) where she was every caricature of a selfish, cruel, demeaning, unlikable person ever. The few and short flashbacks we get to her earthly past are so annoyingly annoying that it made it almost impossible for me to continue to care for this charatcer her in her afterlife. I know, being in the profession that i am, i should have a great deal more empathy for her and where she's coming from (and i would if the show was not so fucking shitty), so i'm not hating on the fact that she was such a bad person, more so that the creators of the show did little to give us anything real to hold on to at all. Between boringly unreal dialogue, stilted acting typical of American sitcoms, overly defined character traits again typical of dated, unchallenging and unsophisticated American sitcoms, I honestly can't understand how on earth this is rated 97% on rotten tomatoes... I mean I guess if I actually read the reviews I'd understand but hehe I'm not about that open-minded, balanced POV narrative okie? :)

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Updates: Haha so ummm eventually I was too bored / curious so I decided to give this show like it’s fourth chance or something and eventually I ended up finishing the entire series and yes I cried as fuck and yes this series made me feel many feels and no I shall neither take back anything of what I said above nor clarify how or what made me change my opinion on it nor elaborate on why I ended up rather enjoying it :-) bye bye

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nothingneverforever · 4 years

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The Half of It (2020)

Okay so first of all….. this is the best movie ever in the whole world….

I mean it..!!!!!

I cried watching the trailer for it, because immediately it felt like exactly what I needed after Never Have I Ever (review <here> – unfortunately I will be referring a fair bit to the series in this review).

The Half of It (Half) felt something like an antithesis to NHIE, if you will. This is a teen love story that is pure in both meanings of the word: purity in its wholesome, innocent, raw, simplicity of emotion and feeling and love, and purity in terms of unadulterated content perfectly suitable for its context, everything so appropriate and coherent and in-place i.e. no dumb jokes where they are not needed (in fact no dumb jokes at all), no pandering to any audience, no desperation to appear logged-on by referencing any internet culture… Unlike NHIE which rams internet culture down our throats, Half is so much more relatable because of the lack of it. A timeless classic, some might even say.

Really… this was so so so … I want to think of another word for pure because that itself is such an internetty word lol. Hmm.. this was just so genuine I guess? It reminded me of what early 2000s indie teen romances were striving toward but could only ever grasp at in futility because they tripped over their untied laces in the process. The untied laces representing the pretensions the narratives often got caught up in, aiming for cool and subversive or off-beat but ultimately remaining unrelatable, unrealistic and lacking soul in all its quirkiness. Something that comes to mind for example is Submarine (2010) by Richard Ayoade? I dunno, I never watched it cos it was too annoyingly annoying for me so I don’t even know why I’m bringing it up at all lol, but I know that even as a teen I could tell that it’s self-awareness just translated as self-consciousness and what is intended as delicate and niche just ends up being too loud in its non-mainstreamness… do you know what I mean? That kind of movie where the indieness is too indie and its just fucking annoying? Again, I’ve never seen Submarine so I’m not quite sure I’m even hating on the right thing (in fact I just tried to watch the trailer for it and its so gross omg) but basically what I’m getting at is that The Half of It is absolutely not that kind of coming-of-age film. Because it rocks… af.

Right, so here are the synopses for this lovely film, directed by Alice Wu:

- When smart but cash-strapped teen Ellie Chu agrees to write a love letter for a jock, she doesn't expect to become his friend - or fall for his crush.

- A shy, introverted student helps the school jock woo a girl whom, secretly, they both want.

Gonna do some character introductions because I shall be referring to them specifically a little. Actually, you know what, maybe just watch the trailer? Because it’s just… fucking good… but also because then my review will make more sense I hope!

youtube

Do you feel the overwhelming pureness, the simplicity? I dunno, I don’t have much to compare this to, but are all ‘good’ coming-of-age / teen romance films these days of this mood, are they this solemn (yet fun…), do they all do their characters this must justice by giving us wholes of their lives, their environments, their homes, their after-school selves? I doubt it…

(later on once I’ve established more that is great about this film, I’ll compare it to some other works that the tone of this one reminds me of)

OKAY SO

Ellie Chu, the Chinese-American protagonist, writes hundreds of essays for basically everyone in school, for a fee, to support her single father who’s the manager of the train station. Then Paul, the guy, enlists Ellie’s help in writing a love letter to the girl he’s in “love” with, Aster the great beauty (who’s also other things obviously). So Ellie, pretending to be Paul, writes letters to and converses via some secret messaging app with Aster, who Ellie herself also has deep feelings for, feelings which only grow with these interactions. Paul, not knowing about Ellie’s feelings, is caught unawares when he realizes Ellie’s truth. So these are the three main characters whose lives and thoughts we follow, and my first comment is that they are incredibly compelling characters! It’s really rare for me to like one character in a film to this extent, but here I found myself enjoying all three of their journeys, found myself relating to thoughts, wanting to be brought along with them all the way, individually and together.

So if one had to simplify the plot, it could perhaps be described as a love triangle. And about this triangle, what I like the most and what I found to move the story along so well was how clear everything was to us from the start. From the moment Aster’s name is uttered* to Ellie (when Paul asks Ellie for a letter to Aster), it is clear that Ellie is in love with her. There’s no sudden realization later on in the movie, there’s no unfurling of sexuality or conflicted thoughts – Ellie knows her feelings (or rather, has known), knows herself, and so do we. And it was... really refreshing and nice? To immediately be thrown into the triangle knowing all the stakes involved, all the feelings apparent. And I liked this too at first because I thought it would be you know, like those utopian-type film-world where sexuality isn’t an issue, where Ellie’s love for Aster would be a problem insomuch as she was in love with her friend’s love interest and not because she was in love with a girl. Because Ellie’s hush over her own her feelings, her furtive looks (like in the toilet scene -gif below- omg fucking epic scene I’m cryinggg) toward Aster, and other hidden manifestations of her love for Aster are all in line with her introverted personality, coherent with how she’s lived her whole live in privacy and isolation. So the hidden sexuality part wasn’t explicit, I mean, because it could have been read as her just being a shy girl – and this is nice, it’s interesting, because again it normalizes the same-sex attraction by not mentioning it at all as the issue.

(Edit*: upon rewatching, I realise I was mistaken and we see and vicariously experience Ellie’s feelings for Aster even before her name is uttered! And it’s a beautiful scene... LOVE THIS CORNYASS FILM!!)

But later on Paul says something that reveals this utopia isn’t the world the movie is set in. He jerks us back to reality like this, toward the end-ish of the film, i.e. when he and Ellie have already become besties:

Of course I may not have the greatest legitimacy to speak on it, having very fortunately never had to be on the receiving end of something like this, but I don’t think I would necessarily couch this as ‘homophobia’, even if that’s the overarching effect…? Do you know what I mean? There’s so much more here, more in Paul’s immediate response that is both hurt and hurtful, than just homophobia. It’s about the that that he has never been out of this tiny train-stop town, the fact that his over-crowded house is incomplete and utter chaos each time he steps back into it, how he doesn’t have a second to himself each day to think on his own or to simply be, where tradition is heeded because it is the only thing that ties one to heritage, to any memory/experience of anything meaningful beyond the daily, dull grind in an utterly dour town. Paul doesn’t have the luxury of expanding his mind beyond this world, doesn’t have romantic hours in the blue fog like Ellie where she reads non-stop in her tiny booth by the railway tracks waiting to ring the crossing bell twice a day, where her father holds a PhD (even if they aren’t close or don’t engage in mind-expanding conversations, I mean that this definitely adds to the culture she’s been brought up in, which must be so so unlike Paul’s).

I find there are two key scenes which help us to understand this ‘homophobia’ of his (again, this is not at all an accurate or meaningful way to view his instinctive rejection of Ellie’s sexuality and feelings for Aster, but I’m just using the term to contextualize it as just one symptom of his greater upbringing).

The first scene is where Paul, whose family has for generations run a meat business, discusses with Ellie his desire to branch out into new, non-traditional sausage recipes. It doesn’t hit as hard out of context, so plzzz watch the film to get the full effect and get ready to crey real tears but this is what Paul says in a beautiful scene, and you won’t get the No Exit (Sartre) mention unless you watch the whole film so just ignore that first and I think the rest of Paul’s touching monologue speaks well enough for itself:

The thing about No Exit is it's like how what I really want is to run my own shop, with new recipes. And-- And FYI, taco sausage is really effing good.

Okay, but I'm the fourth son and my family's been making the same sausage for 49 years and it doesn't matter if they're going broke, or out of style, they're Nana's recipes.

If Ma can't have Nana, at least she can make her sausages. If I break away, it'll break her heart. And it's either her heart or mine.

So I stay.

The other scene that helps ‘couch’ the homophobia and helps frame that painful scene is this one below, where Aster speaks to Paul. After she’s had a random day with Ellie, driving to her “favourite secret place”, floating together for hours in a hot spring while they 谈天说地 (casually talk about everything under the sky and everything on earth), during which it is clear that they have some kind of bond that neither has ever experience and a deep connection that they both need very much, she returns back home and meets Paul and they have this conversation (I got the dialogue straight from a PDF of the full screenplay):

- [Aster] Hey.

[indistinct sports radio chatter]

- [Paul] Hey. [soft chuckle]

- [Aster] Do you believe in God?

- [Paul] Uh... of course.

- [Aster] Yeah.

- [Aster] Yeah, no, of course.

So this scene takes place beside a trash bin late at night where Paul is emptying, erm, trash. Lol so when Paul answers yes of course, that’s his answer because… of course it is. How could it be anything else? And so his rejection of Ellie, his leaving her in the dark upon finding out her deepest secret (of her feelings for Aster) hurts but it’s not cruel. It doesn’t turn our hearts cold against him, because we feel sorry for him. We do because we have to. I’m not saying we should award all homophobes of the world this generosity, but it sure helps us empathize with a lot that is beyond us. Things to do with generational upbringing and religious traditions and smalltown cultures and whatever else that I can’t even pretend is remotely relevant to my own life. But I just thought that his reaction to Ellie, cutting as it was in the moment, was the logical expectation given what we knew about him. And basically what I mean is that this is the best film ever because everything is real, and everything makes sense, and Alice Wu is the best person on earth, I do believe.

And I’m sorry to have to go back to NHIE lol (I mean I’m really sorry – so sorry that I’m even speaking of them in the same sentence when they are so different omg it’s insulting) but really, there’s no reason that Half had to be THIS much better than NHIE. They have almost identical central themes: teenage female protagonists with Asian-immigrant roots in an American town, both feeling the pangs of loss from having a deceased parent (Devi’s father from NHIE and Ellie’s mother from Half), both featuring many scene in a high school, both dealing with first crushes. And, okay, both have the exact same epically high Rotten Tomatoes scores (96%), but… that’s just an accurate representation of the goodness of one and a ridiculous lie for the other. Take my word for it :)

Okay I suppose this is a good time to mention the other films that Half recalled in my mind!

1) There’s a scene, (screencap below) where Paul speaks to Ellie’s dad, only because the latter is not confident in English, he speaks Mandarin to Paul who stands and seemingly understands every word, because the message is clear as day. This is a lot like Lilting (2014), and not just because of the sexuality and Chinese-parent aspect where in Lilting, Ben Whishaw’s character speaks to his dead lover’s mother and they converse, her in Mandarin and him in English, exactly like the shared conversation here in Half. But this scene also has, as in Lilting, the extremely painful longing for closeness of any, all kinds, the desire to be seen and understood and accepted, the desperation for a bridge between two who may be worlds apart. And Lilting is truly an incredible film, so my commenting on this resemblance is meant to be entirely complimentary!!

^ Half above, and Lilting below

2) In general the erm pureness (yes I swear I’ll start reading again soon which shall hopefully re-expand my vocab so I don’t have to keep using this same lame word over and over) of the mood of the film also calls up I Don’t Want to Go Back Alone, or Eu Não Quero Voltar Sozinho. This was a huge Youtube short film from years and years ago (2010) that I remember watching about a hundred times over, it’s Brazillian and under 20 minutes but it was so successful and compelling that a full-length feature film was later made in 2014 based on the characters and simple story that the short was based on. I don’t know if Half will grow to be that iconic, to bestow the world with oceans of fanfic etc, because now that there is so much choice and variety of entertainment Half may just be one of the many, but it feels like it shall leave a similar legacy. There are similarities in theme and plot, where The Way He Looks has a male-female best friend duo where they find they both have feelings for the cute new boy in school, oh and also the male bestie is blind so I suppose there is some similar comment on marginalization there, like Ellie’s immigrant status for which she is taunted for and which holds her father back from jobs much more suited to his capabilities. Anywayyyy yea just thought that Half reminded me of the same innocence and same budding feelings and forays into the world of a friendship being complicated by issues like sexuality and I loved being reminded of it!

3) Also, very unfortunately, I was reminded of this shitty crap I saw a short while ago on Netflix just to pass the time while exercising, All The Bright Places. I thought there would be, at least, something sweet in its “sadness” (quotation marks cos the tragedy of the plot is handled so fuuuuuuckkkkking badly) and maybe something moving even in its predictable contrivance but bro it was literally the worst shit in the world and I stopped about halfway through the film, actually right in the middle of this scene that I’m about to bring up. Fuck even just re-watching this clip has killed me. Fucking disgusting movie!!! Okay so I tried literally for an hour to upload videos (having taken vids of my laptop screen with my mobile, then combining clips into one mashup video because the app only allows for one video per text post, and then trying 5 times to post it without any success for some reason, and also being unable to attach it via the web version) but I have to resort instead to these screencaps, which, disgusting as they already are, still don’t do justice to the crappiness of the whole scene which literally went on for minutes. So anyway here’s the Bright scene that offends every bone in my body:

And here is the genuinely tender and sweet and moving and touching and appropriate and epic Half version, where the stripping takes up about 2 seconds of screentime, with no chest or shoulders or stomach on display because they, you know, actually get to the point of the scene, to the conversation and moments that actually move the plot forward and serve as more than just fodder for pedo men watching:

Could these two scenes be any more different, seriously? And why should they be this way? Oh, right, umm, maybe it’s because Half is written, directed, and produced by a woman (Alice Wu, who I shall write a little about later), and All the Bright Places is directed by a man? Sure, the author of the YA novel by the same name that the film adapts is one of the two female screenwriters who wrote this film but in a scene like this, direction clearly comes from the director right? Sorry if my fleeting brush with film studies years ago has proven to teach me nothing accurate but yea I do think, seeing a scene like this, that the screenplay (by the two women) may say, you know, Boy and Girl strip and jump into the water, but the scene above that we end up seeing is more the result of the director saying something like alright lads let’s really keep the camera on her for like a good minute, let’s just really take our time on this attractive young girl and lets make sure everyone sees how HOT she is but also how CUTE and SWEET ok? It’s just so so so sexualized like it is just me? Do you guys see it too? Seriously it’s so indulgent and exploitative and inappropriate and unnecessary and it SUCKS bleauughhh! Compare it to the exact same idea in Half. They’re both showing basically the exact same activity right, both where one teen brings another teen to their favourite spot and makes moves to jump in, while the other teen in both films is seemingly hesitant / shy at first about doing so before eventually joining in, except that for Half, we see about 5 milliseconds of the actual undressing. Because it should be obvious right? The focus of the scene is about the subsequent floating, about the intimacy of bringing someone new to some place special to you, about vulnerability and friendship and love and blah blah whatever and the stripping of clothes is but an obvious means to get into the water, so there’s no ambiguity even if the scene cuts from two fully-clothed characters on land to two half-clothed characters in the water I think fucking everyone would understand what had occurred right?! Meanwhile we are forced to fixate on Elle Fanning removing each and every single item of clothing from her waifish body, forced to examine the torso of this girl who is meant to be mid-teens?, forced to understand her as beautiful and desirable and demure and enticing because we see her through the eyes of the guy whose glances are as unsubtle as they come and IT’S FUCKING GROSS LA fuck. FYI like I said I never finished watching this dumb film cos I literally couldn’t finish this stupid swimming scene so idk maybe it gets better and it’s ending rocks af but yea probably not ..

4) Of course, Notting Hill (1999)! In Notting Hill, the beautiful cute iconic scene where Julia Roberts asks Hugh Grant for .. well basically asks if he’d be willing to take a chance with her, to work together for a relationship and he says umm nah and she says: Don't forget -- I'm also just a girl. Standing in front of a boy. Asking him to love her.

Similarly, in Half, Paul goes on his second date with Aster (after being wingman-ed af by Ellie) and Paul and Aster’s conversation falters (not that there was much momentum to begin with) and Ellie (who is sitting in Paul’s truck watching them on their date through the diner’s window lol) texts Aster with her phone (pretending to be Paul), and says “I get nervous when you’re close” and after a bit of ‘banter’, Aster replies “I’m just a girl”

Loved Notting Hill and always loved that funny just a girl line for it’s strange, spontaneous, unsophisticated simplicity, so again, as with Lilting and I Don’t Want to Go Back Alone, I enjoyed this reference a lot! :-)

Okay one last main point before I end off this longass ramble with some general points and then I’m done for real

So in Half, Ellie’s character is “deep” and “philosophical” and “smart” while such traits especially in teens would usually annoy me because of how badly they’re written, Ellie never displays these sides of herself intending to exclude others, or alienate or humiliate anyone for not being like her. While it is clear that she is different in so many ways from 99% of her peers and from her entire town, it never results in any kind of chip on her shoulder, and she proves to always see herself very much as a part of her environment, and so despite being the biggest fish in a tiny bond, Ellie remains relatable, likeable throughout when it would have been so easy to make her you know, too big for her boots.

This characteristic of Ellie’s, her ‘deep’ talk and how in her writing and texts to Aster, in wanting perhaps to convey her uniqueness or her smartness, the conversations read a little not-normal, in the sense that most of us won’t be able to relate to having dialogues like that, not because of the content but just the style being a little too not naturalistic, so some may feel that takes away from being able to believe in the characters as real people, anyway sorry for this longass sentence BUT this much-elaborated-by-me characteristic of Ellie’s reminded me of a description of Hermione from the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)! In the film, Professor Trelawney says to an uncharacteristically recalcitrant Hermione:

You may be young in years but the heart that beats beneath your bosom is as shriveled as an old maid's, your soul as dry as the pages of the books to which you so desperately cleave.

And, again, I think Ellie’s ‘pretentious’ dialogue (quotation marks cos I personally found it very coherent to her context and personality and was not offended by those trying-to-appear-smart bits haha) is what it is simply because she hasn’t had much beyond books and words to keep her company all her life. Her father’s love language certainly doesn’t seem to be conversating, and she has probably never had a good friend (or a friend at all?), and so, yes, there have probably been hundreds of dry pages to which Ellie has desperately cleaved through her years in Squahamish. And I think the point of the events in this film was to show that without having met Paul, without having confronted her feelings for Aster and getting to know her personally, without playing her sweet guitar song for her whole school, she would, as Trelawney accuses Hermoine, have gone on to possess a heart as shriveled as an old maid’s. The incidents in the film steered her away from said shreivelness and dryness, and toward a fresh, authentic, golden self.

OKAY I want to limit myself here because without one (a limit), I would literally analyse every scene and dialogue ad nauseam and ya no one would care for that so I just want to mention finally that the reason why this film is the best ever, why it’s so tenderhearted and utterly transporting, why its characters are so likable, why it was able to strike a perfect balance between all things light and heavy, why you can’t help but want to hug everyone you see on screen is because I guess Alice Wu is just an iconic genius! She shows different kinds of love (familial, romantic, platonic etc) and all the types of closeness and longing and dreaming in the film and its heartening to know there is a voice like hers in this mainstream YA world because, especially with things like NHIE and All the Bright Places out there, Alice Wu is clearly much needed.

Here is a bit of her director’s note for the film – it can be viewed in full <<<here>>>. I’m copying these two sections because they frame the film nicely, and again, just as NHIE was a semi-autobiographical tale from Mindy Kaling, Half is the same for Alice Wu, just that Half you know, actually tells a story.

And I like how, like she says, the film ends with our 3 lovely characters beginning their lives.

Okay so… bye! Hehe :)

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nothingneverforever · 4 years

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Never Have I Ever (2020)

Hey, I think this is my first TV series ‘review’ ever! Well I did do a basically empty post on Unforgotten (season 1) back in Feb 2017, promising to write properly my full feelings down, but that was something I never got back to. It’s still one of the best TV shows ever in the whole world, so hopefully I have time for it some day.

Anyway, meanwhile Never Have I Ever (NHIE), is… absolutely not good. At all….

I’d decided to watch it after seeing Mindy Kaling’s Late Night (2019), which was surprisingly enjoyable and moving even, and not just because Emma Thomson is one of my favourite celebrities in this world. It was a fun movie, and it felt different (from other similar films) ! I say it was surprising because I guess due to misogyny or something, I never thought I had reason to take Mindy Kaling seriously. And I am so sorry for it! There were parts of the script (Late Night) that worked out so, so well.

Back to NHIE! First, here are some synopses I’ve found online of the series:

- The complicated life of a modern-day first generation Indian American teenage girl, inspired by Mindy Kaling's own childhood.

- After a traumatic year, an Indian-American teen just wants to spruce up her social status - but friends, family and feelings won't make it easy on her

- Episode 1: After recent trauma, Devi starts her first day as a high school sophomore determined to shake off old labels and finally become cool.

So I guess my first complaint about NHIE is a bone I could pick with just about any American production from the last, idk, 8 years. You know how when (for whatever reason) every single character is ‘awkward’ or ‘weird’ or sooo idiosyncratic in general, they just end up all being… almost exactly the same? Where all the over-used tropes, every character’s too-loud too-colourful unique defining traits just end up reading the same way, to me at least.

Need all characters be so strong, really? Strong as in, overly sapid, full-bodied, clearly defined, distinct in a way that actually isn’t unique at all… I mean I’m not asking for more Jack Maliks (from Yesterday, as reviewed here by me) cos fuk dat guy omfg hate him and his dull ass lol but … do you know what I mean? When every character has traits that are so instantly recognizable, so clear to the plain eye without need for any nuanced observation or interpretation that you can almost like .. see the literal line of text in Courier font for the character description in the screenplay flashing before your eyes? Like of course as viewers we do want to feel like we have some grasp of the characters we’re investing in and relating to but I think if traits and personalities and mannerisms are so simplistic (even if they are diverse) that the characters themselves can ve perfectly summed up in a nutshell then that’s not a good thing at all.. I don’t know, it just seems a very American thing that I’m tired of, where there’s just a complete dearth of authenticity and complexity. Because no one in real life is ever sooooo distinctly themselves 100% of the time you know? Sure, I haven’t seen something specifically catered for teens in a while so maybe it’s just genre-specific thing but I do think there was so much more room for more realistic characters here.

Okay but still, 90% of all comments I have trawled through (facebook, Instagram, youtube) seem to be from American teens, talking about how relatable the show is so I guess high school teachers really be out there acting like caricatures of their TV trope selves and friends are all awkward af among each other and quirky at home and quirky on the streets walking home and quirky in the corridors of their school and exaggerate every reaction in every ordinary situation. But here’s the thing, I don’t think people are actually this way. I think many of them pretend that they are, act like they are. I think here lies the danger: where the more media we have portraying this kind of intensely saturated characters and personalities, the more young people will think that to be ‘themselves’, they have to raise the decibels of each and every trait of their own… I dunno if you understand me? I think it’s an insidious feedback cycle not dissimilar to the manic pixie dreamgirl effect, not in how women’s quirkiness serves to bring out dormant sides of men but just in how people (especially girls because due to society-enforced insecurities are more susceptible to taking influence from popular role models) have to BE SO *INSERT ANY ADJECTIVE HERE* … I don’t know… it’s just inauthentic and tiring. So NHIE is okay, as long as it is makes clear that it’s caricaturizing different examples of how some people may act in different circumstances… but it doesn’t do this. Aiyah I know I’m making a huge deal out of what some people will obviously just take as entertainment and gags for laughs etc but… it’s annoying to me…

Okay

So I’m not sure if you got this from the synopses I’d copied above, so, again: NHIE revolves around a nice girl, Devi (15), who lost her father (heart attack, in the middle of the school hall where he was watching Devi perform at her school orchestra concert) last year and is now starting a new year of school, coping with the incident by stifling every single traumatic memory. Also there are some random throwaways here and there about her having literally become physically disabled for 3 months after her father’s death where Devi lost the ability to use her legs (psychosomatic reaction to her loss) but it’s only ever joked at in insignificant ways so I guess… we shall never know that side of her grief? But all this (grieving over dead father, impersonal relationship with stern mother etc) is mere backdrop, joining other backdrop themes like being a shitty friend from start to end in unbelievably shitty ways etc – the main ‘plot’ instead is made up of Devi’s desperate quest to have sex with Paxton, a 16 year-old ‘hottie’ from school who she likes, erm, because, hot.

Yea that’s it…… that’s the critique. She’s a 15 year old girl whose everyday actions (for the most part) are calculated to lead up to her deflowering by her crush. Not to be a prude but… is this an okay storyline? Like are 15 year-olds legally allowed to have sex? Lol… Am I under any misconception about what teens all over the world get up to? No. Do I think that the law plays any useful role in preventing young girls and boys from sexualizing themselves and wasting their time on sexual pursuits when they can and should be developing literally any other interest and skill? No. Am I still unhappy that this was the main motivating factor for Devi to get up and out of her home each day, unhappy that for this reason (her goal of sleeping with Paxton), unhappy that because of this she morphed into the worst, most unreliable and unrelatable friend ever to her besties who needed her badly??? Yes!

Look, I’ve covered relevant topics in my 4 years of social work education to understand Devi’s actions as unhealthy, maladaptive coping behaviours – we see Devi exhibit behaviours / thoughts etc evocative of basically all 4 stages of the Kubler-Ross grief cycle, besides the final stage of acceptance: denial, anger, bargaining, depression. If we look at Virginia Satir’s coping stances instead, (different types of behaviours people exhibit when under stress), Devi again displays all 4 stances: super reasonable (i.e. over-rationalizing something so as to avoid confronting/acknowledging the emotional truth), irrelevant (distracting, changing the topic, inappropriate jokes), placating (self-explanatory) and blaming (again, obvious). So basically, Devi does, says and feels anything and everything besides maturely coping with the loss of her father. Is this realistic? Yes! Does everyone work within their own timelines before finally coming to that final Kubler-Ross stage of acceptance? Absolutely! And I am not at all rushing Devi to act ‘normal’ or to display healthier coping mechanisms. I just wish the grief was handled so so so much better by Mindy Kaling and whoever else was involved in developing this story - this story that is honestly full of promise. In other words, how Devi fails to handle her grief could have been written so much better, so much deeper instead of her failings itself being the central form of entertainment for much of the 10 episodes.

Anyway, also, besides it being morally not okay for a 15 year-old’s thirst for sex to be an accepted plot point (accepted on- and off-screen I mean), the actors playing Devi and Paxton are 10 years apart in age. Devi (reminder: age 15 on-screen) is played by a lovely actress who is currently 18, and Paxton is played by someone who is currently 29. So like….. she would likely have been 17 at the time of shooting? That’s just not okay and I don’t think I need say more lol. Shit like this, miscasting your key heartthrob, is just so… cheapo and so late 90s/early 2000s you know where the actors are so so clearly adults playing high schoolers, it’s just… cheapo af and absolutely inexcusable now.

Okay, everything up to this point in my ‘review’ has just been small here-and-there thoughts I had while watching it, and I’ve dedicated fluffy paragraph after paragraph on them so as to delay speaking about my main issue with the series: how the central trauma is dealt with... insomuch as it isn’t, at all.

And I’m not just saying this as someone who’s fresh off having just re-watched A Single Man, because they are obviously intended as very different works and intentionally made of (made with?) very different calibers but there are, surely, much much better ways to handle grief than what we are given with NHIE where Devi tries her darnest to have sex with her dreamboat bae. Okay so early in the series (second episode), Devi actually does get with Paxton in his garage after propositioning him (by ambushing him outside school after he finished swim practice or something), but when he takes off her shirt she’s like ok nvm I cant have sex now bye. So yea, it doesn’t happen. But it continues to be her main source of distraction from her grief, so it does remain a central plot point. Anyway the therapist character in NHIE is a joke, full of age-old TV-therapist lines like “So how do you feel about that?” etc, other platitudes and hollow-isms. She does try to tell Devi that it is not in her interest to be putting her sense of self worth on being “bangable” (I do believe this was the exact word used, cant be bothered to find the exact minute in the speicifc episode but yea trust that Devi and her therapist are candid with speaking about her plans for deflowering and Devi is never willing to talk about anything else but), but … I don’t know, Devi’s schtick gets tiresome, not because I’m neuronormative and want to see more normal behavior from the dear girl or because I’m annoyed with how badly she’s handling her grief, but more because of how badly they (writers, producers whoever etc) are handling it.

Like, up till the very end, we see her irrelevant stances or proof of her denial as fodder for lame jokes and utterly cliché dialogue, in what should be a genuine and ‘real’ scene. It’s annoying!! See below for screencaps from slightly over halfway through the FINAL episode of the series - in other words, way, way too late for a joke to be made out of how Devi resorts to the same poor coping mechanisms in distracting from her grief. I’ve screenshotted only parts of the convo, leaving out the parts where this serious convo turns into a joke about Eleanor, that itself pretends to be deep and serious but it isn’t at all...?

Devi’s friends confront her about the most serious thing in the entire series (her needing to go down to her beach to meet her mom to scatter her dad’s ashes, something she hitherto has rejected as she is unable to face this final step in accepting his death but masks with more irrelevant excuses), and she’s still coping poorly by ‘deflecting’, as her friend rightly says. I don’t know about you, but this was not a scene I needed jokes in at all.

But then, like… suddenly…. Immediately after this she starts crying and everything is good for the first time and there is acceptance within her and some semblances of healing of the fractures in her relationship with her mom etc… I dunno, it’s just not cathartic at all, because Devi hasn’t been given enough of a journey at all. The 0 to 100 thing doesn’t work here because it’s not satisfying (for us) or realistic (for Devi) at all.

Re: the grief, I dunno, if we look at another, equally popular Netflix production, The Haunting of Hill House comes to mind. Yes, obviously not at all a meaningful or fair comparison to make but again, if it’s about a family dealing with grief and loss, why can’t we expect that NHIE carry the same gravitas? In Hill House, we see our characters fumble and lash out and ‘pop off’ (a term used in NHIE which I found strangely out of place) at one another, often, but never are manifestations of their grief, never are clear mishandlings of their grief on display for our entertainment in the form of laughs or ‘cringe’ purposes. It’s just...not everything has to be funny you know? Even if it’s a teen show. I think there are ways, subtle ways, expert ways for something to be serious without at all needing to be heavy.

Again, like my gripe with the childish and/or cheap caricatures of human personalities which would be okay if this series was clearly presented as light entertainment to fill gaps in one’s day, not handling the trauma and grief could (perhaps) be overlooked if it didn’t pretend that it would in fact handle it. But everyone’s discussing the show as if it genuinely was an incredible take on dealing with loss and trauma, as if it’s contributed significantly to understandings of how a young, beautiful lovely ‘normal’ schoolgirl can live and learn through extreme trauma… BUT THE SHOW DOESN’T DO THIS LIKE IT LITERALLY DOESN’T AT ALL I FUCKING SWEAR…. Please watch all 10 episodes and show me even just ONE minute where we come full circle from anything, where Devi grows through her pain and where her journey is developed over more than just literally the last 7 minutes of screentime in the very last episode of the entire series. And I’m also seeing soooooo many comments from people who have enjoyed the series mention how fun and lighthearted it was, how comfortable they are to categorize the series as comedy and how great a time they had binge-watching it. But… it’s not funny? Like it’s really not lol… Devi is dealing with a most painful, urgent grief, having lost her father tragically a year before (and having to see him go before her very eyes). Her denial, her various-aforementioned-unhealthy-coping-mechanisms-and-maladaptive-behaviours made for painful watching for me. It shouldn’t be funny for us to see her abandon her friends when they most needed her; it shouldn’t be fun to see her lash out at her mom and dream of Paxton shirtless, these shouldn’t be comedic externalities of her situation at all. Does this mean I want an utterly dour, extremely humourless NHIE instead? Not at all! I just wish scenes / examples of her mishandling her grief were not the same ones that are supposed to make us laugh and think that everything is light and fun. Like, we can have other funny scenes featuring Devi instead you know? Things that aren’t actually incredibly harmful to her psyche.

ANYWAY

Some positives, cos I did enjoy this stupid series lollll and I did cry and I did laugh and I did look forward to watching it every evening while I exercised, okie? :)

There is one honestly genius thing that I like, where the genius lies in its utter randomness. The series (save for one episode which I will not talk about cos I don’t really give a shit about Andy Samberg and whoever his inclusion was pandering to) was narrated by John McEnroe, who, er, apparently is a well-known American tennis player. The only tennis player I know is Andre Agassi because for some reason in 2016 I borrowed from the library and read cover-to-cover his autobiography omg actually why on earth did I even do that lol I must have read somewhere that it was good perhaps? Anyway it is still recognized as one of the most ‘interesting’ or iconic sports autobiographies of all time so. But yea John McEnroe who?? He (John) is mentioned here and there as having been Devi’s late father’s favourite tennis player – which still does nothing to explain how and why he is narrating the whole series, which is great! I do enjoy the no-attempt-made to connect the fact of his narration to anything in the plot. But it’s not done in an annoyingly absurdist way either, you know? It just it what it is. I mean I guess if I’d written the screenplay which was in part autobiographical, I’d too love to have LeBron James or Megan Rapinoe narrating it, just because!

Ultimately, I think we must all acknowledge how fucking epic it is for Mindy Kaling to be where she is today. That Netflix approached her and asked for a story from her heart, drawing from her own life, and gave her the boundary-less freedom to write what she wanted is cool. She may not be the voice I think teens (or any audience really) may most need but they certainly do want this voice – NHIE is so so so loved and appreciate across the board – by adults, kids, diasporic Indian girls, normal non-minority-race girls etc, with everyone calling (begging) for another season, and anyway Mindy Kaling is probably about 1000000x better anyway than others who have been granted the same stage and presence as her before, like, I dunno, Michael fucking Bay or fucking James Cameron so yay her !!! For the sake of us all!

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update, a few hours later:

so since forcing Jade to read my post the second it went up, i have learnt that:

So there goes the one singular uniquely cute thing I did appreciate about NHIE then i guess, seeing as his random feature throughout the series isn’t unique at all... seeing as unexpectedness makes for a predictable part of his record, it is no longer charming to me. lol bye!

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nothingneverforever · 4 years

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The Tale of Despereaux (2008)

I haven’t finished this film yet, been apportioning and cherishing sections of it with my mom over mealtimes, but just like I did with Crimson Peak almost 4 years ago, I wanted to write a little about a snippet of one of the songs on the soundtrack and how it recalled at once a snippet from another.

In Crimson Peak, hearing Buffalo from Fernando Velázquez’s soundtrack got me started on a mad journey to find the as-of-then nameless Harry Potter equivalent it so reminded me of, and after a long while I identified it was Dumbledore’s Army from the Order of the Phoenix soundtrack.

When I heard this bit in Despereaux however, I knew immediately which Potter tune it was just like.

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(Only the background harpischord melody / notes from 0:25 - 0:35)

Do you hear it?

Yes, yes all uncountable my avid readers who are as familiar with each and every note and strum and hum of the Harry Potter soundtracks as I am.... those 10 seconds from In The Dungeon are indeed much like the iconic Peter Pettigrew / Marauder’s map theme from the Prisoner of Azkaban film! Do note that I say from the film and not from the soundtrack because apparently that repeated theme tune (or, leitmotif shall we say, haha...) didnt make it as an individual song onto the OST.. on the track listing there reads a song title "Buckbeak's Fate and The Marauder's Map", but I can’t find this online so I can neither confirm nor deny that it contains the tune I am about to link below:

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You know, I was about to leave this post at this. To link both songs up and say haha isn’t it cool how i noticed that few seconds of the song in my viewing of the lovely lovely lovely Despereaux and how instantly I knew what it reminded me of cos i’m such a mega epic boss Potter fan hehe...

but then!

A couple of days after while on the treadmill in my school gym, I watched this video:

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Harry Potter and the Musical Secrets of the Marauder's Map by Sideways, who does videos almost exclusively about film scoring/music as this is I understand his area of expertise and interest, and this was a really really enjoyable video. If anyone (literally... anyone...?) is reading this, I’d recommend the video for any purpose! It’s nice!

I guess i’d never paid much attention to the Pettigrew/Marauder’s Map leitmotif in the film - because how can I when the epically heartbreaking jawdropping lifechanging A Window to the Past exists? But this video essay by Sideways reminded me that the theme song played in a lot more scene than just in the one I thought it did!

Sideways reads the emotive themes and connotations of mischief, family and belonging into the song (since there’s no official name for it as it was not on the OST, i guess henceforth I shall refer to it as the Marauder/Pettigrew song), because of how the Weasley twins were the ones who give him the map and the Wesleys being hitherto Harry’s only connection to any real sense of family, and of course the map having been co-created by Harry’s own dad (oh but in the Sideways video, he fails to mention that Harry never learned who the Marauders were which is incredibly annoying and also means that this connection to family doesn’t really have relevance cos.. he didnt know..), and mischief because, obviously, the map represented and represents and will represent opportunities for mischief and adventure.

And I realised, listening to all this analysis, that perhaps for all that we are able to read into the Marauder/Pettigrew song, almost the exact same can be said for that 10 seconds in the Despereaux soundtrack too!

The scene in the film where those 10 seconds plays is, as you may have guessed from the title of the song “In The Dungeon”, is when our eponymous protagonist has been lowered into the dungeon (sewers), having been banished from his kingdom of Mouseland for not having been mousey enough. How he got banished, i.e. how we get to point where this very Harry Potter-ish 10 seconds of the soundtrack plays, was by ignoring the advice of his long-suffering parents and brother, by always having a nose for misadventure and a daring sense of misbehaviour... Ditto: themes of family and mischief, as in the Marauder/Pettigrew song!

Am I overdoing this and had i initially intended merely to say hey look they sound the same hehe cute right etc? Yes. But does my lame half-baked lazy connection of the two songs and themes and films and contexts make some sense? Yes i think so :)

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nothingneverforever · 4 years

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Yesterday (2019)

When I’d just seen the trailers and promo stuff for Yesterday, there was some great excitement in me. I loved The Beatles years ago, I mean, I really really loved them, I’ve got about 15 books on them, borrowed my mom’s credit card to shop online for DVDs of all their original movies when I was 14, etc etc, so Yesterday’s premise added up and seemed to look like something I’d enjoy: Danny Boyle, mysterious ultra-niche alternate reality in an otherwise utterly regular world, some kind of deadpan irony about the whole situation…

Then it came and went in cinemas and I never got down to seeing it. So I watched instead this film review by DazzReviews on Youtube, titled “Yesterday Missed A MASSIVE OPPORTUNITY (SPOILERS)”. It’s a short and simple analysis of key weaknesses of the film, being that its actual contents greatly pale in comparison to its great potential. Even without watching the film, I understood Dazz’s gripe because even seeing snippets of the film bored me. It is such a unique, and almost cute idea afterall: a blackout causing selective loss of memory in every single individual in this world (save for 3, later to be discussed) where post-blackout, The Beatles and other cultural/social phenomenon do not and have never existed. Our protagonist, who pre-blackout was a struggling singer/songwriter, then decides to release Beatles songs from his memory as his own, thus gaining global popularity and attracting immense adoration. It’s not novel, perhaps reminiscent of time-travel narratives idk, but it’s still fun right?

Yet even after watching this review video and understanding the film’s flaws and being able to imagine how disappointing the film would have been, watching it in full for myself was still an upsetting experience. Google tells me that Yesterday is of the ‘Drama/Fantasy’ genre, which gives me a good starting point for my critique: how utterly un-fantastical it is.

Our protagonist Jack Malik is LITERALLY the most vanilla, ungrateful, boring, not-alive, nothing-at-all, annoying, pathetically male (in terms of tantrum-throwing and ingratitude) character I have ever seen. None of this is hyperbolic, his character literally sucks so freakin much omfg, absolutely devoid of any redeeming or even remotely INTERESTING qualities at all. In fact save for maybe one scene (which I will talk about below), I don’t think there was another single second in the entire film where we saw him smiling. This is not to say that he’s portrayed as especially tortured or depressed in demeanor, merely to indicate his absolute dearth of warmth and personality.

Meanwhile, it becomes clear as the boring film progresses boringly that Yesterday is in fact nothing more than a love story. The cute Beatles twist is merely a device to show us how Jack and his “love interest” Ellie (inverted commas cos their love sucks omfg I cant imagine that ANYONE viewing it is convinced) were in fact meant to be, with Jack’s momentary superstardom existing to show him that all he ever wanted was his old life, the one with Ellie (even though they were never together because THEY ARENT EVEN MEANT TO BE IN THE FIRST PLACE OKAY….). But, just as Jack’s character itself is flawed and awfully written, our female protagonist Ellie is SOOOOOO early 2000s. Just think of the most typical stock supportive, sweet, pretty, unfailingly kind and patient female whose presence is taken for granted etc etc… So her stock sweetie pie female character coupled with the most unbelievably charmless and unlikable male character make for the most unshippable couple you could possibly imagine. We are supposed to be charmed by her obvious-to-everyone-except-him love for Jack, supposed to have our heartstrings tugged by the singular scene of teenage schoolgirl her standing by the wings of the stage with hearts in her eyes while teenage schoolboy him sings a most soulless rendition of Wonderwall but it literally does absolutely nothing. The means has not met the end! This is a grossly uninspiring love story and there is no fantasy whatsoever!!

Honestly how is this even a Danny Boyle product? But then again… Zhang Yimou, boasting the incredibly genius Raise the Red Lantern (1992) on his resume, also did The Great Wall (2016) so I guess even heroes have the right to bleed or even the best fall down sometimes or something. OMG WAIT I just googled the film again and not only is it directed by Danny Boyle but also written by Richard Curtis LOL wtfffffffffff okay this is the worst film ever seriously

Early on just after the global blackout thing, before Jack becomes the huge superstar that he does after his music (“his” music) is released into the world, when he first decides to use the songs of The Beatles, he is cajoled by his parents into performing for them in their humble living room. (by the way his parents are played by Sanjeev Bhaskar and Meera Syal who I have LITERALLY seen in about 1000 British TV shows and movies by now… idk maybe Yesterday was intended as a semi-ensemble cast film? Since there are other “appearances” by other known faces… ok whatever.) I guess this scene of him, superstar-to-be, sitting down at his piano in the claustrophobic living room with his parents exaggerating their domestic inclinations and comforts (by holding their cups of tea and settling themselves into their sofa-chairs etc) is meant to be comedic, we’re meant to laugh at how his parents have no idea the genius that is about to be released unto the stratosphere embodied by their all-great son Jack Malik, and it’s a predictable scene: his parents get disturbed by the bell and other things in the first 10 seconds of his performance, so Jack has to begin Let It Be 4 times over and never gets past a few lines… and okay, it’s funny because they are treating Jack’s “performance” as such because he has never before produced anything worthy of actual attention and has never performed in any manner that has demanded any respect given that he was an absolutely mediocre singer, but the scene is ruined by how Jack was written to have to react. Instead of taking it in his stride and recognizing that his parents are taking it so lightly because they have no idea how big the song is going to be because they have had no reason to expect anything great of him before, Jack throws a big fucking tantrum and asks why they cannot and have not respected the greatest song to ever be written etc etc… and okay, maybe this was intentional because we are to infer that Jack’s reaction is a projection of his own insecurities about releasing entirely unoriginal songs as his own, perhaps he has doubts about whether they would do as well as they did when The Beatles themselves released them, perhaps he has doubts that he is the right person to do this at all, anxieties and fears about being able to get away with it all… Sure, but I don’t want to give the writers the benefit of this doubt. If I were to watch the scene with my eyes and ears and not my brain, all I’d see is a dumbass manchild with a temper and ego problem incapable of accepting responsibility for the decisions he’s made, plus being unnecessarily cruel and disrespectful to his simple parents who want only to support him, if superficially. Basically, he’s dumb and the worst protagonist you’d want for a romcom.

But let it not be said that I am an extremist with my views: there was one sub-plot that showed promise and that made me think perhaps there was more to this film than the nothingness it had conveyed hitherto. When Jack played in Moscow, as an opening act for Ed Sheeran, we saw the haunting face of a large man in the crowd, carrying a knowing look in his eyes. It gave us a great sense of unease, seeing his concerned face contrasted with the throng of pretty girls screaming their hearts out (you know, à la “Moscow girls make me sing and shout”). Then later we see an English lady (played by the iconic amazing Sarah Lancashire who I know and love so so much from Happy Valley), who like the Russian man, carries the same speculation in her sharp eyes, as she sees Jack manically making his way through Liverpool, visiting key landmarks like Eleanor Rigby’s grave, Strawberry Fields, Penny Lane etc because, as she says to him later, “you cant write songs about places you’ve never been to”. So anyway, this odd pairing make up the only 2 other known humans in the world who for unexplained reasons also remember the existence of The Beatles, and thus recognize that Jack’s positioning of the entire Beatles discography as his own original work to be fraudulent.

So we as audiences who hardly care for this dumbass Jack but have still held on to some hope that the film would bring us some element of surprise and karma for this annoying fraud (whose singing voice by the way is literally the most forgettable ever), we would have loved nothing more than for Jack to face the sound of music (as Mother Mary comes to him). But instead of, I dunno, chopping his head off or outing him to the world, the mysterious duo thank him for bringing their much beloved Beatles songs back into the world, the whole who has forgotten them. They thank him for doing justice to the memory of the greatest band of all time, and together the duo and Jack dance and cheer in a side room minutes before Jack goes out to perform for the biggest crowd he’s ever played to. It’s just… lame and not even a satisfying easy way out. Oh remember above when i said there was literally only about one scene of Jack smiling, this was it. And he only smiled because obviously he was relieved at not having his secret revealed to the world by these two..... ughhh WE DONT WANT TO SEE YOU HAPPY!! WE HATE U!!

Okay haha I shall end this as I do all my other ‘reviews’… by saying that I’m lazy already and cant really be bothered to continue but shall conclude by proclaiming that this film sucked… not in a remotely camp or quiet or interesting manner either. It was just boring and bad and of great disrespect to the music of The Beatles.

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Omg I have just attempted to read some actual reviews of this film and some actually think it’s ‘charming’ and ‘surprisingly moving’ and that the leads have ‘chemistry’………….. that’s literally the fakest thing I’ve ever heard lol bye bye!

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nothingneverforever · 6 years

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Love Actually (2003)

Hello :-)

Had an essay assignment for a movie trailer for a narrative theory module i’m taking as an elective this semester and got to working on this, i can’t remember why I chose Love Actually but alas I did and here it is! I’m quite happy with it, only because I finally had reason to force myself to getting “creative” for the first time in so long. I’ll be more like myself again soon, I promise!

Essay below based on this trailer:

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An Ensemble of Love: The Same Everywhere, but Special Anywhere

A film must always be analysed closely, but perhaps especially so when it inspires continued vitriol from critics while remaining an audience favourite, a holiday tradition even. Love Actually, directed by British romantic comedy doyen Richard Curtis, was released in 2003 and accused at once of being sexist, unrealistic, and heavy-handed. Much criticism targeted in particular the too-large cast which many felt diluted the plot and confused the narrative by including “countless storylines that jumble together” (Hornaday, 2003). To understand why its plot is so interconnected with its structure, this essay will look at the genre of ensemble films in the context of the plot of the Love Actually movie trailer, evaluating its effectiveness.

Ensemble films have the ability to draw large audiences, with fans enjoying the sheer grandeur of having all their favourites share a screen, their combined star power possibly allowing other lacking elements of the film to go excused. Originally, the ensemble film was simply another way to tell a screen story, which was to tell stories instead. Ensemble films are multi-plotted, with a number of characters holding equal status (in driving the plot and in screen time) instead of one main protagonist as is commonly the convention. Their disparate stories and experiences can remain as isolated vignettes, or be woven together via connecting devices, such as location, time, or some kind of principle, to name a few (Sim, 2012). In Love Actually, the theme of love is used to connect the various snippets we see of the too-many characters. Academics interested in the ensemble film phenomenon have employed interdisciplinary concepts, such as that of the “network narrative” (Silvey, 2009) and “cognitive mapping” (Jameson, 1991), to explain the aims and deep potential of the genre. Both these concepts will be used to understand Love Actually, and show that its trailer alone confirms the aim of the genre and its narrative.

In the first 30 seconds of the 150-second long trailer, we see a montage of Curtis’ previous, highly successful films: Notting Hill, Four Weddings and a Funeral, and Bridget Jones’ Diary. Having these clips prelude the Love Actually trailer proper can be read as part of the very narrative aim of an ensemble film. Actor Hugh Grant is present in all of Curtis’ other movies shown in the trailer’s opening clips, which subliminally makes a greater point perhaps unintended. Ensemble films hinge on the thin connections between characters to create a world as a “web or system of interconnections”, ultimately presenting to audiences the world as a map of this system with its parts, and us, all interconnected, sometimes unconsciously (Silvey, 2009). As we catch glimpses of Grant’s characters in his/Curtis’ previous films, all type-casted as affable, floppy-haired and charming, the dots form up to let us on that the characters are, in essence, the same. Meta as it is, this places each character in a web of similar traits, creating narrative links between disparate lives and contexts; it is no coincidence that a clip of Grant, in character as British Prime Minister in Love Actually, dancing down the stairs with great pizzazz is the first Love Actually content to appear in the trailer.

An ensemble film hopes for us to see similarities within the differences of characters, and for us to be able to fit ourselves into that plot. The trailer does this successfully by presenting us with so many variations of the same character types, in different forms and worlds, that we cannot help but relate. There is importance in the ensemble cast acting as the audience would expect (Mathijs, 2011) – and in choosing the specific Love Actually clips of Grant that made it into the trailer, so reminiscent of his previous roles with their notable cheeky sexism, this aim was met. Grant remains as we expect, and perhaps like him to.

Silvey (2009) also suggests that in an ensemble film, characters’ moral dilemmas are parallel to each other’s in many ways. This can be extended beyond moral dilemmas and to plot points of any kind, celebratory and woeful scenes alike. Grant’s prior, recognizable characters as introduction to the Love Actually trailer does this, before the film itself goes on to do so. Using the theme of love to bind the many characters of the film allows us to see how each of their struggles mirror each other, and how each joy is unique yet so universal. For example, in the trailer we first see Martin Freeman’s character yelp in exuberance after getting the girl, and later a very similar expression of triumphant delight from Laura Linney’s character after she gets the guy.

The trailer, once it starts proper, is so hodgepodge that it couldn’t have intended to reveal anything about the plot at all. We see laughter, hugs, furtive glances, flirting, and other universal elements of love, shared between a mélange of characters whose names we are not told and thus can only identify by their actors. It is not only Grant whose performance in Love Actually is evocative of his previous characters as shown in the trailer – heavyweight Colin Firth, cast member of Love Actually, too features in Bridget Jones’ Diary, and is present in a Diary snippet at the beginning of the trailer. We see the eponymous Bridget walk up to Firth’s character and plant a kiss on him, very much like how later in the main trailer, Firth of Love Actually receives an equally surprise smack on the lips from the father of his love interest. To achieve full comedic effect, filmmakers would have had to assume prior knowledge in audiences familiar with his Diary character. Both characters of Firth in the two films are tight-lipped intellectuals, inept with expressions of warmth and love, and both shown here in the trailer as recipients of kisses. It is less important that it is Firth playing the two than it is that the prototype of this stiff, straight-laced character exists at all. In a world (and in a trailer) where so many individuals exist, perhaps it is the aim of an ensemble film to show us that these are not film characters at all but simply everyday characters.

Related to this idea of characters not as plot device or narrative entity, but simply a realistic representation of our everyday, is the concept of aesthetic unity. Literary critics ask for a strong plot to have aesthetic unity, where every element – every scene, every event – of a plot be meaningful to the entirety of the story (Talib, 2018). Love Actually, and by extension its trailer, definitely does not possess any of this unity. How do we judge an ensemble cast film where there is no main plot, simply uncountable sub plots, and sub-sub plots? We get no glimpse into any aspect of the greater plot from the trailer, no hint that the events are consequentially linked in any way other than through the theme of love. While plot-wise this reveals nothing, the trailer knowingly addresses this by overemphasizing love, intentionally offering nothing else.

The voice-over narrator of the trailer, in a predictably deep and camp timbre, invites us to join the “unforgettable filmmaking team” and “take everything we know about love and multiply it by eight” (Youtube Movies, 2014). After touting its filmmaking team, the narrator individually names eight of the film’s most bankable stars, unsubtly selling their star power for maximum appeal. This voiceover narration does two things: firstly, it confirms that the modern ensemble film relies on its starry ensemble (cast and crew in this case) to appeal to a diverse audience (Harrison, 2013). Secondly, by mentioning only love, ad nauseam, in all its “euphoria, hysteria and humiliation” (Youtube Movies, 2014), the trailer makes it clear that this is the only plot of the film: the theme of love, nothing more. This is convenient as it then does not have to subject itself to the rules other films do – if the plot is merely about love, then the events don’t matter, as long as the spirit shines through. If the characters aren’t developed enough (and they most certainly are not in this trailer, or in the film), it can be excused as the film wished to achieve that in the first place. It’s lazy, and smart, to set out to produce a film simply about a most universal theme of which a hundred events and actions could be said to embody. Ultimately, the saccharine and perfect world of Love Actually simplifies objectives, as ensemble films do, by “advocating utopian messages” (Silvey, 2009).

Silvey (2009) also suggests that with all its simplistic and superficial realities, ensemble films and their “network narratives” fall short as genuine differences and complexities are erased. Perhaps this is why critics dig in to Love Actually with such relish – they must know that love is not actually all that we need, contrary to what the trailer’s narrator attempts to lull us into believing. Yet using love as a universal plot, the film and trailer attempt to make it the one thing that connects us all. Using the concept of cognitive mapping as exposited by Jameson (1991), love in fact does successfully allow us to “locate” ourselves and our identifies, to think of ourselves as part of a greater network in the “impossible totality of the contemporary world system”. With this trailer, Curtis and team attempt to show us that love is the same everywhere – it is in Love Actually as it is in Notting Hill, Four Weddings and a Funeral and Bridget Jones’ Diary – but that love still remains special, anywhere.

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Bibliography

Harrison, M. (2013, February 12). Why are ensemble casts so popular in films? Retrieved from Den of Geek: https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/24418/why-are-ensemble-casts-so-popular-in-films

Hornaday, A. (2003, November 7). 'Love Actually': Romance Submerged in Sugar. Retrieved from The Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2003/11/07/AR2005033115760.html

Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press.

Mathijs, E. (2011). Referential acting and the ensemble cast. Screen, 52(1), 89-96.

Silvey, V. (2009). Not Just Ensemble Films: Six Degrees, Webs, Multiplexity and the Rise of Network Narratives. FORUM: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture and the Arts(8).

Sim, L. (2012, December). Ensemble Film, Postmodernity and Moral Mapping. Retrieved from Screening the Past: http://www.screeningthepast.com/2012/12/ensemble-film-postmodernity-and-moral-mapping/

Talib, I. S. (2018). Chapter 6: Plot. In I. S. Talib, Narrative Theory: A Brief Introduction.

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