![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI recently watched Hanna, because it fit with my brother and my not-very-overlapping movie tastes. An action thriller (good for him!) with a non-sexualized teenage girl protagonist (hooray for me!), which fortunately turned out to be excellent, if kind of trippy.
The action begins in the frozen arctic, where Hanna’s ex-CIA father trains her in all his ex-CIA know-how; continues once Hanna has been whisked away to a labyrinthine top secret base; and then follows Hanna’s road trip adventures, where it quickly becomes clear that her father’s years of intensive training totally failed to teach Hanna the most basic ability of spycraft: being unnoticeable.
Hanna is not merely not unnoticeable, but endearingly incapable of fitting in at all. At one point, a boy is about to kiss her, and she says, “Kissing requires a total of 34 facial muscles, and 112 postural muscles. The most important muscle involved is the orbicularis oris muscle, because it is used to pucker the lips.”
Oh Hanna. As if that line weren’t enough, she proceeds to deck him. It’s probably just as well for him, though, because people who spend too much time with Hanna tend to end up running afoul of the CIA and getting killed…
This leads me to one question the movie leaves open, which is driving me mad. Hanna spends a large portion of the movie traveling about with a dysfunctional British family with the world’s most obnoxious daughter. The husband and wife constantly snipe, the daughter is forever rolling her eyes, but Hanna is nonetheless enchanted: her childhood was so devoid of warmth and fun that the family delights her.
Eventually, of course, the family fall into the hands of the CIA, and we see them being questioned. But the movie just drops the plot thread! Perhaps we’re supposed to assume they were killed? Maybe the director felt a big squeamish about killing off the kids on screen? But I want to know...
And then Hanna confronts the big bad in a dilapidated fairy-tale theme park, which is satisfyingly surreal. Hanna is not a retelling of any particular fairy tale, but there is a sense of fairy tale hanging over the whole story: Hanna’s only storybook, for instance, is a German book of Marchen. There’s a sense of eeriness, almost a fascination with the grotesque, that hangs over the story: it’s reminiscent Twin Peaks if it’s like anything, but it’s really not much like anything else.
***
Incidentally, if you have any ideas for good movies that my brother and I could watch over Christmas, please share. So far I have Iron Man 3 and perhaps The Incredible Hulk, because Marvel movies also fall into that amorphous category of “movies we might both enjoy.” Maybe Skyfall?
The action begins in the frozen arctic, where Hanna’s ex-CIA father trains her in all his ex-CIA know-how; continues once Hanna has been whisked away to a labyrinthine top secret base; and then follows Hanna’s road trip adventures, where it quickly becomes clear that her father’s years of intensive training totally failed to teach Hanna the most basic ability of spycraft: being unnoticeable.
Hanna is not merely not unnoticeable, but endearingly incapable of fitting in at all. At one point, a boy is about to kiss her, and she says, “Kissing requires a total of 34 facial muscles, and 112 postural muscles. The most important muscle involved is the orbicularis oris muscle, because it is used to pucker the lips.”
Oh Hanna. As if that line weren’t enough, she proceeds to deck him. It’s probably just as well for him, though, because people who spend too much time with Hanna tend to end up running afoul of the CIA and getting killed…
This leads me to one question the movie leaves open, which is driving me mad. Hanna spends a large portion of the movie traveling about with a dysfunctional British family with the world’s most obnoxious daughter. The husband and wife constantly snipe, the daughter is forever rolling her eyes, but Hanna is nonetheless enchanted: her childhood was so devoid of warmth and fun that the family delights her.
Eventually, of course, the family fall into the hands of the CIA, and we see them being questioned. But the movie just drops the plot thread! Perhaps we’re supposed to assume they were killed? Maybe the director felt a big squeamish about killing off the kids on screen? But I want to know...
And then Hanna confronts the big bad in a dilapidated fairy-tale theme park, which is satisfyingly surreal. Hanna is not a retelling of any particular fairy tale, but there is a sense of fairy tale hanging over the whole story: Hanna’s only storybook, for instance, is a German book of Marchen. There’s a sense of eeriness, almost a fascination with the grotesque, that hangs over the story: it’s reminiscent Twin Peaks if it’s like anything, but it’s really not much like anything else.
***
Incidentally, if you have any ideas for good movies that my brother and I could watch over Christmas, please share. So far I have Iron Man 3 and perhaps The Incredible Hulk, because Marvel movies also fall into that amorphous category of “movies we might both enjoy.” Maybe Skyfall?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-12-08 07:00 am (UTC)Drive-by comment: I quite liked "Salt," the Angelina Jolie action/thriller. It's not the best movie of all time, but there are some cool action sequences and interesting plot twists, and the script was originally written for a male protagonist, so there's no sexualization. And as usual, Angelina is great in it.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-08 04:59 pm (UTC)On the other hand, I've heard very mixed reviews of Tomb Raider, and she is more sexualized in that (that costume!), so maybe not.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-08 07:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-08 02:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-08 04:14 pm (UTC)And I got your Eastern Towhee card yesterday! It is the perfect card for me. "Drink your teeeeeeea!!"
no subject
Date: 2013-12-16 01:08 pm (UTC)And what was the dad thinking, not, um, better socializing his kid? Like, what's the point of giving her a cover story without teaching her that you don't just **recite** it? <--meaning, now, Hanna's dad and Hanna (not the dad in the dysfunctional family)
I can quibble about things I quite enjoy, and that's the case with this movie. I really enjoyed it, but I do have quibbles. As the ninja girl points out, what Hanna knows and doesn't know, and her degree of knowledge about human interaction, seems to vary scene by scene. I mean, the scene where she kills Mary-from-Downton-Abbey shows amazing ability to manipulate people: cry like a helpless child, triggering desire to comfort, then get the person in a death-grip hug 'n' snap that neck! --That was an impressive and chilling bit of emotional manipulation. And yet then for the rest of the movie, she's totally without guile.
Also, pretty as it is--and it's very pretty--I always get frustrated when action heroines wander around with long, loose hair. It tangles in everything! It gets in your eyes!
I actually liked the obnoxious daughter, especially at the first, when she up and decides that Hanna is a--what nationality was it? Romanian or Bulgarian or something?--pop star.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-16 07:13 pm (UTC)I think maybe after moving to the middle of nowhere, her dad was so busy training her to fight the CIA that he sort of forgot that most of the world wasn't actually full of spies and assassins. So he trained her how to deal with those (although "recite your whole backstory" still wouldn't work very well for them - but then she just doesn't speak at all while she's in custody, I think?), but she has no idea how to deal with normal people.
As soon as Mary-from-Downton-Abbey walked in, I knew it was going to go badly. It's so clear her hair is dyed! Her eyebrows are jet black! I wonder if the big bad did that on purpose: maybe she wanted to see what Hanna could do, so she set it up so Hanna could get away.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-17 12:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-08 05:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-08 06:01 pm (UTC)It was such a fun movie. In the theatre, people were chuckling the whole way through.
I loved how character-driven it was. There's backstory! And heart!
I loved the way that it successfully integrated modern values into the Bond franchise. And that it celebrated all of the the Bond traditions and the silliness with loads of affection and good humour.
That's a lot of love! ;) The writing in that movie was really, really well done.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-09 04:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-11 12:59 am (UTC)I haven't seen Bright Star, but I'd like to at some point.
Yeah, Ben Whishaw's great. I really liked him in Cloud Atlas, playing a completely different kind of character yet again. He's got a lot of range.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-08 06:54 pm (UTC)Salt I enjoyed but you can tell it was genderflipped because of how the male love interest is treated. I guess that's variety (albeit questionable), but I found the stated directorial reasons for a certain twist to be appallingly sexist and that kind of tainted the movie for me even more. If you can treat it as a movie independent of filmmaking context it's pretty good.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-08 06:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-09 04:45 am (UTC)I almost never read about the filmmaking context of movies or TV shows. Reading about the thought process behind some of the decisions so often seems to end by enraging rather than enlightening, so why bother?
Hanna is awfully open ended. It feels to me like the film is almost more interested in creating an atmosphere than telling a story: I mean, there is a story, but so many threads are left dangling (apparently deliberately) that it doesn't feel like it's main focus.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-09 06:43 am (UTC)The thing that annoyed me in Salt would have annoyed me anyway (it's a trope I despise, and genderflipping it doesn't feel like a feminist blow to me, it feels like cheap writing; I recognize a lot of self-identified feminists feel otherwise). It just annoyed me more because of directorial comments about why they did that. But I still think Salt is worth watching.
It feels to me like the film is almost more interested in creating an atmosphere than telling a story
Yeah, I think that's what was going on. And it was interesting and kind of compelling, but also frustrated me a lot because I couldn't tell where it was going, and so many loose ends...
no subject
Date: 2013-12-08 07:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-09 04:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-11 08:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-09 04:23 am (UTC)I loved Skyfall, it's the only Daniel Craig Bond film I've seen actually. In relation to carmarthen's post, Hellotailor has a post on Skyfall and feminism I believe.
Maybe Summer Wars? It had some action since there's some apocalyptic stuff going on, but the world is ultimately saved because of a girl's hanafuda skillz.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-09 04:56 am (UTC)I find apocalyptic stories incredibly stressful, but my brother likes them, so maybe I'll recommend Summer Wars to him.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-09 05:01 am (UTC)Apocalyptic is perhaps an overstatement for Summer Wars. Maybe check out the Amazon summary? Personally I find the movie a light hearted film about family. The drama is more about a rogue computer program. Although idk if you're much of an anime fan? The director is somewhat of a rising star in the movie circuit.
tl;dr essay, sorry
Date: 2013-12-09 07:29 am (UTC)I agree with some of what she wrote, but I don't think Skyfall was a step in a 'more' feminist direction from Casino Royale and (especially) Quantum of Solace, although possibly I'm the only person in the world who actually liked QoS overall; she does discuss the rapey shower scene in a later post in the series, although she seems better able to compartmentalize it as "maybe they didn't mean for it to be creepy" than I could. I also don't personally agree that these are the most nuanced and three-dimensional women in Bond movies ever, but that's probably a matter of taste as much as anything else.
Tangentially to the feminism issue (I do not expect feminism from Bond movies ever hahaha, even if the first couple Craig movies gave me glimmers of hope for at least less paternalistic misogyny), I felt like the movie set up some really fascinating and difficult moral questions around M's character arc and career and then copped out of resolving them in a way I personally found deeply unsatisfying. I'd contrast to the British TV series Spooks, which often dealt with similar moral issues related to intelligence work and the decisions made by people doing it and what's in the public interest, but which didn't conveniently sidestep examining the tough questions, as I felt Skyfall did by [spoilery resolution].
But pretty much anything else I have to say is spoilery (esp. the M-related stuff), plus I haven't seen Skyfall or the preceding two recently enough to argue precisely even if this were the right place to do so. Maybe eventually I'll rewatch the three back-to-back and try to form a coherent essay (I used to have vague thoughts of writing a passionate essay about how the Craig Bond movies were moving towards a quasi-feminist franchise and then Skyfall happened and I felt like it was a throwback to classic Bond but with a bigger budget and better cinematography).
But I fully recognize that what I get out of Bond movies, and what I want out of them, is very different from what most of either fandom or your typical viewing audience wants. YMMV, of course.
Re: tl;dr essay, sorry
Date: 2013-12-09 05:54 pm (UTC)I agree the shower scene is creepy as all hell.
As for Eve though, I both like her and know I'm not the best person to discuss her depiction as a black woman in the Bond franchise.
Although, while I eyerolled very hard at another effeminate bisexual villain, I did very much enjoy Bond's response to Silva.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-09 07:22 pm (UTC)I didn't hate Skyfall and there were things I liked about it, and I wouldn't say it's the most sexiest Bond movie by a long shot--I just feel it's a step backwards overall rather than a step forwards as far as the Craig movies are concerned.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-09 07:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-09 08:01 pm (UTC)Well, it's not just the assassination--but I felt they set up some really interesting, crunchy questions about ethics and intelligence work, and instead of actually dealing with them, they killed off M, so she dies tragically/heroically and they never really did attempt to answer whether the actions she was being investigated over were justifiable or not.
They then replaced her role--by far the best-developed female character in the Bond movies, and a recurring character who is also not subordinate to him, one of the characters who has since her introduction actually commented on misogyny and sexism explicitly in-text--with a charming good ol' boy who feels like he'd be right at home in a classic Bond movie (if less sexist himself than prior male Ms). Bam, right there they took away the biggest critique of sexism within the movies and replaced her with yet another man (a man who is interesting and likable in his own right but...a man).
I get that Judi Dench probably wanted out, and that actually examining the ethics of espionage is better-suited to a TV series than to an action thriller--but in that case I wish they hadn't even set that up as M's character arc, failed to deliver on resolving it, and then tidily killed her off in a way that sends her off sympathetically as a person and sidesteps the question of whether the audience should be sympathetic to her moral choices. I feel like if a movie is going to ask tough questions it should at least attempt to examine them.
That said, while I felt they handled the M arc in a really unsatisfying copout way, there was some really interesting M character development and Judi Dench was great, as always. If the fandom were interested in writing long plotty AUs exploring M's choices rather than endless Bond/hipster!Q, I might actually read fic. :-/
(I wasn't exactly thrilled about Silva, either, on multiple levels, and I'm not sure I'd consider Bond's reaction to him as pro-queer, but I'd have to rewatch to go into detail about that, and I...kind of really don't want to.)
no subject
Date: 2013-12-10 02:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-10 08:00 pm (UTC)because yaoi.no subject
Date: 2013-12-09 02:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-09 05:51 pm (UTC)