Recent Movie Round-Up
Dec. 29th, 2013 12:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI am so behind on movie reviews. I’ve been meaning to write about Downfall, but somehow I can’t get more coherent than Nazis! Nature of evil! Life as Wagnerian opera! Discussion of grimdark aesthetics! - and all my other reviews have been stuck in a pipeline behind it.
So I am skipping Downfall, for now.
1. A Very Long Engagement, a French movie starring the luminously beautiful Audrey Tatou, who has the saddest eyes in all of France. Everyone says that Mathilde’s fiance, Manech, died in No Man’s Land by the trench Bingo Crepescule, but Mathilde doesn’t believe it. In the early 1920s, Mathilde sets out on a quest to find out what really happened to him.
I’ve been meaning to see this for movie ages, because Audrey Tatou; but also putting it off, because the premise seemed doomed to end with disappointment. Either Mathilde will learn that Manech's just as dead as everyone says, which will drive home the message that war is terrible but make the movie seem rather pointless (all that work to get where we were in the first place?); or she’ll find him alive, which would totally undermine the message; or she won’t find him at all, which would be extremely frustrating.
But the filmmakers manage to solve this rather cleverly: Mathilde finds Manech, but he has total and probably incurable amnesia. This gives Mathilde’s quest a satisfying denouement, which is nonetheless sufficiently sad that it doesn’t undermine the “World War I and possibly war in general are pointless and awful” message. And it also explains satisfactorily why Manech never tried to contact her, which is important for preserving the love story aspect.
2. The Iron Lady, a disappointingly unfocused biopic about Margaret Thatcher. It attempts to squeeze Thatcher’s entire life into less than two hours, giving roughly equal weight to each part, which means that the most interesting parts - her rise to power and time as prime minister - are hopelessly rushed.
This might not be a problem if the filmmakers didn’t waste a ton of time on their framing device: rather than simply tell Thatcher’s story, they set up the film as the elderly Thatcher’s reminiscences triggered by her hallucinations of her dead husband. If this was merely a framing story, that would be one thing, but they return to elderly Thatcher and her hallucinatory husband again and again and again, as if they believe these repetitive scenes are more interesting than actually delving into her political career. It’s vexing and rather cowardly: I came away with the strong sense that they were afraid to say anything substantive about her career.
3. Some Like It Hot (which, by the by, had an interesting Yuletide fic this year: Had to be you), a film about two men who dress as women in order to escape the Mafia (like you do) and fall in with Marilyn Monroe, a member of an all-female band.
This film does not star Monroe’s breasts quite as prominently as did The Seven Year Itch, but man, if Monroe’s directors had actually sat down with the intention of making a textbook illustration of the male gaze, they could not have done better than this.
4. Kenneth Branagh’s As You Like It, because somehow I had forgotten that I hate the play, which features not one, not two, but three extremely irritating romances: Touchstone mocking Audrey incessantly, Silvio following Phoebe around bothering her and refusing to take no for an answer, and of course Rosalind (dressed as a boy) abandoning her BFF Celia (who gave up everything for her) in order to bond with Orlando over the joys of misogyny.
Moreover, though the production is very pretty, I’m not sure why Branagh bothered to set it in nineteenth century Japan when he didn’t really bother to engage with the setting beyond having some sumo wrestling and a couple of geishas.
5. And also Gone with the Wind! But that will need it's own post, I think.
So I am skipping Downfall, for now.
1. A Very Long Engagement, a French movie starring the luminously beautiful Audrey Tatou, who has the saddest eyes in all of France. Everyone says that Mathilde’s fiance, Manech, died in No Man’s Land by the trench Bingo Crepescule, but Mathilde doesn’t believe it. In the early 1920s, Mathilde sets out on a quest to find out what really happened to him.
I’ve been meaning to see this for movie ages, because Audrey Tatou; but also putting it off, because the premise seemed doomed to end with disappointment. Either Mathilde will learn that Manech's just as dead as everyone says, which will drive home the message that war is terrible but make the movie seem rather pointless (all that work to get where we were in the first place?); or she’ll find him alive, which would totally undermine the message; or she won’t find him at all, which would be extremely frustrating.
But the filmmakers manage to solve this rather cleverly: Mathilde finds Manech, but he has total and probably incurable amnesia. This gives Mathilde’s quest a satisfying denouement, which is nonetheless sufficiently sad that it doesn’t undermine the “World War I and possibly war in general are pointless and awful” message. And it also explains satisfactorily why Manech never tried to contact her, which is important for preserving the love story aspect.
2. The Iron Lady, a disappointingly unfocused biopic about Margaret Thatcher. It attempts to squeeze Thatcher’s entire life into less than two hours, giving roughly equal weight to each part, which means that the most interesting parts - her rise to power and time as prime minister - are hopelessly rushed.
This might not be a problem if the filmmakers didn’t waste a ton of time on their framing device: rather than simply tell Thatcher’s story, they set up the film as the elderly Thatcher’s reminiscences triggered by her hallucinations of her dead husband. If this was merely a framing story, that would be one thing, but they return to elderly Thatcher and her hallucinatory husband again and again and again, as if they believe these repetitive scenes are more interesting than actually delving into her political career. It’s vexing and rather cowardly: I came away with the strong sense that they were afraid to say anything substantive about her career.
3. Some Like It Hot (which, by the by, had an interesting Yuletide fic this year: Had to be you), a film about two men who dress as women in order to escape the Mafia (like you do) and fall in with Marilyn Monroe, a member of an all-female band.
This film does not star Monroe’s breasts quite as prominently as did The Seven Year Itch, but man, if Monroe’s directors had actually sat down with the intention of making a textbook illustration of the male gaze, they could not have done better than this.
4. Kenneth Branagh’s As You Like It, because somehow I had forgotten that I hate the play, which features not one, not two, but three extremely irritating romances: Touchstone mocking Audrey incessantly, Silvio following Phoebe around bothering her and refusing to take no for an answer, and of course Rosalind (dressed as a boy) abandoning her BFF Celia (who gave up everything for her) in order to bond with Orlando over the joys of misogyny.
Moreover, though the production is very pretty, I’m not sure why Branagh bothered to set it in nineteenth century Japan when he didn’t really bother to engage with the setting beyond having some sumo wrestling and a couple of geishas.
5. And also Gone with the Wind! But that will need it's own post, I think.
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no subject
Date: 2013-12-29 03:22 pm (UTC)And for all its 1959 male-gazing, I really deeply love Some Like It Hot, and it had not occurred to me to look for it on Yuletide, so thank you for linking that fic!
no subject
Date: 2013-12-29 04:28 pm (UTC)I hope you like the fic! I think it's an interesting take on their possible future.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-29 07:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-29 07:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-30 04:46 am (UTC)I've watched that! It was a long time ago, but I keep meaning to rewatch it and refresh my memory.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-30 01:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-31 03:35 am (UTC)