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Free Indirect Discourse as Artistic Marxism in Pasolini's The Hawks and the Sparrows

In his 1966 film  The Hawks and the Sparrows, Pier Paolo Pasolini shows viewers a “narrative poem” concerning religion, Marxism and the various social strata present in Italy, here specifically in the outskirts of Rome. As in The Gospel According to St. Matthew (Pasolini, 1964), Pasolini utilizes religious imagery among other “stylemes” and “im-signs” in order to expound on the hypocrisy of capitalism and the shortcomings of religious as well as Marxist ideologies as they pertain to the “real world”. In the film’s second-act digression, a “left-wing intellectual” crow tells Totò and his son Ninetto a story about Franciscan friars tasked with teaching God’s message of love to the hawks and the sparrows. The story is a parable for the futility of religious dogma, as it is in the hawks’ nature to eat the sparrows, regardless of abstract concepts of love. The hawks respond, “we are all God, then”; the sparrows question the value of the friars’ message, as it does not solve their problems of hunger. These themes are repeated later in the film, when Totò and Ninetto travel to different homes in the countryside, further illustrating the presence of an inescapable social hierarchy for which the film proposes the solution of Marxist ideology—a solution that ultimately fails when applied to the characters’ social reality.

In his essay “The Cinema of Poetry”, Pasolini emphasizes the importance of what he terms “free indirect discourse” in poeticizing the medium of film. However, The Hawks and the Sparrows presents distinct points of view through interactions between characters, namely Totò and his son with the people they encounter along their journey. At first, this seems to present a lack of continuity in Pasolini’s argument—a flaw which is definitely present in his essay. But Pasolini’s use of people and animals to embody abstract ideologies turns these characters into semiotic markers rather than concrete personalities. 

This technique is augmented by the presence of the parable in the film, in which Totò and Ninetto also play the 13th-century friars who must spread the gospel to the birds. The crow’s role of ideological lecturer attributes these social lessons to the natural order of the world, and the film’s surrealist imagery and noticeable camera movement (e.g. jump cuts, montage sequences, etc.) fulfill Pasolini’s requirements for “poetic cinema”. 

The film concludes with a callback to the film’s first scene, in which Totò explains to Ninetto the influence of the moon on the tides: “It draws all the garbage to the shore.” Continuing their journey, Totò, Ninetto and the crow come upon a woman named Luna, the Italian for “moon”. Both men feign stomachaches and take turns “swimming” through a cornfield to reach Luna; they each have sex with Luna in the corn. Afterwards, finding the crow pedantic and boring, the two men kill and eat it, leaving its steaming remains on the side of the road and walking onward. This scene is the final, definitive instance of nature winning out over pure ideology: the humans are higher on the food chain than the crow, so they kill him, and the mission of the friars is once again a failure, now with humans proven to be no better than the animals the friars sought to lecture. The previous montage of footage from Italian Communist leader Palmiro Tagliotti’s funeral, the intellectual with whom the crow’s ideology is explicitly aligned, foreshadows this end for the crow. 

The Servant's Cold Comic Irony

Joseph Losey’s The Servant (1963) delves into class conflict with piercingly economical incisions. The most salacious elements of the story are shown from blocked vantage points; we hear the boring edges of conversations about potentially interesting things. The narrative unfolds along prescribed lines: Tony, a young member of the declining British upper crust, seeks to employ a manservant for his new home. Hugo Barrett is well-trained and seems to know his place. Tony impresses his girlfriend, Susan, with vague plans to “clear the jungle” and build a number of cities in Brazil to “fill with people from Asia Minor.” 

Harold Pinter’s script thus matter-of-factly reveals a system of poorly-conceived imperialist idealists nominally clinging to relevance, blissfully and pathetically unaware of the surrounding world’s changing conditions. Tony’s new house, supposedly a mere waystation between adolescence and foreign conquest, becomes with Barrett’s help a last stop on a road toward decadent irrelevance, a tastefully decorated funhouse-brothel-crypt. Pinter and Losey’s application of social conventions to a story about their breakdown emphasizes the irony of such conventions’ strict usage in a society that has largely outgrown the need for them. 

The film’s recurring song, “All Gone,” scores scenes of love and betrayal with mocking detachment: the soul-bearing drama of the lyrics, “can’t love without you, must love without you,” as characters struggle to express themselves beyond allusions to unsavory topics, underscores their repression to an almost comedic level. When Tony visits a beatnik bar, his incongruence with the environment is emphasized by the juxtaposition of Tony’s stiffness with the twangy guitar music. 

Similarly, a scene in which Tony and Susan visit a noble older couple’s manor (unclear whether they are Susan’s parents, Tony’s parents, some other distant relation, or just members of the couple’s milieu) starkly contrasts imposing mise-en-scene with tedious dialogue to point out the ridiculousness of the ruling class. Lady Mounset works at an embroidery hoop while Lord Mounset sips a highball, the two-shot buttressed by neo classical nude statues and spindly, baroque furniture. The high-culture aesthetics of ancient civilizations loom over the elderly couple while simultaneously being relegated to the background, a visual reminder of the imperial powers after which the British Empire models itself. The couple’s leisurely pastimes denote the privilege as well as the frivolity of their class position. Another discussion of Tony’s business prospects in Brazil leads to a disagreement about the meaning of the word “poncho”: Susan defines it as the article of clothing that “drapes down in the front and behind,” while Lady Mounset maintains that it is “what the cowboys are called” in “The Argentine.” Again, the wealthy display their ignorance in matters that extend beyond the drawing-room even as that parlor visually represents the seat of western imperial power. The ease with which Barrett monopolizes Tony’s home and assumes control over his life further exemplifies the paradoxical nature of the class structure in situations that would be comical if not for the overwhelmingly pathetic downfall of Tony; when he writhes on the floor in an alcoholic stupor, we can’t help but pity him.

The LA Times called The Servant “the coldest film ever made.” To me, this description is made accurate by the ice inherent in the film’s hints of warmth, by the penetrating winter snow that is almost always visible through the townhouse windows. Warmth emanates from the hearth, lit by a resentful servant in a display of false domesticity; it emanates from glasses of brown liquor and cigarette smoke, vices that pair with and substitute for “intimate” trysts coldly arranged by that same servant. The fickle warmth of the relationship between Barrett and Tony is tinged with cold, boyish competition petrified by stifling class designations. Susan and Tony fail to express their emotions while standing in a snowy field that accentuates their repression. The Servant coldly depicts a social structure in which authentic warmth is made impossible by outdated conventions. The imperial fantasy of developing the global south is an unreachable mirage in the declining era of the empire.

Anatomy of a Hustler: Capitalist Madness in Uncut Gems and American Psycho

“You wanna win by one point or fuckin’ 30 points, KG?” asks Adam Sandler as Howard, jeweler and gambling addict. The line cues in a feverish marimba on top of an ominous synth.

KG is Celtics star Kevin Garnett, playing himself. This moment comes after KG pays Howard $165,000 in cash for an uncut opal. With this cash, Howard is finally in a position to pay off his extensive debts — but there’s still 30 minutes left in the two-hour film.

Josh and Benny Safdie’s 2019 crime thriller Uncut Gems is a grueling experience for its characters and viewers alike. The film barrels forward, accumulating tension without stopping to catch its breath — akin to a roller coaster with a perpetual, rapid incline. The disorienting tone and pacing help immerse us in Howard’s world, and his singular obsession with money, as it drives him to ruin.

Howard, like many tragic figures, has his fair share of hubris. Rather than a prophecy deciding his fate, however, Uncut Gems demonstrates how American capitalism creates the ideal conditions for Howard’s particular brand of go-getter. A similar societal critique is advanced in Mary Harron’s turn-of-the-century cult classic American Psycho, though in the context of corporate finance. Taking distinct stylistic and tonal approaches, the two films portray capitalist logic as a narrative force of compulsive escalation.

Both Uncut Gems and American Psycho omit the starting and turning points of their protagonists’ unraveling, resulting in an unsettling narrative inertia. This choice allows the films to level their critiques beyond their protagonists at the environments that shape them.

Uncut Gems is set into motion with the delivery of an Ethiopian opal that Howard, deep in debt, plans to sell. KG, however, insists on borrowing the opal for good luck at his NBA game. From there, the film follows Howard, growing increasingly desperate, as he scrambles to get the opal back while evading loan sharks.

After Howard finally does sell the opal, our relief quickly evaporates when he decides to gamble the money. “This is how I win,” he explains, delivering a kind of manifesto as the marimba track intensifies. Both lucidity and madness might be read into his gaze, which is partly shielded behind black shades.

Howard does win, in a sense: His bet wins him over $1 million. And then a loan shark shoots him in the head. The final shot zooms into his serene, lifeless face; Howard is finally at rest. His death curbs the inertia of his gambling addiction, which incidentally ends on a high.

So ends a nuanced depiction of gambling addiction — not as a failure of personal responsibility, but as a powerful capitalist impetus. The incentive to “win” cannot be chalked up to pure greed: Howard’s obsession with chasing wealth far surpasses any desire for its rewards, and the camera takes no aesthetic pleasure in material glamor. As misguided as Howard may be, his glorification of wealth for wealth’s sake is a condemnation of the system that incentivizes it.

American Psycho’s serial murdering protagonist, meanwhile, is indisputably evil, but this characterization similarly serves a critique of his milieu. It owes its success to a stark tonal difference from Uncut Gems’ grittiness; eschewing subtlety, American Psycho hyperbolizes the archetypal Wall Street investor with the self-serious, image-conscious Patrick Bateman, who finds an outlet for his neuroses in brutal homicide.

In the iconic opening scene, Bateman briefly introduces himself before diving into a catalog of his morning routine. This voiceover accompanies a visual representation of his systematic inventory-taking, featuring close-ups on sculpted body parts and luxurious toiletries and long shots of his apartment in the vein of an interior design magazine. Bateman presents himself as a commodity, a sum of desirable objects. This eerie scene establishes Bateman’s storefront-esque sense of self, deliberately constructed so he may relate to coworkers at a reasonable distance.

Much as we meet Howard already in debt, American Psycho foregrounds Bateman’s psychopathy, later revealing that he’s killed before. In contrast with Howard’s nosedive into mania, however, is Bateman’s increasing detachment from the world around him. Diametrically opposed to Uncut Gems’ frenzy, the corporate environment serves as a backdrop for mundane conversations between coworkers. Petty status competitions have higher stakes than the work itself, which is essentially absent from the narrative. Physical violence is at least generative for Bateman, a reprieve from the stifling nothingness of corporate existence.

The escalating tension between Bateman’s personal and professional selves drives the film toward an uncertain climax; as his body count grows, so does the challenge of compartmentalizing his two lives. After a very public murder spree, Bateman calls his lawyer with a tearful confession, presumably ending his double life — but when Bateman confronts the lawyer at a company event, he’s met with a blank stare.

The lawyer’s unresponsiveness marks a striking role reversal for Bateman, whose uncharacteristically sincere expression fills the frame. Faced with this dead end, Bateman joins a table with the same coworkers as usual, though he sits tentatively. Their conversation is aimless; they talk at each other without really listening.

As one makes a passing comment — some guys are just born cool, I guess — a wide shot captures the table’s response: While the others stare off into various distances, Bateman looks at him and snorts, then points and laughs. It’s a bizarre shot with a slightly high angle, a stylistic break that goes out of its way to show the coworkers as an egalitarian group. The interaction also departs from the norm: Bateman, attentive to his surroundings, disrupts their aloof dynamic with a genuine reaction.

For the first time, Bateman seems to comprehend the people around him and his position among them. Their usual pretentiousness, something he’s always participated in, now strikes him as ridiculous. The others point this out; when they finally recognize something “off” about Bateman, it’s when he’s at his most human. In the end, nothing fundamentally changes, save for Bateman having a realization: He and his coworkers are unknowable to each other.

Bateman’s “true self” is made irrelevant, supplanted by his corporate self. Like Howard, Bateman “wins” in that he constructs a persuasive corporate identity, but he finds himself trapped in it.

Uncut Gems and American Psycho ask us to consider the nature of such wins. Both protagonists remain unsatisfied despite capitalist success; the thrilling momentum of these narratives, as it turns out, precludes real change and growth. We might start to wonder if madness, given its economic incentives, should come as any surprise.

Opening Night Re-examines and Refracts the "Aging Actress" Trope

“I’ll do just about anything to make my character more authentic. I always have.” 

John Cassavetes’ Opening Night (1977) is about a woman whose life is dedicated to performance. Myrtle Gordon subsumes herself in her acting roles. She has no children; her romantic relationships are with her co-star and her director; she has no age to which she will admit, lest her aging jeopardize her career. In her latest play, she stars as Virginia, an aging actress. After a car accident takes place outside the theater after a performance and a young fan is killed, Myrtle begins to hallucinate the young girl as she herself descends further into alcoholism and unreality. Myrtle speaks, like Gena Rowlands’ characters in Cassavetes’ films often do and are, like a mad person who believes she is the only sane one in the room. 

She may be the only sane one in a room of occultists preparing for a seance led by the playwright’s psychic, but her proclamations of self-knowledge are as forthcoming and easy to comprehend as they are tragically revealing of Myrtle’s own blind spots. In sacrificing herself for roles - not sleeping enough, drinking, smoking, all to “get into character” - she indulges in the hedonistic pleasures afforded her by the vocation of inhabiting another person. In pursuit of a character’s authenticity, Myrtle has lost herself; she is unable to see the young woman she once was in Virginia, the “second woman.” Because she inhabits every character so fully, Myrtle’s loss of self impedes her acting. Thus, the straightforward trope of the aging actress is reflected back upon itself, exposing the discrepancies between the artistic rendering and the reality. 

Myrtle moves between stage sets and real-life locales constantly, and themes established in the outside world recur in the narrative of the play. In Virginia’s apartment, two enormous black-and-white photographs of an old woman in a headscarf adorn the walls. Her face is etched with wrinkles, the quintessential babushka; the domineering presence of the photographs beats the play’s audience over the head with its theme of aging womanhood while serving as a clear juxtaposition with Myrtle/Virginia, whose “old” age is less obvious, more well-preserved than “decrepit.” We see the fine lines on Myrtle’s face only when she winces as she knocks back a drink in a close-up, a donning of armor before facing the audience. 

Myrtle is not as old as Virginia, and she identifies this to Sarah Goode, the playwright (played by 1930s movie star Joan Blondell, whose own career imbues the casting with the connotation of the washed-up starlet archetype) as a major sticking point in her artistic process. “You have me up there having hot flashes - I don’t have hot flashes!” Myrtle refers to herself as her character, indicating her increasing difficulty with separating the two, and implicitly accuses Sarah of humiliating her by writing such an old woman for her to play. Myrtle’s worries seem vain and ridiculous, like those of so many vain, ridiculous actresses who care more about how they appear than how accurately they portray the character: a variation on Norma Desmond, the butt of the joke. It’s a culturally accepted phenomenon, and it largely lets Hollywood off the hook for the superficial standards of practice that drive women to such hysterics. Myrtle explains it all: if she plays this role convincingly, her fate is sealed as an old actress relegated to old-woman roles. No matter how good this play might be, no matter how complex and rich of a character Virginia is, she is not an ingenue in the traditional sense and Myrtle will never be such an ingenue again. 

The paradoxical lucidity with which Myrtle analyzes her relationship to Nancy, the young fan killed in an accident outside the theater, further distinguishes her from the crazy actress trope while confirming that she is sort of textbook “crazy,” hallucinating the dead girl as a paragon of desirable youth who says things like, “I like to fuck. I like when men look at me.” Unable to let go of this version of herself who probably never was - first eighteen, then seventeen, impossibly young and beautiful and scarily willing to be used by men in ways that many aspiring actresses rationalize to themselves again and again - Myrtle conjures her and tortures herself with the phantom. When Nancy confronts Myrtle, it is the confirmation of Myrtle’s worst fears about her aging self through the eyes of the younger woman she “killed,” perhaps so no one would rise up, All About Eve -style, in her place? 

In the manner of an experimental character study, Opening Night atomizes and comments on the wider tendency of the actress to make everything about herself, the solipsism required by the profession that dramatizes every aspect of life, encouraged and pilloried by the people who want her to perform, who write plays and direct her in them. The car accident has a lingering effect on Myrtle because it is an awful thing that she witnessed and subsequently internalized, but also because the people in the car with her (her husband, Manny, the play’s director; and her co-star and stage husband, played by Cassavetes) tell the chauffeur to keep driving.

Re-Evaluating Cruising: Indictment or Incitement of Anti-Gay Violence?

Cruising (dir. William Friedkin, 1980) is a controversial film. It earns this label more through audience and critical reactions than through its content. Content-wise, it’s a bit muddled, which of course facilitates reactionary interpretations. Its depictions of gay-bashing and homophobia are as pulpily violent as its wordless scenes of semi-nude male bodies writhing in underground bars are pulpily seductive, and the picture it paints of gay life in early 1980’s New York is grim and seedy and dangerous. Released at a time when representations of homosexuality in the mainstream media were sparse and often negative, it inevitably generated backlash from gay rights groups who viewed the film as yet another exploitative depiction of a “lifestyle” in which sex is inextricably tied to violence and homoerotic urges are a mark of shame and depravity.

Given its polemical history, I was surprised to see Cruising in the Criterion Channel’s collection of “taboo-breaking” queer cinema for Pride Month. I guess it fits the description: a lot is shown that is considered “taboo” by contemporary cultural standards, although whether the taboos are broken or enforced by the film is a slippery question the answer to which changes based on the viewing context. Friedkin himself remarked that the movie was “never” an “anti-gay screed,” but rather a glimpse into the specific S&M subculture of the gay experience based on a real-life serial murder case from the era. And from a modern-day viewpoint, seeing the film within the context of all the other cinematic depictions of queer life that came after, the culture it depicts seems less monolithic. 

 

 

 

The question of interpretation is complicated by the role of the police. Although the film is far from “copaganda” - the police fail to apprehend the killer, the killer is a police officer (in a last-minute reveal that sacrifices clear character motivation for shock value) - it positions the authorities as our window into the “regular” world. The opening scene, in which a beat cop delivers a Travis Bickle-style speech to his partner about cleaning up the filth from the streets, could go either way depending on whether or not you viewed Taxi Driver as a satire. 

Al Pacino’s George Burns, an undercover officer looking to make detective, bridges the divide between the film’s two worlds; the “everyman,” in an acceptable heterosexual pairing, ostensibly more interested in doing his job than in “working over” potential suspects. The audience is made to identify with Burns, and the casting of a likeable star who served a similar narrative purpose in one of the era’s biggest successes, The Godfather, facilitates this kinship between viewer and protagonist. 

However, Cruising’s subject matter is even more “taboo” than the Italian mafia, and the content dictates an inevitable lack of subtlety that can be ascribed more to a dearth of gay media representation than to the representation in this specific film. Club scenes, post-coital scenes, and murder scenes are often unaccompanied by score, and Friedkin allows action to unfold in long, silent takes that feel more voyeuristic than judgemental. The classical theme that plays when Burns is in bed with his girlfriend connotes propriety as well as stodginess.

The killer’s act of corrective penetration - stabbing to death the man he has just sexually dominated - is his indictment of his own behavior as well as his victim’s, a manifestation of self-hatred. Or it could be, anyway. Unlike in Psycho or Dressed to Kill, there is no psychologist to sweep in at the end and explain the murderer’s perverse motivations. As oversimplified and unsatisfying as the psychological explanation often is, the lack of such a convenient wrap-up leaves us with no prescribed point of view with which to agree or contend. But is it fair to expect a clear moral answer from a film simply because it deals with “controversial” subject matter? Does the filmmaker have a “responsibility” to lead the audience down the “right” path in their thinking? At a time when gay life was not in the public eye as it is today, media depictions such as Cruising were many people’s first and only foray into that world, and although it focuses on a small subculture, Burns ultimately does not restrict his violence to members of that subculture when he murders his neighbor, a gay man who does not participate in the “scene.” The film’s final twist is sticky because it traces this violence back to the authorities while acknowledging that elements of that same violence (the police costumes, the power dynamics) are also present in the subculture the authorities aim to attack. The film falls short of breaking the taboos it exposes, instead grimly reinforcing them.

Very Important Persons: Period Satire in The Death of Stalin and The Favourite

In the typical fashion of political satire, monarchies and oligarchies serve as wells of comedy in Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite (2018) and Armando Iannucci’s The Death of Stalin (2017). Its subjects, however, are out of power; The Favourite depicts the court of Queen Anne of Great Britain in the early 18th century, and The Death of Stalin, while recent history, depicts the ruling committee of a now-dissolved nation. From score to costuming to set design, these films embrace period drama conventions and root themselves in history. This genre-melding provides a viewpoint of the human condition that neither contemporary satire nor straightforward historical accounts can access on their own.

Set in the Soviet Union in 1953, The Death of Stalin portrays the central committee’s response to their leader’s demise and their ensuing power struggle, which ends in one member’s execution and Nikita Khrushchev’s rise to power. The committee members are simultaneously old friends and bitter rivals, at times timid and other times ruthless. Comic actors play many of its essential roles, most notably Steve Buscemi as Khrushchev and Jeffrey Tambor as Malenkov, Stalin’s gullible successor. This casting reflects the film’s irreverent approach to depicting historical figures, as it imagines comedic situations and banter within the context of high-stakes political turmoil.

As the audience witnesses mythic figures portrayed as fallible humans, the characters themselves experience the same with Stalin’s passing. The committee finds their leader’s dead body on the floor of his office, collapsed in a puddle of urine. They perform grief, and it’s not clear who the exaggeration is meant to convince — it could be Stalin, the other ministers, even themselves. The film finds humor in this grief; Malenkov proclaims that Stalin is irreplaceable, for example, before pointing out that he’s the successor. “Calamity, calamity,” Khrushchev laments as he casually takes off his coat. As the characters state their distress, the camera remains impersonally distant rather than capturing their faces in close-up as one might expect.

There’s also the running joke of the urine puddle: After his proclamation of grief, Malenkov steps on the wet spot and asks, “Is this?” as the camera tilts down to the puddle. The others make the same mistake and then warn the others, who shuffle around the spot. Each time, the grief is quickly interrupted and abandoned. These trivial asides often occur in long shots where Stalin’s horizontal body remains in frame, rendering him an afterthought, which further minimizes the gravity of death as an individual — what his death means commands much attention. The men then hoist the body off the ground together, shuffling and giving each other commands as though they were transporting furniture.

The levity of this scene seems dissonant with the historical significance of Stalin’s death; the committee’s reactions ask us to consider the difference between what Stalin represented versus Stalin as an individual. His physical body becomes an inconvenience in this scene, and as the ministers deal with the material reality of his death rather than its abstract meaning, the film convinces us of their status as human beings rather than historical concepts.

The Favourite takes a similarly candid approach in representing Queen Anne, its highest-ranking character. I say highest ranking because Anne, while the most powerful character in name, is vulnerable to other characters’ emotional power over her. The film sees Anne most often in a passive role, reacting to her surrounding circumstances. The central conflict occurs between Anne’s trusted confidant and lover Sarah Churchill and her cousin Abigail, whose arrival changes the court’s status quo. While Sarah’s influence over Anne allows her to influence her decision-making, Abigail develops a friendship with Anne that challenges Sarah’s political and emotional power over her.

The value of winning Anne’s favor means that the smallest actions, like a certain intonation or glance, can have significant consequences for the characters’ relationships. Anne’s power — or rather, her title — actually makes her more susceptible to manipulation. She expects to be catered to and cared for, surrendering agency as an exercise of privilege.

Early in the film, Abigail pours Anne hot chocolate, but Sarah stops her, telling Anne it’s unhealthy. Anne protests; the camera captures Abigail, confused, facing the other two on the couch as they argue. She stands with the cup in a low-angle shot, as though from Anne’s vantage point. Though low-angle shots often assign the subject power, this one seems unique. This angle exemplifies the bizarre power dynamic in Anne’s close relationships, as Anne requires her subordinates to dote on her. Sarah, for instance, regulates Anne’s diet to a comical extent; although she allows Anne to drink the hot chocolate, Anne lets the cup sit untouched, signaling her faith in Sarah’s judgment.

The absurdity of this exchange also results from its contrast with Sarah and Anne’s preceding political discussion. As we watch Abigail pour the hot chocolate, the other two talk offscreen about Anne’s raising property taxes to fund the war against France, at Sarah’s insistence. “Are the people really angry about the land tax?” Anne asks. These far-reaching policy decisions take place in the background, speaking to Anne’s limited regard for her actual governing power. Severely detached from the nation she rules, she treats politics as she does interpersonal relationships. Her fickleness and naivety speak to the isolating effect that power can have on a human being, warping their perspective.

As a result, the competition for Anne’s affection is also a competition for power. Her lopsided priorities fuel much of the film’s humor, producing situational irony as the characters assign grave importance to trivial interactions. In this way, The Favourite achieves a similar tone as The Death of Stalin, balancing humor and darkness, but by depicting exaggerated reverence rather than irreverence.

Essential for both The Death of Stalin and The Favourite and distinguishing them from standard cinematic accounts of history is their focus on interpersonal pettiness, which not only brings abstract historical figures to life but makes their humanity plainly visible. The films derive humor from how their neuroses and social blunders fuel political conflict. These foibles aren’t just entertaining, though; they have major consequences for society at large. The contrast between characters’ earthly concerns and their lofty titles and responsibility allows both films to tread a fine line between comedy and darkness. With their faults amplified by considerable power, the ruling class drags subordinates and the public into their internal conflicts, a dynamic neither film allows us to forget.

Saboteur: A Harbinger of Blacklist Paranoia

Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur (1942) predates the first official Hollywood blacklist by five years, but its themes of scapegoating, patriotism and paranoia reflect such a period of upheaval in which the seemingly trustworthy are found suspect, and vice versa, as “true Americans'' seek out disloyal enemies on home soil. Barry Kane, a California factory worker, becomes a fugitive from the law after authorities wrongfully peg him as the saboteur who set fire to an aircraft factory. The classic Hitchcock premise - a man falsely accused of a crime, pulled into a world of subterfuge and corruption that goes to the top, accompanied (often unwillingly) by a skeptical but ultimately acquiescent femme noir - takes on a topical meaning: the sabotage of which Barry has been accused is a crime against the war effort, against his fellow workers, against America itself.

Barry first takes off to find Frank Fry, a mysterious factory worker (played by Norman Lloyd, whose friendship with Elia Kazan notably ended after Kazan named him among other actors for the HUAC in 1952) who handed Barry a fire extinguisher containing gasoline when the blaze broke out. Evading the police after they come to question him at the home of his deceased friend, Mason, Barry follows an address he noted from a dropped envelope of Fry’s to an opulent ranch in High Desert. Charles Tobin, the ranch’s owner, lovingly plays with his infant granddaughter as he informs Barry that the police are on their way to arrest him in place of the real saboteur, Fry, a minion of Tobin’s. 

As Tobin has him arrested, Barry laments that “just because you have a big ranch with a pool, everyone will believe what you say.” Tobin agrees, smugly asking, “who are they going to believe? I am an upstanding member of this community.” The recognition of Tobin as such, while an innocent with lower socioeconomic standing is made to take the blame, suggests that the unfair conditions of this world are not unique to Barry’s situation.

When Barry takes refuge in a blind man’s home, he identifies himself as “Barry Mason.” This adoption of the dead worker and friend’s name signifies the working-class solidarity that makes men like Mason and Barry himself expendable in the eyes of the sabotage’s wealthy mastermind. The blind man’s niece, Patricia, is intent on turning Barry in as soon as she sees his handcuffs, claiming it is her “duty as an American” to do so. She remarks that Barry fits the character of a saboteur in a way that Tobin does not, again causing Barry to cite Tobin’s wealth as the source of this misconception. Kane’s primary helpers in his escape are a blind man and a caravan of circus freaks, people marginalized by society in the same way he is as a criminal. 

Saboteur ends with Barry chasing Fry to the top of the Statue of Liberty, where Fry falls to his death: the villain meets his demise, with a poetic nod to the national ideal of “liberty and justice for all.” But Tobin, the financier behind the sabotage, remains unpunished and free to live at his family ranch, suggesting that the trappings of wealth and good social standing are enough to grant one impunity even in a country based on values of justice and equality. Coincidentally, the screenplay was written by Dorothy Parker and Peter Viertel, both of whom were also named on the Hollywood blacklist. I watched this movie with my dad, who dismissed the dialogue as "weird" the way that dialogue in old movies just is weird to modern audiences. I think some of that comes from the need at that time for coded language to get around censors, as well as subversive subtext that exists in any film about a man wrongfully accused of a crime - a criticism of the government, of class, of the system writ large. 

Lost In America Embalms the New Hollywood Road Movie with 80s Cynicism

Lost In America (dir. Albert Brooks, 1985) tells the story of a married professional couple who “drop out” of society to roam the United States in an RV à la Easy Rider. The irony is inherent to the concept, but the narrative unfolds it to its full potential by prodding its characters incrementally toward their inevitable failure. Unlike its self serious predecessor’s approach of tragic irony, Lost In America handles the futility of the American dream with the deranged comedic detachment of resignation to the (admittedly comfortable, albeit monotonous) status quo in an arch eulogy for the New Hollywood road movie.

David and Linda Howard are quintessential yuppies. Their identity is defined by this era-specific term that denotes upward social and financial mobility. David quits his advertising job not on principle, but out of frustration after being denied a promotion. They liquefy all of their assets into a comfortable “nest egg” to live on for their remaining years: not exactly “free-spirited.” And their first stop is Las Vegas, the American mecca of consumerist debauchery. Again, every additional element heightens the film’s satirical premise.

In Vegas, soft-spoken Linda reveals herself to be a compulsive gambler and loses the entire nest egg in the middle of the night. David’s comically disgraceful attempt to convince the casino owner to refund the Howards their money, complete with a desperate advertising pitch featuring Santa Claus, establishes that his professional skills are unhelpful outside of an office and cannot help him in the “real world.” Linda, too, proves unadaptable to these non-yuppie environs through her inability to control herself at the blackjack table, thereby threatening a marriage built on stasis and responsibility and financial comfort.

Beside the Hoover Dam, the couple argue over the plot of Easy Rider. We never see the national landmark in all its glory; instead, we linger on the side of the road as the Howards bicker about whether Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper “dropped out with nothing” or “sold a ton of cocaine” at the beginning of the movie (they did the latter, a point which further tarnishes the ideological purity of both pairs’ endeavors).

Both David and Linda view the lifestyle depicted in that movie as exemplary in some way, even though the film itself is arguably about the disappointing “reality” of such a lifestyle. David and Linda bond with a police officer over their love of the film and he tears up their ticket as a result. That an officer of the law could adore a film with staunchly anti-establishment leanings indicates a misunderstanding and re-appropriation of an American cultural touchstone made possible by the superficial concerns of the “yuppie” era.

Linda and David’s decision to go to New York and “eat shit” for David to retain his old job, followed by a montage of the increasingly exhausted travelers driving across the country set to Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” satirizes the couple’s renewed faith in the stifling yuppie lifestyle as euphorically positive, highlighting the romanticized nature of that vision with the use of the iconic song over less-optimistic footage of the RV merging with choked-up city traffic - a less visceral but more insidious final image than the explosion at the end of Easy Rider.

Resolutions for the Unresolvable Girl in "Promising Young Woman" and "Little Women"

While the recent PG-rated adaptation of Little Women and the provocative social thriller Promising Young Woman couldn’t differ more in tone and aesthetic, they are products of the same moment in a post-#MeToo Hollywood. The two films reflect a tentative optimism about the state of women in film, as well as an interest in reevaluating past portrayals of women.

Shaped by this climate, Little Women and Promising Young Woman tread familiar ground with fresh perspectives. Though they might hope to celebrate women’s victories, both retain some level of skepticism about the future. For one, they acknowledge that having a voice is not enough; these films not only star women but grapple with the extent they can control their own narratives.

Director Emerald Fennell answered the call for subversive female protagonists with Promising Young Woman, which deals with a familiar narrative — the rape-revenge plot — but only partially delivers on the revenge element.

The film stars Carey Mulligan as Cassie, a med-school dropout who spends her weekends entrapping predatory men. Her main target is Al Monroe, who assaulted her late best friend, Nina. In the final 20 minutes, Cassie tracks down Al at his bachelor party and corners him with a scalpel — but in a prolonged, stomach-turning twist, the groom suffocates Cassie to death with a pillow. For those who hoped for a victory over the patriarchy, this scene is a punch to the gut.

On top of thwarting expectations, this moment is captured with brutal honesty. No visual euphemisms shield us from the horror of Cassie’s death, and the pace slows to a near stop as the camera pulls back to document the event. We witness her struggle in real-time as the camera steadily pushes back in, only to take up Al as its subject. Cassie’s limbs are still twitching as she’s edged out of frame.

Then, the tone shifts drastically: a college buddy discovers the scene the next morning and, moments later, reassures Al of his innocence. Cassie is an afterthought as Al’s buddy pulls him into a hug and kisses his head. The exchange is light, verging on comical. The tonal dissonance reaches a climax as the two men burn her body in the woods, set to “Something Wonderful” from The King and I. Al’s friend comforts him as they stare into the fire. “This is a man who tries,” the song promises us.

The tragedy of this sequence of events isn’t just that Cassie fails; it’s also that Cassie is literally and figuratively silenced, and that the film then moves on. She spends the film trying to get justice for another dead woman, only to meet the same fate. The absent Nina lost control of the narrative a long time ago; following Cassie’s abrupt removal from her own story, the ease with which Al assumes center stage rubs salt in the wound. He progresses toward his own happy ending — his wedding day — and gets yet another second chance.

At this point, we viewers might feel that the karmic laws that govern storytelling have been violated; though this injustice is realistic, it’s still narratively unsatisfying. The film seems to sense our disappointment in its final moments and says, “Fine, my treat.”

At the outdoor wedding reception, Cassie’s scheduled texts come through, and they seem to address us directly:

You didn’t think this was the end, did you?

It is now.

Enjoy the wedding!

We — along with the texts’ recipient, Cassie’s ex-boyfriend — realize Cassie has planned for this outcome, having dispersed the necessary evidence ahead of her death. Cue upbeat ‘80s ballad “Angel in the Morning.” Sirens announce the arrival of the ultimate Deus ex Machina; the police escort the bad guy out of frame. Then, the final texts:

Love,

Cassie & Nina

;)

Fennell shared in an interview that she planned to end the film with Cassie’s body burning, but financiers pushed her in another direction. Without this final scene, we could say with certainty that Cassie’s revenge is a futile exercise. But as it stands, Promising Young Woman ends on her last text — a winky-face emoticon! Did she win after all? Is this catharsis?

I’d argue no: The film withholds catharsis. No one mourns Cassie; the final scenes don’t allow space for it. Cassie must posthumously force herself back into the spotlight. If this is victory, it’s the Pyrrhic kind. Yet Cassie engineers this scenario with precision. When forced to compromise, she ultimately decides that regaining control of her and Nina’s narrative is worth it.

I recognized a similar kind of compromise in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women. Gerwig’s adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s text reckons with her choice to marry off Jo March; without diverting from this ending, the film plants seeds of doubt that undermine its legitimacy.

After Jo says a final goodbye to Professor Bhaer, she turns around to find her family and friends smiling at her expectantly. “You love him,” Amy tells her — not a question, but a statement. “No, I don’t,” Jo replies. It doesn’t matter; no one believes her. Her sisters plan a carriage ride to intercept Bhaer. The music swells gleefully, and the following scenes in the carriage and at the train station are bathed in warm yellow light, preparing us for romance. If we detect artifice here, we might be able to ignore it.

Then the music abruptly dies as the film cuts to the coolly lit publishing office. Jo and the publisher are discussing the ending of her novel, “Little Women”; Jo’s current ending is unacceptable because the main character does not marry. The prior scenes hint at artifice, but this one confirms it by revealing a divergence between Gerwig’s Jo March and Jo’s fictional counterpart. Jo points out that her protagonist voices her refusal to marry throughout the book — as she does in the film — and defends her choice.

“The right ending is the one that sells,” the publisher says. Jo ultimately concedes, but she wants the copyright.

La Fiancée Hésitante, Auguste Toulmouche

When the soaring music starts up again and Jo and Bhaer kiss passionately in the rain, the image of Gerwig’s Jo begrudgingly accommodating her publisher is still fresh. These two versions of Jo become difficult to reconcile. The excessive romance of this reunion seems less substantial when compared to Jo’s mercenary pragmatism. In this light, Jo’s family’s insistence that she marry Bhaer is less endearing. The film still adapts its source material’s ending, but it understands Jo March’s marriage as a compromise — both on Jo’s part and Alcott’s.

In the final scene, Jo watches the printing and assembling of her book with a nebulous expression. Her smile is slight, fading before returning. A disembodied arm hands her a completed copy. She’s proud, but that emotion is complicated by uncertainty. While the copyright might belong to her, this story is not purely her own.

Despite its effusive joy, Gerwig’s Little Women cannot give its protagonist a true happy ending. Jo’s womanhood precludes her from an uncompromised triumph. Beholden to patriarchy, Jo has limited control over her own narrative, but she can control which sacrifice she makes.

Keeping Jo March in mind helped me disentangle the messiness of Promising Young Woman — like Jo, Cassie struggles against the confines of her circumstances, evading a neat resolution. The reunion with Bhaer evoked a similar sense of unreality to Al’s arrest, which strikes me as too good to be true. The romantic happy ending is so convenient and cinematic that it casts doubt on itself, and I couldn’t help but feel the same way about the last-minute karma of Al leaving his wedding in cuffs.

Cassie’s posthumous texts are certain of this scene’s finality, definitely claiming that the end “is now,” though Al’s fate will be left up to the justice system. It seems that Cassie declares an ending to her own narrative, regardless of Al’s fate.

My first reaction to the film closing on Cassie’s winky-face was disbelief. I felt it was unearned. What is there to wink about? Upon reflection, the wink seems cued into the sick joke of the situation. As minor characters discover the trail of evidence leading back to her corpse to the tune of an 80’s power ballad, Cassie makes herself heard the only way it seems to work. “I told you so,” the wink says. “I told you I would.”

Cruella: A Traditional Fairytale with an Updated Aesthetic

This weekend, I went to the movies for the first time since the start of the pandemic. When we’re both home from school, my friend Ryan and I like to go to the worst movie we can find that still promises some entertainment value. We haven’t always struck the right balance - Tom Hooper’s Cats (2019) in particular felt like a waste of $13.50 - but the theatrical experience can usually make a mediocre film into a somewhat captivating spectacle. We saw Cruella, the origin story of the titular Disney villain first seen in 101 Dalmatians. Amateur reviews on Twitter advertised a bonkers explanation for Cruella’s hatred of spotted dogs, the kind of plot twist you can tell got greenlit in the middle of a pandemic when everyone was losing their minds a little bit.

Cruella places its heroine at the center of the London fashion scene amid near-constant British invasion-era needledrops, painting the classic villain as an avant-garde designer who stages guerilla runway shows and sabotages her stodgy competition, the House of Baroness. The rivalry between the two designers, Cruella and the Baroness, somewhat acts as a microcosm for the film’s blending of gritty, counterculture coolness with elements of the classic fairytale. I couldn’t stop thinking of comparable works, possible pitches: “Vivienne Westwood meets Mary Poppins;” “The Devil Wears Prada meets Cinderella”. Maybe this is because I think of Disney less as a treasure trove of quality children’s entertainment and more as a soulless conglomerate gobbling up all the surrounding talent and putting them to work spinning gold out of idle Disney IP. 

It’s not just a Disney thing, though: Todd Phillips’s Joker essentially mix-’n’-matched thematic and plot elements from Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy while applying them to the well-known narrative of the evil comic book character. Cruella, teasingly dubbed “the Girl Joker,” borrows less directly from seminal works, but both films seem to me like things people wanted to make anyway and then were paid a lot more money to write as vehicles for already-established characters owned by studios. The trend of small, up-and-coming, “serious” directors being tapped to helm big-budget Marvel movies in the past few years (e.g. Taika Waititi, Ryan Coogler, Rian Johnson, Chloe Zhao) suggests an attempt by the genre to rebrand as genuine “art” rather than action fodder, an ideological counter to the studios’ impetus to churn out as many sequels and reboots as possible. At first glance, Cruella reads as an audacious cash-grab by an industry bereft of new ideas; its merits as a film don’t necessarily absolve it of that judgement, but rather raise questions about the interactions between creativity and money in a “fallen” Hollywood. 

It makes me a little mad that they used an Iggy Pop song in a Disney movie. It feels like yet another example of mainstream media de-fanging subversive work by adopting its aesthetic without analyzing its deeper meaning. “Now I Wanna Be Your Dog” makes an inane level of sense in a movie about a woman obsessed with crafting a dalmatian fur coat. It’s clever in a not-clever way that pisses me off and makes me feel like I’m being annoying for getting pissed off. But who was that for? Am I just supposed to recognize the androgynous High Street vintage store proprietor; Cruella’s Frank-n-Furter costuming and makeup as she assumes control of her own “Frankenstein place,” Hell Hall; the music of The Beatles and The Clash (different, sure, but both famous and British) as half-defined markers of a bygone era, stripped of any real cultural significance, but easily recognizable shorthand for a “vibe” that doesn’t need to adhere to historical accuracy?

Yes! Yes. Time and again, Cruella anesthetizes the cultural subversion and political turmoil its allusions suggest by reverting to fairytale conventions. Any issue of class brought to bear by Cruella’s status as an orphaned pickpocket is quelled by the ultimate revelation that she is the Baroness’s daughter. Both Cruella and the Baroness are referred to as “psycho,” but their poor mental health is simply a facet of the characters’ villainousness. The cast’s algorithmic diversity suggests a post-racial landscape, and readings of unconventional characters like Artie and Cruella as “queer” are purely subtextual. Thus, Cruella utilizes its historical and cultural milieu for aesthetic purposes while such allusions appear to “heighten” the text.

Nurikabe: The End of a Very Long Beginning

This is the end to a very long beginning. Looking back at the past three years, I don’t think there was a day I didn’t spend thinking about this project in one way or another. And as we move into production, I feel like it would be good to reflect a bit on some of the things we learned from the experience.

 

1. Motivation is not discipline: At the beginning of any creative endeavor you probably feel very motivated. After all, it takes enthusiasm and creative energy to come up with an idea for a project. And maybe that motivation will carry you through developing that idea into a workable outline. But eventually that motivation fades. It doesn’t fade forever, of course, resurfacing anytime. But it will inevitably fade. And the idea you’ve been excitedly working on? Well, the excitement is gone and the work remains. It is at times like this that discipline comes in handy. Motivation and the energy that comes with it is fickle and unreliable. Discipline is not. It’s an “either you do it or you don’t” mentality. So even when things were hard, frustrating, intimidating or felt impossible, we both knew that nothing was going to happen unless we made it so. 

 

2. Unique doesn’t always mean original: In our research, we read through many volumes of folklore and fairytales. And though no two stories were the same, some were more similar than others. In Japanese folklore many stories can be summed up as such: A spirit causes trouble, so a monk prays a lot and the spirit goes away. In Latin American folklore, we found quite a few stories that bore a striking resemblance to Cinderella. The Japanese character Momotarō is similar to Tom Thumb and Thumbelina, all of whom in their respective stories are children born in odd ways to childless parents. Since our project’s focus is adaptation and folklore, we knew our film wouldn’t be something entirely new. But in our research, we realized that the most interesting thing about adaptation is not how similar things are. It is the differences between each story that make them interesting. For something to be interesting and unique, it doesn’t have to be completely original, it just has to take the material in a new direction. 

 

3. It’s all on you until it isn’t: As we’ve mentioned in previous posts, this is our first large scale collaborative project. We are used to relying on ourselves for everything, from the first draft of the script to the final cut of the film. The weird thing about this project is it felt very much like everything we’d done before until it wasn’t. We had to create the story, write the script. It was up to us to find a cast and crew. As stated before, we understood from the beginning that nothing would move forward on the project unless we made it happen. But now it feels like something is about to change. Now, we have to pass our vision on to our cast and crew, relying on them to make this thing a reality. And while it does relieve some pressure on us, it can be scary to hand off almost three years of work to others and trust them to make it good. We have to stay on top of things, making sure everything is in control and moving along nicely. But we also have to let go a bit, letting everyone do their work. Ultimately, we can’t do this by ourselves, as film by its very nature is collaborative.

 

4. Caution and anxiety are two different things: We have taken a lot of care in planning for production. Making sure everything is ready, our contingencies and backup plans, that is the result of caution. Caution is good in pre-production as it makes you take a step back, consider possible obstacles or issues. Anxiety, on the other hand, has no place in filmmaking. It makes you doubt everything, throwing you into a swirling storm of what-if’s. It’s a paralyzing force that narrows your focus to only the problems without considering any solutions. If left unchecked, that anxiety turns to self-doubt, which affects the entire production. Because if you don’t believe in the project (or yourself), why should anyone else? In my experience, the best remedy to anxieties (other than good preplanning and backup plans) is a simple question: “And?” It switches the focus from the problem back to the solution. Worried about what happens if something goes wrong? And? If it happens, you’re going to have to deal with it anyway, so it doesn’t help to get worried about it. It’s an attitude that’s gotten us through many stressful periods in all sorts of environments. No matter what happens, at the end of the day you’ll likely get through it unscathed. It may not be fun, and it may not be perfect. But it will be done. 

 

5. Never forget why you love it: A little while ago, I saw someone give a talk about being successful. They said that you shouldn’t do what you love because one day you’ll be working hard and realize you aren’t enjoying it. They argued it was better to figure out what you’re good at and learn to be passionate about it. Personally, I find that a rather depressing way to live. For all I know, I only have one shot at life. Seems like a waste to give up on pursuing my passion without at least trying to follow it first. And yes, there have been times on this project where everything feels wrong. Times where it feels like it’s too much to handle, where frustration and challenge overwhelm any positivity. But in those times, it’s good to remember why you started. Because if those young Nishimoto brothers, who were so fascinated with the behind the scenes features on DVDs, could see what we are doing here today… their excitement would be enough to power us through this project ten times over. 

 

That flame of childhood excitement, it is still burning inside us. Sure, it might not be as easily accessible as it was back then. But it’s light has been with us every step of the way on this project, and it will continue to light our way ahead.

^{Photos By Amy Nishimoto}

We have been Thomas and Curtis Nishimoto. We’re making something that, for lack of a better term, is really cool. And we cannot wait to show you. - TC