Discover the Masterpiece that is 'The Worst Person in the World'
#163: "The Worst Person in the World," "Jackass Forever," "Say Anything," "Murderville"
Edition 163:
Hey movie lovers!
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In this week’s newsletter: It’s Valentine’s week, a perfect time to talk about a romantic dramedy I truly loved out of Norway. Then, of course, we have to talk about the new Jackass movie, give some rom-com streaming suggestions and I’ll put you onto a hilarious new Netflix series. In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” A24 is back with another creepy thriller I cannot wait to see.
Worst Person in the World
The best movies are the ones that defy not only expectation but also definition.
Such is the case for Joachim Trier’s…let’s call it a romantic dramedy, or perhaps a bildungsroman, a meditation on the human condition, or simply…a masterpiece.
For the sake of clarity, I’ll over-simplify to say that our protagonist, a young woman in Norway, doesn’t know what she wants as she cycles through careers and romantic partners across a four-year stretch of her life.
Often in movies, that theme is used to portray a narcissism that the protagonist doesn’t feel fulfilled no matter what he or she accomplishes, but here it is wielded far more compellingly as a symptom of feeling like she is not the main character in her own life story. It’s a fight for agency that humanizes her far more than your average lead character in a movie.
Were it not for the organization of the story into 12 chapters plus a prologue and epilogue, one could quite easily forget you are watching a movie entirely. There is only one moment in the entire 130-minute runtime that feels as if it was written (a moment that will be obvious to all who watch the movie) rather than simply experienced. When the credits rolled I felt like I had lived those four year’s in this woman’s life.
That level of immersiveness in a fictional world is rare for any story to accomplish, and allows the magical movie alchemy to occur that opens one up to the emotions of another person’s lived experience.
What’s even more incredible about The Worst Person in the World is that unlike the extreme authenticity of something like Manchester By The Sea, this movie is able to hook up that emotional IV drip without tethering the other end to reality. There’s plenty of room in this story for classic rom-com montages, slow-mo and one absolutely glorious, reality-breaking “dream” sequence that ranks among the best movie scenes in the past five years.
The deep level of engagement allows the movie push far beyond any simple solutions to simple problems. Her decisions, who to love or what to pursue, never come with clear cut rights and wrongs. As Trier said in one interview, the movie is “yearning for a feeling that something is more complex, and allowed to be ambivalent, because truth is never one sided.” Expressed in one particular devastating moment that will no doubt become the movie’s tagline, “I love you. And I don’t love you.”
Not since Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight has a movie been so willing to sit in uncomfortable moments and give space for such direct and hard conversations. It’s gut-wrenching because it feels so real, so raw.
The result is a movie that feels like life — soaring and weightless in the good times and crushingly hopeless in the bad times, before finding its grounding in some bittersweet resignation.
It’s difficult to be effusive and also interesting about a subject where you don’t want to spoil material, so I’ll just say I loved this movie and leave it at that.
It would’ve vied for a top spot in my 2021 rankings, but despite its festival premiere I am officially claiming it for 2022, where it goes to No. 1 and will likely stay for most of the calendar year.
Something New
Jackass Forever (Theaters): The Jackass franchise exists in what seems to be some kind of alternate universe, where the most traumatic experience of any normal person’s life (for instance, having your nipple bitten by an extremely venomous spider) are not only a regular day’s work but in fact among the most forgettable of scenes in a film celebrating such acts of stupidity. This universe operates outside of time, evidently, because this latest installment is just as unapologetically Jackass as the original 20 years ago, give or take a few gray hairs.
There’s no use in intellectualizing what’s going on here. It is comedy on a primal level, starting at adolescent pranks and devolving into what is essentially sadistic forms of torture. But hey, it’s torture out of an intense friendship, which grounds the insanity and earned the fervent, long-lasting loyalty people feel toward Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Chris Pontius and the gang.
While the stunts and pranks are just as crazy, or crazier, than they’ve ever been, the thing that has changed is us, the audience. What would’ve been jaw-dropping 20 years ago can now be seen every single day when someone scrolls through TikTok or YouTube, which desensitizes us to what we’re seeing AND the performers to what they’re doing — which is a bummer because watching them be terrified was always half the fun, and is either absent here or feels for the first time like a bit of a put-on.
The real question now is whether this truly is the grand finale of the series, as it’s being promoted to be (they said they same thing 10 years ago). Considering the $23 million opening in the current landscape, something tells me we haven’t seen the last of Jackass.
Something Old
Say Anything (1989, HBO Max): Monday is Valentine’s Day, and in case you’re not feeling J-Lo’s totally ridiculous Marry Me in theaters or Charlie Day/Jenny Slate’s charming-looking I Want You Back on Amazon, it turns out HBO Max has a nice collection of older romantic comedies to dig into.
One I’d never seen — other than the iconic shot of John Cusack holding a boombox over his head blaring Phil Collins’ “It’s In Your Eyes” — was this endearing high school romance. It’s stereotypically 80s in every way imaginable, including some dating habits (calling a girl you just met on her home phone, talking to her dad?!) that seem mind-blowing by modern standards. But the cuteness and simplicity of the movie wear off in the final 20 minutes when it manages to land not only a complex father-daughter relationship arc but also a quarter-life crisis that could’ve gone very wrong. It’s a fun watch, and if you’re looking for another in HBO’s collection — which I’ve recommended a bunch of times — check out 1987’s Broadcast News. You’re welcome.
Something to Stream
Murderville (Netflix): Breaking away from movies for a second because in terms of dumb humor, few new releases can top this Netflix comedy series starring Will Arnett as a hard-boiled homicide detective. Its brilliance is in its premise — each episode, Arnett is paired with a different celebrity guest star as his partner, and that partner has not been given a script.
So it plays out almost like an escape room mixed with an improv comedy performance, where the “detectives” bumble through purposely embarrassing scenarios hoping to pick up on actual clues, and by the end of the 30 minutes the celebrity must decide which of three suspects is actually the killer (a very smart game show element). The choice of celebrities is great too: Conan O’Brien, Marshawn Lynch and Kumail Nanjiani are the three I’ve seen so far. It’s an extremely dumb but incredibly watchable show, which I can’t imagine won’t be a hit and produce upwards of 50 or 100 episodes. I’ll watch them all.
Trailer Watch: Men
From A24, the studio that brought us “Pig” and “Lamb” comes the next short-titled movie about beasts that roam the earth…men.
Jokes aside, director Alex Garland and A24 have collaborated to make gold in the past (Ex Machina, and if you drop acid before watching, also Annihilation). This trailer teases us without giving anything substantial away (the way all trailers should be!!), showing off the recently-nominated Jessie Buckley in the lead role and the pagan iconography that A24 has increasingly relied on to create unsettling worlds. Because, well, IT WORKS. This movie is going to be sick.