The most controversial movie of the year is 'Malcolm & Marie'
#117: "Malcolm & Marie," "Bliss," "Touch of Evil," "Judas and the Black Messiah"
EDITION 117
Hey movie lovers!
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In this week’s newsletter: Malcolm & Marie didn’t just blow its awards chances on the first week of release. It managed to make everyone mad while doing it. I’ll try to sort through why. Then we’re talking Britney Spears of all people, the messy new rom-com Bliss, and more proof of Orson Welles genius. In this week’s Trailer Watch, it’s our second look at this awards season’s sleeping giant.
Malcolm & Marie
It’s comforting, in an odd way, to realize we’ve returned to place culturally, politically, even physically where we can get angry and argue about a good ol’ fashioned movie.
There is nothing actively revolting about Malcolm & Marie, the quarantine-shot relationship experiment written and directed by Sam Levinson (best known as the showrunner for HBO’s “Euphoria”).
Yet few movies in the past handful of years have been so loudly rejected by critics and the online film community. In this particular case, the discourse has grown to be far more interesting than the movie itself — essentially a two-hour argument between two actors in one location shot in heavily stylized black and white.
Levinson says the movie was meant to be a conversation starter, provoking fresh perspective on everything from relationship dynamics to identity politics. But having written it in just one week at the request of “Euphoria” star Zendaya after that show’s production was put on hold, this script turned out a bit like leaping out of an airplane without making sure you packed a parachute.
Malcom (played by John David Washington, seen earlier this year in Tenet) is an up-and-coming filmmaker, who returns home from the premiere of his latest movie having forgotten to thank his girlfriend Marie (played by Zendaya) in his remarks, a plot inspired by Levinson doing the same thing at the real-life premiere of his first film.
Writing autofiction is cheaper than therapy, I always say, and it’s easy to dismiss this immediately for being nothing more than a therapy exercise. The goal may have been to reach some universality, but the details are way too specific for the average Netflix viewer to see themselves in either character.
If you choose to see Malcolm & Marie as something like a narrativized essay, you’re on the fast track to hating it (for all the reasons outlined most thoroughly by The Atlantic’s Shirley Li). It’s a movie working through the director’s own experiences in a fictional character, a character who within the movie makes his own movie working through his own experiences. Yikes.
If we’re to believe that Malcolm is a mouthpiece for Levinson, then that would mean that the critic Malcolm rails against whom he calls “that white lady from the L.A. Times” could very well be the real life, white female freelance critic who panned Levinson’s first film in her review in the L.A. Times.
Critics are as thin-skinned as they are tribalistic, so the vendetta was out immediately against Levinson’s project. But their problems run deeper. Malcolm lashes out against critics who use a film only as a basis to comment on culture at large, and those who only view a filmmaker through the prism of his race, gender and sexual orientation.
Which is ironic, since the words about racial viewpoints of this black man and woman were written and directed by a white man who cannot fully understand them. It feels like a preemptive defensive against his own criticism.
What’s more, Malcom’s treatment of Marie exposes a really scary egoism, maybe even abuse, one that is not difficult to project on many Hollywood filmmakers who see themselves as geniuses.
However, there is another way to view this movie, one that could lead to some qualified appreciation (an important technique to know before watching the movie). If you identify Malcolm as being a buffoon, in which each of his long diatribes exposes him further as an egotistical a-hole, you may have just unlocked the movie.
The whole movie initiates off his error — not thanking Marie — and the argument continues to rage because of his inability to properly express that he’s sorry, until the movie ends with him finally saying “I’m sorry” and meaning it.
Seen in that way, Levinson was using Malcolm not to rant from his soap box but rather to expose and rebuke his own tendencies.
I’m ready to believe this was Levinson’s intent, I just don’t think he pulls it off. The viewer is constantly reminded that Malcolm is smart and talented. The rantings of his evil alter ego are presented a bit too lovingly, and when told through the eloquent and graceful acting of Washington, they are too convincing. The movie succeeded in swaying me from one side to the other with each volley of insults and attacks.
And if we’re to believe that Marie is the hero, she should not be so frequently sidelined. Zendaya’s magnetic screen presence is muted. Washington receives close-ups during his monologues but often during Zendaya’s big speeches the camera cuts back to Washington’s face for reaction.
As exhausting as all the discourse can become, the movie has little to offer without it. It captures the characteristics of a real life lover’s quarrel. It’s chaotic, passionate, inconsistent, repetitive. But I’d never call sitting in on another couple’s no-holds-barred fight for a couple hours a fun time.
The difference between this movie and something like last year’s far superior Marriage Story, which had its fair share of screaming matches, is that the arguments here don’t really amount to anything. They ramp up, circle around for a bit, then come down unresolved. That experience may be authentic (a word the movie explicitly hates), but it doesn’t justify the time investment I made in watching the thing.
And, certainly, it doesn’t make me love Levinson. He’s had to respond publicly to the backlash his movie has received over the past week, and has at various points placed the blame back on audiences and critics. Malcolm and Marie are imperfect and contradictory, he told the L.A. Times, and the public response “mirrors our inability to listen to one another and to take it all in as opposing viewpoints.”
Well the next time Levinson wants me to sit through his two-hour therapy exercise, I think I’ll pass. Just because his long, flowery diatribes come out of the mouths of beautiful movie stars, shot in gorgeous cinematography and settings, doesn’t make them gospel truth.
Something New
Framing Britney Spears (Hulu): The biggest cultural talking point this week — arguably bigger than the Super Bowl — was pop star Britney Spears, thanks to a new documentary released as a part of “The New York Times presents” series on Hulu (I guess I should disclose that I’m employed by the NYT, though the only way this would enter my orbit is if Spears were to suddenly contract Covid).
The doc unfolds like a really good newspaper feature story, chronicling Spears’ rise to fame and truly unbelievable treatment by the tabloid media, culminating in the utterly bizarre conservatorship situation she now finds herself entangled in. Even if you’re the farthest thing from a Spears fan, it’s a fascinating story and you’ll be amazed by bits and pieces of it that you couldn’t help but absorb along the way. And I really appreciate, in this world where everything gets stretched into an 8-part series, that they got in and out in a little over an hour here. Bravo.
Bliss (Amazon Prime): Just as predicted in last newsletter’s “Trailer Watch,” this movie is based on a wild concept. Basically what if The Matrix were a romantic comedy starring Owen Wilson and Salma Hayek? That’s an interesting hook, but unfortunately this feels like a rough first draft of a story that no one else looked at before they sent it out to the world. Entire plotlines jumble and/or disappear, making a mess where the arc of a story should be, amounting to nothing but confusion. The takeaway here: never underestimate a movie star’s desire to take a paid vacation to a tropical filming location like coastal Croatia. (Sidenote: what a year for Bill Nye the Science Guy! First Mank now this!)
Something Old
Touch of Evil (1958): I realized this week that, for all my defense of Orson Welles’ genius in Citizen Kane, I hadn’t seen many of his other films. Then I watched this awesome interview the Coen Brothers did with Guillermo Del Toro, in which they admit this late-50s Welles detective caper in particular was a big influence on their own filmmaking style (the Coens’ endorsement is good enough for me on anything).
So I dove into this noir thriller set on the U.S.-Mexico border — you can imagine some elements of that setting have not aged particularly well by 2020 standards — and found a who’s-who cast of golden age Hollywood: Charlton Heston playing…a Mexican detective (like I said, not aging well); Janet Leigh, who you might know as the woman in Psycho who gets stabbed in the shower (spoiler!); Orson Welles as a fat, racist border cop (ok, that part aged well); Zsa Zsa Gabor as a strip-club owner; and my boy Joseph Cotton (star of The Third Man) in an uncredited, hardly recognizable cameo.
The movie creates such a strong sense of place: hot, dirty, grimy, deceitful, dangerous. It reaffirmed my belief in the genius of Welles, particularly as a visual stylist. Hamstrung by primitive technology, he orchestrates the camera and staging in such a stunning way that you can only wonder what he’d do with modern tech (except you don’t have to, because filmmakers have been ripping him off for decades. Go watch the long, unbroken opening shot of this movie and try to convince me the one-take shot that opens Boogie Nights isn’t a direct homage).
Something to Stream
Judas and the Black Messiah (HBO Max): Friday marks the release of what I think is the most worthy Best Picture candidate I’ve seen, a powerful social drama led by incredible acting performances. It will be the coming out party for director Shaka King, who many believe to be the next Ryan Coogler, a commercial-yet-artistic hitmaker. I can’t wait to talk about this more in my full review next Friday, but King has not been shy about how difficult it was for him to get this movie financed, and this week in an interview with The Atlantic took direct aim at his awards competition.
“It was not only impossible to make a movie at that scale, but also not what they would offer a movie like The Trial of the Chicago 7,” King said. “And it’s a courtroom drama. When I found out how much money it was made for, it was really telling to me.”
Trailer Watch: Nomadland (#2)
Chloé Zhao’s semi-fictional tale of American nomads remains the sleeping giant of awards season. Very few people have seen it, yet the latest Best Picture betting odds I saw have it as the current favorite to win, by a clear margin. It would be quite a statement by the industry to choose this movie, which couldn’t be more anti-Hollywood in its sensibility, as the representation of this past year in movies. Setting aside the horserace of it all, the film looks lovely and effective in opening a window to a subculture few people know anything about. Not to mention Frances McDormand in the center of the frame. That’s always a can’t-miss proposition.