Bucking the Genre: Promising Young Woman

 

After the dissolution of the studio system and the abandonment of the Production code the 1970s witnessed an explosion of subgenres of film that had previous been forbidden more graphic sexuality, violence, and nudity changed cinema from studio productions to exploitive independent movies. Perhaps the most exploitive subgenre to emerge from this cinematic chaos was the rape-revenge movie.

In this subgenre a woman after surviving a sexual assault discovers hidden reserves of strength and becomes a force for vengeance, sometimes solely against her assailant and sometimes against men in general. The movies often ended with final showdowns where she triumphs, often lethally, against her original attacker. Rape-revenge movie is different from movies that utilized a woman’s sexual assault to motivate the protagonist to finally act against the story villain by centering the woman, or sometimes women, experience instead of using her trauma as mere motivation for someone else. Often these movies are very exploitive, using social commentary and feminism as excuses for onscreen explicit violence and nudity.

Promising Young Woman is without a doubt a rape revenge film, the trailers made that much clear, but unlike the vast majority of the genre PYM doesn’t promote the trope that trauma instills growth but rather unflinching it depicts trauma as it is so often in reality, something that shatters lives and personality leaving the person broken and incomplete.

At the film’s opening Cassie, the protagonist, spends her weekend nights playing at being too drunk to stand and when some man takes her to his home to, let’s be blunt, rape her, she drops the sham intoxication and confronts him. Cassie’s life is devoid of friends and joy, she is already broken by the experiences of her backstory. Everything changes after a chance encounter with a former classmate who brings the knowledge that the assailant that escaped any form of justice has returned to town. Cassie switches from random revenge to precise, calculated vengeance against the people that enabled the assault. However, in the course of her revenge Cassie discovers new information that set her on a much darker much more violent path.

In most rape-revenge movies the filmmakers are caught between two terrible paths when forced to depict the sexual violence at the heart of their story. They can depict the terrible events more faithfully and risk traumatizing and repelling their audience or, and this is the case is the exploitive side of the genre, they can titillate with the violence, playing to dark male fantasies. Emerald Fennell, Promising Young Woman‘s writer and director did neither. Rather than show us she restricted our experience to hearing the attack. A brilliant move that sidestepped and exploitive titillation and provided the audience with the horror of what we are capable of imagining. Fennell kept her film and script grounded with a reality we can believe in rather than one of glorified and improbable violence. The ending, fitting with her approach of the subject matter, is dark and with only a glimmer of catharsis. The film’s second act is perhaps is greatest magic trick, inducing in Cassie and the audience a false sense of security that so perfectly mirror the real-life experiences of far too many.

Cary Mulligan’s portrayal of Cassie is nuanced and even when Cassie’s life seems happier with a new dawn possibly breaking her performance contains the tragedy that always exist just under her skin. Like her namesake Cassandra, Cassie is living a tragedy with an inescapable fate that bears down on her like a freight train.

Promising Young Woman is currently playing on HBO.

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Let Us Not Rejoice in Death

 

There is no doubt, no confusion, no mistaking noise amongst the data, at this time in the United States Covid-19 is killing more ‘conservatives’ than ‘liberals.’ At both the state and county level vaccination rates track with election results, the more a region voted with the Democrats the more vaccinated its population and the more vaccinated the population the more protected that are. Where Trump won larger votes shares more people are dying of Covid. The cause and effects are stark, clear, and lethal. Rejection of vaccines and mitigation measures such as masks are the cause of the pandemic continued lethality among ‘conservative’ populations.

To those basking in schadenfreude at this misfortune, at the suffering and death of your political opponents I say, stop! For practical and moral reasons, we should not, at all, take any sort of pleasure or preen with and sense of superiority over these human tragedies.

Many, if not most, of the people suffering, dying, and losing loved ones are pawns, used and manipulated by cynical sinister and anti-democratic forces. They are victims of the greedy, venal, and evil people that control ‘conservative’ thought in America. Yes, they placed those people into power and now those in power are sacrificing them as they have so many others before. ‘Spiking the ball’ will not open eyes, it will shut them, but perhaps, maybe, a little compassion will save some of these misguided souls.

This terrible tragedy is killing more than just those who have been led into suicidal behavior. Hospitals in these regions, already underfunded, are stressed to. and some areas, beyond the breaking point and people in need of critical care are dying because there is no care left for anyone else. If you are taking joy in these prevented covid deaths, you are also taking joy in the collateral damage it spreads. There cannot be one without the other.

Abuse, individual and cultural, is a cycle and the abused becoming the abuser. Only when the abused can find their way out and not visit upon other what has been done to them can the cycle shatter. Many of these ‘conservatives’ have indulged in their own schadenfreude over others suffering from disease and addiction and while it is hard, very hard, now is the time for the formerly abused to break the cycle and not continue it.

None of this is to say that the political fight ends with compassion and welcoming arms. There is a proto-fascist movement seeking to end democracy in the United States. It’s aims are to subvert and discredit elections while stealing them with discriminatory laws and regulations. For that enemy there is no compassion, no forgiveness, but for the pawns that use, abuse, and discard we can be the better people. When they said, ‘hate the sin not the sinner,’ they lied, we do not have to lie. We can be the moral people and we can be the righteous people without becoming the cruel people taking joy in death.

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Why I Prefer the Theatrical Cut of Aliens

 

Seven years after Alien burst upon the scene and spawned countless imitators and knockoffs the James Cameron helmed sequel Aliens arrive for a fresh round of terror and action.

The version released to theaters in 1986 ran a total of 137 minutes, that two hours and 17 minutes making it a very long film for theatrical distribution. The more over two hours a film runs the fewer screenings a theater can screen in a single day. In 1991 an extended version running twenty minutes longer was released on laserdisc with both editions available on the Blu-ray boxed set collection. Writer/Director Cameron has stated that his preference is for the extended ‘Director’s Cut’ version of the film.

When I first saw the extended cut on DVD/Blu-Ray I agreed with Cameron but over time I’ve found that my preference has become for the theatrical cut.

In the making of documentaries packaged with the Blu-ray release Cameron reports that when the film came in longer than the studio preferred time and technology hampered going through the entire film and trimming scenes here and there to shorten the running time. In 1986 editing was still a physical processed of cutting and splicing film as non-linear editing had not yet become the industry standard. His producer and at the time wife Gale Anne Hurd suggested and entire reel of the film depicting the colony of Hadley’s Hope and the discovery of the alien vessel, and the parasite eggs could be dropped without damaging the narrative. That’s exactly what Cameron did.

It’s the introduction of the reel that I find doesn’t really work and it all comes down to Point of View.

In Alien it is not clear at all that Ripley is the protagonist of the story until late in the film. Perhaps as early as Dallas’ doomed foray into the airduct but certainly by the reveal of Ash’s true nature do we understand that Ripley is our real focus. Part of the terror of Alien is because we haven’t had the protagonist clearly defined, we are uncertain who is ‘safe’ due to storytelling conventions.

Before the first frame flashes past our eyes, before we have gotten our popcorn and taken our seat in Aliens, we know that Ripley is our hero and our eyes into the world. It is he struggle with PTSD and survivor’s guilt that drives the emotional heartbeat of the story. It is her pain that we empathize with and her restoration we are hoping for.

Given that to leap away from our protagonist, our viewpoint character for 15 or more minutes to meet the colonist is a violation of the story’s point of view. We don’t know these people and save for newt, who drives none of the deleted scenes, we will never meet them again. Leaving Ripley for these throw away characters saps emotional investment from the audience and wastes time. With this reel excised from the movie the story remains tight on Ripley, and we ride along with her, knowing no more than her as this fresh horror unfolds.

 

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Excited About Dune (2021)

 

First let me get this confession out of the way, I have never been a devoted uber fan of Dune. I have read the original novel a few times, I see the deeper ecological and sociological warnings Herbert infused into the narrative, but it has never been one of my favorite books but simply an enjoyable one with something to say. I have read the immediate sequel and none of the other books, neither the one by the original author nor the expended one by others, so my interest in the upcoming movie is not from sense of awe about the source material.

I did see the David Lynch film back in the 80s and I even own it on Blu-ray, it is a lovely, strange, and confused mess that is less like Lynch’s filmography that every other movie he has directed. It missed the novel’s core themes but is enjoyable for the train wreck it is.

Denis Villeneuve, a film maker with a track record of interesting and intelligent science-fiction films, Arrival and Blade Runner 2049, is an artist who might be able to crack the titanic trouble that adapting a novel primary about ideas into a visual medium. I am heartened to know that he is not attempting to cram all of the novel into a single film but without the sequels already ‘green lit’ we are in danger of being left hanging with an incomplete story. This Dune has an impressive cast, not that Lynch’s didn’t but I always have issues when family member for no discernable reason speak in radically different accents, and benefits from 21 century visual effects. (I really like the look of the ornithopters, the dragonfly-like wings at least feel credible. I confess to never having successfully visualized the craft while reading the novel.)

Next month I will learn if my excitement is justified.

My SF/Noir Vulcan’s Forge is available from Amazon and all booksellers. The novel is dark, cynical, and packed with movie references,

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Series Review: Reservation Dogs

 

From filmmakers Taika Waititi and Sterlin Harjo Reservation Dogs is a dramatic comedy focused on 4 Native American teenagers, their life on a reservation in Oklahoma, and their deep desire to escape to golden California.

Still in mourning from the passing of a friend a year prior to the start of the series the four friends engage in crimes to fund their California dreaming escape plan. The plan is upset by the arrival of a new teenage gang and interpersonal conflicts between the series’ protagonists.

With equal measures of ironic comedy and dramatic intensity centered on tribal life and identity Reservation Dogs is neither farce nor tragedy but rather a distorted mirror of reality. The shows wisely presents native folklore and theology neither as noble savage truth nor as ignorant superstition but with the same messy complexity that often accompanies faith, tradition, and the viewpoints of previous generations that teenagers so often disregard.

Season one has just concluded with the next already greenlit by the network. Reservation Dogs airs on FX and streams on Hulu.

My SF/Noir Vulcan’s Forge is available from Amazon and all booksellers. The novel is dark, cynical, and packed with movie references,

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We Are the GOPs Enemy

 

In the long before time of the Cold War it was easy to see who the enemy was in the eyes of nearly every Republican, The USSR its satellite states and its desire to spread the glorious revolution globally. The enemy allowed the diverse GOP a point of unification. Northern ‘Rockefeller’, rambunctious Libertarians, evangelical pro-lifers, and southern social conservatives set aside their vast and deep differences to unit in the fight against global communism.

Then they won.

The USSR dissolved, the Eastern Bloc shattered, and the only Communist nations left in the world was Cuba and North Korea.

The division that had been suppressed within the GOP became meaningful. Rockefeller Republicans were run out of the party labeled as RINOs and the remaining cliques fixed their eye on a new enemy to unify their ranks and stoke anger and fear to motivate their base into the frenzy required to separate them from their cash and win their vote and that enemy were their fellow Americans. But the calculus that stoked the anger failed to recognize that anger can be self-generating and the energized base is easily transformed into the murderous mob. Now, with the murderous mob in their party no one has the spine to confront their creation and the list of enemies grows and the list of actions ‘beyond the pale’ to acquire power shrinks to nothing.

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Streaming Review: Thale

 

Thale is a 2012 Norwegian horror film about two men, Leo and Elvis, who are contracted to clear away the remains of bodies of people whose corpses were either not discovered before serious decomposing has set in or had died violent messy deaths. While on a job at a remote forest cabin they discover hidden rooms in the building’s basement and a mysterious young woman, nude and mute.

I struggle to accurately name Thale a horror film in part because for so much of the movie’s run time very little occurs. Now, I am not one who lacks patience for a ‘slow burn’ of a horror film, in fact a well crafts slow burn is my favorite style of horror film making but Thale seems to lack enough plot for its scant 76-minute running time which honestly felt much long. As a short feature, 30 minutes or so in length it would have packed a much more powerful punch but over an hour with its extremely limited plot the film drags. The story draws on Scandinavian folklore and had the filmmakers leaned more into that aspect of the tale they might have achieved, even on their quite limited budget, a more effective film. This film is not clumsily made, and it is well shot and well-staged and for some it may act as a curious diversion but for me the film failed to lift off and merely taxied to its runway without every taking flight.

Thale is currently streaming on Shudder.

My SF/Noir Vulcan’s Forge is available from Amazon and all booksellers. The novel is dark, cynical, and packed with movie references,

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The Intersection of Noir and Horror: Mulholland Dr.

 

It has taken me a long time to realized that my endless fascination with David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. is in part because the dream-logic, nightmare-adjacent film is a fusion of two of my favorite film genres, Noir and Horror.

Mulholland Dr is a twisted terrifying tale of Hollywood, the emptiness of its illusions, the corrosive nature of obsessive dreaming, and the ultimate destruction of self and identity when we allow our dreams to become more vital than our reality.

Naomi Watts stars as Betty a fresh-faced aspiring actress recently come to Hollywood after winning a dancing contest and as Diane, a bitter broken woman whose dreams of stardom and love have been crushed by the heartless engine that is Los Angeles. Laura Harring plays Rita, a mysterious amnestic woman who has barely survived an attempt on her life that stumbles into Betty’s life and Camilla, as fellow actor that has all the success Diane never achieved and who has spurned Diane for other lovers leaving Diane bitter and murderous.

If that sounds confusing it is but that is often the deep style of a David Lynch film. Lynch doesn’t photograph reality but rather his films follow the logic of a dreamer on the cusp of waking and often it can be difficult or even impossible to separate what is real from what is dream and what is symbolic. Lynch rarely will have explanations within his narrative and outside of the piece never explains his work. It is your viewing and your emotional reaction and your interpretation that matters as to a film’s meaning. The film is incomplete without your participation in the dialog between artist and audience and Lynch will not corrupt the process by instructing you on your side of that conversation.

The most common description of the events of Mulholland Dr., and one I agree with, is that Betty is the escapist dream of failed Diane’s life, and that in the Club Silencio scene the dream crumbles revealing disastrous reality that collapses into hallucinatory psychosis.

This film is a niche taste and not for those expecting a direct, linear narrative where what you see on the screen reflects a fictionalized reality.

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Repulsed Republicans

 

The attempted recall of California Governor Gavin Newsom failed by a staggering 28 points. Wasting time and nearly a quarter of a billion dollars the sane citizens of the Golden State resoundingly rejected the GOP’s desperate do-over and its mad scheme to place the control of nation’s most populous state in the hands of a conservative celebrity.

Hopefully I wish for the national Democrats to learn this valuable lesson, tie every last Republican to the leader of their Turd Reich. From dog catcher to Senator every single motherforking one of them to their orange man-baby, endless sound bites of them praising the Manhattan Mussolini and at every debate pushing them into corners forcing them to either denounce the madness or own it. Rick Wilson, former Republican election strategist wrote a book Everything Trump Touches Dies, make every damned GOP candidate touch him. This must be the North star for Democrat for countless election to come.

But California needs to reform its recall system. This is madness. I’d say go ahead and leave the signature requirements and such the same. We should not make it too difficult to remove a person who needs to be removed but the actual replacement should simply be the Lieutenant Governor. That’s why the office is there, to become Governor when there is a vacancy. Given that the GOP has proved it cannot win statewide offices anymore that post is almost certain to be a Democrat and there would be little fire to exchange one Democratic for another.

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20 Years On

 

Tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and flight 93 that is generally assumed to have its target the capital but was thwarted by its passengers at the cost of their own lives.

I remember clearly where I was how I heard about the attacks. At the time I was working an overnight shift at a laboratory that performed drug testing for commercial clients. I loaded and ran a large machine that processed the samples. I was far from a scientist but a worker with basic skills and to help pass the hours I listened to radio during the night. Every night as the dawn came atmospheric changes began interfering with reception and usually, I had to shut off the radio for the last hour or so of my shift. On Sep 11th, 2001, just as the signal was degrading beyond usability, I hear the first reports that a plane has collided with one of the towers at the WTC. I assumed it was probably some light civilian aircraft and heard no more as noise swamped the signal.

At the time I used mass transit to get home and at the bus stop a random person was trying to tell me that a tower had collapsed. At this point I still had no confirmed information that it had been a massive airliner and assumed this person was passing on rumor or speculation. (Even before the Internet, Facebook, and Twitter there was plenty of bad and fake information out there.) When I reached the 7-11 just blocks from my apartment, I saw the video playing on their television and understood that the world had changed.

 

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