“If a film says something about human nature that’s widely recognized as true, that film will find an audience. Richard Linklater‘s Bernie, a dark small-town comedy that is tight and clean and well-sculpted, is such a film. It says that feelings and likability rule, that Americans trust beliefs more than facts, and that we’re governed less by laws than emotions.” — from a 4.18.12 HE riff.
It finally hit me what the argument against Silver Linings Playbook might be and why certain female critics and columnists (i.e., those who don’t necessarily see movies and roles and performances as creative expressions in and of themselves but elements that may or may not advance a certain forward-march, proactively feminist agenda) might have an issue with it.
If it manifests (and I’m saying “if”), their argument might be that Jennifer Lawrence‘s Tiffany character, an emotionally fragile nutter of sorts but mainly a spirited, tough-talking, no-b.s. woman who doesn’t take any shit, is basically a male fuck fantasy, and the story itself is too male-centric because Tiffany is basically used by director-writer David O. Russell to support and complete Bradley Cooper‘s Pat Solitano character by (a) shaking him out of his “I need to get back with my wife” obsession and (b) falling in love with him and gradually inspiring reciprocity.
In short, the Silver Linings milieu is too male, too blue-collar, too football-fanatic and not positive enough in terms of pushing strong, independent-minded, take-charge, stand-their-own-ground female characters. Tiffany, in short, is too emotionally vulnerable and isn’t Katniss Everdeen enough.
Just listen to Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone, who’s something of a we-go-girls essayist when it comes assessing the worth of this or that film by way of positive or not-so-positive aspects of its female characters:
“Lawrence knocks it out of the park in the Silver Linings Playbook, and the one-two punch of that and The Hunger Games puts her at the top of the list,” Sasha writes. “She’s more Helen Hunt in As Good as it Gets than Halle Berry in Monster’s Ball in Playbook. If she weren’t such a rising star she would be in the supporting category for her work here, as her function in the film is mainly to support Bradley Cooper’s character arc.
“What makes this an award-worthy performance is that Lawrence elevates it beyond what’s written on the page. She makes it deeper, richer, more compelling than it otherwise would be — it’s a male fantasy, yet Lawrence finds the truth in who the character is and that makes the difference.”
Got it? Stone is a Lawrence fan, but a cornerstone of her support is due to Lawrence having managed to overcome the inherent sexism and fuck-fantasy material installed in the script and pushed by the manner of the film. If a less-willful, more malleable actress had been cast, Silver Linings Playbook would have been even more of a vaguely sexist, woman-marginalizing, football juju comedy. So thank God for Lawrence having bolted through the door and knocked over the living-room furniture and re-ordered the sexist universe of David O. Russell!
I suspect that one of the things that Paul Thomas Anderson whispered into Joaquin Phoenix‘s ear when they began working on The Master was “don’t be overly literal or derivative but think of Dwight Frye‘s Fritz character in the 1931 Frankenstein…think of his grovelling manner, those gleeful little giggles, the little serpent with the tongue flicking in and out.”
Everybody and his cousin has re-posted the announcement about Sascha Gervasi‘s Hitchcock being the opening-night attraction at the 2012 AFI Fest, on Thursday, 11.1. So where’s the teaser? If Fox Searchlight is smart they’ll re-shoot this longish black-and-white trailer that Hitchcock himself acted in and/or narrated. Just for fun. And why, incidentally, can’t I get the AFI publicists to write me back about press credentials?
I’ve been flipping through the Universal Classic Monster Bluray collection (10.2), and am once again reminded of the Bride of Frankenstein weight problem. The face of Boris Karloff‘s monster was almost skeletal in the original Frankenstein (’31) but Karloff had bulked up with hundreds of roast beef and mashed potato dinners and was a good 15 or 20 pounds heavier in Bride, which was filmed four years after the original. Plus the dark under-eye makeup was gone on top of the little bangs.
Yesterday author Richard Crouse posted a chat with Guillermo del Toro about Ken Russell‘s The Devils and particularly Crouse’s “Raising Hell: Ken Russell and the Unmaking of The Devils,” which has just been become available.
“I also wonder whether people will look back on this campaign and say it all boiled down to that 47% video. It is the smoking gun. That it was filmed by a catering staff member, one of the workers of the event, makes it all the more poignant. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s like at the end of The Dead Zone when Martin Sheen holds up a baby to protect him from a bullet and that is what brings down his bid to be President.” — Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone in a Facebook remark posted two or three hours ago.
The vision and the details are fine — certainly better than Romney’s — but they’ve been repeated so often that they don’t sink in. But the presentation does. Obama is good at addressing hundreds in the standard booming oratorical style, but his speaking-quietly-and-earnestly-at-the-kitchen table patter is perfect. One thing: why did we keep on in Afghanistan for four years, knowing we’d change nothing and defeat no one?
The current idea isn’t just to beat Romney. The idea is to humiliate him and remove as many of the Tea Party radicals from the House as possible.
