The Invisible Man Does Elegantly What Promising Young Woman Fails to Do with Lectures
freddiedeboer.substack.com
I’m going under the knife to fix my shoulder tomorrow, and I’m not entirely sure when the next post will be up. It’s only an hour-long procedure and I’ll be going home right after, so it shouldn’t be more than a matter of a couple days. If you’re looking for something to read in the meantime, next week we’ll be doing a Book Club short story discussion about
"I look forward to a correction for this stuff in the coming years, where getting more films by women and filmmakers of color stops being a novelty and people are more comfortable letting the stories tell the tale, in and of and for themselves."
Same, man. Piggybacking off yesterday's post, there's a lot of Good White Men in Film Twitter world as well who are just insufferable with their loud, scoldy social justice takes. They're so awful that they can turn you off of an otherwise good movie. Prominent examples include MovieBob, David Ehrlich, and FilmCritHULK, but they're far from alone.
I look forward to the day when those guys chill the fuck out, though it might take a few years.
I was very distressed when I was looking for a shitty movie to zone out on that Invisible Man was actually ... good. Weird. Anyway, appreciate the concern, but there's lots of art — books, paintings, spicy memes, music — being made by and about and starting non-white men that is officially Definitely Art and isn't like, MCU market pandering. We got this. :)
I rather liked Promising Young Woman even though I am usually allergic to films with an overbearing message. [From an earlier comment of mine:] The film was to my mind more subtle than the outward presentation and many viewers were unable to parse that Mulligan's character was both fighting for a righteous cause but was also bordering on deranged and committing deeply immoral acts. It seemed to me many of the reviewers were unable to view the acts in the film as morally complex, instead sitting at either "she's a monster and woman deserve better heroines" or "I adored watching this righteous quest; you go girl!" To my mind, the film is about how the pernicious poison of sexual assault blackens and ruins all that it touches; such acts destroy the lives of everyone in the vicinity, leaving only twisted rage and grief. In that respect the film is genius.
I know a few people who have become singualrly defined by a traumatic event in their past. Promising Young Woman captures with uncanny accuracy how those people became unanchored from the world and people who care about them, slowly poisoning themselves yet further in a doomed effort to get justice.
I think Kathryn Bigelow's Hurt Locker is a shining example of what's possible for the future of art made by not-just-men.
Second, and this is incidental, this reminded me of something my mom told me about a friend back in the 80s: the woman's husband would tell her he was going out of town then he'd hide in the house and do things to scare her. YEESH. thankfully she successfully divorced him.
I haven't seen either, but your analysis of the two conveys an all-too-familiar art trope these day; namely, that the message should always be paramount to anything else...including the art. Besides the obvious error here (art quality should never really take a back seat to anything) it's also just plain exasperating.
I read recently that Oscar Wilde was a big proponent of something called aestheticism; the idea that art should exist for art's sake, and not be subservient to socio-political themes. While I both agree with him on principle, and would say that there's nothing inherently wrong with having your art be a reflection of said socio-political themes, I think modern artists would do the form much more genuine justice if they concentrated more on producing great art first, and sending a message second.
Anyone can call out social injustice, just read Twitter for 5 minutes. But only a great artist can do so both without you realizing it because the medium is so sublime, and in a form whose beauty will still be just as beautiful if you took away the message.
One thing to my own credit - I am fairly immune to how “politics” are injected into movies, television, etc. I can evaluate a program/movie without being sidetracked by those considerations. Acting, story, flow, suspense can pretty much be separate from “underlying messages” for me.
In fact, I do not look to filmmakers for political import or wisdom - I assume they generally will not be good at it.
So I enjoyed PYW because of the acting, fairly unique story, some compelling scenes, and the payoff. Certainly over the top in many ways, but for me it worked.
And that’s the bottom line - you don’t have to find the “messaging” to be artful to enjoy the film. There are lots of ways for a movie to be sophisticated/nuanced or to fail at same, but the “political messaging” alone is just one piece.
You touched on this, but I find that if a movie (or anything else) has particularly fashionable or unfashionable politics I have to just completely ignore the reviews. Critics might be the most morally masturbatory group in media.
Re: Promising Young Woman’s ending, it was originally meant to have a downer ending but the money men made the writer/director change it.
"the people who make those decisions think that movies by women or people of color are meant to be political first and foremost."
I am reminded of a report of marketing failure back in the early 80's, regarding 'cars for women'. Manufacturers (or perhaps car dealers) put a great deal of effort into painting select fancy models pink with lots of chrome, only to watch them sit on the lot. When making their own choices, women wanted excessively practical cars with extra safety features.
If women & 'minority' film makers have visions that are so different as to be valued for their unique flavor, it follows that those flavors may not be to the taste of a majority of film watchers.
"Unfortunately, I’m also very often underwhelmed by the art that’s being made as a result of this opening of doors, in large measure because the people who make those decisions think that movies by women or people of color are meant to be political first and foremost. The trouble is that diversity in the creation of art only really has meaning if it’s good art; if we’re just giving out golf claps in response to more superficial diversity, we’re certainly not actually honoring diverse filmmaking."
or literature. the same is largely true in the publishing industry and books now as well. is anyone talking about that?
"it’s a horror movie where the profound terror and cruelty of intimate partner violence are totally inseparable from its effectiveness and its message."
Fab! Are we all fans of the original Stepford Wives and Rosemary's Baby? The (SPOILER) husbands don't actually get violent; it's outsourced, but the horror of betrayal is the same, and also inseparable from effectiveness and message.
***
Hard and long LOL at this:
"(You’ll notice that this is not the same as a stranger disagreeing with you.)"
Good luck on the surgery! I would nominate Judas and the Black messiah as another example bad art that got good reviews due to representational concerns. I’d still rather watch Selma again, not necessarily for the politics but because it’s just so much better made than Judas.
Promising Young Woman starred Carey Mulligan and started off promisingly enough but soon was crushed by the weight of The Message!
It made me nostalgic for the movies of the 70s that were unafraid to end on a bleak note, because, as adults, we could take it and make our own minds up. Now, the hero/heroine always has to triumph, which as we all know, very rarely happens.
I'm generally surprised when I'm impressed by anything that gets greenlit by a major American studio, whatever the identity of the director (and filmmaking tends to be so collaborative that the importance of this is going to vary enormously) due to the amount of compromises, cuts and "focus grouping" that will almost invariably be involved - the best I expect tends to be the likes of 'The Batman' when, as your review said, was solidly decent.
Talented folks will (and always have) push through, however. I could watch Kelly Reichardt direct a woman setting up a food bank on a parking lot and would probably end up in tears at the end of it because I'm weirdly sensitive to how she uses space or something. I wish Lynne Ramsay had never moved to America because she understands Scotland so much better than she does the States - 'Ratcatcher' and her early shorts are in a league completely removed from 'We Need to Talk About Kevin', but she's so attuned to the ASMR-y bits of everyday life they'll always be an individual moment in one of her films that makes me tingle.
Most films simply aren't very good - it's absolutely right that individuals from all demographics should also have the opportunity to make films that aren't very good. And, hopefully, the handful of films that are worthwhile will have a broader array of experiences and ways of being in the world reflected in them.
Still, this is mostly about American cinema. There are so many thousands of masterful films directed by folks who aren't white men over the decades that you could happily never watch a new release again, but they've been largely filed in the nonsense category of "world cinema", which at least is a category that seems to have died out along with Blockbusters for the most part.
Totally agree that a lot of the really engaging horror movies tap into real world anxieties, from The Thing to Night of the Living Dead to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer tv series. And I also totally agree that it takes something away when the movie explains the premise.
"I look forward to a correction for this stuff in the coming years, where getting more films by women and filmmakers of color stops being a novelty and people are more comfortable letting the stories tell the tale, in and of and for themselves."
Same, man. Piggybacking off yesterday's post, there's a lot of Good White Men in Film Twitter world as well who are just insufferable with their loud, scoldy social justice takes. They're so awful that they can turn you off of an otherwise good movie. Prominent examples include MovieBob, David Ehrlich, and FilmCritHULK, but they're far from alone.
I look forward to the day when those guys chill the fuck out, though it might take a few years.
I was very distressed when I was looking for a shitty movie to zone out on that Invisible Man was actually ... good. Weird. Anyway, appreciate the concern, but there's lots of art — books, paintings, spicy memes, music — being made by and about and starting non-white men that is officially Definitely Art and isn't like, MCU market pandering. We got this. :)
I rather liked Promising Young Woman even though I am usually allergic to films with an overbearing message. [From an earlier comment of mine:] The film was to my mind more subtle than the outward presentation and many viewers were unable to parse that Mulligan's character was both fighting for a righteous cause but was also bordering on deranged and committing deeply immoral acts. It seemed to me many of the reviewers were unable to view the acts in the film as morally complex, instead sitting at either "she's a monster and woman deserve better heroines" or "I adored watching this righteous quest; you go girl!" To my mind, the film is about how the pernicious poison of sexual assault blackens and ruins all that it touches; such acts destroy the lives of everyone in the vicinity, leaving only twisted rage and grief. In that respect the film is genius.
I know a few people who have become singualrly defined by a traumatic event in their past. Promising Young Woman captures with uncanny accuracy how those people became unanchored from the world and people who care about them, slowly poisoning themselves yet further in a doomed effort to get justice.
Two things:
I think Kathryn Bigelow's Hurt Locker is a shining example of what's possible for the future of art made by not-just-men.
Second, and this is incidental, this reminded me of something my mom told me about a friend back in the 80s: the woman's husband would tell her he was going out of town then he'd hide in the house and do things to scare her. YEESH. thankfully she successfully divorced him.
I haven't seen either, but your analysis of the two conveys an all-too-familiar art trope these day; namely, that the message should always be paramount to anything else...including the art. Besides the obvious error here (art quality should never really take a back seat to anything) it's also just plain exasperating.
I read recently that Oscar Wilde was a big proponent of something called aestheticism; the idea that art should exist for art's sake, and not be subservient to socio-political themes. While I both agree with him on principle, and would say that there's nothing inherently wrong with having your art be a reflection of said socio-political themes, I think modern artists would do the form much more genuine justice if they concentrated more on producing great art first, and sending a message second.
Anyone can call out social injustice, just read Twitter for 5 minutes. But only a great artist can do so both without you realizing it because the medium is so sublime, and in a form whose beauty will still be just as beautiful if you took away the message.
One thing to my own credit - I am fairly immune to how “politics” are injected into movies, television, etc. I can evaluate a program/movie without being sidetracked by those considerations. Acting, story, flow, suspense can pretty much be separate from “underlying messages” for me.
In fact, I do not look to filmmakers for political import or wisdom - I assume they generally will not be good at it.
So I enjoyed PYW because of the acting, fairly unique story, some compelling scenes, and the payoff. Certainly over the top in many ways, but for me it worked.
And that’s the bottom line - you don’t have to find the “messaging” to be artful to enjoy the film. There are lots of ways for a movie to be sophisticated/nuanced or to fail at same, but the “political messaging” alone is just one piece.
But I will watch Invisible Man. Thanks!
You touched on this, but I find that if a movie (or anything else) has particularly fashionable or unfashionable politics I have to just completely ignore the reviews. Critics might be the most morally masturbatory group in media.
Re: Promising Young Woman’s ending, it was originally meant to have a downer ending but the money men made the writer/director change it.
The most interesting and believable villain is the one that thinks that he is the hero, and he may even sort of have a point.
"the people who make those decisions think that movies by women or people of color are meant to be political first and foremost."
I am reminded of a report of marketing failure back in the early 80's, regarding 'cars for women'. Manufacturers (or perhaps car dealers) put a great deal of effort into painting select fancy models pink with lots of chrome, only to watch them sit on the lot. When making their own choices, women wanted excessively practical cars with extra safety features.
If women & 'minority' film makers have visions that are so different as to be valued for their unique flavor, it follows that those flavors may not be to the taste of a majority of film watchers.
"Unfortunately, I’m also very often underwhelmed by the art that’s being made as a result of this opening of doors, in large measure because the people who make those decisions think that movies by women or people of color are meant to be political first and foremost. The trouble is that diversity in the creation of art only really has meaning if it’s good art; if we’re just giving out golf claps in response to more superficial diversity, we’re certainly not actually honoring diverse filmmaking."
or literature. the same is largely true in the publishing industry and books now as well. is anyone talking about that?
"it’s a horror movie where the profound terror and cruelty of intimate partner violence are totally inseparable from its effectiveness and its message."
Fab! Are we all fans of the original Stepford Wives and Rosemary's Baby? The (SPOILER) husbands don't actually get violent; it's outsourced, but the horror of betrayal is the same, and also inseparable from effectiveness and message.
***
Hard and long LOL at this:
"(You’ll notice that this is not the same as a stranger disagreeing with you.)"
Good luck on the surgery! I would nominate Judas and the Black messiah as another example bad art that got good reviews due to representational concerns. I’d still rather watch Selma again, not necessarily for the politics but because it’s just so much better made than Judas.
Promising Young Woman starred Carey Mulligan and started off promisingly enough but soon was crushed by the weight of The Message!
It made me nostalgic for the movies of the 70s that were unafraid to end on a bleak note, because, as adults, we could take it and make our own minds up. Now, the hero/heroine always has to triumph, which as we all know, very rarely happens.
I'm generally surprised when I'm impressed by anything that gets greenlit by a major American studio, whatever the identity of the director (and filmmaking tends to be so collaborative that the importance of this is going to vary enormously) due to the amount of compromises, cuts and "focus grouping" that will almost invariably be involved - the best I expect tends to be the likes of 'The Batman' when, as your review said, was solidly decent.
Talented folks will (and always have) push through, however. I could watch Kelly Reichardt direct a woman setting up a food bank on a parking lot and would probably end up in tears at the end of it because I'm weirdly sensitive to how she uses space or something. I wish Lynne Ramsay had never moved to America because she understands Scotland so much better than she does the States - 'Ratcatcher' and her early shorts are in a league completely removed from 'We Need to Talk About Kevin', but she's so attuned to the ASMR-y bits of everyday life they'll always be an individual moment in one of her films that makes me tingle.
Most films simply aren't very good - it's absolutely right that individuals from all demographics should also have the opportunity to make films that aren't very good. And, hopefully, the handful of films that are worthwhile will have a broader array of experiences and ways of being in the world reflected in them.
Still, this is mostly about American cinema. There are so many thousands of masterful films directed by folks who aren't white men over the decades that you could happily never watch a new release again, but they've been largely filed in the nonsense category of "world cinema", which at least is a category that seems to have died out along with Blockbusters for the most part.
And the origin of the term "Gaslighting" has, of course, its own cinematic bona fides . . .
Good luck on the surgery.
Totally agree that a lot of the really engaging horror movies tap into real world anxieties, from The Thing to Night of the Living Dead to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer tv series. And I also totally agree that it takes something away when the movie explains the premise.