Suzanne used to say that you’re not really anybody in America…unless you’re on Tv. ‘Cause what’s the point of doing anything worth while…if there’s nobody watching? So when people are watching, it makes you a better person. So if everybody was on TV all the time…everybody would be better people. But if everybody was on TV all the time…there wouldn’t be anybody left to watch. That’s where I get confused.
– Joyce Maynard/Buck Henry, To Die For
For several years, I had been bored. Not a whining, restless child’s boredom (although I was not above that) but a dense, blanketing malaise. It seemed to me that there was nothing new to be discovered ever again. Our society was utterly, ruinously derivative (although the word derivative as a criticism is itself derivative). We were the first human beings who would never see anything for the first time. We stare at the wonders of the world, dull-eyed, underwhelmed. Mona Lisa, the Pyramids, the Empire State Building. Jungle animals on attack, ancient icebergs collapsing, volcanoes erupting. I can’t recall a single amazing thing I have seen firsthand that I didn’t immediately reference to a movie or TV show. A fucking commercial. You know the awful singsong of the blasé: Seeeen it. I’ve literally seen it all, and the worst thing, the thing that makes me want to blow my brains out, is: The secondhand experience is always better. The image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality can’t anymore. I don’t know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script.
– Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.
– Pablo Picasso
We are living in the age of narcissism where our celebration of self is a minute-by-minute obsession. By nature, human beings are drawn to their own image, like Narcissus himself, doomed to stare until we perish.
Rosamund Pike floats through the first half of Gone Girl like the coming of a storm churns the surfaces of still waters, then gusts of winds that hint at the chaos and destruction to follow.
Film noir femmes fatales might not survive today’s gauntlet of social justice bloggers, who are right to fight the good fight when it comes to sexist tropes in video games and in Hollywood films. But what would cinema be without them? Is art required to give all women positive role models, to tell an even bigger lie that all of us are pure of heart and altruistic?
There are so many truths to femmes fatales in the lives of women and so much truth in Amy that it’s caused so much debate among women – is she a feminist hero (no), is she a misogynist fantasy (no)? She is that rare creature born out of art who can’t be explained by any sort of type. She isn’t supposed to be a role model nor is she meant to be an invention of the male gaze. She is created by a woman — a woman who knows women.
There is no male equivalent to the kind of power women on screen can unleash when in the hands of a capable director, a willing audience, and critics who can buckle up and hold on for the ride. Once the nitpicking starts, however, all is mostly lost. Some things you just can’t overthink.
Back in 1995, we didn’t yet have a working internet. It was a tool used to communicate. I know because I was on it. We talked about movies on my group but we didn’t really use the “world wide web.” We had to wait as Mosaic became Firefox, for Netscape to actually work well but a few years later it would deb like the wild wild west – a wide open new frontier with start-ups bursting like planets from the big bang.
Back in 1995, when Gus Van Sant’s To Die For came out, everybody was indeed becoming famous in all of the wrong ways. Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes stretched out over lifetimes. An American Idol runner-up would win an Oscar. Another is now the most famous country western singer in America. Fame was tossed back in the bowl then refashioned for those of you watching at home. The line between being watched and being the watcher was blurred.
To Die For was seen as indictment of the media more so than a true crime version of the Pamela Smart case (watch Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart). But it was more than that, even more than the insta-fame ordinary citizens now had at their fingertips, provided they would be willing to sacrifice everything. It was the birth ofIt was a femme fatale for the celebrity age.
Kidman’s Suzanne Stone roped three teenagers into killing her husband but that was really only because he stood in the way of her pursuing her career goals. Every good femme fatale needs a chump and she had three willing participants. But To Die For is very much about Suzanne and the camera — Suzanne and TV — us watching the people who matter.
As the years went on, and the internet exploded, people from all over the world began their exodus to their online avatar lives. It took a while but now it feels like we’ve reached full saturation point where it is acceptable behavior to portray yourself in a dimension that doesn’t exist.
Amazing Amy, as carefully cultivated by post-90s/therapy/mood enhancing drugs, is meant to be the sum total of everything done “right.” Back in the ’90s women started their march towards perfectionism born out of the 1980s when the yuppie women went back to “work” then reflexively started staying home to be better mothers. That perfectionism of self was transferred to perfectionism of offspring because maybe if you did everything right the child would be raised with high self-esteem, the trait deemed most important by middle-class families in the late ’80s and throughout the ’90s.
Pike’s version of Amy seems to have sprung off the pages of Facebook where we have flipped our real lives onto a magic mirror, or a moving diorama that tells everyone who knows us how happy we are, how much we love the holidays, how great our marriage is.
The movie version of the book has some women mad that Amy isn’t likable anymore. That’s because a visually inclined director alters the opportunity for interpretation our imagination gives us. You see, many readers of the book found that they liked Amy. They liked her even when she tricked them into thinking she was a victim of an abusive, cheating husband. She showed them how easy it is to play up the tropes women trapped in novels often find themselves tangled in. The beauty of Flynn’s narrative is that she had no problem upending that in her adaptation, and no problem delving into the darker side of this insane sociopath also known as Amazing Amy.
How a person relates to the first half of Gone Girl says much about how they view women, marriage and adult life. Do they think women like that exist and more importantly, do they desire those women and that life? Do they feel betrayed when they figure out that they were fooled so completely?
Fincher’s reimagining of Flynn’s Amy explores this notion that appearances are everything. The only directive Fincher gave Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, whose score for the film acts as Amy’s own inner voice, was to find that annoying music they use in spas and salons to make you feel relaxed when most of the time it does anything but. We women know that vibe all too well – the serene yoga face that tells the world we are okay. Everything is fine in here. Nothing to worry about – see, here’s a happy selfie. See how happy and content I am? I have to be happy and content because otherwise I’m a bitch. I’m a complainer. I’m nothing that you want, believe me.
Pike’s Amy is a combination of Kim Novak in Vertigo and Natasha Henstridge in Species. That beautiful face, that blonde hair, those patrician features. So familiar to the big screen both in her talent for transformation and in the clarity of her mission. Many female characters in films wander around not knowing what they want or need. Their empty holes are to be filled and then they will be complete. But Amy has no such self doubts. She is clear, precise, ruthless.
The femme fatale of the 1940s drew the male protagonist into a tragic situation that rendered him lost, helpless, broke or dead. The girl in peril whose objectives are well hidden is often measured by how sexy she was in the part, how bad she was and how much we loved her for it. Gloria Graham, Lana Turner, Barbra Stanwyck and even up to Kathleen Turner – all heels and blood red lipstick.
But Amy is a femme fatale for the narcissistic age, a vessel built on purpose for our collective projections to serve an end goal, one she never even really even wanted for herself but one that her parents already decided she was supposed to want. In the second half of the film Amy uncoils. She stuffs her face with junk food, tosses her pink fuzzy pen out of the window and carefully carries out her best laid plan. Pike’s expression relaxes from perked-up happy perfect Amy to pissed off Amy who doesn’t care anymore what anyone thinks she looks like. That uncoiling is what most women feel when they peel off their Spanx after a party or walk around their apartment without their bra on, no makeup, unbrushed hair. It’s ourselves with our on switch turned off.
The brilliance of Pike’s Amy is that she is unlike anyone’s picture of who Amy would be, probably a little like Reese Witherspoon or Rachel MacAdams. They saw her as the girl next door turned mean girl. But Pike is a cool automaton – able to switch from sweet and trusting to blank-eyed and vicious. Her best scene is when she’s all bloodied up and seated in the wheelchair. She is being questioned by the detective (Kim Dickens) who is about to nail her on an inconsistency. Pike barely flinches but just enough for us to see the flicker in one of her flawless eyes. She switches gears instantly and says exactly what she needs to say to shift focus and lay blame.
Pike’s femme fatale is less a good girl turned bad as she is one who didn’t fit in this world from birth. The complete absence of stereotypical female emotions toys with viewers expecting to see a woman they need to like. A similar dynamic is played out in Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin with Scarlett Johansson playing an alien playing a woman. She is acting the way she thinks people think women are supposed to act. She is the sum total of her body parts – lips, tits, ass — but like Pike’s Amy, she doesn’t act on intellect but rather, on instinct.
While Under the Skin is a deliberately opaque sci-fi film, and Gone Girl is an entertaining, if a bit unsettling, thriller, both depict a female character whose internal self does not match the external. Beauty is then the definition of a mask. The iconic status beautiful women enjoy is, here, a construct.
It takes a while for the full impact of what Glazer is trying to do with Under the Skin and to do it he needed the infamous body of one of the most famous bodies in the world – Johansson’s. Because what the film ultimately says is that there is so much more under the skin, so much we don’t see and couldn’t imagine. Under the Skin is not an easy story to figure out – it is open to interpretation, no doubt, but I saw it as a woman who wants to be a woman people want. Like Amy, this too is a false portrait of the male gaze upended.
Another wonderful rumination on the notion of the other self, the idealized woman is Robin Wright’s character in The Congress, where she plays an aging actress playing herself who signs over her life to her younger avatar. In the imagined animated world people can assign themselves completely alternative selves, or avatars, while real life is revealed to be a place of pain and suffering. But she loses everything that matters in doing this, her image being the only thing that survives in the end. Like Under the Skin, The Congress is open to interpretation and not an easily digested film in the least bit. But Van Sant, Glazer, Folman and Fincher are getting at something few filmmakers do – circling around the changing times, the images of ourselves as we’d like to be, and revealing what we still want from those beautiful faces on the big screen.
My favorite actresses from back in the day are Gloria Grahame, Anne Baxter, Joan Crawford. When they were bad it because they had to be, but more than that they were smart. When I was a little girl I wanted to be Maleficent so bad because she was so smart and so awesome and you could not fuck with her. Was she scary? Hell yes, but so what? I don’t know. I just think Amy is unhinged. Actually maybe she became the shadow of Amazing Amy because she could never be that perfect. But that character is unlikeable. And somehow I think the older femme fatales we still likeable somehow. It’s probably the circumstances. Amy was rich so for most people a rich person shouldn’t turn out like that.
Amy never needed a reason for me. She had Gillian Flynn’s reasons for creating her. She’s a construct.
In my view, he’s made surreal metaphoric movies before that are widely adored, and I’m glad he’s made another one this year.
Word.
Also: some of the symbolic cues in the movie I found rather crude and too obvious: like the pink pen. So I would like to hear you elaborate on this theme, that would be interesting. I have only seen it once, so I’m not too definitive in my dismissal. I would like someone to persuade me to see it again thinking that maybe I was wrong the first time around!
“This is not the first time Fincher has made a movie that’s not strictly realistic, right? How the heck can I feel the same David Fincher who made Fight Club and The Game suddenly threw all that ‘realism’ out the window?”
This is exactly my point. That’s why I referred to his ‘postmodernist’ style. Damn, am I not able to put together meaningful sentences these days or…?;)
This is exactly my point. That’s why I referred to his ‘postmodernist’ style. Damn, am I not able to put together meaningful sentences these days or…?;)
no you’re good. I got that you too believe Fincher is in his post-modern groove.
I’m finding it hard to know how to butt heads with you this morning since we do see things the same way — just that I like the vibe I see, and you have issues with it.
Ryan: I’m sorry if the fact that I was in a hurry obscured my message. Because I do agree with you that the blurring of genre labels within the context of a single movie doesn’t detract from the experience of it necessarily. I just don’t think GG benefits from this genre confusion. I got annoyed with the two main characters because I didn’t believe in them as ‘real people’ and I found them uninteresting, no fun as ‘pulpy’ characters. But that’s my take. I was trying to say that in itself the genre confusion is no bad thing per se. And to some extent I think Fincher went for that kind of movie deliberately. Which leaves me with a question that only he can answer, really: What is this movie about for him? Did he give up on realism because he felt that it wouldn’t work as a realist piece of filmmaking? It’s not quite enough to fuck with people’s expectations if you ask me. Fincher would have been a bolder director this time around if he had dared to go all the way in either direction (pulp or realism). But maybe I feel that way, because Fincher has proved his ‘postmodernist’ leanings ages ago, so the ‘confusion’ of the message isn’t as stimulating coming from him, I don’t know? If Spielberg had made GG the same way (hypothetically speaking, because we all know that he wouldn’t have and couldn’t have), it might have been a more refreshing experience?
That I’m even thinking this way shows you that I’m caught up in the sickness of post-modernity, where nothing is allowed to be what it is in and of itself, so blaming Fincher for being the same way is hardly a faultless critique.
julian the emperor, we’re now in the realm of explaining how the movie affected us personally, so you’re right — personal interpretation is an absolute, beyond agreement or disagreement.
Did he give up on realism because he felt that it wouldn’t work as a realist piece of filmmaking?
see, speaking for myself, I never thought the novel was a work of realism. So since I wasn’t expecting realism, I don’t feel anyone “gave up on realism.” Seeded throughout the screen version of Gone Girl, (for me) I saw overt symbolic cues and accents of a stylized hyper-reality so strange that it almost felt subliminally dreamlike at times. Too complicated for me to get into at this hour, but I’ll write about it some other time to try to explain what I mean.
But at the core, I didn’t think the novel was grounded in realism so it didn’t disturb me to see the movie take off in satirical and even absurdest directions. This is not the first time Fincher has made a movie that’s not strictly realistic, right? How the heck can I feel the same David Fincher who made Fight Club and The Game suddenly threw all that ‘realism’ out the window? 🙂 In my view, he’s made surreal metaphoric movies before that are widely adored, and I’m glad he’s made another one this year.
And I’m just gonna keep misspelling David Oyelowo’s name the rest of the season, aren’t I?
I already explained all of this, please refer to my past comments re: GONE GIRL.
Happy NYFCC morning, everyone!
Last final predictions before the season officially starts later today, and then any predictions don’t really count for me. A bit extremist you say? Nah. Once NYFCC announces the season is effectively inaugurated and your predictions don’t give you any credentials in my book — so here’s me risking everything without any precursor data to make my job easier, this is how you get it done. I’ll make it brief.
Best Picture winner: BOYHOOD (Alt. SELMA)
Best Director winner: Linklater (Alt. N/A)
Best Actor winner: Oyewolo (Alt. Keaton)
Best Actress winner: Moore (Alt. N/A)
Best S. Actor winner: Simmons (Alt. N/A)
Best S. Actress winner: Arquette (Alt. N/A)
Best A. Screenplay winner: THE IMITATION GAME (Alt. N/A)
Best O. Screenplay winner: BOYHOOD (Alt. N/A)
Best Cinematography winner: BIRDMAN (Alt. N/A)
Best Editing winner: BOYHOOD (Alt. SELMA)
Best Score winner: THE IMITATION GAME
Best Production Design winner: INTO THE WOODS
Best Costume Design winner: INTO THE WOODS
Best Makeup winner: INTO THE WOODS
Best Visual Effects winner: INTERSTELLAR
Best Sound Mixing winner: INTERSTELLAR
Best Sound Editing winner: INTERSTELLAR
Best Animated Feature winner: BIG HERO 6
Best Documentary winner: LIFE ITSELF
Best Foreign Language Film winner: WILD TALES
and last but not least
Angelina Jolie will not be nominated for Best Director.
Well that’s the whole point. You are still living in the world where a woman needs a reason. She didn’t want to “fool” Nick. She wanted to ruin him. Frame him for her murder and have the state put him to death. We’re talking Medea level here. She is a perfectionist and thus it has to be the perfect frame job, not just any old trick. That’s what’s so brilliant about it, a la Body Heat. Like the previous boyfriend of hers who said all he did was kind of sort of pull away from her and she had him up on charges for sexual assault and registered with the sex offenders list. So yeah.
I’m not living in a world where a woman needs a reason, but rather one where a CHARACTER needs a reason. If that reason is just “crazy vindictive,” then that lessens the impact of the story. I’d be making the exact same criticism if the film was about a sociopathic husband who’s framing his cheating wife for murder. The GG novel was more interesting to me since Amy and Nick seemed at least somewhat on level playing fields in trying to ruin their marriage, it’s just that Amy’s methods were more extreme than Nick’s more common ways (i.e. cheating, being a lout, lolling around on the couch all day or spending it at the bar) of nuking one’s relationship. The film just takes this idea and dumbs it down by making Amy into such a clear-cut villain. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a good movie, but I felt it could’ve gone to a next level.
NGNG: Johanssen in Under the Skin or Jolie in Maleficent
“You call this film a piece of trash so no wonder you hesitate.”
Actually, no, I did not. I said that it’s possible to ENJOY a movie as trash OR as a meditation on (blah blah)… meaning: There are different ways to enjoy a movie, I’m not stating that there’s any one right way.
Furthermore I elaborate on that, saying that what confuses me about the movie is whether it’s meant to be a trash movie or more like a realist thriller (in that regard it fails convincingly, so I would go for the former). But seeing it as pure trash, a piece of colorful entertainment, is not the same as thinking it’s bad per se. Some of my favorite movies are what I would happily consider trash movies, so there you go.
Oh, and I hope you’ll excuse me for lacking your insight into the everlasting brilliance of GG. From now on, I will of course, annihilate any urge to think for myself and let you guide me toward the one pure knowledge of movie brilliance. Thank you very much.
“saying that what confuses me about the movie is whether it’s meant to be a trash movie or more like a realist thriller”
or perhaps neither of those things? or both to some extent and other things at the same time?
me, I’m saying: why does a movie have to “decide what it wants to be”?
me, I’m saying: hey, that’s interesting. a movie that doesn’t fall neatly into anyone’s preconceived notions, a movie that refuses to be categorized with a one-word label like “thriller” or “pulp” or “trash” or “satire”
me, I’m saying: hmm, that’s refreshing for a change. a movie that begins by leading viewers to expect that it’s one thing, and then it switches direction and becomes something else, and then it pulls the rug out from under us again and flies into another orbit of surreal craziness altogether.
me, I’m saying: that’s different, that’s stimulating, that’s thought-provoking.
me, I’m saying: I’m sorry that’s not fun or interesting to everybody. but I’m not too sorry, because it’s tons of fun for me.
“what confuses me about the movie is whether it’s meant to be a trash movie or more like a realist thriller”
I’m not trying to be contrary (really, I’m not!) but I felt the same confusion about Touch of Evil, and Psycho, and Lady from Shanghai and Marnie.
🙂
But then I remembered it was Welles and Hitchcock and Welles and Hitchcock so it wasn’t hard to convince myself to assume there were all kinds of levels of reality happening on shifting planes of tectonic meaning. I give Fincher the same credit for knowing how to lay several layers of significance on the same core story and let them slide around on top of each other letting various flavors bubble up to the surface.
The more confusingly Hitchcock blends reality with pulp, the better I like him.
Am I the only one getting a serious Alexandra Del Lago vibe (Sweet Bird of Youth) from that Kidman pic ? Ironic how she ALMOST played her on Broadway, too bad the whole project fell apart.
As much as I love Julianne Moore’s work, I really hope Rosamund Pike will win for two simple reasons : 1. the character she created is an instant classic, one that will be talked about for years to come therefore it would be fitting if the most memorable female role of the year would actually win the Oscar 2. Julianne Moore is SO winning next year for Freeheld.
Full disclosure : I haven’t seen Still Alice so I may change my mind after I have, but considering that will be sometime in March (UK release date), I will probably stick with Pike for the remainder of the season.
P.S. Gugu Mbatha-Raw deserves to be at least in consideration !
And what a great photo of Rosamund Pike that is!
I’m still coming to terms with the movie version of Amy over the book. And that is a good thing.
Weird thing though, I was loving the book, and was a bit disappointed how it ended – both the final chapter and the close of the book in general. Seeing the movie soon after I now wished Flynn had ended the way she does in the book. What Nick says to Amy right at the end in the book is cruel however you look at it, And if that made it to the movie it would have been a smack in the face – even if you didn’t like Amy, because it still makes you feel some pity for her.
I can see why, then, Flynn omitted that. But still, I would have loved that ending more.
Have I gone off-topic there?
“Pike’s Amy is a combination of Kim Novak in Vertigo and Natasha Henstridge in Species”
Hehe, I sort of agree actually, not at exactly at midpoint of course, veering slightly toward Novak, but they are apt spectrum’ ends to apply here. What an underappreciated gem SPECIES has become, no? And how much fun it is to watch and re-watch it once in while.
What an underappreciated gem SPECIES has become, no?
If only critics had the imagination to resurrect it as such. It’s fantastic.
Q Mark: I completely agree with your description of the Amy Dunne Character. There’s nothing THAT interesting about a psychopath, because the minute you realize that’s indeed what she is, trying to decipher some deeper meaning to the movie in a socio-political sense, becomes kind of pointless. That doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy the movie as a piece of trash or as a, yes, unsettling meditation on identity and deception, though. I would just hesitate to claim that the movie says anything important (I hate that word, but there you go) about society or women or men in general. The point is, for me, that it doesn’t have to do that in order to be a good film. That it’s not a good film probably has to do with Fincher’s and Flynn’s weighting of the material. The movie never quite decides whether it wants to be a realist thriller or pure pulp. It goes for both (or none) and therefore suffers as a work of art as a consequence of a lack of artistic choice or focus.
I would just hesitate to claim that the movie says anything important (I hate that word, but there you go) about society or women or men in general.
You would hesitate because ….? You call this film a piece of trash so no wonder you hesitate.
“The movie never quite decides whether it wants to be a realist thriller or pure pulp”
Well, honey, that’s where you get to use that big brain nature gave you.
Gone GIrl is only a “bit” unsettling?
I still feel GG lost something in the adaptation by making the Amy vs. Nick debate so one-sided. Going by the movie, rooting for Amy is like rooting for the Joker. It somewhat diminishes Amy as a character by having her go to such elaborate lengths to fool Nick, who can barely handle Call of Duty, let alone a sociopathic mastermind — it seems like Amy is using a flamethrower to kill a fly.
I still feel GG lost something in the adaptation by making the Amy vs. Nick debate so one-sided. Going by the movie, rooting for Amy is like rooting for the Joker. It somewhat diminishes Amy as a character by having her go to such elaborate lengths to fool Nick, who can barely handle Call of Duty, let alone a sociopathic mastermind — it seems like Amy is using a flamethrower to kill a fly.
Well that’s the whole point. You are still living in the world where a woman needs a reason. She didn’t want to “fool” Nick. She wanted to ruin him. Frame him for her murder and have the state put him to death. We’re talking Medea level here. She is a perfectionist and thus it has to be the perfect frame job, not just any old trick. That’s what’s so brilliant about it, a la Body Heat. Like the previous boyfriend of hers who said all he did was kind of sort of pull away from her and she had him up on charges for sexual assault and registered with the sex offenders list. So yeah.
I also have to cast a vote for Sheila Vand’s work as the Girl in “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night”. That was a gorgeous film.