I Procrastinate (And So Can You!)

Gosh this seems like the story of my life some days. I really need to figure out how to get things done and not overcommit. Oh, and also just go ahead and do things I don't want to do (ahem! that phone call!) From the Prelinger Archives:

The Women

If you don't know anything about the movie The Women, at some point you will feel there's something off about it. Something strange; something forced. I'm not quite sure when you'll realize it, but it'll happen. You see, there are 130 speaking roles in the movie, and who knows how many people on screen. The movie is set in homes, and department stores, and spas, and other semi-public places and yet it seems that half the population has been deleted from the screen. Not a single man or boy appears on screen during the whole film.

We're used to seeing movies with mostly or only men. I don't remember any women in The Great Escape, or any in Platoon. No wait, there were some mothers in the village in Platoon. It's hard to just take women out of village scenes after all, even if they're just for show.

And that's my problem with The Women -- unlike war movies, where the lack of women is actually an issue, and represents a loss to the men, this movie just deletes men as if they don't matter. This sounds like an extreme tactic to be all about women, to be a proto-feminist movie about the issues and foibles and world of "women only." But actually, the whole movie is about the crazy competition that women have with each other in order to get men. Like a No Boys Allowed sign outside a bunch of grade school girls' secret hideout where they gossip about boys, The Women is, as its DVD case proudly proclaims, all about men. Apparently, the lives of these women revolve completely around men -- whose husband is having an affair, which rich bachelor can be hooked into being a woman's next husband after Reno, and on and on.

Now let's be fair about this: there are few movies with the star power of the Women. Made in that glorious year of Hollywood, 1939, it's got so many excellent actresses that there were problems with billing and who got to have the biggest names on screen. Apparently Norma Shearer had written into her contract that no one's name could be bigger than hers in the title credits (except for a leading man's), but damned it Joan Crawford wasn't getting at least as good. So they both got huge lettering, and Rosalind Russell had to be content with smaller letters and just stealing the show with her portrayal of the completely over-the-top gossip Sylvia Fowler. There's also Paulette Goddard (Mrs. Charlie Chaplin), Joan Fontaine (who was in Hitchcock's Rebecca) and Mary Boland (who you probably have never heard of, but she's brilliant as the worldly but silly, "in love with being in love" Countess DeLave).

And it's also a comedy of manners, sort of a female version of Oscar Wilde, spearing gossipers and the scheming ways of rich housewives (remind you of any reality TV these days?). I love these sorts of comedies, and I love those women lighting up the screen. So why didn't I like this movie?

It's not just about the No Men on Screen gimmick. It makes sense for a play, and I applaud the idea of seeing if it would work, even if it's a bit forced. But -- can I even allow my feminist self to say it? --- these women need men. Without men on screen to actually fight for or even fight over, all of the women's catty tactics towards each other just play out in a vacuum, and I could never really care about who got the guy in the end. Without men, you could never see these women be sexy and smart and winsome; they're just fighting with each other. Without men anywhere to be found, their world seems impossibly small and trivial. Where is the outside world? Where are the working classes on the streets of Manhattan (both men and women) where this movie supposedly takes place?

I often love the women in movies made around this time. The dames, the sidekicks, the gamines -- they might all exist before the glorious sexual revolution of the 1970s, but those women had it figured out. They knew how to fight to be equal with men but still be women. Think of Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday just one year later -- a fast-talking reporter who can give and good as she gets from Cary Grant. Think of Katharine Hepburn in Woman of the Year, playing a brilliant, high-powered political columnist. Think of Barbara Stanwyck in basically anything she did. For goodness' sakes, even think of Vivian Leigh in that movie made the same year as the Women. Instead of being a smart, funny movie about smart, funny (if also conniving) women, The Women ends up just making the women small and ugly -- even if their names were big up there on the screen.

Wanted

This is for John Mark.

Imagine a group of twenty-something men -- men of my generation -- in a room together talking about their favorite things. Video games, a hot chick in leather (but not too much), stuff blowing up.

Then imagine this group of men put all of their favorite things in a movie. Sound of Music, I assure you, it would not be.

Instead, you'd get what is called a summer blockbuster movie. And if one of the men in that hypothetical room vaguely remembers Greek mythology from high school, you'd get the movie Wanted. The only way to describe it is an excess -- and I do mean excess -- of all things a post-adolescent boy would consider "badass." It's got Angelina Jolie shooting things, Morgan Freeman being the wise godlike figure, and a Fight Club set-up with the main character (played by James McAvoy, who really can do better) living a zombie-like existence until he is rescued to a group of elite fighters who spend about as much screen time beating each other up as training as killing targets. Plus, most of the shots work perfectly as a video game set up. What more could a boy want? A Rocky reference or two? Oh, they are there, too (mmm . . . meat on hooks . . .). Oh, and throw in a little bit of the Matrix for good measure -- those special effects were cool, right? And everyone's mind was blown by the whole existential "There is no spoon" discussion. Might as well throw in some fate/pre-determination stuff here, too.

It is a movie that revels in excess, and this can be entertaining, but only if you've already got a high tolerance for that sort of thing. The combination of influences was a merry jumble, if somewhat overwhelming, and I must admit I enjoyed the unselfconscious stupidity of throwing all those movie and pseudo-philosophical references into a grab bag of ideas and visuals. However, if you, like me, are not used to playing Grand Theft Auto for hours on end, sitting through so many fight scenes with frenetic editing and pounding hard rock soundtrack becomes a little numbing to the senses. I'd say I liked about half of the movie and for the rest worried about an impending headache.

My friend's favorite part of the movie was when our "hero" -- I really hate calling him that -- hits someone with a keyboard. Keys fly off (as well as a tooth), and they magically align into two angry words I won't type here, but suffice it to say that the second one was "you."

This effect was clever, and somewhat funny, but I think it works a lot better in its original comic book (or is it "graphic novel"?) form. I haven't read any of the original source, but I suspect a form that uses the written word doesn't have as much trouble having to explain if the words spelled out in a picture are actually spelled out in that picture's world. When a superhero hits the villain with a POW! written in a starburst, I've never thought about where that starburst came from. But when a bullet said the word "Goodbye" in this movie, I was distracted from the moment by the nagging question, "Is that actually written there? Does it appear magically, or was it already on the bullet when it was loaded, therefore not having any specific significance in this situation?" Some parts of the comic book medium just don't work as well in a movie.

I suppose I could summarize the plot a bit, but it doesn't really matter. James McAvoy is a sadsack temp who discovers his father was part of an elite group of assassins called the Fraternity. He gets recruited, nominally to kill the man who killed his father, and quickly learns how to fight, get bloody, and curve bullets. Apparently the Fraternity has a couple of magical items in its possession. First, a magical loom's threads tell the Fraternity who should be killed (imagine the Fraternity to the be the Three Fates with guns). Second, magical paraffin wax baths serve the useful plot device of helping the assassins recover from their rough-and-tumble ways.

James McAvoy's character quickly becomes as badass as the rest of the gang, and then surpasses them in badassness when he discovers a secret of the Fraternity and decides to Do What Is Right -- which involves a lot of blowing stuff up. In fact, one of his old jackass friends, after being beaten up by him, intones in an awed voice that the friend he once took advantage of is now "the man." You can almost hear the voices of those young men writing the script bowing down to the awesomeness of the character they have just created.

Unfortunately no one has told those young writers that trying really hard to be badass doesn't actually make someone badass. You have to be a little cooler, a little more sleek, a little more aloof. I can't believe I'm about to say this, but give me Keanu and the half-baked mysticism of the Matrix any day.

1.5 stars