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“Silver Linings Playbook” Doesn’t Play

***This review contains spoilers!***

This little film by David O. Russell has been wildly over-praised. I saw it tonight and was incredibly disappointed. The first half of the film had great promise as a beautifully rendered drama about mental illness and family life. But it veers off course by the second hour and drive right off the road. Let me break it down fast, because the Academy Awards are in 48 hours and this movie is up for a slew of awards including (incredibly), Best Picture.

Pat, beautifully played by the super hot Bradley Cooper, is bi-polar. The movie begins with his release from a mental institution after an 8-month stint for beating his wife’s lover to a bloody pulp after finding the man in the shower with Nikki (his wife). Pat is released into the custody of his nervous, loving parents, the wonderful Robert DeNiro and Jacki Weaver.

Pat wants to get back together with his wife. There is a restraining order against him, so that’s not likely — or at least not immediately.  In the meantime, he has to be saved by the love of a good woman, played by Jennifer Lawrence.

(We do meet the wife at the end of the film. She never speaks a word: the entire point of her character is to be an object of Pat’s obsessive affections and violent possessiveness, and then to be an object of his rejection. And that’s my major complaint: No female character in this movie has any reason to exist beyond reacting to what the male characters do.)

The plot of the movie’s second half is patently ridiculous and revolves around a bet on the outcome of a football game and a dance competition. You can predict the ending with your eyes closed and your popcorn bag over your head. It is as clichéd as “Rocky.” In fact, it takes place in Philadelphia so it shares a locale with “Rocky.”

The film is billed as a romantic comedy but it is neither romantic nor a comedy. That doesn’t bother me so much — I like films that transcend genre — but what does disturb me is the way the screenplay sets up Bradley Cooper’s character, Pat, as a kindred spirit to Tiffany, who is played by the very talented and appealing Jennifer Lawrence. What exactly makes them kindred spirits? The suggestion is that mental illness does. They are equally unbalanced and damaged and will be redeemed by mutual understanding and support and sexy quirkiness (and they’re both very sexy, no doubt about that). Also, dancing. Now there’s an original plot line: having the two leads fall in love through dancing together. That’s never been done before.

However, while Pat has a diagnosis of bi-polar disorder that has plagued him for years, Tiffany has a case of… female sexuality and outspokenness.  The “disordered behavior” that supposedly makes her the perfect girl for Pat is that after the tragic death of her husband, she acted out by having sex with eleven co-workers. Since there is no other explanation given for a more chronic struggle with mental illness, I was left with the justifiable impression that Tiffany just made a bunch of bad choices out of grief.

Do the screenwriters know that there is a very real history of women being demonized and labeled as “mad” for hypersexuality? They should research the medical history of “treatment” for hysteria (originally thought by male doctors to be the result of the womb wandering around the body)– including lobotomy, clitorectomy, hysterectomy and burning at the stake.

The film plays this revelation of manic sexual behavior (apparently entirely consensual) for laughs, taking Pat’s POV as he salivates over the information and begs Tiffany to reveal whether some of those co-workers were women.  Hot girl-on-girl action, right Pat? Even though Tiffany was obviously suffering, get your fap material! The subsequent dialogue is a parody of male pornographic imagination, and Tiffany later busts Pat on taking lascivious pleasure in her tale of sadness and degradation. It’s a good moment, and a self-aware one. But that’s all the deep back story we get from Tiffany, who never hesitates in her full-throttle seduction of a man who is demonstrably unstable. Her entire existence as a character is defined by the death of her husband, her promiscuity following his death, and her desire to have Pat as a boyfriend. I know the guy’s hot, but he’s also unemployed, mentally ill, and lives with his parents. I have the feeling Tiffany could probably do better but after all, this is Hollywood. And Hollywood scripts are written by men, for men.

Maybe I’m just a little touchy because of all the stories in the news right now about women being killed by their boyfriends and husbands. Pardon me for finding this movie’s premise more than a little disturbing. This guy’s a violent manic depressive just out of an institution with a restraining order against him. LOVE WILL MAKE IT ALL OKAY.

Julia Stiles plays the obligatory Emasculating Wife Character, Brea Ree the Icy Bitch Wife Character, Chris Tucker and John Ortiz play the Wacky Colored People Pals, and Anupan Kher plays the Clichéd Indian Character Who Gets To Shout An Obscenity And Make Everyone Laugh. All of the POC in the film exist to reflect the reality of the attractive white people at the center of the story. Yay, Hollywood!

 

 

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Empty Chairs At Empty Tables: “Les Miz” and Sandy Hook

I got through Tom Hooper’s “Les Miz” (*there are spoilers in this post] without the cathartic cry so many experienced. I thought the movie was only just pretty good , with fantastic performances by Hugh Jackman (Huge Ackman, as I like to call him), Eddie Redmayne as Marius and Samantha Barks as Eponine. I felt that only the three of them managed to serve both the demands of the camera and the musical score. I left an eight- minute review of the film on my Facebook page (there’s a link on the bottom of this page if you’re interested in following me there) if you want to hear more on that.

I had fun giggling to myself over alternate title for the film, things like “White People In Trouble.” I finally settled on “White People Walking Toward the Camera Crying and Singing.”

I have seen the show many times and identified with various characters along the way. My mom gave me the score (on a cassette tape!) as a gift for my birthday when I was in college. I will never forget the thrill I got when I first heard that four-note cascade of twinkling sound that signaled the start of the show and serves as its theme. “One day more…!” I had been planning to go out that night, but I hung up my coat, called my boyfriend (on the DIAL PHONE that plugged into the wall — there was no coordinating to “meet up later” in those days, as there was no way to get in touch once you left the house) and cancelled our date. I sat on the floor of my bedroom and listened to the entire score, sobbing at “I Dreamed a Dream” and feeling ecstatically wrung out by the time the friendly ghosts surrounded Jean Valjean to accompany him to heaven.

I have been Fantine, I have been Eponine. I have been little Cosette. I have been Javert, and the Thénadiers (and of course, Mme. Thenadier is a dream role). I have been Valjean, and Marius, and I have been Enjolras, the student revolutionary.

This time, for the first time, I was Gavroche.

Gavroche (Daniel Huttlestone) is the little street urchin who delivers messages between the barricade and the streets, and who is shot several times by soldiers as he cockily attempts one last dodge through the front line. In what was the most moving moment for me in the movie, Inspector Javert pins a medal from his own jacket onto Gavroche’s dead body. They are fighting for different sides of the rebellion, but Javert knows that here lies a truly courageous soldier.

While previous viewings of “Les Miz” provided a delicious sort of romantic pain –oh, the lovelorn Eponine! Oh, the neglected child Cosette! Oh, the tormented obsession of neurotic Javert! — this viewing just hurt. It hurt because of the shooting, at almost point-blank range, of pre-adolescent Gavroche. It hurt because, although some cultural critics have raised the issue of the studio’s silence around the shooting of a child in their blockbuster release, we all know there is nothing to say. How can we be such ridiculous hypocrites as to protest the shooting death of a fictitious child in a movie about a student revolution in 19th century France while we live the way we live in 21st century America?

Spare me the hand-wringing. Of course it’s responsible and considerate to inform American viewers in December of 2012 that the film includes a scene of a child being shot and killed. But let’s not waste our time debating the emotional harm that might be caused by that scene, or any other scenes of violence depicted in the movies. Scenes of violence always cause emotional harm. It’s just that humans decided long, long ago that violence is an acceptable form of public entertainment, not just for sadists and psychopaths, but for everyone.

I wonder how many shooting deaths I’ve seen in the movies and television in my life? It has to be in the thousands, and I’m not a big action genre fan (although I do enjoy it, and some of my favorite movies are extremely violent). You could argue that even before moving picture entertainment, people could read about shooting deaths. Sure they could. But they almost never saw them with their own eyes unless they had been to war.

We have all been de-sensitized. We’re mostly pretty numb to gun violence unless it has taken someone we personally know. Children are killed by guns all the time in the cities and so far, America has not much cared. Kill them one by one on a street corner, one by one walking from school through the empty parking lot, one by one through the walls of their bedrooms while they sleep and no one much cares. Kill them by the classroom full and suddenly we realize that we’re sacrificing our nation’s children to the false idol of a monstrous interpretation of the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment, perverted by paranoid domestic terrorists and sustained by the insatiable greed of the gun lobby, is now impossible not to see in anthropomorphized form as a monster, dripping with the blood of human sacrifice.

I will never again be able to hear this song, sung with heart-wrenching beauty in the film by Eddie Redmayne, without thinking of little kids coloring or playing or talking at kindergarten tables, while attentive, loyal teachers hover around. There’s a pain that can’t be spoken.

At least little Gavroche knew what he was dying for.

Empty Chairs At Empty Tables

There’s a grief that can’t be spoken
There’s a pain goes on and on
Empty chairs at empty tables
Now my friends are dead and gone….

Oh my friends, my friends forgive me.

That I live and you are gone
There’s a grief that can’t be spoken
There’s a pain goes on and on.

Phantom faces at the window
Phantom shadows on the floor
Empty chairs at empty tables
Where my friends will meet no more.

Oh my friends, my friends, don’t ask me
What your sacrifice was for
Empty chairs at empty tables
Where my friends will sing no more.

– from “Les Miserables,” music by Claude-Michel Schönberg. Lyrics by Alain Boublil (French), English by Herbert Kreztmer

 

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Should We Be Laughing At Honey Boo Boo?

 

A friend made me watch it.

No, really. She did. And we sat and watched three episodes back to back, fast-forwarding through the commercials and screaming with horror and laughter at the antics of the Honey Boo Boo clan, the rural Georgia family of Alana Thompson (the titular Honey Boo Boo), a 6-year old beauty pageant star who was apparently foisted on the viewing public in another terrifying show called “Toddlers and Tiaras” (also on The Learning Channel).

Honey Boo Boo is actually a pretty charming kid, and she seems happy. Her mama, June Shannon, loves her and is devoted to her and her siblings, all of whom have colorful nicknames like Pumpkin and Chubbs. Their father (well, Honey Boo Boo’s father — the other kids have different daddies) is a taciturn, exhausted-looking guy named Mike who goes by the name Sugar Bear.

Not that you didn’t know this already, but this is mostly just class prejudice and humiliation served up as entertainment. The family is edited to seem like the crassest of all possible hillbillies. They’re constantly passing gas or blowing their noses into washcloths or taking about poo.  In one episode, Sugar Bear brings home a little pet pig for Honey Boo Boo as consolation for her losing an important pageant. The pig, named Glitzy, is adorable and funny scrambling around her play pen. She seems to be getting decent care. Then the kids put her on the dining room table and she poops, causing all of America to join in one communal, “Ewwwwwww!” Makes good viewing: apparently, episode 6 of the show got higher ratings than the RNC.

I admit that I had a great time guffawing with my friend at the things that came out of these people’s mouths (like when June said of her failed diet that she “fell off the bandwagon”). Little HBB herself already has some catch phrases that are destined to become pop culture classics (“I holla for the dolla!”) and she’s pitching ring tones at the commercial breaks. No one knows how much the family is getting paid to be exploited like this — the media reported $2-4,ooo per episode, but Mama refuted that. Who knows? Only their lawyer, and I hope they have a good one.

Somewhere along the second or third episode of the show I viewed, I stopped laughing so easily and became queasy and guilty for enjoying the show.  It dawned on me, for one thing, that these obese people are probably seriously malnourished.  Mama June is a couponing addict (by her own admission) and serious devotee of food auctions. With her coupons at the store and at auction at a some kind of local hall, June buys huge amounts of junk food — potato chips, mini frosted cakes, Nestle drink mix (pure sugar), and “snacks” for Sugar Bear to take to work. You never, ever see or hear of any kind of actual nourishment pass these people’s lips. They’re fat and starving, and all candidates for Type 2 diabetes. The adults constantly look exhausted and twice my age – but they’re fifteen years younger than I am.

The producers undoubtedly thought it would be a laff riot to have an etiquette coach visit the house in one episode, and I did get a kick watching the coach barely conceal her disgust at the uncouth behavior of the little girls, one of whom asked if it’s okay to fart at the dinner table. However, if The Learning Channel wanted to live up to its name (ha ha – not in this lifetime), it should have had a nutritionist visit the household and teach the adults how to feed their family on a budget.  My heart breaks for mama every time she steps on the scale to tip it at well over 300 lbs. and then weighs in her kids. They’re all fighting a losing battle, trying to stick to their “diet” when they must be famished all the time.  Mama don’t know the first thing about how to eat.

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