Freedom in the age of Feminism
May 11, 2016
Mustang (2016).
D: Deniz Gamze Ergüven. DP: David Chizallet and Ersin Gok. W: Deniz Gamze Ergüven and Alice Winocour. Starring: Günes Sensoy/Doga Zeynep Doguslu/Tugba Sunguroglu/Elit Iscan/Ilayda Akdogan/Nihal G. Koldas/Ayberk Pekcan/Bahar Kerimoglu/Burak Yigit
Finally releasing here in the UK this week, Mustang will break your heart. Premiering at the Cannes festival last year the film was France’s submission and eventual nominee for Best Foreign Language film at the this year’s Oscars. Already winning a slew of other awards, Mustang is as beautiful as it is relevant in a world still struggling with active feminism and an industry denying opportunities to women.
The project blossomed out of a writing partnership between director Deniz Gamze Ergüven and fellow director Alice Winocour at a Cannes program. The two would go on to develop Ergüven‘s idea into a feature. Mustang follows five orphaned Turkish sisters who live with their uncle and grandmother in a remote village. After school one day the group meanders with some boy classmates on the beach, playing and being young. Their play is viewed differently by the adults in their village and measures are taken to ensure the girls chasteness and eventual marriageability. Essentially as one sister says, “the house turned into a wife factory.”
Ergüven has described the five sisters like one character with fives heads. Each piece of action one girl takes is in reaction to their sister. An excellent analogy it sums up how the siblings’ dynamic is so beautiful and so painful when it is wretched apart. The girls are long haired elfin creatures that are natural onscreen and with each other. Günes Sensoy as Lale gives the group its voice and fight as the youngest member. Surrounded by images of shrouded female bodies and direct and indirect messages demanding female chastity and sublimation, Lale’s tomboy girlhood is easy to love.
Like another French film Girlhood, Mustang illustrates a community that prides itself on conservative and traditional gender roles. Virginity is currency and marriage the only place for a woman. Like the spectacular Girlhood, the film does not interfere and force an emotional hand. Longer shots allow the prison-like home to shrink as the freedom of the girls movement is drastically reduced. A simple and elegant score adds just the right amount of magic to certain scenes.
Surely a lot has been written already about the importance of Mustang as a film written and directed by women starring women. Cross culturally it is also a fascinating text with the relationship between France and Turkey. Yet what I want to say here is that yes Mustang is beautiful and spellbinding, but also a reminder of the repulsive treatment of women clearly outside of current feminism/wage gap discussions. It is not only the categorization of women as either Madonnas or whores, but that generations of women are still being taught that their role in life is and can only be marriage and motherhood. Mustang safely stays away from directly referencing religion and thus remains anchored with the sisters’ restricted freedom as each story breaks our hearts. An brilliant and significant watch that hopefully you won’t miss.
A Cash Money Payoff
January 17, 2016
The Big Short (2016).
D: Adam McKay. DP: Barry Ackroyd. W: Charles Randolph & Adam McKay (Based on the book by Michael Lewis.) Starring: Christian Bale/Steve Carrell/Ryan Gosling/Brad Pitt/Marissa Tomei/Jeremy Strong/Hamish Linklater/Rafe Spall/Finn Wittrock/John Magaro/Max Greenfield/Billy Magnusson/Melissa Leo/Tracy Letts/Adepero Oduye.
Sandwiched between costume dramas and survival epics are a few films this award season based on large intricate real events. The Big Short is one of those and chronicles three different stories of the discovering of the housing market bubble that would lead to the financial crisis in America in 2008. A complicated system to even explain, The Big Short manages to be cynical, satirical, and directly engage its audience in understanding the bedrock of Wall Street.
Director Adam McKay, who wrote and directed both Anchorman films, received a gift from the Gods that his movie follows Martin Scorsese’s 2013 film, The Wolf of Wall Street. With the clear picture of a turned out Leonard DiCaprio in our minds as decrepit banker #85723 (number hypothetical), The Big Short can be self-aware that it is destabilizing a world just put on screen. In a delightfully silly, but helpful nod to Scorsese’s film Margot Robbie appears in a bathtub drinking champagne to explain to the audience some Wall Street jargon. These appearances of direct address to the audience are coupled with Ryan Gosling as banker Jared Vennett whose voice-over is sprinkled throughout the film. With dyed brown hair Gosling has a sickly orange glow to him and acts as a guide for the audience, a conceit that thankfully never gets overplayed.
In these ways McKay is in command of his material and plays with audience’s knowledge of the lifestyles of the rich and the famous. This includes music ques and the use of music videos to reiterate the complicity of media in the farce. Affirmations must also go to veteran female (!) editor Thelma Schoonmaker for a punchy style that isn’t overdone. In a fun twist she also edited The Wolf of Wall Street as the long standing editor for Scorsese. McKay’s vision was clearly deftly planned from the start.
McKay assembled a fine group of veterans to handle a wordy complicated script that does not ask for a tremendous emotional range. Rather Christian Bale’s Dr. Michael Burry is a subtle representation of a man whose brilliance does not necessarily compute to social skills. It is nice to see Bale in a produced down role, lacking capes and bellies galore. The center of the film however is Steve Carrell as hedge fund manger Mark Baum whose is the most emotionally conflicted character. This works because nearly everyone is so distracted with making money off of the destruction of American lives that his exhaustion and disgust plays true. Produced by Brad Pitt’s Plan B he does his duty by showing up for a part in it, making sure to remind his young protege’s of where their profits come from.
The Big Short is based on Michael Lewis’ novel inspired by these events. His books also became 2011’s Moneyball and 2009’s The Blind Side so his track record is certainly enviable. In the impending Oscar race this film is hard to compare to treacherously emotional journeys of other entries, but ultimately is a clever and investigative piece of filmmaking. The use of flickering images and cash money rap songs around sequences of characters walking through empty homes abandoned by their broke families sends chills. As I left the theater it was heard not to hear Polonius saying “neither a borrower nor a lender be” and not rush home to put my money under my mattress.
Shining Through a Hazy Fog
March 11, 2015
Still Alice (2014).
D/W: Richard Glatzer & Wash Westmoreland. DP: Denis Lenoir. Starring: Julianne Moore/Alec Baldwin/Kristen Stewart/Kate Bosworth/Hunter Parrish/Shane McRae. (based on Lisa Genova’s novel of the same name)
Many a time a performance has stood out against the backdrop of a weaker film. Still Alice joins that group of films which arguably includes many an Oscar winning bunch. Indeed, what ultimately is spellbinding is the acting talents of Julianne Moore.
The co-directed and co-written film follows renowned Columbia University psychologist Alice Howland (Julianne Moore) who has just turned fifty and started to have moments of memory lapses. The film drops us into her experience right away and uses clever close ups of her communicating her symptoms to her doctor, who is kept off-screen for a short while. Alice eventually reveals her situation to her husband John (Alec Baldwin) and begins her early onset Alzheimer’s journey. This of course includes sharing this painful news with her three children.
Still Alice is somewhat faithful to its source novel by Lisa Genova, but misses a few important beats. In the novel Alice feels so isolated by her husband’s and co-workers reactions to the disease that she seeks out her own community. She creates a social group at her home for other early on-set Alzheimer’s patients. By removing this important plot line Alice is not given much agency in her care taking. Other plot points, like her visit to an Alzheimer’s home, feel marooned without a thread to film’s narrative. Also some parts of the script are glaringly weaker than others or appear disingenuous, which is never at fault in the novel which is memorably told in first person.
The film is thankfully able to root itself in Moore’s performance, specifically in her eyes. Moore is able to give Alice an intelligent transparency that thread lines throughout the film despite her character not being very established before things fall apart. One almost wanted more screen time from her despite the miscasting of Baldwin as her husband, does anyone buy him as a scientist? Kristen Stewart is decent as her youngest daughter Lydia, though she lacks the fire to match Moore. The film’s editing and pacing make some transitions slightly jarring and unfortunately it is simply a testament to Moore’s abilities that one is moved in the end. One cannot help see this film in tandem with Sarah Polley’s 2006 excellent film, Away From Her, based on an Alice Munro short story. Away From Her sees a childless couple go through the same harrowing experience and is the better film overall.
On a final side note, although completely dissimilar in content, Still Alice shares a birth plan with Fifty Shades of Grey. Genova self-published her novel in 2009 before it was picked up a few years later by publishers, like E.L. James. As trends continue in the publishing acquisitions realm it shall be fascinating to see what else is scooped up from writers still trying to get the attention of editors, let alone film producers.