Insecure people are very dangerous

You would think May December (2023, Todd Haynes) is Sirkian melodrama, right? It has persecution from society, traditional feminine domestic roles/space, and the self-reflexive construct of artifice throughout. But it’s not entirely so, because it doesn’t seek to tear your heart out in that overly effusive attack on your emotions kind of way. And that’s why Todd Haynes is so good at doing his own thing—beautiful perfect make believe little dioramas where the character is just a little deranged enough to be fun but still hold up a mirror to show us ourselves. 
     And because I love Todd Haynes so much, I love Julianne Moore as GRACIE. It’s through Gracie the film is able to achieve its fundamental moral ambiguity. And if you’re open to trying hard enough to not merely discount her as crazy, you could begin to appreciate the strengths that contrast her weaknesses, and how the dreams of being happy contrast her nightmare reprehensible behaviors. Yeah sure, this is in fact a triangle protagonist thing and I should care about Natalie Portman as ELIZABETH and Charles Melton as JOE, but really I only care about Gracie. 
     Okay I know maybe I have a problem with decoding symbolism. But I can’t resist here the temptation to just sketch out: think about Joe gently nurturing butterflies from chrysalis to monarch; Elizabeth choosing a snake, a “kind that doesn’t bite,” to play her Gracie; against Gracie prowling the forest flanked by her 2 hunting dogs, with a shotgun, stalking an array of cute furry little woodland innocents. 
     The genre of May December should be called something like elevated melodrama. Or, I’d like even better something like arthouse melodrama, specifically because of the way it uses a Michel Legrand cue from The Go-Between (1971, Joseph Losey) much in the way Paranoid Park (2007, Gus Van Sant) uses the Nino Rota excerpt from Juliet of the Spirits (1965, Federico Fellini). The way that Legrand theme is used constantly shifts the tone of or our interpretation of shots. The biggest one maybe is right when the movie starts and there’s a slow zoom on Gracie lamenting they might not have enough hot dogs and the devastating music cue tells us maybe this is more tragic to her than we know? Or maybe this movie is disconnecting us from the melodrama code to get us to think about the art? Or maybe this movie is hilarious? Whatever it is, it’s fun too.
     The setting is one of the factors contributing to another great strength in May December, which is how original this material feels and allows us to forget that real life story it vaguely resembles. (I know this is irrelevant but I love Savannah and when Elizabeth interviews Gracie’s ex at that coffee shop I freaked out because in real life it’s Gallery coffee shop and I always go there as much as I can I love it.) When they mention living on an island (more symbolism in the vein of Sirk) it’s gotta be Tybee, and, uh, how can I put this, mostly people with money live there and it’s kind of uh, quaint—perfect. Also yes, the downtown Savannah stuff is gorgeous. But that night exterior where there happens to be a tour conducted in the background where we overhear snippets of anecdotal history gruesome details of a hanging told almost like it’s a fun fact is bonkers.
     May December is about each of its 3 main characters, and too nuanced and balanced for it to be worth me trying to outline. I see their flaws as much as I empathize with them. They’re all too human. And it’s as much a trashy tabloid premise as it is an elegantly executed prestige woman’s picture. 

10/17/2023 Landmark Midtown Art Cinema

Atlanta, GA

DCP

Promised Land

Todd Haynes’s body of work as a whole is an impressive contribution to cinema. His films are fun, inventive, intelligent, and project a vast spectrum of emotions through his protags. His art is never achieved at the expense of heart. Even his made for TV miniseries resulted in a work as satisfying as any of his best films. Haynes takes trash genre aesthetics and repurposes them as a means to shape his own style. Is he that rare case (in cinema) of high art legitimately turned pop? Or am I exaggerating how wide his appeal has become?

     Haynes isn’t easy to classify. The second I find myself tempted to describe his indulgence in artifice I’m immediately confronted with Safe (1995, Todd Haynes) and its committed psychological realism. Also what other filmmaker only makes period films? This is a key to enjoying Haynes’s brilliance: the contrary effect of simultaneous verisimilitude along with distancing the audience.

     Dark Waters (2019, Haynes) is yet another instance of Haynes taking his style of filmmaking into a different direction, namely history-based social drama. It’s Haynes relinquishing his role as artist in exchange for chronicler (he can still pull both off though). But being a longtime fan I find the most enjoyable aspect of Dark Waters is the familiarity with Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1988, Haynes), Poison (1991, Haynes) and Safe; having the awareness of this string of films from early in Haynes’s career 30 years ago with their explorations of innocent characters succumbing to advanced stages of corporeal decay.

     What makes Dark Waters more than an Erin Brockovich knockoff is Haynes’s aesthetic. And while he’s gained subtlety with maturity, his uncanny ability to terrify hasn’t diminished. What stands out for me are some degraded shaky images of cattle mutilation found on a cache of VHS tapes stored under the floorboards of a quiet rural farmhouse where a quaint family lives. Also a POV shot of a little girl riding her bike with her little sister, smiling and revealing a mouth of black rotting teeth. These are the primary examples of Haynes’s aesthetic—the feminine sphere of the woman’s picture disrupted by sci-fi horror motifs. And Dark Waters does it while maintaining a commitment to realism not seen to this degree before with Haynes. Or maybe it’s just more refined.

     Another benefit of Haynes’s penchant for period pictures is the authenticity found in the production design, art direction, hair, and costumes utilized in recreating middle-class suburban homes and women’s appearances in particular. And when Haynes does period pieces they’re most enjoyable when the period is recent. (I still get a kick of how Safe was made in the early nineties but set in the late eighties.) Dark Waters boasts some faux wood grain and gilt filigree touches that give such a lived in quality to the homes in the world of the film (were there doilies or am I just imagining there were?), and the baggy legged men’s suits along with prevalent shoulder pads regardless of gender is fun.

     Trivia Fact: Ed Lachman (who’s shot Haynes’ last 5 films and Mildred Pierce) was also the DP on Erin Brockovich (2000, Steven Soderbergh), the last movie Soderbergh would use a cinematographer on before serving as his own DP for all of his subsequent movies. Dark Waters has a distinct (shot on film!) palette, with blue popping up a lot, with hints of straw and many artificial-hued practical fixtures, several night shots, and generally dark throughout. Lachman really emphasizes color in the eighties Robby Müller tradition. 

     Even more of a trivia fact: Lachman was Müller’s assistant on The American Friend (1977, Wim Wenders), which is considered to have pioneered the technique of implementing un-corrected fluorescent tube practicals in shots in a way that would go on to be seen in much of Lachman’s work.

     So, in addition to the look of Dark Waters the other big draw is its domestic drama, especially the women. Without Anne Hathaway and Mare Winningham the movie would just be a bunch of suits arguing. And now that I’ve highlighted what works for me in Dark Waters, to conclude I’ll admit that I was skeptical at first as to whether or not its environmentalist agenda would get in the way of its accessibility. But that wasn’t the case because foremost I engaged with the people this story is about. Historically the events depicted in Dark Waters are unsettling to say the least, and Haynes was the perfect person to blend it all into a compelling drama.

we are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars

Todd Haynes has now directed 7 period features and Mildred Pierce (2011), thus maintaining my assertion that he is the only filmmaker who hasn't set any of his work in the present.

Wonderstruck (2017, Todd Haynes) is a PG rated period YA mystery that plays out concurrently through 2 separate narratives.

The first narrative takes place in Gunflint, MI beginning in 1977 and centers on BEN (Oakes Fegley), a boy in search of answers about his family; while the second starts in Hoboken, NJ in 1927 featuring ROSE (Millicent Simmonds) and her voyage to find out more about her family.

Wonderstruck is the first time Haynes has directed someone else's script. And while it may not feel entirely like a Todd Haynes film, it is entrenched in his personal style. Rose's story is filmed by Ed Lachman in black and white (Eastman Double-X 5222) and Millicent Simmonds steals the movie. (I didn't even know they still manufactured black and white film anymore.) Rose's film-within-a-film is my favorite part. It's legitimately a silent movie. And it's important to consider the time it takes place, 1927; the year The Jazz Singer was released by Warners; the first year of sound movies. The silent movie is also (along with the rest of the film) superbly scored by Carter Burwell and remains true to the era, complete with emotional underscoring and stingers supplied by an organ. It's as fun and moving as the black and white B-movie aesthetic Haynes went all out in recreating in the "Horror" thread from Poison (1991, Haynes). And it has Juliane Moore.

Wonderstruck feels slight at times, but as the mystery is revealed there is a device that goes all the way back to Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1988, Haynes) that is used to tie everything together, which made me realize just how intricate and subtle Todd Haynes, who graduated in semiotics from Brown, carefully crafted this sweet, beautiful, innocent film that happens to be his most mature work to date.

With all the dark, arty, ugly, sensual, violent elements I typically enjoy in cinema, Wonderstruck has instantly become vital to me as an instance of possessing all of the complexity, angst, and familial turmoil, with impactful images and sound that I would never have expected to find in a kids movie.

A Christmas Carol

Movies shot on film are an endangered species, though thankfully not extinct. As a historical artifact, the medium of film fits with Todd Haynes latest movie, a filmmaker whose work is comprised entirely of period pieces. Haynes has also yet to shoot a movie on video.

Carol (2015, Todd Haynes) is a film about, by, and for outsiders. It's also about love. And, everything about it is beautiful.

Rooney Mara's THERESE BELIVET drives Carol. Mara's performance gets its strength from her fickle, twitchy, self conscious, strange composure. Therese's ugly pageboy haircut and general lack of fashion sense or aptitude with makeup application doesn't stop CAROL (Cate Blanchett) from recognizing her attractive qualities, however. And Carol will come to love "fallen from out of space" Therese. And as a romance Carol finds Therese lonely, confused, young, unsure of what she wants to do with her life, a virgin, and never having been in love.

But what about Carol? Carol is unhappily married, also lonely--her one friend ABBY (Sarah Paulson) vehemently despised by Carol's husband. All Carol has is her daughter, until meeting Therese. And Blanchett's performance, depicting the anguish and running out of time and options she gives to Carol is, along with Mara's turn, some of the best of what makes Carol work so well. The two leads compliment each other by contrast: Carol is older, cynical, worldly, refined, affluent and in a family, whereas Therese is young, naïve, uncultured, dowdy, middle class and on her own.

1952 Manhattan has and continues to be a glamorously picturesque subject for classic Hollywood style filmmaking. Especially the elegant costumes and hairstyles for both men and women, and the interiors. Carol was shot on 16mm by Ed Lachman, whom Haynes also collaborated with on Far From Heaven (2002, Haynes), I'm Not There (2007, Haynes), and the made for TV, also shot on 16mm Mildred Pierce (2011, Haynes). Lachman is also one who has chosen outsider, or maverick filmmakers to work with. And 16mm is in a sense an outsider medium to shoot on, usually connotating art or experimental films.

Though Carol may look like a Fifties Hollywood movie, with its expertly framed compositions utilizing reflective surfaces finding characters seen through glass or separated by various constructions, the 16mm has a darker look, more natural, and there are frequent Steadicam, over-cranked subjective shots to put us in Therese's shoes.

Most of Carol is about unattainable objects of desire, brooding, and suffering. And that's why, like much of Haynes' other work, can be traced back to the feel of late Hollywood Sirk and also Fassbinder. But here Carol's characters aren't victim to as much external violence or even emotional conflicts; here, they are attacked from within, and battling for a chance to figure out a cure.

Carter Burwell's score is memorable, delicate, and one of his most memorable. The romantic theme ties Carol and Therese and gives the movie another of its contemporary highlights. Highsmith's original source gives Carol its Fifties authenticity. And another praise for Haynes is his ability to refrain from kitsch or hokey gags based on the difference of our American culture back then. Not to put down Far From Heaven, or Mildred Pierce, but Carol feels more somber, even realistic in comparison to those.

--Dregs