Author: Deirdre Crimmins

Categories
Arts Culture

Rear viewings

The indie horror film Swallow is "an incredible testament to the depth of compassion capable in film." Publicity image.

Saying that this year has been an anomaly is a comical understatement. So much of our daily life has been uprooted and, to mirror our own bodies, movies were not immune from these changes either. Before we start writing eulogies for Cinema with a capital “C” and discussing the fall of the multiplex, it is in our best interest to look at a few of the fantastic films that were released this year. We may have watched them on laptops or televisions, but bear in mind those technologies are now better than ever. And while there were no big blockbusters or studio tentpoles, 2020 saw an unprecedented wave of early access to film festival favorites and what feels like unlimited choices on streaming platforms to keep hungry cinephiles satiated.

That said, the best releases of 2020 are all, at their core, stories of people struggling and connecting. Whether it be their own versions of reality or niche pockets of our world that are uncovered through the camera’s lens.

The Vast of Night

Director Andrew Patterson’s debut film is incredible. It unfolds like a hybrid of a radioplay and a “Twilight Zone” episode. We follow the events of one night through the experiences of two New Mexican teenagers as they discover something is sending a radio signal across their town. The camera rarely strays from the faces of the actors, and never affords the audience the comfort of edits as it draws us deeper and deeper into their story. Visually a masterpiece and structurally a well-placed gamble, The Vast of Night is easily one of the more intriguing films of 2020.

Possessor

Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor uses a world adjacent to our reality to tell a human story. In its version of our future, it is possible to upload consciousness from one person into another. Though the process is clunky and dangerous, it is also a boon to criminals and hit men. Andrea Riseborough and Christopher Abbott tag team a performance that matches the brutally complex implications of this reality. Possessor is gory and high concept, but the way it handles memories and connections between people keeps the film grounded.

Scare Me

One of the best, most audacious recent horror films uses only the power of telling stories around a fire. Writer/director Josh Ruben and Aya Cash are two writers on upstate retreats who get to know each other quickly when a power outage excitingly pivots their night to a storytelling contest. As they each build a story of horror and suspense, the film’s style begins to mimic that of their tales. While this might seem like a silly exercise, Scare Me deftly manages to not only create tension merely by the stories told, but by pitting these two wildly different characters against one another in a remote cabin. It proves that scares on screen only need a good raconteur, not expensive effects.

Nomadland &
The Painter and the Thief

Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland and Benjamin Ree’s The Painter and the Thief might seem an odd pairing, but in contrasting them it can be easier to see their strengths. Nomadland has no real plot. The film simply follows Fern (Frances McDormand) as a nomad in the American west. Technically a fictional narrative, it uses real nomads as the people who populate Fern’s world. We are peering into their lives and habits through her experiences on the road. The Painter and the Thief is a documentary, but unlike Nomadland it’s filled with plot and intrigue. Art heists, incarceration, and marital tension all meet to create a fascinating look into the art world as well as a deep examination into the very notion of forgiveness. Nomadland and The Painter and the Thief both give us a window into a dark corner of our world.

Swallow

No list of 2020’s best films would be complete without mentioning Carlo Mirabella-Davis’ Swallow. Haley Bennett stars as Hunter, a bored housewife who has recently found out she is pregnant. Thanks to her wealthy, traditional husband, Hunter is left with little to do each day but wait for him to come home. That is, until she begins to consume random objects around the house. Though Swallow deals with less common psychological disorders, its empathetic look at control, compulsion, privilege, and motivation is an incredible testament to the depth of compassion capable in film.

While all the films on this list are wildly different, there are common threads throughout. They are beautiful and honest. They are unflinching and inquisitive. Perhaps the unifier is that these exceptional 2020 releases each aimed to push the notion of storytelling in movies. They alter the way we see our world, and have the potential to impact the way we think about our fellow humans. That is the ultimate power of cinema, and that power is just as strong in these films, even if the screens we watch them on are smaller.

Categories
Arts Culture

Digging for love: Ammonite is a stratum above a bodice-ripper

In Ammonite, Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan fall in love as they gather fossils on England’s Dorset shore in the 1840s.

Ammonites are fossils that are used to mark geologic time. Resembling the spirals that contain the golden ratio, they are ripe for parable and illustration. The film Ammonite, from writer/director Francis Lee, tries to capture that depth of meaning, but much like its namesake fossil, it is common and unexceptional.

The film holds fossils at its core. This is not a vague metaphor about antiquated notions of sexuality or history, though both of those interpretations are on the table; rather, the film literally revolves around the collection and refinement of fossilized creatures. Mary (Kate Winslet) is a known but not renowned fossil hunter on the Dorset coast. She fills her days by avoiding her fellow townsfolk, expressing disdain for tourists, tending to her mother (Gemma Jones), and scouring the beach for fossils. Robert (James McArdle) comes to the coast to learn under Mary’s tutelage, and the location has the added benefit of allowing his wife, Charlotte (Saoirse Ronan), to follow doctor’s orders and get sea air in her lungs. This is the 1840s, and that was cutting-edge medical advice.

Soon, Robert leaves to travel, and asks Mary to teach Charlotte to hunt fossils in his place. Mary is hesitant, but is in no position to turn down money. After Charlotte falls ill one day and Mary is designated her caretaker, their relationship begins to shift into desire.

While it might be easy to write off the two women’s romance as a dramatic example of the Florence Nightingale effect, Ammonite tries its darndest to convince us that these wildly different women have chemistry. There are longing looks across the beach and a shared excitement over a massive fossil find, but beyond that, there is little to unite them beyond lust and convenience. Granted, those factors drive nearly all Hollywood romances, but it is Ammonite’s insistence that it is being clever that makes it a bit rough.

What ultimately saves the film from becoming a tedious bodice-ripper is both Winslet and Ronan’s performances—and their clothes. Winslet is dressed as an exaggerated vision of a woman who has neither the money nor the inclination to care about her appearance or likability. Her hair is dull and muddied in color. She does not wear the corsets of her contemporaries. And though she is often digging through rocks by the shore, she has not gone so far as to completely abandon skirts and dresses.

Ronan, conversely, is dressed to reflect her emotional status. When we first meet Charlotte she is in mourning and decked in black and lace, not suited for digging or exploration. But as she adjusts to life without her husband, and she is no longer defined by relationship status or reproductive health, she starts dressing in color and more rough-and-tumble fabrics. She is ready to live her life.

This is the work of a skilled costume designer. Clothes can and should tell us more about characters than their words, but the issue in Ammonite is that signifiers like costuming and lighting are so obvious while the characters are so subtle. This mismatch feels both like a heavy hand and an absent ship captain, to mix metaphors.

There are, however, hints of more interesting stories adjacent to Charlotte and Mary’s quickly congealing attraction. A townswoman named Elizabeth Philpot (Fiona Shaw) brews salves, tends to her gardens, and makes Mary more uneasy than even the stuffiest social obligation. There is definitely a history there, and from snippets, we learn it is far more engaging than the film’s central storyline.

We also get whiffs of Mary’s difficulties in her profession, both as a woman and as a person of modest means. From having to sell her largest fossil find, to making picture frames out of shells for tourists, to having her name pasted over on fossil identification cards, it’s easy to see why she may be hiding from the world. We get too little of that story to be fully drawn in, but it would have been worth exploring.

It is unfair to judge a film for what it does not tell, rather than focusing on what it does. But the story here is not enough, and allows the mind to wander. Seeing these fleeting glimpses of the richer world of Mary, only to have her primarily defined by her attraction to Charlotte, is a disservice to the character and a frustration for the viewer.

Ammonite does deserve credit for showing a love story between two women, when that is still a novelty in a mainstream motion picture. The women are tender and caring toward one another, and the positive relationship for both of them is a testament to the growing acceptance of prominent queerness on screen. It just would have been better coming from two characters who had organic chemistry and a director who was able to find confidence in subtlety.

Categories
Arts Culture

Holiday in hiding: Happiest Season is a missed opportunity to kick open the closet

Mackenzie Davis and Kristen Stewart star as lovers who hide their relationship when they visit family for Christmas. Photo from hulu

A new relationship during the holidays is a recipe for hilarity and high jinks. There’s meeting the family, heavily enforced traditions, and all sorts of other religious and historical wrenches to throw into the spokes of what could be cozy couple time. Happiest Season takes on all of these elements, plus the added layer of hidden identity—with mixed results.

The hidden part of this Christmas comedy is thanks to Harper (Mackenzie Davis). She loves the holidays and her family—and her girlfriend Abby (Kristen Stewart). The fact that Harper has not come out to her family is not only a shock to Abby, but waiting to tell her until they are driving to Harper’s family Christmas puts Abby in the position of lying on Harper’s behalf and hiding her own identity as well. When Abby asks, “It is five days, how bad can it be?” she soon gets her answer.

Harper’s family is not only completely unaware of her sexual orientation, they are intense. Mom Tipper (Mary Steenburgen) is obsessed with posting pictures of their perfect family online. Dad Ted (Victor Garber) is running for mayor. Sister Sloane (Alison Brie) seems to be more uptight than everyone else, and sister Jane (Mary Holland) is the black sheep, though that is a fairly low bar in this high-profile, wealthy suburban Pittsburgh family.

From here we get the usual dose of expected family gags. Sloane has a pair of creepy twin kids who pop into rooms silently and judge. A trip to the mall ends in a massive miscommunication between Abby and the mall security. Ice skating bonds the three sisters through competition and knitted garments. And Harper has incidents with not one but two exes who still run in similar circles as her parents. We’ve seen this before.

Happiest Season shines when it takes its time to deal with the uniqueness of its premise. But the film insists on spending far more time on the less remarkable moments. Ted and Tipper forcing a dinner with Harper’s handsome and successful ex Connor (Jake McDorman) is awkward enough, but adds little to the plot and doesn’t deepen Harper’s character—things would be just as awkward were they all straight. It’s the moments Harper is with her secret high school girlfriend Riley (Aubrey Plaza) that help us understand how Harper got Abby into this situation, and bring nuance into the film. These brief windows into the complexity of their lives, more so than people who never have a closet to come out of, humanize and emphasize. This is not merely a white lie, it is Harper living in fear of being rejected for being her true self.

To that end, Davis feels a little wasted in this role. Aside from the inevitable emotional climax on Christmas morning, she plays a bland woman who is concerned with family appearances, and seems quite happy in her hometown. She effortlessly rises to the demands of the character, but as one of the more interesting actresses working today, the rest of the film feels like a lost opportunity. Others have to do the heavy lifting to make Harper seem intriguing and torn, as she glides through the visit relatively unscathed.

While Stewart does an incredible job of managing a smiling but disappointed visage throughout, Holland and Daniel Levy are the ones stealing the scenes. Holland takes what could have been a throwaway, comic sidekick and turns her into the confident but quirky sister standing in the shadows of Harper and Sloane. She seems aware of their differences but assured of her value in the world—and that confidence makes her the one to watch in any ensemble scene. Levy, as Abby’s best friend John, is the fast-talking supportive rock that Abby needs to get through these five days. He’s the only one looking out for her, and their chemistry sells the friendship.

Happiest Season should be lauded for not only addressing the complicated and weighty issues around coming out, but also for having a queer relationship at the heart of a traditional Christmas family comedy. Yet, it still stops short of condemning hatred and homophobia. There are hints of the negative impact that such outdated and ignorant beliefs can have on lives, thus justifying Harper’s reluctance to express herself, but the film never goes so far as to identify these beliefs as the real villain here. Sure, Harper’s repeated lies are problematic and the source of funny antics, but Happiest Season avoids connecting the dots to the homophobia that drove her to lie for all these years.

Happiest Season is a solid addition to the legions of heteronormative Christmas movies. Had Harper been a more engaging character or if it focused on what sets it apart from other holiday films, it might have been a great one.