fiftytwofilms

Week 6(ish): Psychoanalysing The Piano, aka Everything is Bleak

Current concerns:

Coronavirus: obvious
Job: cinemas are closed down for the foreseeable future, oh dear
Uni: my course is so unsuited to learning in isolation that we’ve had gentle recommendations to withdraw, yikes
MAJOR CONCERN: I am haunted by this blog, and all the weakness, anhedonia and lack of commitment it represents.

Potential coping strategy: the blog is called Fifty Two Films, not “Fifty Two Films Watched in Consecutive Weeks and Reviewed According to a Strict and Regular Schedule”.

Today’s solution: blog??

(I make lists when I’m stressed – it’s my personal alternative to the fight/flight response. Although, in its own way, is fight/flight/freeze…a list??)

The upside of all my life commitments (work, uni, social life, having a partner that I can get to without crossing closed borders and being thrown into mandatory quarantine) crumbling around me is that I can come crawling back to this spooky, decaying blog and start churning through some more weeks. To my three subscribers asking for updates (you know who you are), do not take this as a sign of me returning to any kind of routine. The barrier of reentry has to be as low as possible for me to even stomach clicking this festering link in my toolbar, this icon of guilt, hypocrisy and abandoned dreams.

So, how are we all?

I watched The Piano yesterday, and oh boy, let me tell you: not a film that will take one’s mind off trials and tribulations. The theme today? BLEAK.

Jane Campion’s 1993 drama about a mute woman and her daughter being dumped on a New Zealand beach with their piano netted her an Academy Award nomination for direction – one of the five female nominees ever. Now that, in itself, is BLEAK.

I was really conflicted about this film. For a start, nobody has a good time. Scottish Ada McGrath (Holly Hunter) is psychologically mute – to communicate, she only needs her daughter Flora (Anna Paquin), trusty notebook necklace and beloved piano. Ada has been sold into marriage by her father, and the film opens with her being deposited onto a bleak, stormy beach to be collected by frontierman Alisdair Stewart (Sam Neill, unfortuately without any gruff Uncle Hec charm). After Stewart deems her piano too heavy to carry home and instead sells it to roughhewn local George Baines (Harvey Keitel), Ada and Baines strike up a deal – in exchange for a series of (increasingly sexual) “piano lessons”, she can buy her piano back key by key.

Needless to say, things go very badly for everyone involved, and there is a lot of rain, despair, uncomfortable sex and plunging into the ocean’s depths. No spoilers.

Apart from this scene, which is beautiful and soothing and generally the best. And the SOUNDTRACK!

Before we proceed any further, please commence listening to Michael Nyman’s beautiful theme, The Heart Asks Pleasure First – pretty much the only song Ada every plays, and for good reason – to get yourself in the right headspace.

For me, the enjoyment of The Piano has come through lying it down on my figurative settee and unspooling its complicated filmy brain. I read this film in the context of feminist psychoanalytic theory, which I assure you is very simple and has a low barrier of entry (ha ha).

Here’s what you need to know.

Psychoanalytic film theory: takes a bit of Freud and Lacan, and decides that cinema is not a window to reality or a frame constructing it, but a mirror which awakens the unconscious desires and fears of the spectator through identification. Basically, dark room, projection facilitates internal projections, we misrecognise characters as our own reflections like a Lacanian infant, psychic fusion happens, there’s castration anxiety, etc. Cool? Cool. Bleak.

The male gaze: the central concept of Laura Mulvey’s seminal 1975 work Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, which, despite being informed by the slightly batty above, is kind of a big deal in the world of screen studies. Male gaze is a complicated idea, but is basically predicated on gender power imbalance: in film, women are objects to be looked at, and men/the camera/the audience gain sadistic, voyeuristic or fetishistic power from looking.

In other words:

The male gaze, as defined by Mulvey, is a way of portraying women onscreen in order to provide male spectators with pleasure, conforming to a “dominant patriarchal order” (834). To Mulvey, mainstream cinema provides a phallocentric (focusing on and emphasising that which is male) view of a world “ordered by sexual imbalance” (837), which separates men and women into roles that are either active (male) or passive (female). This distinction places woman as “erotic object” and man as “bearer of the look” (837). Mulvey’s male gaze is in fact made up of three distinct but interconnected “looks”: that of the camera (and its presumably male operator) as it records the scene, that of the male protagonist as he looks at the woman, and that of the audience as they watch the final product.
– Me, in an essay one time.

It’s an old theory, and not without its gaps, but trust me: a gamechanger. Back to The Piano. Here’s some psychoanalysis to start you off – see how you go.

Fears: castration anxiety, repression and feminization

Stewart’s repressed longing for Ada, and the complex sexual power imbalance of their marriage, links to Freudian ideas of the Oedipal complex. Stewart is immediately allied with concepts of fetishism and sadistic voyeurism, possessing and gazing at a small portrait of an unblemished Ada as he makes his way to collect her from the beach – a literal objectification of his new wife. However, Ada challenges this structure, refusing to be made the subject of his desire. In a later scene, Ada awakens Stewart as she sits above him, caressing his face and hands. As she gazes down at his body, the camera cuts to a conventional eye-line match, a lingering close-up of Stewart’s chest. Stewart, in being unable to touch Ada back, is made object of her gaze, and this serves as a kind of symbolic feminization or castration. In the later act of (spoiler) cutting off Ada’s finger, Stewart attempts to reclaim masculine, sadistic power through his own punitive act of castration: removing Ada’s power, her unique capacity to express passion through music, prevents her from communicating her desire.

Desire: female passion and subversion of the gaze

This subversion of the male/female as spectator/bearer of the look fits into The Piano’s wider examination of Ada’s sexuality and desire. In some scenes, there is an implication of reversed of ‘female’ gaze, where the power lies with Ada or some other, feminized spectator – for example, when Baines appears naked in front of Ada, he emerges tentatively from behind delicate red curtains, presenting himself and in so requesting to be looked at. Often, Campion eludes the gaze entirely, choosing instead to communicate her heroine’s passion and desire through score. Ada herself describes her piano as her voice, and its presence (both diegetic and extradiegetic) communicates a more ethereal, sensory and emotive desire than can be communicated visually. The implication of this altered filmic language is that the ‘gaze’ provides a stereotypical male pleasure, and that the tools of this sadistic male scopophilia are insufficient to represent female desire.

Ok. You’ve advanced to the boss level. All your (two paragraphs of) training has prepared you for this. Final stage:

In terms of application, I am always fascinated by work that goes beyond use of theory as a tool to analyse film, and instead uses film to evaluate the usefulness of theory – considering how that school of thought may have influenced the film in the first place. For example, I would suggest that The Piano is more interesting when read as a reaction, response or counter to male gaze theory, as opposed to simply reading it through the lens of scopophilia.

Male gaze theory is so established that it itself can inform cinema, creating a kind of meta-gaze. As someone familiar with male gaze theory, I certainly felt that Mulvey’s analysis could have partially informed some of Campion’s choices – whether that’s true or simply me projecting my feminist reading onto her, I don’t know! For example, the shot of Ada sitting at the piano from behind seems to directly correspond to Baines’ male, sadistic, voyeuristic perspective – he has power over Ada, and is explicitly deriving pleasure from looking at her body. However, I found that shots like these somehow felt more aligned with Ada’s perspective: her vulnerability and awareness of her own nakedness, but also her participation in being looked at – a complex unspoken sensuality as her feelings for Baines are gradually awakening. I felt that Campion intentionally positions the spectator to secondarily identify with Ada in these portrayals of her body, rather than receive any kind of voyeuristic gratification. This links further into Lacanian mirror stage theory – in this melding of primary and secondary identification, the spectator is looking at Ada with a sense of recognition, as if through Ada’s own eyes.

Whew.

Here’s some self-psychoanalysis: this incredibly dense, confusing “review” is a dreamlike actualisation of my deep fear of sticking to projects that I start. Voyeuristically, you get a sadistic gaze at me finally doing some coursework, which satisfies your inner child??

Three subscribers, do tell me: do you like seeing the evidence of my part-time honours degree, or do you want more Cats gifs? Or both? Brb, doing my thesis on Cats.

The Piano is hard to watch, but it’s a landmark achievement in female filmmaking, I’ve been thinking about it more and more since the credits rolled, but my mum and I have agreed that we might need another 30 years to cool off before the next rewatch.

Bleak, but brilliant: 6/7.

Freud would have hated this film. He was scared of ferns.

Week 5: Parasite Micro-Review

In the wake of the Oscars yesterday, I thought it would be good to write about a film I have a lot of love for but don’t want to heavily discuss – Parasite. It’s tricky to describe, and I think audiences should go in blind.

I am also two weeks behind (help) on this blog at the moment, but on the plus side, I haven’t been fired from my other writing-about-movies job which pays me money. So, priorities are in order.

Whinging and excuses out of the way, here’s my plan for this week: give you some thoughts about Bong Joon Ho’s hit, but, as my style guide at work would say, in a way that ~excites and intrigues~ you without giving much away. I’ll also use the film’s various Oscar wins for a bit of listicle-esque thematic guidance – if you’re sceptical of the Oscars*, feel free to ignore those.

Best Original Screenplay – What’s this film about?

Very brief, spoiler-free summary is this: the poor Kim family live in a semi-basement apartment, working temporary jobs and struggling to keep afloat. With the help of a friend, son Ki-woo fakes his way into a job tutoring the daughter of the rich Park family.

Seeing the Parks’ generosity and gullibility, the Kims gradually work to infiltrate the lavish Park home, taking full advantage of the opportunity they’ve found. But, just when you think you’ve got it figured out, Parasite morphs from black comedy into something else all together: something darker, sadder and more twisted.

Best International Feature – It’s in Korean though, hey?

Yes, but you will be absolutely fine. I completely forgot I was watching a film in another language, and the broader themes of Parasite transcend South Korea’s specific socioeconomic circumstances.

There might be small nuances you’ll miss or misunderstand, but Parasite is HIGHLY RELATABLE.

Best Director – Sounds pretty quality…

It is. The cast are excellent. The cinematography, editing and colour grading of the whole film is beautiful and precise – everything is clever and considered without being hit-you-over-the-head “arty”. It’s sharp, funny and fast-paced, and you’ll never feel like the long runtime is outstaying its welcome.

And while we’re on the topic of directing, Bong Joon Ho is a proud dad, drinking legend and absolute icon.

Best Picture – What makes Parasite so special?

For me, the thing that makes Parasite such a lightning-in-a-bottle film is that it’s not only challenging and well-crafted, but also accessible. It’s funny, suspenseful and sad – exciting to watch, but also complex and symbolic. You could enjoy it simply as a darkly funny horror, or take it home and read about it for hours.

I’d have trouble writing a clear, one-sentence thesis statement on what Parasite is trying to say, and I think that’s the mark of a really special film. Bong Joon Ho isn’t presenting us with a nicely-wrapped message to take home, but instead creating a warped, exaggerated tale of a dystopia we already inhabit – a world where we’ll always push the people below us further down on our quest to the top, because we don’t want to be the ones in the basement.

This is a 7/7. **I didn’t love it with all my heart the way I loved Little Women or Wilderpeople, but it’s essentially a perfect film.**

*You can be sceptical all you like, but don’t try to tell me that Billie Eilish’s baffled side-eye for spontaneous Eminem isn’t the greatest moment in TV history.

Week 4: Little Women, Big News

First up, news.

I’ve observed in my long, Gen Z life that as soon as you give yourself something to do, it will set off a chain reaction and more and more things will suddenly start piling on top of it. Which is good, since I like being busy, but does mean that you go from zero responsibly (aka quarter-life crisis, see the about section) to HEAPS OF COOL STUFF HAPPENING all at once.

The main hunk of cool stuff is my new job – first industry job, unless you count the acting gigs I had in 2008, which I decidedly do not. This real, not-for-children job is with the marketing department for an arthouse cinema in Melbourne, and will involve lots of creativity, industry knowledge, and free popcorn. Essentially, it’s a dream job, and I couldn’t be more excited about it. They’re paying me and everything!

The other main gem in the cool stuff pile is my honours degree in film and cultural studies, which I’m going ahead with part-time: coursework in 2020 and thesis in 2021. Which means two more years of studying (hooray), spending time at uni (yippee) and student discounts (PRAISE THE LORD).

If you’ve noticed a theme, well done: 2020 is going to be a year where I do a truly insane amount of writing about movies. I’m planning to keep going with this little project anyway, because it would be pretty sad to back out before January’s even over, but please be forgiving if there are some sparse, late or grumpy pieces here and there.

LIFE UPDATE OVER.

This felt like an appropriate review to preface with a few paragraphs of build-up, because my build-up towards seeing Little Women is finally over. Oh boy, was it worth the wait.

Note Florence’s helpful fringe, the colourblind viewer’s #1 tool for figuring out which timeline we’re in.

Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 novel has been adapted countless times since its publication, and the consensus of many was that this civil war family tale had already been wrung dry. My quasi-religious faith in the deity that is Greta Gerwig told me otherwise, and I was absolutely right – I’ve never a particularly dedicated fan of the novel, and this version made me feel that I ‘get’ Little Women in a way I never have before.

One of the common issues with the novel is the dissonance between its fun, whimsical, girls-growing-up-together-and-having-shenanigans beginning, and the increasingly bleak ending as everyone ends up separated, away from home and promptly, passionlessly married off. Alcott reportedly engineered this dissatisfying conclusion on purpose, writing in a letter that she was so frustrated with the expectations of her audience and publishers that she created a “funny”, ridiculous match to marry Jo off to “out of perversity”.

Gerwig cleverly negates this descent into depression by layering these two parts over each other, creating two timelines which regularly flash back and forth. We begin with an adult Jo (Saoirse Ronan) selling stories in New York, and are gradually treated to flashbacks of her childhood and family until these flashbacks make up the bulk of the plot. I found myself craving these warm, cozy scenes of youth, and quickly realised that this is all part of Gerwig’s design – the film tantalises us with short snippets of sepia-toned happiness, scenes which get longer and less warm until the line between childhood and adulthood has blurred beyond recognition.

This deft restructuring is aided further by a remarkably flexible and charming cast, who have the added challenge of playing two different versions of their characters. It almost goes without saying that Saoirse Ronan is astonishing, playing Jo with the perfect balance of power, vitality, anger and vulnerability. Ronan apparently begged Gerwig for the role, who, after Lady Bird (2017), likely didn’t take much convincing.

The wonderful Laura Dern is muted but effective as the long-suffering Marmee, not to mention shockingly believable as Ronan’s mother. Despite similarly lovely turns from much of the supporting cast – Chalamet (playing Laurie) is more charming than I’ve ever seen him before – the biggest revelation here is Florence Pugh, a breakout star of 2019 who totally revitalises the historically loathed character of Amy March.

Pugh truly steals the show, building up an Amy who is hilarious, sassy and spoilt (“I have such lovely small feet!”) but also strong, practical and deeply likeable. Crucially, Gerwig chooses not to punish Amy for her candour and ambition, but instead provides her with a vicious, powerful monologue about the lack of agency for women in her time. Jo may be the rulebreaker, but Amy is determined to play the game as best she can, and end up on top. In this new Little Women, Amy being married off to Laurie is no longer a cruel jab for romantic readers, but an earned and satisfying conclusion for two characters who are so often denied.

Much of the film’s feminist theme feels poignant and especially timely in the wake of the 2019 Oscar nominations, and Gerwig’s lack of nomination for Best Director – a category which has only ever seen five female nominees, and a single win. Professor Bhaer (Louis Garrel) makes some early, foreshadow-y metacommentary about authors and artists smuggling big ideas into mainstream, accessible work. This notion of ‘taking the system down from the inside’ later becomes especially excellent in the film’s masterful ending, which I don’t want to over-explain – I’d undoubtedly be copying other great breakdowns. Suffice it to say that the condensing of Jo, Alcott and Gerwig into one creative force provided, for me, the cleverest and most affecting turn of anything I’ve seen for a long time.

Similarly tongue-in-cheek dialogue about what is deemed ‘important’ enough to write about – or whether the act of writing itself is enough to confer importance – feels especially sharp. In a year where, as provocatively claimed by a recent SNL sketch, all the other Best Picture nominees are essentially about ‘male rage’, the centrality of womanhood in Little Women is powerfully cathartic. The warmth and lushness of the March home, particularly in scenes of meal times or family reunions, positions domesticity and family as both powerful and sacred in Gerwig’s vision. An overtly utopic final scene forefronts children, family and togetherness as the ultimate success, as if to suggest that these women will become uniquely responsible for building the world’s future. Maybe Alcott wasn’t thinking “the future is female” when she was writing in the nineteenth century, but it’s somehow drawn from her words – this is a period piece with a thoroughly modern sensibility.

I’m hoping to do my thesis in adaptation studies, meaning I’ll likely be revisiting this film in the future. One thing I’ve gotten increasingly confident about is that great adaptations, particularly of classic literature, can’t afford to just reproduce what’s on the page – they have to actively engage with the soul of the text, and do whatever they can to transcribe that essence from word to screen.

It feels undeniably modern, and maybe it’s a tale as old as time, but Gerwig, in her subtle deviations from Alcott’s text, makes Little Women somehow more true than it’s ever been before.

And, since I need to go and figure out what ‘smart casual’ means, that’s a suggestion to unpack further some other time.

7/7. Sublime.

P.S. I do have one criticism – this film is long, and it does sometimes feel it. But if Quentin Tarantino can make a 161-minute film about people wandering around in 60’s Hollywood and everyone is going to lose their shit for it, Our Lord and Saviour Greta Gerwig can take up two hours of your time.

Week 3: Awards Season Marathon + 1917

Continuing the buildup for Little Women (at this point, my white whale), this week I saw a few other films – it is, after all, the most wonderful, awardy time of the year. This also the cause of this week’s lateness; something I thought I could get away with since I only have about four readers, but have received a number of recent complaints about. SORRY. I’m overwhelmed with choice at the moment.

Despite this overload, one that’s been on my mind a lot is Sam Mendes’ 1917, one of the current frontrunners for Best Picture along with Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite. I had the rare pleasure of seeing this with my little brother, who is not a huge fan of movies but does like a good dose of history and “at least five explosions”, and after tantalising him with the trailers he was fully on board with 1917.

To get the obvious out of the way, this is an incredibly well-done war film, and a beautiful film in general. The film’s style of being made to look like one continuous take was not at all a central draw for me, and I was edgy about being drawn into a mediocre story which relied too much on one camera gimmick. I was very wrong. Director Sam Mendes and cinematographer Roger Deakin (nominated, rightfully, for his 15th Academy Award) masterfully weave 1917 into an unbroken experience, where time passes almost the same for the characters and the audience. This approach is so much more multifaceted than I anticipated – it creates creeping tension, then nauseatingly pulls us through danger as we run along beside the soldiers, then hovers peacefully as characters pause for discussion and reflection. Not a second felt wasted, and never cutting between scenes meant that I was completely immersed in what was happening.

The cast is strong: partly the various cameos by Posh Men from BBC Dramas™, but mostly the fantastic central pairing of Dean-Charles Chapman (Tommen from Game of Thrones) and George Mackay (from a bunch of stuff, but I especially loved him in Pride). This is a film of incredibly sparse, economical dialogue, and Chapman and Mackay draw out warmth, humour and nuance in the brief interactions between the two men.

Honestly, it’s difficult to pick any weaker technical elements – everything from the production design to the scoring seems to fit just right, without drawing attention away from the action. The premise of the film is so simple, and its execution so effortlessly correct, that I’ve been finding it quite difficult to explain.

That said, despite its strengths and overall sleekness, I couldn’t help feeling that there’s something under the surface of 1917 that would like to inch its way out. The notion that Blake is chosen for the mission not because of heroism or sacrifice, but because he will be uniquely motivated to save his brother presents murkier implications about the morale of the army at that time – an interesting can of worms that Mendes doesn’t really touch.

I appreciate the relatively light touch in how we are introduced and familiarised with the films’ characters – it’s very show-don’t-tell, and falls gently within familiar archetypes (young and naive paired with wiser and more cynical) without becoming obnoxiously cliche. A conversation about selling a medal for a bottle of wine provided a good example of this approach, telling us a huge amount about the experiences and outlook of each man without actually giving much concrete exposition or information about their lives.

I also think this is an effective mechanic for telling stories about war and trauma – it’s impossible to capture the suffering of hundreds upon thousands of soldiers, so maybe this ‘everyman’ approach is a kind of compromise. We empathise with Blake and Schofield, but also recognise them for what they are – relatively opaque sketches, representing a multitude of people and experiences.

That said, I agree with Richard Brody’s skepticism of this approach to characterisation. Every sense that we get of Blake and Schofield’s lives are external, and their only motivation is to survive, to follow orders, to keep on pushing. In a film this concerned with how it looks – and, to be fair, a film that looks this good – it’s hard not to get a very vague whiff of superficiality.

It’s not doing anything particularly groundbreaking or new, and it might not be the most exciting candidate for Best Picture. But what 1917 is doing, it’s doing incredibly well.

To wrap up, here are the (spoiler-free) five times I cried:

After the Plane Crash (proper cry – silent but screwy-up-faced)
Babysitting (more of a moist-eye moment than a full tear expulsion)
That Running Bit from the Trailers (tense/man, war is bad cry)
Ol’ Brave-faced Robb (mild, exhausted cry)
Under the Tree (elegant single tear)

6/7, or 1643/1917.

Week 2: Stages of Cats (2019)

Guess who, again, did not see Little Women this week?

Guess who, instead, ended up vaguely tipsy at a 9pm Sunday screening of Tom Hooper’s Cats?

Let’s jump right in: this film is a deeply intense, psychological experience, and I can only adequately review it via the complex internal journey it took us on. Thus:

The Seven Stages of Watching Cats

1. Abject Horror

This started for me when I saw the first trailer back in July, and then immediately sent it to everyone I knew. Let’s get it out of the way: the ungodly cat-human hybrids do not, at any point, get more pleasant or natural to look at.

Who decided to sun-from-the-Teletubbies this movie? How big are these abominable creatures meant to be?

Why do the cats all have to look so aggressively naked? Especially their sculpted cat bums, the parts where some are wearing clothes and some aren’t, and ESPECIALLY especially when Idris Elba takes his scary coat off to reveal a ripped, furry cathuman body.

We have angered God, and this is our punishment.

2. Gleeful Delight

I watched this film under absolutely perfect circumstances. We were in maybe the smallest theatre I’ve ever seen (about 20 seats) – reflective of the film’s poor performance at the box office, having lost an estimated $90M.

Happily, absolutely everyone in the room was on the same page about the tone of the viewing – in fact, some had seen it already, and were now bringing friends to all share in the spectacle (trauma) together. The energy was similar to that you’d find in screenings of Tommy Wiseau’s The Room, with cheerful heckling and singalongs galore.

I love camp. I love terrible recorder covers of epic soundtracks. I love things that are weird, wonderful, and fail so spectacularly that they begin to succeed again.

And I loved watching some sexy anthropomorphic cats leap around a junkyard whilst singing fun musical theatre tunes. It’s perfectly, horrifically delightful.

3. MORE HORROR, OH GOD, MORE HORROR.

I DON’T LOVE IT WHEN THE CATS ARE WEARING FUR COATS/SKINSUITS, WHICH THEY THEN SEDUCTIVELY REMOVE.

I also don’t appreciate the human shoes and hands on the fluffy bodies.

Jennifer Hudson’s face is absolutely coated in snot for every second that she’s onscreen. At one point, as she tragically crawls away (as a side note, the crawling feels very weird in a universe where the catpeople are clearly bipedal), a string of phlegm very visibly droops from her nose and skydives towards the ground. After a few seconds passed in total silence, I let out an involuntary whimper of “thatwassomuchsnot”. One of the guys in front of us groaned back – “GOD. I was going to just pretend I didn’t see it.”

Cockroaches with human faces. Chubby mouse children who are imprisoned, paraded and consumed by Rebel Wilson. The incredibly sexually charged head nuzzling. Sir Ian McKellen lapping up milk from a bowl.

How did we get here.

4. Tentative Appreciation

After a good half-hour of staring at the horrifying cat-faces and loudly scorning everything that was happened, we gave the shouting a break and gradually settled into a period of calm reflection.

Once you accept that yes, this is happening, it’s hard not to think about how much work went into this audiovisual spectacle. The effects, dodgy and unnerving as they may be, are certainly unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The performers are strong – particularly the ensemble, but even the obligatory stunt cast holds their own. Taylor Swift has revealed that the cast went through “cat camp” training, which is something that I have so many questions about.

More than anything, though, it’s different. I love seeing musicals onscreen, and it’s fun to see one so wild, wacky, and not three hours long.

Mesmerised. Is a word.

5. Mind-Numbing Boredom

How many times is ~Grizabella~ supposed to sing Memory?? Foolishly, I assumed it was one.

One of the crucial problems with Cats is that it is, in the words of one of my fellow movie-goers, really just two hours of cats introducing themselves in song.

I don’t want to say that you can’t make a film with no plot, or that having a traditional story structure is necessary to tell a good story – I’d argue that films like The Breakfast Club (kids do detention and make friends) or Fantasia (colours! sounds! brooms!) are good examples of this. In fact, Hooper actually inserts far more plot than the original production has, creating some semblance of a protagonist in Victoria and adding in a new original song (cough, awardbait, cough) which builds on the themes of the real showstopper, Memory.

But when I checked the clock after meeting Old Deuteronomy – assuming that SURELY we’d now met all the relevant felines – and it wasn’t even halfway to freedom?

I was ready to yeet myself to the Heaviside Layer.

“What’s the matter? cAt GoT yOuR tOnGuE?!?!”

6. In-Depth Theorising

We sat through the credits to talk to our new friends, the-massive-group-of-men-in-front-of-us, as my new best pal the-one-with-glasses explained that there were “two distinct schools of thought on what Cats means”.

I liked theory one, which is that the entire thing is a complex biblical analogy, wherein all the Jellicle cats competing to ascend represent deadly sins – appropriate, in that the Jellicles explicitly describe themselves as “allegorical cats” in a particularly unnerving rhyme.

Theory two was more focused on post-apocalyptic cults, genetic mutation and ritual suicide. I was less convinced by this one, because it doesn’t adequately explain the central role of magic in the “plot”, or how Macavity can disappear with a whirl of glitter whilst sexily hissing his own name.

7. Confused Acceptance

The most surprising takeaway of the night for me? I’m not sure this was the worst way to adapt Cats.

The draw of the musical (which, in all honestly, I have always been deeply skeptical of) is the performance of its cast, but the atmosphere of live performance is difficult to capture on film.

They could have put some talented performers in the classic catsuits and just filmed them being talented, but that approach already exists in the 1998 filmed version – which, incidentally, I was given as a child and absolutely hated.

And while initially I agreed with the case that this should be a full-blown animated film, the show is so dance-heavy and plot-vacant that I can’t imagine it would be nearly as compelling without the visuals of the (sort-of) human performers.

This is a supremely weird film with some incredibly low spots, but it was also the best $8.50 I’ve spent in a while.

3/7 for “is this a good movie?”, 6/7 for “is this a good time?”.

Never forget that Doctor Who did it first.

Week 1: Hunt for the Wilderpeople

It’s week one. Forgive me as I figure this thing out as I go.

This was going to be a Little Women review, but everyone lost enthusiasm for Little Women since it was “too nice outside” and we should “be in the sun” and “socialise”. So instead, my first film of 2020 was Hunt for the Wilderpeople at the hastily-constructed family outdoor cinema.

He’s won Best Font on a Poster, where is Taika Waititi’s Silly Jumper Wardrobe Guild award?

First off, this 2016 masterpiece from Taika Waititi is excellent material for outdoor viewing experiences. During the opening, sweeping aerial shots of rainforest, the screen was aggressively buffeted by wind. By the time the snow had started falling onscreen, my little bro and I were under four blankets. Highly immersive.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople, based off the Barry Crump novel Wild Pork and Watercress, is about the explorations of sassy, ‘skux’ 13-year old Ricky Baker (Julian Dennison) and his grizzled, ex-con adoptive uncle Hec (Sam Neill). Set against the wilderness of rural NZ and balancing quirky comedy with poignant family story, the film absolutely blazed the NZ/AU box office – going shockingly under the radar over the pond.

Despite not always having the slow, trance-like feel of a character study, Hunt is all about its Wilderpeople, and Waititi sketches out some wonderful personalities. Julian Dennison is obviously the star, dancing and quipping his way through the many facets of Ricky’s adolescence – Waititi has demonstrated a real skill for drawing compelling and complex performances out of child actors, most recently in Jojo Rabbit (but more on that later?). Seasoned curmudgeon Sam Neill makes for a wonderful, understated foil to Dennison’s youthful quirky mania, building Hec into a character you feel deeply sorry for, but also would absolutely kill to go camping with.

The ensemble makes use of some other Waititi regulars, including Rhys Darby as a psycho bush man (is it a bush?? OR A MAN??) and the wonderful Rachel House as child welfare’s lead Terminator, Paula Hall, who will leave no child behind. The dialogue in this film absolutely crackles with life – it’s funny, devastating, and often both. Waititi’s cameo as a rambling priest is the paragon of his ‘tragicomedy’ style, a perfectly-timed, hilarious, devastating gift of a moment. I’d put it forward for best scene of the 2010s.

Full disclaimer, this is one of my favourite films of all time – it also, by coincidence, was the very first film we watched in screen studies at uni. On a fifth viewing (I know), it’s near impossible to see through fresh eyes – our sofa was quoting along for about 65% of the film. Instead, I relied on the fresh eyes of my English siblings, who I can only describe as gleefully entranced.

I also had new appreciation for some of the more under-the-radar one liners: “Out there, somewhere…beyond the cutty-grass…” is a new favourite.

Watching with a fresh audience also reminded me that, alongside his frivolity and irreverence, Waititi has an incredible talent to sucker-punch you with grief at any given time. This is a real, honest-to-god “I laughed, I cried, I laughed until I cried” experience, reinforced to me by the desperate shouts of “LUCY!!” every time things veered into touching territory.

A more layered review would probably make a vague attempt at identifying weaknesses, but honestly, Ricky and his gang of misfits completely captured my heart, and continue to do so every single time.

It’s snarky but sincere, familiar without feeling derivative, and unique without feeling try-hard. In a word, majestical.

Starting strong with a 7/7.