Tag: movies

Written on March 4, 2019

Whew. It is late at night and the tears and snot are still dried on my face after watching A Ghost Story, a beautiful film written and directed by David Lowery. It stars Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck as a young couple, named C and M respectively, who experience a deep loss when C dies in a car accident. C comes back to life as a ghost and remains in the house where he and M used to live when he was alive. I don’t know what it is about A24 films, but I have yet to see a film released or produced by A24 that I didn’t like. Lady Bird, Moonlight, Obvious Child, The Lobster, Room. And now, A Ghost Story, a beautiful reflective tale about how we cope with grief and memory. I’m not surprised that this indie production company has received 25 Academy Award nominations for its films and won Academy Awards for six of its films.

First and foremost, what makes the film so incredible is its lack of noises. Since it’s no longer in theaters, I suggest you watch it wearing headphones because the noises are often muffled and for the most part, there is a significant lack of dialogue, even more so than The Lobster. The film relies on a lack of noise in order to properly help us reflect on the subject matter. It may seem silly at first that Casey Affleck is walking around wearing a large white sheet, almost child-like in nature. (remember the old clichés about kids wearing white sheets on Halloween?) However, I remember C’s body lying limp on the wheel of the car after he crashes and dies, and then had to remind myself that the ghost C was looking back on his life after his death. It reminded me of The Lovely Bones, a haunting novel by Alice Sebold about a girl who is raped and murdered and watches from her personal Heaven as her friends and family struggle to cope with her death.

One example in which silence is a powerful tool for eliciting emotion from the audience is a scene in the film in which M is eating a pie that a real estate agent gave her to send condolences for C’s death in the car crash. The scene lasts for a good 5-10 minutes, but it disturbs you gradually until you’re sitting there crying with her. You see her throw the note in the trash, and then eat the pie, then gradually she furiously digs her fork into it until, five minutes in, we see her eat the pie in silence from the side and slowly she breaks down into tears while C, the ghost, just stands and watches as an invisible spirit. This was the moment when I finally broke down during the film and couldn’t stop crying afterwards. This scene, although one of many deep scenes in the movie, really hits you if you stop everything and look closely. It is an incredibly painful moment to watch her grief just shatter her slowly from inside, but the entire silence of that scene allows the viewer to really see the psychological impact that grief can have on our physical and emotional well-being. The absence of dialogue was perfect because we get to focus on M’s facial expressions and how they alone convey the frustration and pain and other indescribable emotions that she feels after C’s death.

Another scene that was extremely important to the film was when C walks into a room of the house where a bunch of random strangers are having a house party, and one of the people there gives a monologue about faith and forgetting. This person talks about Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 and says that yeah, sure, “we build our legacy piece by piece, and maybe the whole world remembers you, or maybe just a couple of people, but you do what you can to make sure you’re still around after you’re gone.” The overall monologue is very dark and cynical and basically says that someone can write a book, record a song or do anything to leave their children and their children’s children for years to come, but they, like everyone else, are going to pass away someday and will no longer be able to enjoy the legacy that person left, like with Beethoven. The guy says that Beethoven passed away and people still listen to his music, but in the long run, his legacy doesn’t have any meaning in and of itself and that leaving a legacy is essentially hopeless. Basically, the guy is saying, people forget about you after you die, even when you leave a long legacy (I’m pretty sure C was the one messing with the lightbulb above the dude’s head as a way of saying “Forget? You wanna bet?”).

While it is true that humans are mortal and we won’t get to enjoy the art, books, movies and music that someone leaves behind after we ourselves die, what matters is the fact that people, when they are alive we will never forget how they made us feel, and clearly C made M feel so much even if she might not remember everything that happened during their time together. When C looks back on his past self with M, he shows both the good times and the rocky times of their marriage, and as we see with the pie eating scene and further scenes with M coping with C’s death, he made a significant impact on her.

Overall, this film requires a lot of patience. They could have made C a cartoonish ghost that says cliched lines and goes “BOOOO! I’m a ghost!” But they didn’t. In fact, they turned the ghost caricature on its head by showing how C suffers so much psychologically, mentally and spiritually when he realizes that his wife has moved on after his death, that the house no longer will be the same, that different people move in, and the whole time this happens he just wants to be seen, heard, even do things over again in his life. However, the thing that is most painful about this film is that C is a ghost and thus no one can physically see him unless he makes things move without them actually seeing him. In a haunting but very sad scene, he sees a single mom move into the house with her two kids, and he watches them have a wonderful time together eating breakfast, playing toys and celebrating Christmas. This probably makes C sad because he didn’t have any kids with M before he died, and so he opens and closes doors, but ends up scaring the kids and the mom, and because he is frustrated with not being seen, smashes all the plates and cups in their cupboard. I cried because C is trying to deal with all of these changes and it’s just really hard for him because he just wanted a normal life with M and now it’s gone. C’s silence speaks volumes in and of itself, and that’s what makes the film so unique. He finds another ghost who lives in the house next door to his, and they communicate with each other through their prolonged eye contact, and this prolonged eye contact is translated into literal subtitles, a language that only they can understand, a language of grief.

Overall, this film, like The Lobster, is a film I will never forget. I don’t think I can see it twice because I cried throughout the movie and don’t think I can take crying anymore. It just reminded me to appreciate people while they are still alive and also celebrate someone’s life and appreciate them even after they pass away. I have been to quite a few memorial services for people, and while I am sad, I appreciate the times I spent with that person. The film shows that change is constant and while it’s hard to move on, you have to do it in order to keep living. It was a tough message to swallow throughout the film, but it needed to be said. Like I said earlier, it takes a lot of patience to admire and appreciate the film because it goes against traditional ghost stories and redefines the meaning of a “ghost story.” Death is a scary topic, and no amount of cartoon ghosts is going to fix that. But the film’s reflection of death is what makes it so haunting and yet so incredibly poignant. It is emotionally hard to process, but it is definitely worth a watch.

A Ghost Story (2017). 1 hr. 32 min. Rated R for brief language and a disturbing image.

March 3, 2019

So I was mulling over this film last night because I needed more time to think about the film, and it made me think of animal symbolism. In the show Brooklyn 99, there is one episode where Gina Linetti, the goofy sarcastic office manager of the 99, says that her chosen animal used to be the wolf, but after sleeping with her coworker Charles, she feels so ashamed that she goes around the office wearing a sweater with a picture of a naked mole rat on it (when she wore it, I thought about Rufus, the naked mole rat in the show Kim Possible) and adopts it as her chosen animal (3/27/21 edit: she calls it her spirit animal but I read an article talking about the misuse of “spirit animal” by non-Indigenous people and reading it reminded me to be careful about the way I use language, so I recognize I still have a lot to learn. The article can be found here)

The Lobster takes the question, “If you could be an animal what would you be?” and makes it literally a question that people must ask themselves if they cannot find someone to love within such a short time. Also I had to develop a strong stomach because I consider myself an animal rights advocate, and seeing Jacqueline Abrahams shoot the donkey at the beginning of the film was hard to watch, and I had to tell myself, It’s just a movie. Not all films are going to have the “No animals were harmed in the making of this film” disclaimer in the end credits. Indeed, while watching the end credits I found myself waiting for the four minutes they rolled to say that disclaimer as film companies have done for previous films I saw in which animals were depicted in scenes of torture or some other inhumane violence. However, I saw no such thing. I was wondering, Wait, so that donkey at the beginning was actually killed? And the heartless woman (yes, her character lacks so much backstory that she is in fact called the heartless woman as her character role) actually killed that dog (aka David’s brother, who couldn’t find a partner within 45 days)? And wait, those rabbits that David takes to Shortsighted Woman were actually dripping blood?

I think what’s interesting about this film is that even without making an explicit commentary on the treatment of non-human animals, it does in a way make such a commentary because turning into a non-human animal such as a dog or a lobster is seen as punishment that humans should avoid if they want to live their fullest lives. However, as we find out later in the film, David and Short-Sighted Woman (who by this point in the film has been blinded as punishment for wanting to fall in love with David) are no happier being humans than they would be as non-human animals. It also seems that they wouldn’t be happier being animals, either, because these animals end up getting either killed for merciless fun or for food. So basically humans and non-humans are caught between a rock and a hard place, and there’s no hope for salvation for either party (there are still living animals roaming around the Loner forest in the film, but they probably don’t get to live long either before turning into someone’s food.)

And then I saw the film feature “Making of The Lobster” and understood why the harm-to-animals disclaimer probably went unused in the credits. The actors revealed that they had to do a lot of uncomfortable stuff during the film’s production, and this was very hard for them to process. The actress who plays The Heartless Woman, Angeliki Papoulia, said herself that working with Yorgos was challenging because he had them go outside their comfort zone to shoot these scenes, but in retrospect it really helped her improve her acting skills because she was able to take on demanding acting work, and a lot of times, some of the best films require actors to go outside of what they traditionally do. Colin Farrell, who plays David, says he has starred in movies where people don’t really care about the film afterwards, but this film, The Lobster, really makes people think long after the credits roll. There’s no self-awareness or stream of consciousness going through David’s head, he just goes with what society tells him should be done because he’s literally in danger with his life if he disobeys society. But I think the silences in the film and the lack of dialogue is what makes the film so incredible. But after seeing the film Widows, I thought, “Well, Colin has starred in other thought-provoking films. It’s just that in The Lobster, he plays this extremely vulnerable character who isn’t in a position of power.” I last saw him play men in positions of power; in the 2017 drama Roman J. Israel, Esq. he plays a lawyer who hires a civil rights attorney to work for his firm. He talks a lot and assumes an air of manliness in his powerful-looking suit and legal jargon. In the 2018 heist film Widows, he plays a corrupt politician named Jack Mulligan who says he’s going to support young Black women’s businesses and help the low-income communities of Chicago, and yet his idealism doesn’t match up with the fact that he doesn’t genuinely care about the Black community and only really wants the campaign money for himself. While these films were thought-provoking, they didn’t stress me out as much as The Lobster did because Colin Farrell’s characters in Widows and Roman J. Israel, Esq. are rooted in real life. You’re going to have attorneys and you’re also going to have corrupt politicians. These people exist. However, a society in which this lonely man has to turn into an animal if he doesn’t find a partner is scary, and it’s something that we’ve never really heard of happening before. Also this film puts Colin at the front and center of the film, while Widows and Roman J. Israel, Esq. have him playing supporting roles, so you really get to see how much this dystopian world is messing with his mind, body and soul.

I am really glad I watched the behind-the-scenes special after the film. Not only did it relieve me a little bit of the film’s stressful nature, but it allowed me insight into why Yorgos had people play such disturbing roles. Yorgos kept a certain distance from the actors and used long lens and wide angles to give a sort of space for the actors to really embody these unemotional but still human characters. This distance allows the script and the structure of the film to preserve its sensitive nature. Even with the lack of backstory for the characters, as well as melodrama and emotion, the film is still incredibly poignant and conveys a sense of deep isolation and loneliness without outwardly referring to it. In the forest, for example, The Loners have a silent dance party in which they dance alone with their headphones on. This is actually a thing, and it allows the Loners time for themselves. However, when you think about how the Loners can’t actually fall in love with each other, the idea of a silent dance party has a certain level of discomfort to it, unlike real life, where people can go to these silent dance parties and still go out and love who they want. (4/1/21: also, I looked up what these parties actually looked like because I was curious and they are funny enough anything but silent)

The lack of lights also conveys the overall dark tone of the film; it’s not just the forest that is darkly lit but also in the hotel the lighting is dim and the colors of the upholstery and furniture (as well as the outside environment) are dull. Jacqueline Abrahams, who not only shot the donkey at the beginning but was also the film’s production designer, said that the hotel felt like a prison, but the point was to contrast the hotel with other places such as the forest and the city in which the Loner Leader takes the Loners to go shopping. The simplicity of these places shows how rigid the customs are in this futuristic society. The American actor John C. Reilly, who plays Robert in the movie, said that it was actually a beautiful opportunity for the actors because they got to film at the Parknasilla Hotel and Resort, as well as the Dromore Woods in Coillte Teoranta, all in Ireland (he called it a “summer film camp for actors.”) Indeed, even though the film is grim in tone, it is just so organic, and the actors and producers who worked with Yorgos on the film said he didn’t care if the actors weren’t perfect; he just wanted them to play the roles even after just a couple of takes. The actors didn’t have to wait until the lighting was perfect, there was no stop-and-start of the filming, just a couple of rehearsals, then shooting the film. Yorgos’ use of mostly non-professional actors for the film really allowed him to preserve the film in its originality rather than having seasoned actors who would tell Yorgos, “Oh, I couldn’t do that, that’s not the kind of acting I usually do.” This is pretty rare for films because, this is just my amateur assumption, it seems that most directors would do multiple rehearsals before actually shooting the film.

Although I must say, props to the actors for keeping such straight faces throughout the film; there is little smiling that goes on, and the world these characters find themselves in is rather absurd (it is categorized as an absurdist film, and absurdist films typically portray characters’ experiences in very hopeless situations where they can’t find any reason to live for its own sake, and are full of meaningless events to convey the hopelessness of the situation.) Then again, Yorgos wants viewers to think for themselves about the actions and characteristics of the film’s characters, so he doesn’t impose any prior judgment on the characters. The film is one of the few I’ve seen that doesn’t really have any “likeable” characters because even the ones we think are sweet and vulnerable become conditioned to be just as cold and distant as the people they are with. David, for instance, wishes nothing but pain and misery on a woman who injures herself very badly, and he just stares as The Heartless Woman chokes on an olive. Because we don’t really see him develop in any way throughout the film (aka he just stays miserable the whole time) we as the viewer are left to judge for ourselves what kind of person David is and what purpose he had saying things that normally would be considered quite cruel. David doesn’t really have a choice though in what he says because he is literally hanging on for his life.

Another thing I thought while watching this film was the hotel options for residents. I used to work at the front desk of a hotel and didn’t pay much mind to the options of room sizes for guests. However, after watching this film, I have reflected more on my brief time working at the hotel and never understood how much I took this info about hotel sizes and rooms for singles, couples and families for granted. As I discussed earlier, the hotel is very austere, especially for singles. The wardrobe is monotone, residents get punished for doing things forbidden in the rules, and they can only choose between two sexual orientations. Couples get to enjoy things that singles don’t get to do and they enjoy upgraded room sizes. Their wake-up times and everyday schedules are heavily structured, but in real life the wake-up is never forced and the hotel staff don’t care what time you check out or what time you go to breakfast. In the film the hotel manager doesn’t care what the residents’ names are and the waitstaff address them by their room numbers. Even the couples’ lives are subject to nosy investigation at the hands of the waitstaff and management; they are expected to stick together as a couple, and even when David and Short-Sighted Woman are in the city mall and Short-Sighted Woman wanders off, a security guard asks David if he has identification on him to prove he is married and not just wandering around (they profiled a woman earlier seen by herself.)

Overall, very excellent film with a brilliant social commentary about love, marriage, and the stigma around being single. It was one of those films where it was hard for me to articulate my thoughts about the film in a cohesive way because there are so many layers to it (similar to Sorry to Bother You, another very layered film), but I think that’s what makes the film so excellent. I’ll probably have more thoughts about the film come up and it will be hard for me to adequately convey them in words. The trailer for the film might help sum up all my feelings about it because I still cannot convey how this film really felt for me in words even after writing it.

The Lobster. 2015. 1 hr 59 m. Rated R for sexual content, including dialogue, and some violence.

April 15, 2019

There is a song by singer Britney Spears called “Lucky,” and in the song Spears sings about a young woman who has achieved celebrity fame and has everything she could ever want, and yet cries on the inside because she is incredibly lonely. In other words, no one knows the real person behind the celebrity’s image.

This song should have been included in the soundtrack of My Week with Marilyn, a 2011 film starring Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe and Eddie Redmayne as Colin Clark, who was one of the assistants to Marilyn and Laurence Olivier’s film The Prince and the Showgirl in 1956. Even though the film shooting only lasted a week, it meant a lot for Colin, who falls in love with Marilyn even though the other men at the production company tell him to be careful since she will break his heart and leave him (also, she was newly married to author Arthur Miller, in a quite toxic partnership.) Colin starts off watching a lot of films as a kid and so he wants to go into the film industry, but his parents disapprove and tell him he won’t get a job there, but Colin is desperate to pursue his dreams, so he goes to a production company and keeps coming back for employment opportunities. Finally, the production head says yes, and Colin ends up being an assistant on the film. When Marilyn first arrives in England, she is constantly pursued by paparazzi and has high hopes for her film shooting with Laurence. However, things quickly go sour when Marilyn shows up late for the shoot several times and then forgets her lines in the middle of filming, forcing the directors to start over and over again. In one scene, it becomes so bad that she leaves the room several times, saying that she can’t act and having the people around her, namely her acting coach Paula, persuade her that she is a great actress. Paula, unlike Laurence, is incredibly patient and has a great sensitivity to the art of acting. When Laurence screams at Marilyn, Paula (Professor Hooch in Harry Potter, aka Zoe Wanamaker) and Sybil (played beautifully by Dame Judi Dench) defend Marilyn, arguing that she is in a different part of the world and not used to Laurence’s old-fashioned acting methods. Paula tells him that Marilyn needs time to prepare her role and develop the character she is playing, rather than simply acting to “be sexy” as Laurence wants her to do.

This film made me think a lot about the film A Star is Born (the one with Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper in it) and how there is so much pressure for female actresses to maintain a certain image for the public eye. In A Star is Born, Ally has to keep up with the image her record label manager imposes on her or else she loses her big opportunity. However, this pressure destroys her and she burns out. This is why Marilyn’s affair with Colin is so important to the film, because Colin doesn’t see her as just a sex symbol like the other men do, and he doesn’t want anything sexual from her. His innocence allows Marilyn to be freer in expressing her sexuality in a way that the public really cannot appreciate. The media capitalized heavily on Marilyn Monroe’s image as this platinum blonde with hourglass figure and smoky eyes, but this film really delves into the psychological toll that fame had on Monroe. We see alcohol in her room at all times, she takes pills every night before bed. Even with all her fame, Monroe was extremely lonely and miserable because people were always projecting their ideas of how they should be on her, and she wanted someone to just love her for who she is, and Colin and Paula were the only two people in the film who really genuinely cared about her humanity. In one scene, Marilyn is in a library with Colin and is admiring a dollhouse. While peering inside at the house’s girl dolls, she says that all little girls should know how pretty they are. This reminded me yet again of all the pressures that the media places on young women to be a certain size and to look a certain way, and while people are more woke and having campaigns that celebrate curves, thinness, pimples, dimples and other normal facial features that have historically not been celebrated much, there is still this lingering pressure to fit in with Hollywood’s idea of a beautiful woman. Most women still think they are not pretty even though people tell them that, and so Marilyn saying this in that scene was very important. In the #MeToo era, this film is especially important because it shows the impact of sexism on the self-esteem of young women like Marilyn (of course, I feel like a hypocrite for saying that in light of the sexual harassment allegations against Harvey Weinstein, whose company The Weinstein Company produced My Week with Marilyn.)

The film also shows that while training and experience are helpful, acting through pure human instinct is an art in and of itself that is actually quite hard to do for a lot of people. Even though Laurence had a lot of experience and formal training, he didn’t know how to be a good mentor and really didn’t have the level of patience that it took to finish the film shooting. In one scene, he looks in the mirror in his dressing room and tells Colin that he actually does admire Marilyn even though he never really showed it because she has the grit to turn everything Hollywood threw at her into an opportunity to work even harder in her career, and she never gave up. As Marilyn tells Colin in the film, she grew up in several foster homes and had a tough early life, but she pushed through it and eventually became successful. However, the film shows that fame doesn’t always guarantee lasting happiness. Marilyn achieved a lot of fame, but she died of a drug overdose and suffered with severe depression for much of her acting career, mainly due to the pressure of always being in the spotlight, always having her image on display for the public. People always overvalued her youth, and this also impacted her self-esteem and older actresses’ self-esteem as well. Vivian Leigh achieved success as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind, but as she got older, Laurence started thinking she was too old to play younger women, so he replaced her with Marilyn. Marilyn is smart and understands how messed up this is that this veteran actress isn’t seemingly pretty enough in the eyes of a male director to keep taking on fresh opportunities. It reminded me so much of a sketch that comedian Amy Schumer did called “Last F**kable Day,” in which famous actresses Tina Fey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Patricia Arquette tell Schumer that when female entertainers get older, Hollywood doesn’t think they are sexy anymore, so they stop giving them more opportunities and often replace them with younger stars, even though these older actresses are incredibly attractive. They have this day to celebrate the “last chance” they get at being attractive to the public eye before they quit their acting careers and fade from the public consciousness (which, in real life, as long as these three gifted ladies are alive and killin’ it in their careers like they always do, is most likely not going to happen.) Here’s the hilarious and clever sketch below (warning: contains strong language.)

In one powerful scene in the movie Marilyn is going shopping with Colin and the rest of the film’s team, when all of a sudden people see her walking down the street and race at her, bullying her for autographs. When the film team gets Marilyn safely into the car, one of the guys jokes that she’s famous and no one can resist her, but we see Marilyn silently sit in the back car seat, trying to recover from the invasion of privacy and wearing a look of pain and misery and exhaustion all rolled into one. This yet again shows the emotional labor associated with being a famous person, this struggle to take off the fake persona we put on for people and just get real with people about who you are. It really taught me yet again to value the humanity of celebrities, because frankly, even with all their success, stars are human, too, and want to live normal lives and just do their work and have genuine relationships with others.

Overall, excellent film. Highly recommend it. And Michelle Williams as Marilyn…all I can say is, what a force. She acted the hell out of that role.

My Week with Marilyn. 2011. Rated R for some language.

February 27, 2019

Last night I finally did it: I watched the film Bridesmaids. At first I wasn’t sure how I’d like it because I thought the trailer looked a bit silly (and I am a self-diagnosed emetophobic, so hearing about the infamous vomit/food poisoning scene from the film put me off from watching it.) However, I was totally wrong in my assumptions. I needed to see this movie because it was the best movie to watch before bedtime. It was light, funny and had a lot of good life lessons in it. Also Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, who both star in the film and who I both love, wrote the screenplay! 🙂 I didn’t know this, but it was the first film produced by Judd Apatow to be nominated for an Academy Award (it was nominated for Best Supporting Actress–Melissa McCarthy–and Best Original Screenplay).

The film teaches a very valuable lesson about friendship: that people change and you need to just appreciate the friendship while it lasts, as well as the people you meet along the way. It’s about this middle-aged woman named Annie (Kristen Wiig) whose baking company goes bankrupt during the recession and is sleeping with a guy who doesn’t want a serious relationship. She also lives with roommates who are not allowed to work in the U.S. and thus she has to pay most of their rent (Rebel Wilson plays one of these roommates, and she is hilarious.) Things become awkward when her best friend since childhood, Lillian (Maya Rudolph), gets engaged and asks Annie to be her maid of honor. At the engagement party, Annie meets Lillian’s friends, who are also her bridesmaids. From there it becomes a wild party and it is hilarious to watch.

One theme that spoke in particular to me is when Megan, one of Lillian’s bridesmaids, comes to Annie’s door when she is at her most depressed (Annie moves back in with her mom after her roommates kick her out of their apartment) and tells her to stop having a pity party. She tells Annie that she thinks she doesn’t have any friends, but that she is ignoring the fact that Megan actually has her back. Megan tells Annie that she was bullied horribly in school for her weight but she studied hard and now has an incredible job working for the government, has six houses and has a really nice car. At first we don’t know any of this during the first half of the film and we think it’s just Melissa McCarthy doing silly stuff like bugging her seatmate on an airplane and taking nine of Helen’s dogs (which were presents for after the bridal shower she throws for Lillian) and taking them home with her. But Megan really does teach Annie that in life you have to be resilient and you can’t blame other people for your misery.

I remember when I was in college, and I thought I didn’t need any friends. There was a group of incredibly sweet young women who invited me to their breakfasts, lunches and dinners in the campus dining halls, and invited me to study with them, but I again thought I didn’t need any friends so I ignored all of their texts. But in retrospect, I realized how little I appreciated these people, even the other friends I made during my first year of college. I even stormed off on a couple of my friends at a restaurant during my last week of college before graduation, for absolutely no reason at all (I was a hot mess back then, in retrospect, and could have handled my stress in a much more mature way.) Throughout college, I found out the hard way that you can’t have a pity party for yourself and think that no one cares about you. It’s also why it’s important to seek help; Annie’s depression was pretty bad, and sometimes it’s not easy to lift yourself from depression, so that may mean actually going to a licensed mental health professional for help. I felt too bad to ask for help in college so I didn’t seek out counseling services. Bridesmaids taught me that being resilient doesn’t mean refusing help when you need it.

In fact, this message about resilience happens even earlier in the film when Annie and Nathan (Chris O’Dowd), the police officer who pulled her over, are at a bar and he tells her she should try baking again. When she tells him she literally lost all of her money from the baking company going bankrupt, he tells her that just because she didn’t make any money from her baking company doesn’t mean that she failed, and tells her that she is really good at it. Even after they sleep together, he wakes her up and buys her baking supplies so that she can bake him some cupcakes. But this brings up bad memories of her business going bankrupt, so she apologizes immediately and leaves his house. Honestly, I know this wouldn’t have been true to the story, but if she seriously wanted to make the situation better, she could have taught him how to bake instead of her making treats for him. He seems like a very level-headed guy, and after he taught her how to operate that speeding device to detect people driving over the speed-limit, she could have taught him how to bake.

This scene reminds me of the book So Good They Can’t Ignore You, in which Cal Newport debunks the idea that one should quit their job and follow their passion, when in reality they should first build up enough career capital, or skills, and money to be able to invest in their passion projects. Even though Annie’s business went down the toilet, she could have pursued it as a side project while working another job. I have no idea whether she quit her job or dropped out of college to start her business, and frankly I can’t blame her because the recession was pretty bad and it wasn’t her fault. She also could have tried selling her stuff to friends and family members. Even though this would of course have changed the entire plot, I think it would have at least helped her re-boost her self-confidence. Newport says that the key to success is not giving up, but just producing a lot of stuff to show people. Chris Rock did it, Steve Martin did it, Annie could have easily done it while working as a barista or some other job. I know during the recession that there weren’t a lot of jobs, but I had to work a service job and it helped me make money while still playing my music without worrying whether I’d get a paycheck from playing my music or bombing some orchestra audition. Again, I don’t know much about Annie’s situation; just saying it could have been a possibility for her.

Annie’s struggles with moving on also taught me that I need to accept change and appreciate the people in my present life. Annie bakes Nathan a cake saying “sorry” and expects he’ll immediately accept her apology, but I think that he’s more upset not just with the fact that she didn’t get her taillights fixed like she promised, but because she keeps saying sorry to him and blaming other people for making her feel low. Annie finally realizes that Nathan genuinely cares about her. Annie’s previous lover (played by Jon Hamm) constantly makes her feel like a tool and doesn’t respect her (he says that while he’s driving, she can sleep in his lap, showing his narcissism and lack of regard for her not wanting to do that). Nathan, however, actually wants her to succeed. There’s this great quote from this book called Discussions on Youth by philosopher Daisaku Ikeda:

“Real love is not two people clinging to each other; it can only be fostered between two strong people secure in their individuality. A shallow person will have only shallow relationships. If you want to experience real love, it is important to first sincerely develop a strong self-identity.” (Ikeda, 67)

Unlike Nathan, Jon Hamm’s character (I say “Jon Hamm’s character” because Jon Hamm was uncredited in the film so I never got the character’s name. According to IMDB trivia on the film, Hamm chose to go uncredited though because he felt if he appeared in the credits, then people would view Bridesmaids as a more serious film since he isn’t generally recognized for appearing in comedies) does not care about a serious relationship and even straight-up tells Annie that he doesn’t want to be her boyfriend or husband, but is really just interested in sex with her. He doesn’t really care about her baking dreams or her friends. Nathan, however, isn’t trying to fix Annie; in fact, he expects her to have her life together, and when she doesn’t and assumes he is trying to fix her, he knows enough to move on and not get bent out of shape about it. Daisaku Ikeda also says that men should respect women and work alongside with them to help them achieve their goals. Nathan actually cared about Annie and wanted a serious relationship because he has a serious job as a police officer and expects her to take her baking pursuits seriously so that the two of them can be independent happy individuals who are still in love. Honestly I would have loved to see Annie succeed with her baking company.

This film also says a great deal about people-pleasing. Helen, Lillian’s wealthy snobbish friend, constantly tries to make it seem that she is Lillian’s best friend by buying her all of these extravagant things and even booking her a flight to Paris. But as we see later in the film, Lillian realizes she doesn’t want Helen controlling her wedding and in fact, it’s going to be hard for Lillian’s dad to afford the wedding. After Annie destroys everything at Helen’s mansion during the bridal shower, Lillian gets upset with Annie and asks her why she can’t just move on and be happy for her. However, even Lillian is fed up with Helen because this whole extravagant wedding has brought her stress. This film teaches that friendship isn’t so much about how many times we hang out with people as it is the small moments that count. Helen assumes she is Lillian’s best friend because she takes her out for all these social gatherings and buys all these expensive things for her, and that Annie is a bad friend because she doesn’t have any money, even though Annie and Lillian have known each other much longer than Lillian and Helen have been friends. Helen realizes her mistake in trying to please Lillian and apologizes to Annie, but Annie, who spends most of the film apologizing, is fed up with Helen’s apologies. The film also makes a great point about apologizing; women tend to do it a lot (although Nathan apologizes a couple of times) and you really shouldn’t say sorry all the time because it eventually comes off as sounding like you don’t really want to take responsibility and are just looking for someone’s forgiveness. I myself have done this countless times and I am still working on it, so I need to watch movies like Bridesmaids to let me know that just because you say sorry doesn’t mean you can just make the same mistake again. You have to accept what you did wrong, move on, and check your actions next time.

In Discussions on Youth Ikeda also has a profound chapter on friendship, and one of the passages from this chapter spoke to the movie so much:

“What is friendship? It is not simply a matter of being favorably disposed toward someone because he or she spends a lot of time with you, or lends you money, or is nice to you, or because you get along well and have a lot in common. True friendship implies a relationship where you empathize with your friends when they’re suffering and encourage them not to lose heart, and where they, in turn, empathize with you when you’re in the same boat and try to cheer you up. A friendship with those qualities flows as beautifully as a pure, fresh stream.” (Ikeda, “Friendship and Perspectives on Life,” Discussions on Youth, 47)

Overall the film was incredible and I recommend it. Also, Melissa McCarthy is hilarious. Heck, the whole female cast of the film is incredibly funny. 🙂

Bridesmaids. 2011. 2 hr 12 min. Rated R for some strong sexuality and language throughout.

February 10, 2019

For those who haven’t seen the film, Black Swan is a thriller directed by Darren Aronofsky about a kind-hearted ballerina named Nina Sayers (played by Natalie Portman) who auditions for the lead role of the Swan Queen. She starts off by being nice and not engaging in the competitiveness of his fellow ballerinas, but as the film progresses she lets her ego take over as she tries to be both the innocent pure White Swan and the dark twisted Black Swan simultaneously. She thinks another ballerina, Lily (Mila Kunis), is out to steal her part as the Black Swan, so she goes to great lengths to beat Lily and please Thomas, her teacher.

I read a parents guide on Kids in Mind and a Wikipedia plot summary before seeing the film because I frankly don’t enjoy scary things that jump out or happen suddenly on screen, even though I know deep down that reading these guides kills the fun of the movie. However, even when I closed my eyes at all the gruesome creepy parts I had plenty to ruminate about after the film. In fact, the end credits add to the overall darkness of this psychological horror film because it’s a cream-white background but with black feathers representing Nina’s role as The Black Swan. After you realize how much Nina destroyed herself to become the lead role of the Swan Queen, you’ll need to wait until the end credits are actually finished to actually take a deep breath of relief. Because the white and black contrast of the end credits against the sounds of Peter Tchaikovsky’s ominous Swan Lake Overture are beautiful but unsettling when you remember that the film is overall very dark.

Because I’m still trying to digest the 1 hour and 40-ish minutes of the film (I don’t really want to look up the actual time because then I’d have to see a photo of Natalie Portman’s gorgeous yet haunting glare at the viewer in the film poster), here are just a few of my jumbled thoughts about it. I have never binge-watched so many episodes of Brooklyn 99 in my life, but after seeing Black Swan I needed to see something humorous. While I loved the cinematography and the acting, I had to convince myself of just that: that it was just acting. Because it felt very real. As scary as it was to watch Natalie Portman destroy herself (which is why I was hesitant at first about seeing the movie) her acting is incredible, and so is Mila Kunis and the other actors’ performances. And the music score, speaking as a classical musician, was amazing.

First and foremost, the film has a pretty harsh reality check for any perfectionists out there (speaking for myself). Nina goes into the office of her teacher, Thomas, and asks for the Swan Queen role. He then tells her he gave it to another ballerina and tells her to leave. She then tells him she just wants to be perfect. He then tells her that he doesn’t care about her technique and that perfect performance isn’t just about technique but about losing yourself in the role and letting go. He tells her embodying both the White and Black Swan is hard because the Black Swan would require Nina to lose touch with herself. However, it’s important to not take what he says to heart, because honestly speaking this dude (yes, I called Vincent Cassel’s character a “dude”) is a creep and forcibly kisses Nina in his office. This reminded me of allegations against various orchestra conductors who put their students on a pedestal while abusing them in silence. Thomas also manipulates Nina into taking him literally. While Lily, Nina’s colleague, gets to have fun and go out with friends while still holding Thomas’s attention, Nina is constantly tortured by the idea that Lily would replace her.

I was thinking, this is just a movie, this isn’t supposed to be a documentary about ballerinas, it’s all fiction, but I wanted to find real-life experiences by ballerinas that shattered the Nina stereotype. I immediately remembered a friend and I were talking about Misty Copeland’s story. For those unfamiliar with Misty Copeland, she became the first Black woman to be the principal ballet dancer of the American Ballet Theatre in 2015, and has encouraged so many girls and young women, particularly women of color. Misty Copeland, in an interview with Elle, says that she started later than other ballerinas but that she believes it is her mission to encourage young girls to develop positive self-esteem because of the deeply ingrained stigma associated with the classical ballet sphere.

In Copeland’s words,

“I’m such a late bloomer. Having been in the company for as long as I’ve been, and having been promoted at this stage– I think that it’s been hard for me to accept that I belong here, that I’m good enough. Maybe it’s just that I’m so exhausted and I’m 35 now and it was my breaking point, but I believe that I deserve to be here. The power that I have in bringing people to the ballet, and for what I represent– I don’t need to be working like a slave. I can say no to certain things and decide to do something else that will enrich who I am.” (“Misty Copeland is Pirouetting Her Way to Disney Fame.” Sophie Brickman, Sept. 19 2018. Elle.com)

Misty recognizes that it’s important to not compare yourself to others, and in fact encourages young ballerinas to be passionate about what they do and to have fun. This is just my perspective, but Black Swan made it seem that in order to be a good performer, one must close themselves off from the real world and focus on being better than other performers. This is an unrealistic and unhealthy way of approaching art. Most of the successful musicians, artists and dancers I have encountered over the years have told me to have fun, not compare myself to others and just appreciate the fact that I’m even playing an instrument. Thomas makes it seem like Nina has to give up her sense of self in order to become the best, but him telling her this only leads Nina to destroy herself physically, emotionally and psychologically, and it has a severe impact on her relationships with others.

There is a particular scene in which Nina is rehearsing alone late at night with the pianist, and he finally gets up and leaves. When she tells him to stay and rehearse with her, he tells her “I have a life” and that she herself should get rest instead of staying up late rehearsing. Nina’s mom tells her to get sleep instead of going out for drinks with Lily, and I agree with her (then again, if Nina didn’t go out with Lily and get drinks, the film would be way shorter than 1 hour and 48 minutes.) Countless scientific studies have shown that taking time for ourselves actually helps us perform better. My cello teacher even encourages me to take breaks in between practice sessions so I don’t risk burning out while playing my instrument. I learned the hard way a few years ago about the importance of taking time to care for my mind, body and soul, but the harsh lesson I learned was worth it because I realized how little I cared for my own life. I was obsessing over my musical success without taking care of my mental health, seeing therapy and spending time with loved ones. Even while practicing all of these difficult cello pieces, I know that I need to take a break after 20-40 minutes or so to just stretch, meditate, read, or watch a funny Drunk History episode. Because, like the pianist told Nina, “I have a life.”

I would argue that Nina’s constant comparing herself to her peers and her driven perfectionism hurt her more than help her succeed. In fact, in today’s world of the performing arts, the hard truth is that you can practice all you want to get every note perfect, but you have to do other stuff to balance it out. There have been many times when I have literally destroyed myself in order to play a perfect audition, and I only ended up closing off my friends, family and peers in the process because I was so focused on getting everything perfectly. I ended up losing out on things I enjoy, such as reading for fun, and ended up isolating myself for days at a time. Having mental illness is not fun. Being a tortured artist isn’t beautiful or cute. It’s painful and you’ve got to learn to love yourself first so that you can appreciate your career and the people who helped you along the way.

At the end of the day, no one cares if you did things perfectly. A performance is just that, a performance. Yes, work hard, give it your all, but please love yourself and encourage yourself in the process. Everyone just wants to see something done from the heart. After the film, I had all these heavy feelings, but I had to remember that the film, as it says in the end credits, is a work of fiction and that the characters are fictional. While I am not a ballerina and can’t speak to ballerina’s experiences, I can’t assume that the way ballet is depicted in the film speaks for every ballerina’s experience, such as Misty Copeland’s experience where she found healthy work-life balance. It might have some truth, but for the most part I had to take the film with a grain of salt and just watch it as it was. I think doing this helped me get over the heaviness of the film, although it is one of those movies that I watched and don’t think I can watch again because it really is scary. Although, I must say, this post is a much better critique of the film than mine because it comes from someone who actually is a ballerina and calls out many of the ways in which the film wrongly portrays the lives of ballerinas. Also, there’s a brilliant Saturday Night Live parody of the film, and I have seen it at least a thousand times and cannot stop laughing. Jim Carrey, as always, is brilliant. 🙂

Black Swan. 1 hr 48 min. Rated R for some sexual content, disturbing violent images, language and some drug use.

Written on February 6, 2019

Uncategorized

Like Bad Moms, this movie was HILARIOUS! I seriously found myself busting up laughing quite a lot. The movie also make a great commentary about singlehood.

The film follows the lives of three single women: Robin, an extroverted partygoer, played by Rebel Wilson, and a cautious young woman named Alice (Dakota Johnson) who lives with her sister Meg (Leslie Mann). After graduating college, Alice decides to break up with her boyfriend to move to New York City and gets a job as a paralegal. On her first day she meet Robin, who shows her how to enjoy her newfound singlehood in the big city. She gives Alice tips on how to hook up with guys and enjoy herself, but Alice finds herself still conflicted about her ex-boyfriend while meeting these other men. Meg decides to have a child of her own via a sperm donor, and meets a guy named Ken who wants a long term committed relationship with her. Alice, meanwhile, still remains conflicted about whether or not to get back with her ex-boyfriend even though he has moved on.

What I really loved about the film is the cliches about romantic comedies that they manage to point out at various points in the film. A few years ago, singlehood was stigmatized and single people were often seen lonely and crying over not having anyone. However, the movie sends a good message that just because you’re single doesn’t mean you can’t be happy. And in fact, no single person’s life is going to be identical. One of the guys Alice meets, David, is a single dad. She assumes he is married just because he has a daughter, but then she finds out his wife died. Instead of letting Alice into his life, we find out that David does not feel emotionally ready to have Alice replace his wife and be his daughter’s new mom. He ends up using the time he has to not remarry to develop a healthy relationship with his daughter even after his wife’s death. Had he remarried, it would have been a completely different story and Alice wouldn’t have time to enjoy her singlehood anymore.

Tom, who works as a bartender, hooks up with various women in the movie, but he himself does not want a long-term committed relationship. In the beginning he meets a young woman named Lucy and makes fun of her for using online dating sites to find people rather than meet them in person. However, when she gets married, he continues to act like she still loves him, but her husband George lets him know that Lucy is serious about getting married and to stay away from her (seeing Jason Mantzoukas give this diss to Anders Holm-Tom-was brilliant but also gave me chills because it was so well-delivered.) It’s similar to the film Up in the Air, when George Clooney’s character love living a life where he can just fly by himself in first class and hook up with women, but then has to face the reality that the women he treated so carelessly move on and get married.

The movie not only challenges stereotypes about single women, but also pregnant women. One great scene is when Meg is shopping for things at a maternity store and Ken, the guy who wants to be in a long-term relationship with her, jokingly calls her crazy for not telling him she is pregnant, and says that pregnant women are crazy. She then tells him it is rude to call a pregnant woman crazy and then storms out on him. One of the salespeople calls out to Meg, “Tell him, girl” for calling him out on his nonsense. I literally had to watch this scene at least three times because it was so funny. Normally, if a woman gets angry in a store, the people working behind the counter just stare in shock (not surprisingly, considering I used to work in retail), but I love how in this little moment that woman cheered Meg on for challenging Ken on his comment about pregnant women. *Side note: I thought Ken looked familiar, and so I thought, Wait did he star in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel? And then I looked him up on Wikipedia and it said that he starred in Obvious Child. He was a great actor in that movie, too. 🙂

What I like about the film is that it challenges the idea that being single means either being totally lonely for the rest of your life or living this totally carefree life where you can just do what you want without consequences. Robin spends all this money partying and taking Alice shopping; however we find out that she is quite wealthy and didn’t really need a job, and was only working at a law firm so she could spend time with Alice. She made Alice pay for a lot of their fun together, which isn’t fair from a real-life perspective because Alice probably didn’t come from a sizeable nest egg like Robin did. All of the people I have talked about living in New York City have told me it is incredibly expensive, so in real life it wouldn’t have been good for Alice’s budget to live Robin’s social life. I am glad that she finally came to understand that she needed to love herself and take responsibility for her own life so that she could feel confident about who to let in her life and who to leave. Finding yourself in your 20s and 30s is different for everyone. Some people, like me, have found themselves through learning how to appreciate being alone because having depression can often make you feel guilty for spending time alone.

In a 2003 Psychology Today article, Hara Estroff Marano says that in today’s hyperconnected world, we need to embrace solitude so that we can harness our creativity and learn to love ourselves. Marano says that unlike solitude, which is “refreshing; an opportunity to renew ourselves…loneliness is harsh, punishment, a deficiency state, a state of discontent marked by a sense of estrangement, an awareness of excess aloneness. Solitude is something you choose; loneliness is imposed on you by others” (“What is Solitude?”) Alice learns it’s okay to stay in and read a book if you don’t want to go to a party, and she also gets a chance tp mend her friendship with Robin.

Overall, this is an excellent film and I wouldn’t mind seeing it more than once.

How to Be Single. 1 hr 50 min. Rate R for sexual content and strong language throughout.

Written on February 3, 2019

Categories: Uncategorized

* Disclaimer: I wrote this article back in early 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic, which has changed so many aspects of work and hustle culture, so the views I express in this piece might be outdated.*

Recently I read a piece in the Sunday Business section of last week’s New York Times issue about the dangers of today’s work culture. In this piece, titled “Why Are Young People Pretending to Love Work?,” San Francisco-based journalist Erin Griffith explains that the myth that millennials are lazy and entitled contradicts with the ridiculous amount of time they spend working in their offices. Griffith visits WeWork, a tech start-up company in New York where messages of “don’t stop working when you get tired” and “do what you love” pop up everywhere, even on the cucumbers in the company’s cooler water. This hustle culture, she says, is overly optimistic and tells people to work at their creative projects until they drop dead because ambition is a way of life rather than a means to an end. Everything they do, from breathing to interacting with others, should be for the purpose of their work. If you doing work you don’t really care about, you’re not going to change the world or be successful for that matter.

According to Griffith, tech companies originally had perks in place as a way of attracting the best talent and keeping people working for them longer,

“but today as tech culture infiltrates every corner of the business world, its hymns to the virtues of relentless work remind me of of nothing so much as Soviet-era propaganda, which promoted impossible-seeming feats of worker productivity to motivate the labor force. One obvious difference is that those Stakhanovite posters have an anticapitalist bent, criticizing the fat cats profiting from free enterprise. Today’s messages glorify personal profit, even if bosses and investors– not workers–are the ones capturing most of the gains. Wage growth has been essentially stagnant for years. – Griffith, “Why Are Young People Pretending to Love Work?”

Working long hours in order to pursue what one thinks is their passion not only has a toll on one’s mental well-being but also their spiritual well-being. Griffith says that many American millennials are becoming less interested in organized religion and have internalized an extreme version of the Protestant work ethic by treating work as a lifestyle instead of a way to get by. Having a job isn’t enough nowadays; in order to be considered legitimate, you need to care about the work you do. And if you take a break from it, you are spending time away from your passion, which makes you less productive and, moreover, less successful. One entrepreneur, Jonathan Crawford, tells Griffith his relationships suffered and he gained weight because he let his e-commerce startup consume his life and cut out any activities that weren’t going to do anything monetarily for his company. After realizing how miserable his work was making him, he started making more time for himself and encouraged his fellow entrepreneurs to also make time for things outside of their passion projects, such as reading fiction and watching movies. Most of his fellow entrepreneurs thought this was radical because they didn’t realize how much they had conditioned themselves to think that their productivity determined their self-worth.

How did we end up calling millennials lazy even when they work these 80-hour weeks at these startup “dream companies?” According to Griffith, it goes back to the ways in which society has conditioned millennials to think about success and productivity. Many of us grew up internalizing the idea that beefing our college resumes with high GPAs and extracurriculars would lead us to success, but it only wound up leaving many of us with student loans and jobs where we didn’t use our degrees. Most times work is not supposed to be fun, but a lot of start-up companies are still telling employees to think their work will make a difference in the world, using vague mottos to encourage employees to view their work as creative and philanthropic for humanity. This “do what you love, and never work a day in your life” mindset dates back to 16th century Europe, where employers would try to get workers to stop thinking about the monotony of work and think of hard work as a virtue (this didn’t work and only left workers more stressed than before. ) However, people are starting to realize the façade behind these mottos, such as the Google employees who participated against the company’s poor handling of sexual harassment allegations. This shows that millennials are pushing back against against the culture of overwork; however there are people who still embrace this overwork culture. According to Griffith:

“the grim reality of 2019 is that begging a billionaire for employment via Twitter is not considered embarrassing, but a perfectly plausible way to get ahead. On some level you have to respect the hustlers who see a dismal system and understand that success in it requires total, shameless buy-in. If we’re doomed to toll away until we die, we may as well pretend to like it. Even on Mondays.” -Griffith, “Why Are Young People Pretending to Love Work?”

So…how does this all this analysis relate to the movie?

This article was the reason why I finally got around to watching Sorry to Bother You. After reading Cal Newport’s rejection of the passion hypothesis in So Good They Can’t Ignore You, I wanted to learn more about the downsides of telling people to pursue their dream job and how it fit into the larger discussion of capitalism and work culture in America. Based on director Boots Riley’s own past experiences working in telemarketing, the film Sorry to Bother You is a brilliant satire about the flaws of America’s capitalist system and the sometimes ridiculous lengths employees will go to please their bosses. Cassius Green, played by the brilliant LaKeith Stanfield (who starred in Get Out, another excellent film with incredible social commentary), applies for a job at a telemarketing agency, but his employer tells him that just because he has all these experiences on his resume doesn’t mean he stands out from the rest of the applicants. In order to advance in the company he has to stand out from everyone else in some way. Cassius bombs all of his first phone calls even when he sticks to “hi, my name is, sorry to bother you, but we have a great product…” script, but then a fellow black coworker of his (played by the veteran actor Danny Glover) tells him to use a “white voice,” or one that sounds like a stereotypical white American man, in order to boost his sales. Cash uses this voice and becomes successful with his sales.

However, he lets his success go to his head and lets it define his self-worth. He starts working longer hours when he gets promoted to the 1% of the company, even after he finds out that the telemarketing company sells slave labor to the WorryFree work program, which exploits workers for profit in the most disturbing ways (admittedly I closed my eyes towards the end of the film because it was a lot to take in). Cassius eventually finds out that being in the elite means contributing to labor injustice and that he can’t sell his soul to long workweeks if it means losing his sense of self and his friendships. Even the 1% seem to be exhausted by this vicious game; one of the elite members of the telemarketing company reveals later in the film that everyone is just basically faking it until they make it because doing so provides them opportunities for career growth and, above all, more money.

Cassius’ girlfriend and fellow co-workers on the other hand, resist the idea that longer hours at the company will help them get promoted. Detroit, played by Tessa Thompson, works two jobs so she can fund her performance art, and wants Cassius work and make money but not let it negatively impact their relationship. (she tells him she loves him “not for posterity’s sake”) When Cassius starts donning suits and talking in his white voice around her and his friends, she becomes at odds with him and it negatively affects their relationship. When she tells him her love for him exists in and of itself and not as a means to an end (i.e. marriage, children, retirement), I immediately thought about the book I read in college called Eros and Civilization by German philosopher Herbert Marcuse, in which he talks about how labor culture in society should promote sexual freedom rather than letting people repress it so they can be more productive. (edit 2/18/21: after rereading what I wrote, I’m pretty sure I need to reread Eros and Civilization again. It’s been a while since I’ve read it) Marcuse argues that capitalism, aka the industrial advancements in society, are making it hard for people to feel comfortable with their sexuality and that love, or Eros, can provide the energy people need to be productive in society. In the film, Cassius starts off having a healthy relationship, but by working long hours he no longer has time for to have sex or even just a loving relationship with Detroit.

Unlike the tech startup employees described in Erin Griffith’s piece, the people in Sorry to Bother You do not enjoy their work. It is not exciting or fun for them, but they do it so they can pay their bills and have enough just to get by. They aren’t interested in the rat race culture that promotes the “work hard and follow your passion mantra.” And that’s what incites them to do what those Google employees did and protest the telemarketing company’s unethical management practices. Similar to the WeWork proposal of having all employees work, breathe, sleep and eat at WeWork facilities, the millionaires behind the WorryFree program propose that the factory is the same place where WorryFree employees cohabit, sleep and eat their meals in “space-efficient” homes that really look like glossed-up prison bunks, and the workers don’t need to earn wages because their contracts with the company last for eternity, and they make everything and anything. However, other than food and a place to sleep, these employees really don’t get any personal benefits from working at WorryFree, and instead the company has an even darker trick up its sleeve for increasing worker productivity (I won’t spoil it since I already gave away many plot points of the film.)

Now obviously this was a long analysis of one film and frankly, it’s a very messy and disorganized analysis. But this is why I love blogging, because after this nearly two hour film I kept ruminating over everything that went on in the plot and felt writing about it would help get some of the stress I felt watching the movie off my chest. Discussing social justice issues is supposed to be messy because individuals within oppressed communities have different experiences with oppression, and our conceptions of justice and societal expectations have fluctuated over time. Annapurna, the production company behind Sorry to Bother You, produced another insightful film called Detroit, which portrays the tumultuous 1960s race riots of Detroit. The violence is very realistic and difficult to sit through, but it really makes you think about truth and how bias shapes our perceptions of truth. The police officers in the film operate on implicit bias, and this leads them to commit what are essentially acts of terrorism against the black characters. Similarly, when Cassius adopts a “white accent” people immediately perceive him to be more likeable, and the white millionaire he aspires to be like (Armie Hammer ripped the role of Steve Lift to shreds. He played it so well it was terrifying) appropriates a lot of African-American cultural traditions and even forces Cassius to rap for him and his peers because he assumes Cassius can rap based on the way he talks.

Overall, I highly recommend you see this film. And yes, it will be stressful to watch (if you are squeamish like me, I suggest closing your eyes when Cassius gets up to go to the restroom during his meetings with Steve Lift. The bathroom scene is unpredictable and, frankly, scary. Then again, the whole film is beautifully unpredictable, so that warning might not help in the least.) But it’s full of a lot of juicy commentary and the cinematography is original and incredibly well-done in my opinion.

Sorry to Bother You. 1 hr 52 min. Rated R for pervasive language, some strong sexual content, graphic nudity and drug use.