November 2022 Viewing Diary

Something in the Dirt (2022; d. Aaron Moorhead, Justin Benson)
I really liked this. If you like losing yourself in conspiracy theories – without being, like, a QAnon-type ready to shoot up a pizza parlor – then this is super fun. I reviewed for Ebert.

Argentina 1985 (2022; d. Santiago Mitre)
Argentina, 1985 is my kind of movie and I really liked it. I’m biased towards it already due to its subject matte: military dictatorships, courtroom/investigative dramas, the catastrophe of the “disappeared” in Latin America, as well as an underdog public prosecutor facing death threats going up against a strong institutional edifice (the military, the juntas, the whole shebang), the lies people tell themselves, the lies people insist on believing in, because if they actually admitted the truth, they would have to acknowledge the horrors they helped support. Based on a true story. Like I said, I’m already biased towards something like this – but I felt it was really good, and moving, really good acting, etc.

Unforgotten (2018-2021)
Mum told me about this one. I decided to watch at least the pilot, and then, whaddya know, I binged the whole thing in a couple of days. It is EXCELLENT.

Eight is Enough, Season 5, episode 13, “Vows” (1981; d. Irving J. Moore)
This was a revelation. I put up my post about Ralph Macchio on his birthday, where I write about an episode of Eight is Enough that saved my life. Knowing what I know now (that bipolar swarmed my brain at age 12, alongside my first period, cuz that’s how it happens for girls, good times) … I don’t think “saved my life” is an exaggeration. It’s amazing to me that I only saw the episode once – maybe one more time in re-runs? It’s not like Eight is Enough is in constant syndication rotation. It’s also not out on box set. I was never a big fan of the show, but I tuned in because of RALPH. And this one episode BURNED INTO MY SOUL. I posted about it on Instagram and – amazingly – a woman said that mp4s of each episode have been uploaded – and she provided a link. So I was able to watch it again! The Ralph Macchio post was written totally from memory: look how much detail remains in my head. Incredible: Watching the episode again, I was amazed at how much I remembered. It’s all accurate. That’s how much of an impression it made on me. The rest of the episode was like walking into an altered reality and it made me think, “……….. This was a hit show?” It’s wild because … there’s a laugh track. And CLEARLY there isn’t an audience there. It’s very strange. And why are all these ADULTS hanging around the house?? And they all appear to be the same age! Anyway, it was truly amazing to watch this episode again. Thank you random stranger on the internet!! I watched the silliness and had a moment where I said – to the episode – “Thank you for being there when I needed it.” Not kidding.

The Glass Key (1942; d. Stuart Heisler)
Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, together again. They had such amazing chemistry, particularly because he was so tight-lipped, tough, taciturn, wary. Here, he’s not as sociopathic as he is in This Gun for Hire, but compelling nonetheless. I love her. And Brian Donlevy is great too.

Conversations with a Killer: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes (2022; d. Joe Berlinger)
The next installment of Joe Berlinger Serial Killers on Tape docuseries. I mean, it’s not an official series, but … I watched the Jeffrey Dahmer one last month, there was the Ted Bundy one, and now there’s the John Wayne Gacy one. I think this is my second time with this one. Amazing interviews: people who knew him at every stage. The guy was truly terrifying, a monster in our collective dreams. The tapes are chilling.

Blue Dahlia (1946; d. George Marshall)
More Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. A haunting California noir: up and down the Pacific Coast Highway, from LA to Malibu and back, on dark nights … Amazing mood and setting. It’s post-WWII – JUST – and there is a LOT of anxiety, particularly about servicemen coming home to wives they haven’t seen for years. What have the women been getting up to? NOTHING GOOD.

Capturing the Killer Nurse (2022; d. Tim Travers Hawkins)
In the season where everyone is watching all these great films – and I am too – I do want to recommend the new Netflix doc with the sensationalistic and yet truthful title “Capturing the Killer Nurse” about the investigation that finally led to the arrest of “nurse” Charles Cullen, who acted as an angel of death through multiple hospitals until finally one brave nurse/co-worker not only figured it out but worked to help capture him and trap him. You know how docuseries now and everything else are so drawwwwwn out and everything is 4 episodes long? Dammit, learn how to tell a story in an hour and a half like your ancestors. It’ll be better, I promise. Anyway, this one does its job and horrifyingly well in an hour and thirty. There are a ton of questions that the doc doesn’t address (who IS this guy, and why did he do it?). Cullen admitted to killing 29 patients – but detectives believe he could have killed up to 400, there’s enough evidence point to it. There’s some pablum included about how he felt “unsafe” in his house as a kid and blah blah oh boo hoo. There’s a ton of audio footage of him talking to investigators, because once he was found out, he caved, and just admitted to everything, almost like it was a relief to just be who he really was, a heartless executioner. The doc really isn’t about him. It’s about the hospitals, his co-workers, and his victims. You get to know the victims and the pain this psycho caused. Even though I wanted a psychological profile, this really was the best choice I think to put the focus on 1. the victims 2. the nurses who worked with him who had no idea and who also saw little red flags but didn’t put it together because … how could you? and 3. the two detectives who finally decided to go after this guy and how they did it. It’s a very good story showing the very admirable work of two New Jersey detectives who had no idea about all the medical stuff, couldn’t even read a chart – but knew enough to get the help they needed to interpret all this data for them. They they had to get the “smoking gun” and/or syringe in order to make this thing stick, and they WORKED this very difficult case in the face of sinister hospital cover-ups and their own incomprehension in terms of medical language. One brave nurse – at great risk to herself – dug into the records, printed stuff out in secret and helped the detectives SEE what she saw in those damning charts. It’s grisly stuff and terrifying but the doc isn’t just interested in the scandal. The director really goes at the moral terror a case like this causes, and it allows for that moral and ethical horror to emanate. I watch a lot of these docuseries and most are so-so and/or make me think “is there any reason you couldn’t tell this story in an hour and a half?” Here’s the killer with the two detectives responsible for putting this case together – Tim Braun and Danny Baldwin.

Tár (2022; d. Todd Field)
What a film! There are so many movies that self-consciously (and sometimes self-importantly) address “how we live now” and reviewers call them “timely” or “prescient” or whatever – but, imo, the majority of those movies will sink like a stone and be forever forgotten, attached only to their own time. Just you wait: in a couple years, words like “gaslight” will be like “Oh wow, that’s so 2018.” You’ll be able to nail stuff down to almost a particular MONTH. A movie like Casablanca was designed to be entertaining, but it REALLY was about the plight of refugees, clustering in Morocco, trying to get to Portugal. Now THAT is a successful way to slide in a relevant message, without sacrificing the movie’s intent. Tár is the story of a brilliant famous conductor (Cate Blanchett) whose life unravels in a matter of months, due to a couple of accusations – one from a former protegee who ended up killing herself – and then there are students who record her lectures, and splice “inflammatory” comments together, to make Lydia look terrible. She’s famous but she is not well-liked. It’s the story of her – yes – and her girlfriend (played by the superb Nina Hoss) but for me … it’s ABOUT how we live now, with the constant threat of accusation. People are fired because of the accusation. No due process. No opportunity to learn or grow, or even apologize and course-correct. You must vanish forever. But … people can’t vanish forever. They’re still alive. There’s a ritual to all of this: a ritual of denouncements, and even if the person is your friend, you must denounce them. Scandals follow people from job to job, and etc. EVEN IF the person apologized, the scandal doesn’t die. (Look at what just happened with Letitia Wright. She apologized. Two years ago. The internet will never ever let her forget.) Tár is not explicitly trying to make points about how we live now. It’s more like “how we live now” has seeped into the pores of the film itself: it’s a mood, an atmosphere, an electrical buzz in the air we breathe. Lydia is famous. She is not some random citizen with 200 Instagram followers who wore an inappropriate Halloween costume in high school and now can’t get into grad school because of it. Lydia IS difficult, she DID behave badly with her protegee, and she DID make those comments in the lectures, although imo they weren’t that bad. They were off-the-cuff comments, maybe a little cranky and imperious, but … enough for an entire life to be trashed? (At one point, one of her students says to her, “As a BIPOC pangender person, I won’t listen to Bach because of his patriarchal attitudes and how poorly he treated women.” Her response is along the lines of what you would imagine. The clips go viral. But again, the movie isn’t ABOUT that: it’s more about what this free-floating sense of indiscriminate PERSECUTION actually feels like on a daily level. Because make no mistake: it is something new. Being “canceled” is not new – see, Scarlet Letter, see the village stocks, see … the history of humanity … but the internet super-charges the situation. You can’t even move to another town and try to start again. Tar unfolds almost like a horror movie, and Lydia’s rapid deterioration comes out of this free-floating indiscriminate sense of threat, AND from the feeling that no matter what you do or say, no apology will be sufficient. It’s all there, in the cinematography, the exquisite sound design, the colors allowed in the palette (the palette is very strict), the sense of psychological dread … even if Lydia isn’t aware of it, we in the audience ARE. Let me point you to Glenn Kenny’s excellent review.

The Post (2017; d. Steven Spielberg)
Love it. Have seen it about 5 times by now. It’s comfort food. I needed it this month.

There There (2022; d. Andrew Bujalski)
Speaking of movies trying to address “how we live now” – There There was filmed during COVID, with none of the actors – or director or cinematographer – being in the same place at the same time. It felt more like an experiment than a movie – that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it didn’t work for me. I reviewed for Ebert.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover (2022; d. Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre)
I’ve seen so many adaptations of this. It’s hard to make it seem fresh. It’s hard to make it, in general. This is really good! I reviewed for Ebert.

Saturday’s Children (1940; d. Vincent Sherman)
John Garfield and Anne Shirley star as a young married couple struggling to make ends meet. Claude Rains plays the girl’s father, in a wonderfully warm performance. Garfield has to play a shy tongue-tied man, perhaps a bit of a stretch, but he makes it work. I loved the section where they were dating but not dating … they were just “hanging out” … they were friends … Uh-huh. “Friends”. And she kept insisting they were just hanging out, but she didn’t realize she was really falling for him, and he was too shy and polite to make a real move. Her family can see what’s going on before she can. A very realistic film, about regular people living regular lives, which – of course – are not regular at all.

The House on Telegraph Hill (1951; d. Robert Wise)
This film is so disturbing. So much anxiety in it. Anxiety in every frame.

EO (2022; d. Jerzy Skolimowski)
For me, there are two best films of the year: Jafar Panahi’s No Bears and this one. I was overwhelmed by EO. It hit me way harder than I was prepared for. It’s a movie about a donkey. Okay. I love donkeys. Who doesn’t love donkeys? The film is told from the POV of the donkey, known as EO … he is first seen performing in a circus. Then the circus is shut down and he finds himself in another place. And then another place. The universe is unpredictable, capricious, whimsical in sometimes sinister ways, as seen through an animal’s eyes. My favorite review of this special film by a Polish master is my friend Stephanie Zacharek’s review in Time. Please see EO!

And here’s the trailer:

Barbarian (2022; d. Zach Cregger)
Allison had seen this so she made me watch it, and then filmed me as I watched it. Freaking out. This is how we like to watch movies. We have never before explored our mutual love of horror movies so this was a lot of fun. Justin Long is so good. Interesting fact: I got curious about the director of this, especially when the “barbarian” appeared. I wondered: okay, this person who made this is REALLY grappling with some stuff and I wonder what’s going on. I don’t know anything about Cregger, so I looked him up. He’s super young. He comes from the world of comedy. I instantly understood. If this was made by a young woman, it would have “made sense”, or at least a certain kind of sense. But that this was made by a young man tells me that he is fully aware of what has been happening, he is interrogating his part in it (coincidental and otherwise) AND he is attempting to enter the mindset of women, to understand what life must be like. Because it’s DIFFERENT. If you imagine the roles reversed in Barbarian: if she was there first, and he showed up? No way would she have let him in. This isn’t unfair. This is … how we’re built, based on millennia of learned experience. From the youngest pre-verbal age, you start to absorb messages and moods and feelings. Biology plays a part too. So much so you’re not aware of it, it’s inside of you, it IS you. I speak from experience. Don’t tell me my experience of living in my own body isn’t valid. I would never do that to someone else. Ever. I read an interview with Cregger who said he read Gavin de Becker’s The Gift of Fear – !!! – and it made him aware of the level of threat women live with, walk around with, every day, all day. (I would recommend all men reading that book! It helped me enormously. A cop gave it to me when I was 25, basically like: “Listen to when you feel fear. It’s a gift. You’re under threat. Trust it.” Game-changer for me. I recommend it for everyone, though.)Every moment involves a threat assessment, even with openly friendly men (maybe even especially with openly friendly men). It’s wired into us. I don’t even think about it. And so Cregger decided to make a movie about this, and incorporating every “red flag” he could possibly think up. So smart. The “barbarian” is fascinating: Allison said she hadn’t thought much about it on her first watch: it was just this scary creature. Second watch though: she got it. This movie is really ABOUT something. It’s also scary as shit. Very well done. Incredible that this is Cregger’s first film.

The Babadook (2014; d. Jennifer Kent)
And so after Barbarian, I returned the favor and showed Allison The Babadook, which she had never seen. I’ve said this before: it’s one of the scariest movies I’ve ever seen, and my first time watching it, about half of the way through, I remember thinking, wildly, “I honestly don’t know how much more of this I can take.” Beyond the scary factor, the film is one of the most insightful and fully sustained metaphors for mental illness I can think of. It’s along the lines of The Shining, which also works as fully sustained metaphor. What REALLY puts Babadook into the canon of films-about-mental-illness is the final scene. I couldn’t fully absorb the final scene the first time I watched it. I don’t think I realized the import. But since then, I have thought of it often. That final scene is a perfect metaphor for what it is like, living with a mental illness. It really is a monster in the basement. And it’s very scary. But you have to find a way to live with it. And soothe it. You can’t run. Anyway, it was so fun watching this with Allison. It starts slow. Maybe a little creepy but nothing too alarming. Allison said at one point, “So I guess the terror will eventually ascend?” I kept my mouth shut. I wanted to say, “Oh just you WAIT ….” 20 minutes later, Allison is literally screaming bloody murder, so much so that her poor dog Harper came over and sat next to me, absolutely petrified at what was happening to Her Person. Allison was moaning and crying, “NO NO NO” and it was totally glorious.

Three Wise Men and a Baby (2022; d. Terry Ingram)
Then Allison showed me one of “her” movies. I absolutely loved it. Wrote about it here.

God Forbid: The Sex Scandal That Brought Down a Dynasty (2022; d. Billy Corben)
What a truly gross story. I remember following this one in the news, although much of it is new to me. These people are so disgusting. Not a particularly well-made documentary. It can’t really decide on a tone.

Pepsi, Where’s My Jet? (2022; d. Andrew Renzi)
Allison and I tripped over this one and decided to watch it. We were absolutely swept away by it. It’s a 4-part doc about the kid who noticed a loophole in a Pepsi-points commercial, and started the process of trying to acquire the fighter jet he believed Pepsi had promised him. You wouldn’t think that this arcana would warrant 4 parts but … the way Renzi has structured it, it’s an absolutely fascinating look at not just the situation, but all the people involved. He got interviews with everyone. And it’s not just the information that is interesting – we were so drawn in to the characters. Every single person is so interesting. Michael Avanatti shows up. The man is everywhere. I don’t know if I can put into words why this works so well. Allison and I kept talking about it. It’s the APPROACH that makes it, and that’s all on Renzi. We absolutely loved this. It even manages to be legitimately moving. And … it made me love people. Now that’s something you can’t say every day.

Navalny (2022; d. Daniel Roher)
I’d been dying to see this. Allison and I watched. One of the documentaries of the year. I had been following along with Navalny and his opposition group before he was poisoned on the plane. A brazen act. Alexei Navalny is now in prison, high-security, serving out a nine-year bogus sentence. The whole thing is a sham. Taking place in broad daylight. Putin does not give a fuck. He acts with impunity, he does not wait for cover of darkness. When Navalny was poisoned, like many I watched the footage of him moaning and howling on the plane. I am well versed in Putin-KGB-Russian treachery, and yet I still somehow was shocked. I remember thinking “Oh my God, they didn’t DARE. Holy SHIT.” But they did dare. This documentary is not told from a distance and this is one of its distinguishing characteristics. Navalny did not die from the poison attack. Germany literally sent a plane to get him out of the Siberian hospital where he was under lock and key. Thank you, Germany. So the documentary crew is embedded with Navalny and his family in the year following the attack, Navalny living in exile, running his opposition group through the internet, and planning his return to Russia. He knew what would happen if he returned. But he had to return. He is aware that he is a SYMBOLIC person. Symbols matter. He had to return. I have been an admirer of Alexei Navalny for a long time, and what is happening to him is outrageous and disgraceful. And, not to be mean, but when I hear people calling America the worst place to live, and how oppressive it is here, and how we have no freedom of speech here … (people literally write op-ed columns in major newspapers complaining about how there is no freedom of speech in this country. HOW can you have ZERO cognitive dissonance when you are PUBLISHING a piece about how you have no FREEDOM OF SPEECH?) … anyway, when I hear this, I think of Iran or Russia or Turkmenistan or … pick your poison. It’s important to address injustices in America, of course, but it is also important to not be too American-centric in your critique, and realize that there are many people- millions – who have it way way way worse, and THEY need our support. They are also a cautionary tale, of what it can look like when things get REALLY bad. This is a heartbreaking and very important film.

The Fabelmans (2022; d. Steven Spielberg)
First West Side Story, then this. He keeps getting better and better. Honestly, this might be one of my favorite Speilbergs. He’s always personal. But this is personal personal. It’s deep and empathetic and detailed. Wonderful performances.

20/20 Tainted Love (2022)
This was a crazy story. Allison and I relax by watching 20/20, Dateline, or 48 Hours.

Holy Spider (2022; d. Ali Abbasi)
Will also be on my top 10, which I have been adding to, subtracting from, making tough choices, over the last month. But this has a permanent spot.

Saint Omer (2022; d. Alice Diop)
Another one I had been itching to see, particularly since it played at Indie Memphis and I couldn’t go this year, but followed along with all the posts. (Saint Omer screened there, and won big there.) Diop is a filmmaker to watch. She attended the trial in 2015, of a Senegalese woman – who had immigrated to France – accused of leaving her baby on the beach to drown. Why would she do such a thing? Diop was fascinated by the story and all of its intersections: emigration, assimilation, isolation, womanhood, the whole nine yards. The two lead actors – who barely have half a credit between them – are absolutely extraordinary. I can’t say enough good stuff about this one. This is Diop’s narrative feature debut. Here’s the trailer:

Decision to Leave (2022; d. Park Chan-wook)
I had been dying to see this one. Unlike everyone and their mother, I wasn’t crazy about The Handmaiden, although I recognize the skill of its approach and that crazy structure. Decision to Leave – a noir-esque film, with a possible femme fatale, and an obsessed miserable detective who can’t let it go – is a much stronger film. I found it enchanting, intriguing, charismatic, gorgeous to look at. Riveting.

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022; d. Laura Poitras)
Lots of great docs this year. This is the best. Or, my favorite, let’s say that. A portrait of photographer Nan Goldin’s life – first of all – and it’s been a crazy life – as well as her campaign to take down the Sackler family, responsible for the opioid crisis. The Sacklers will not face jail time. But because of the efforts of Nan Goldin – and the New Yorker writer Patrick Radden Keefe (“Empire of Pain”) – interviewed for the doc – as well as people like Courtney Love – and the series Dopesick – seriously, it’s been a concentrated campaign of character assassination, and in this case, I am fully on board – because of all of this, the Sacklers name is now mud. They cannot hide anymore. Goldin’s activism comes out of her Act Up days in the nightmare of AIDS: very very smart protests, symbolic, peaceful, but powerful. Great film. Here’s the trailer:

The Eternal Daughter (2022; d. Joanna Hogg)
I reviewed for Ebert!

Women Talking (2022; d. Sarah Polley)
This one isn’t out yet, but I’m a critic so I get a screener. Based on a book, which is based on a true (and horrifying) story. I’ll be reviewing this one so I’ll save my comments for then. Here’s the trailer.

No Bears (2022; d. Jafar Panahi)
Another one of Panahi’s illegal films, made and produced following the lifetime ban on making movies (handed down in 2012). I don’t even want to say this out loud but it might be Panahi’s final film. He was arrested – again – in July. He is being held in the notorious Evin Prison. I am very VERY concerned. The film is one of his best (and with him, that’s saying a lot). With each of the films he’s made – secretly – under the ban (This Is Not a Film, Closed Curtain, Taxi, Three Faces – and now this) – he has gotten more and more bold (although he was always a bold filmmaker). His life is an act of boldness. No Bears takes place on the wild borderland of Iran and Turkey. You can literally look across the wildlands and see the other country – freedom, escape. But it’s very dangerous. Just the mere fact that Panahi filmed the film in such a place speaks volumes. My heart is breaking. I can’t bear the thought that this might be the last time we hear from him. Here’s the trailer.

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3 Responses to November 2022 Viewing Diary

  1. Shawn says:

    Okay, here’s my 2 cents on Tar. Tar is all about what you are saying, and Tar is also about Lydia’s internal shame, which is why she seeks such intense perfection. Her obsession with her art is what makes her great at it. But it is double edged because she can’t keep from rejecting anything that doesn’t conform to or contribute to her perfect world, a world she has created to cover the shame of her origins. When she is insulting her student, it is out of a desperate need to whisk away anything that she perceives threatens her own existence, it’s not because she’s just mean. It’s critical for the survival of her own self investment in her curated image and sculpted public persona. It’s fight or flight.
    I had some mixed emotions about the film at first. I initially thought that this type of story, and what Tar does was more genuinely straight male, that the comeuppance and confrontation of consequences should have been directed at a straight male character. Todd Field is the director and my lasting impression of his other great film In The Bedroom, is still that shot where you realize it was all Sissy Spacek’s fault. Ive always felt that Mr Field needed to examine why he would make a woman to blame, in such an emphatic way, where the title implicated her as well. Well, he does that again here. Tar’s title also acts as a finger pointer, a judgement. And again we have it coming from a male director, at a female.

    BUT, where else have we seen a character such as this in any other film? Tar is wholly original, and it is an amazing vehicle for one of our greatest actresses to flourish in front of our eyes. I never thought Cate could be better than her Phyllis Schlafly, but wow. It brings the viewer into a world we have not seen very often. We are given a deep view into a profession that may be experiencing some similar stresses of relevancy. But most of all, if there is any dysfunction going on with Mr Field, who cares. He has given us an amazing entertainment that is passionately made and multi-layered.

    • sheila says:

      Thanks for your thoughts! Very interesting! Ironically, Tar is not in my own personal top 10 – or even top 20, probably – and I think it’s more fun to think about than actually watch, lol. But it’s cool to hear what you thought. My own thoughts have fluctuated a little bit, the more time I’ve had to think about it.

      // this type of story, and what Tar does was more genuinely straight male, that the comeuppance and confrontation of consequences should have been directed at a straight male character. //

      I completely disagree! (respectfully!!) If it had been that, a huge YAWN would have been the critical response. As a woman, I am familiar with the treachery of women – #notallwomen of course – but women can be very sneaky and tricky in the ways they hold other women back and silence women – women’s manipulations are, for the most part, invisible to men. It’s designed that way. Women work by stealth. We could opine on why that is – society doesn’t let us express ourselves sob story boo hoo – but as someone who’s been the victim of this kind of thing – way more from women than from men – men have given me a helping hand more than women have, at least in terms of my writing career – in the early days it was men who opened doors for me – just stating facts – then I always give the huge side-eye to people who somehow think women are “above” this sort of thing. Not that you’re saying that – I’m just saying that the “straight male as villain” thing is what is expected – and at this point it’s old hat. Besides, can’t we have women be BAD again – and therefore interesting? – as opposed to always having to be empowering girlbosses? (Not saying you’re saying that. I am now just going off – take it for what it’s worth). women’s treachery towards other women is not a popular topic now – we’re not even supposed to admit that it’s a thing – we’re all supposed to be in this thing together, and “you go girl” – But …. there’s so much conformity required. It’s stifling. Women demand status quo, demand consensus. step out of line ONCE with the rank-and-file opinion on anything (politics, art, anything) – you will be shunned – labeled as “not one of us”. – or “not a real woman” or “she’s just being a pick-me girl” or “Look at her, she’s just trying to be a cool girl(TM)”. WOMEN are the ones who do this – not men. Women don’t leave other women any way OUT. I’ve been on the receiving end of this kind of thing since I was a kid, really, and … groupthink means people don’t grow out of it.

      There are so many exceptions, of course, to the generalities above – all of my friends are amazing generous women who don’t behave like this – but I have had enough experience to recognize that there are trends and patterns. It’s wild to me that peer pressure continues as an adult – thankfully I’ve always been immune to peer pressure – even when I was a kid I was like “Get drunk? No thanks.” I didn’t trip about it – but the pressure is real, it’s there. Conform. Believe in these 10 things as gospel truth. Don’t like these 10 artists OR ELSE. You are literally treated as a weirdo and a traitor if you disagree on their main talking points. Like, this is a real thing. It’s so stupid. AND it holds us back.

      // And again we have it coming from a male director, at a female. //

      Often it’s the “outsider” who can see with more clarity what’s going on. Lydia is not demonized. Maybe some people think she is – I just think she’s kind of complicated and flawed and fallible. she’s not some spider woman – although I suppose her protegee might have felt that way, and with good reason. (although I love spider women too – in cinema, at any rate. For instance: Deep Water! I loved Deep Water. Have you seen that one? Adrian Lyne back in the erotic thriller saddle! It’s deliciously dark and twisted – a total hoot. I’ve missed sexpot cinema sirens!)

      // But most of all, if there is any dysfunction going on with Mr Field, who cares. //

      I certainly don’t. Show me an artist without dysfunction and I’ll show you some boring art.

      There have been some interesting pieces written about the film – I’d love to hear if you’ve read anything else about it – besides my sloppily jotted off scratchings above. There has also been some really bad pieces written too. (One was like “why did he make her a lesbian? A better film would have been Lydia triumphing over the adversity of her male-dominated profession.” That’s a paraphrase from an actual piece – written by a staff writer on a newspaper. Ma’am, there is literally no guarantee that your half-baked wish would “make a better film”. Ugh. But Tar is bringing out the weird! the wingnuts are getting in on it too which always makes things super pleasant lol Dan Kois wrote an interesting piece for Slate about how he thinks that everything that happens after Lydia goes into the old abandoned building is all in Lydia’s mind. lol According to him, everything – her “cancellation”, her escape to Asia, is a hallucination. Or … she’s gone mad. Or … Kois is sometimes very bad. I don’t read him generally but I thought the piece on Tar was a fun read. The scene where she follows the Russian cellist into that abandoned building definitely has something uncanny about it – although I never once thought it was some barrier between the real and the unreal.

      Thanks, as always, Shawn, for reading and commenting!

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