This week our teas on tap include a greyscale noir about race in the 1920s, the fifth season of a popular animated comedy, and a classic saga of a disjointed family in a singular yellow bus.
Passing
Netflix - Drama - Tragedy
Synopsis
A chance encounter reünites two childhood friends whose now adult perspectives on their divergent lives call into question their choices to belong on either side of a racial divide.
My take
An adaptation of Nella Larsen’s (1929) novel of the same title, Passing is an important entry into our cinematic canon at a fundamental level, because of its focus on the difference of actual from perceived identity. While this difference has long been intimately known by those whose truths embody it, I cannot recall another film that has tackled it for the major set of the population — especially not in so incisive a fashion — than this one. And still, I think, we can argue it is early to the scene: As still relatively few (but increasingly many) people live lives that blur expected boundaries between apparent belonging and actual identity, the conversation around this topic will only become more important as time goes on (despite whatever discomfort it may inspire in even well-meaning assemblies).
Of course, the cultural context informing the characters whose light skin allows them pass or not pass as they choose in Passing layers onto that conversation the charged race-based history of the United States, to the extent that each of the two women’s choices can be understood as a rebuke of her surrounding expectations and a bid for her personal survival and happiness in a way others’ in the umbrella category cannot. White-passing Clare ignores her Black truth to also ignore the weight being Black necessarily carries in her society, at the same time as her childhood friend Irene avoids her White passability to also avoid the notion that success in the same society lands on only White doorsteps. Both women choose with a sober awareness of the history they, their families, and their neighbors all share alike, a history written not so much by their forebears as about them, a history that makes Clare and Irene’s ability to choose a kind of privilege, however perverse or fraught it or its consequences may be. This shared history and this ability to choose to live apart from it distinguish Clare and Irene’s choices from others’ who also pass, but who lack either (if not both) affordance(s). Despite salient identity-based oppression of his own, Hilary Swank’s Brandon Teena (Boys Don’t Cry, Peirce & Bienen, 1999), for example, is not a member of a family or community that shares his experience or critical identity. Moreover, as a trans man, he passes not as a matter of choice but rather as a matter of identity (i.e., he is a man, whether or not he style himself like one). On the other hand, Leonardo di Caprio’s William Costigan, Jr., (The Departed, Scorcese & Monahan, 2006) who does pass by choice passes, as he himself admits, as “‘families are always rising and failing in America,’” not as a means to slip past the obstructive machine of colonial racism. Ironically, unlike the choices Brandon and William make, the choices Clare and Irene make act to reïnforce, not dismantle, the social lines they recognize they can pass through and, consequently, comment on the illusion of true mobility and freedom in an expectation-based society.
All that praise, however, could well be applied to Larsen’s novel on its own. Passing’s adaptation to film by writer-director Rebecca Hall earns praise in its own right for skillfully translating that written text from words to sounds and images. Like the key image I chose for this write-up above, Eduard Grau’s complete cinematography purposely operates in monochromatic greyscale, pushing the viewer to simultaneously attend to and forget how skin tone appears and varies on screen. Devonte Hynes’ somber blues score responds with a noir-esque vibe, coloring the black-and-white scenes with contemplative chords and melodies that integrate the drama of the moment with the constant backdrop of the city and its realities. That Hall chose these approaches to telling the story speaks well to her thoughtfulness at the helm of this project. Finally, Ruth Negga’s portrayal of Clare is instantly one of the best performances of the year: superficially honey sweet, but buzzing beneath with the hectic energy of a hive perturbed.
It’s not quite all applause and accomplishment, however. I found Tessa Thompson’s Irene not quite prudent enough: moderate and unaffected, where stronger contrasts with Clare would have helped shape the story for the audience. Perhaps most importantly, however, I cannot shake the tragic resolution of the story, retained from its source material. Written seventeen years after Thomas Mann’s (1912) Death in Venice and like it in its end, Passing through fatalism implies that there is no way fully out of the characters’ strife toward happiness except death. While I understand and respect Hall’s adherence to the original text, on this point I wish she had, much as Gerwig had for her (2019) Little Women, seen beyond the limits of the now nearly a century-old voice behind the story, to conjure an adaptation fit for our present times, when race and identity remain prominent issues. Such an addition, to me, would have up-levelled the film from fascinating time capsule to eminently relevant social commentary.
Still, overall, it is a worthwhile success.
Temperature check
Hot
The Electrical Life of Louis Wain
The Electrical Life of Louis Wain
Amazon Prime - Drama - Biopic
Synopsis
An anxious illustrator’s fascination with electricity in Victorian England leads him into an unconventional marriage and an unconventional (and memorable) career.
My take
An early bid for the art-house slot in the categories of the major awarding bodies, this new biopic from writer-director Will Sharpe and writer Simon Stephenson tackles the eccentric life of British illustrator Louis Wain, most famed for his colorful catalogue of cat sketches, paintings, and drawings. Credited with changing national and international perceptions of the animal (from nuisance to pet), these artworks were actually intended as attempts at capturing electricity, a force Wain saw as key to life.
In portraying Wain on the screen, Benedict Cumberbatch takes this fascination as his primary direction: bubbling, writhing, and snapping with sharp impulses at once alive and jarring, the actor conveys a man consumed by electricity and does so admirably enough to power an otherwise formulaic story. Channeling him (for at least half the story) is Claire Foy as Miss Richardson, the family governess and Wain’s love interest, whose darting glances and coy exchanges make the two a fine, if unusual, pair.
The film’s strongest asset, however, is Erik Wilson’s cinematography. Framing Wain’s story in 4:3 fields and cityscapes, the colorful inner life of the otherwise introverted characters is brought outward, carefully lit by sun or candle. Splash in favorable hair and make-up and the film overall becomes a visual joy to watch.
That said, the narrative does lag behind. Written in the tradition of other period biographies like The Personal History of David Copperfield (Iannucci [dir. & wri.] & Blackwell [wri.], 2019), Frida (Taymor [dir.], Sigal, Lake, Nava & Thomas [wri.], 2002), and even A Beautiful Mind (Howard [dir.] & Goldsman [wri.], 2001), the plot tracks Wain from a moment of adolescent significance through the establishment of a pattern based on that moment into full-fledged adulthood, “stability,” and creative power until the years finally slide by so fast that we can hardly glimpse his ending of weakening rest and recognition. While such a torrid pace can befit a narrative where persistent themes are well established and primary tension is clear, in a story like Wain’s, wherein the themes and tensions become fragmentary following a loss, that quick a pace through important events reduces biography to telegraphy, stuttering bits and points together in a coherent if relatively artless string. It’s here, in the second half of the film, that effectiveness is lost.
Still, like Wain’s cat pictures, the overall result retains a certain charm that I think is at least worth glancing at.
Temperature check
Tepid
Big Mouth (Season 5)
Netflix - Comedy - Coming of Age
Synopsis
Pubescent students feel the anthropomorphic influence of their hormones and emotions in dealing with the wants and fears of their recently sexual lives.
My take
Yawn.
Rather than find ways to push the show beyond what we’ve seen for the past four seasons, the writers behind this fifth season of Netflix’ popular animated series Big Mouth choose instead to give us more of the same.
While I’m sure some will still be entertained by the now rote gags featuring animate pēnēs, lustful pillows, and swirling labia, the once novel frankness of the material now barely meets expectations for me and consequently feels insufficient to keep the show afloat much longer. Even a literal attempt to break the fourth wall by intermixing real footage with animated characters felt too little and too late in this season to save it.
Frankly, the only episode that left a positive impression on me was the Christmas episode (Episode 8), whose alternative animation styles (e.g., stop motion) and religious irreverence marked the only jokes I honestly enjoyed throughout the entire ten episodes.
What, if anything, more do you have to offer us, Big Mouth, or is it time yet for you to stop speaking?
Temperature check
Cold
Retrospective
Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
Amazon Prime - Comedy - Family Road Trip
Synopsis
A disconnected family bands together in order to spirit their youngest via Volkswagen bus to California’s ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ pageant.
My take
Nominated for seven Rich Picks including Live-Action Feature-Length Film (and winner of two Academy Awards), Dayton and Faris’ (2006) road dramedy Little Miss Sunshine is a beautiful film — period. I mean it. Visually, musically, and narratively the film is beautiful; a coherent palette warming the dry desert in sunny gold and umber, a roving soundtrack assembled from original and adapted songs by Mychael Danna and DeVotchKa, and an elegantly simple original screenwriting début from Michael Arndt set the metaphorical (and literal) stage for a magical, “Into the Woods”-style modern fable about validation, success, and family.
And what a cast to play on that stage! Five then current or future Academy Award nominees, one (Arkin) a winner for the film, and the sixth with an otherwise notable career in both television and film ever since, the members of the cast all bring their considerable talents to bear on the little moments of interaction among their characters, to produce some of the most rewarding bits of the film, like the early dinner scene I posted above, which not only motivates the entire action of the plot but also allows each character to be built neatly and quickly as an individual and as a member of the complicated core family.
While ultimately the film does stumble over some moments (e.g., clipping scenes a beat too late or too early for impact in the narrative, contriving reasons to keep the plot going in its intended direction)1, the overall effect is one that I was happy to revisit this week — happy enough to share here as a little reminder of films past with you all.
Temperature check
Hot
Editing was not among the film’s seven Rich Picks nominations, and though Screenplay (Original) was it wasn’t a win.