Rocksolid Light

Welcome to novaBBS (click a section below)

mail  files  register  newsreader  groups  login

Message-ID:  

The shifts of Fortune test the reliability of friends. -- Marcus Tullius Cicero


arts / rec.arts.movies.international / Three with Carey Mulligan (or, in what planet is _Promising Young Woman_ considered a better film than _Suffragette_?)

SubjectAuthor
o Three with Carey Mulligan (or, in what planet is _Promising Youngseptimus_...@q.com

1
Three with Carey Mulligan (or, in what planet is _Promising Young Woman_ considered a better film than _Suffragette_?)

<779474a1-73e7-4d43-814a-b48fd4187779n@googlegroups.com>

 copy mid

https://www.novabbs.com/arts/article-flat.php?id=39&group=rec.arts.movies.international#39

 copy link   Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.international
X-Received: by 2002:a05:620a:1253:: with SMTP id a19mr30550253qkl.293.1638768403737;
Sun, 05 Dec 2021 21:26:43 -0800 (PST)
X-Received: by 2002:ae9:ef11:: with SMTP id d17mr31077718qkg.347.1638768403577;
Sun, 05 Dec 2021 21:26:43 -0800 (PST)
Path: i2pn2.org!rocksolid2!i2pn.org!weretis.net!feeder6.news.weretis.net!news.misty.com!border2.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!news-out.google.com!nntp.google.com!postnews.google.com!google-groups.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.international
Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2021 21:26:43 -0800 (PST)
Injection-Info: google-groups.googlegroups.com; posting-host=174.28.24.154; posting-account=2U4OKQoAAADmvdIzS3SSaqjc8l8itvdC
NNTP-Posting-Host: 174.28.24.154
User-Agent: G2/1.0
MIME-Version: 1.0
Message-ID: <779474a1-73e7-4d43-814a-b48fd4187779n@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Three with Carey Mulligan (or, in what planet is _Promising Young
Woman_ considered a better film than _Suffragette_?)
From: septimus...@q.com (septimus_...@q.com)
Injection-Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2021 05:26:43 +0000
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Lines: 163
 by: septimus_...@q.com - Mon, 6 Dec 2021 05:26 UTC

I have always loved Carey Mulligan on stage, but it
was only recently, when I rewatched _An Education_,
that I was blown away by her cinematic roles too. I
saw _An Education_ on the big screen with company,
which must have distracted from the experience,
especially since I suggested the title and hated to
disappoint people. Looking back, Mulligan clearly
deserved her nomination for an Oscar. The auction
scene alone, where she is shy, exuberant, over-eager,
and embarrassed all at once, would have made her a
star. The directing and the technical aspects of
the film are good too, without being too showy, and
the supporting actors are wonderful (especially an
understated Olivia Williams as her favorite teacher).
But it is Mulligan's film all the way; hers is surely
one of the most fully realized cinematic teenagers
of all time. (Mulligan was about 24 at the time.)
Once upon a time I was head over heels in love with
French culture and Camus too, like her character.
Wish I was as brilliant and inspired.

Full of admiration for Mulligan, I bought not just
this DVD, which has a commentary track by the leads
and the director (a rarity these days), but also
those for _Suffragette_ and _Promising Young Woman_,
all starring the actress. Danish director Lone
Scherfig has a rather thick accent; fortunately
even the commentary track is subtitled. She calls
Mulligan not sufficiently "camera-ready"! The
actress concurs that she used to hide from the
camera. Mulligan is as usual endlessly inventive
and dryly funny in the commentary; she speaks
exactly like the Olivia William character does in
the film. The real-life Lynn Barber on which her
role is based did not end up writing for the New
York Times; she went the Penthouse route. Still,
"she can be anything she wants," as her teacher
predicts. The camera work is functional without
being showy, and the period design (London in the
1960s) is seductive. Scherfig was one of the
"Dogme" directors and made _Italian for Beginners_;
good to see she has escaped from that evil cult.

---------------------------------------------

_Suffragette_ received faint praise from critics
and no major award. It was criticized as too
serious, too narrow (focused on one fictitious
working class whit woman), too broad, and even
for ignoring that African American women were
deprived of voting rights (isn't that on a
different continent?). _Promising Young Woman_
won an Oscar for screenplay, BAFTAs, and a
mountain of awards. Isn't it focused on a
fictitious white (American) woman to illustrate
date rape and sexual assault? Doesn't it
completely ignore African Americans (the only
representative is a would-be predator)? And
that's why we should pay no attention to awards
and most critics. Someone probably pulled dirty
tricks to derail the award chances of _Suffragette_,
like they did for _Zero Dark Thirty_ and countless
other deserving films. The criticism business is
so dirty and corrupt.

_Suffragette_ features a performance by Carey
Mulligan that rivals the very best I have ever seen.
She takes a long road from being a mousy wife/mother,
laundromat forewoman, and spectator (near victim) of
the British Suffragette's confrontational tactics,
to a halting, furtive participant, to a prisoner
who is force-fed and loses her parental right, to
a full-fledged activist who never quite loses her
ambivalence. It is a privilege to witness her slow
evolution, her opening up to the world (including
reading books from her compatriots with more class
privilege), and her moments of levity and humanity.
She even does a proto-Chaplin dance in front of
her son, whom she can visit only in secret. The
fundamental conflict between pacifism and descent
toward violence in all political movements (like the
recent demonstrations in HK) is nicely illustrated.
At the end of the film, having witnessed first hand
the death (suicide?) of her co-conspirator at
the famous King George racetrack event, she is
traumatized, yet picks herself up, runs to her
old employer, plucks the young girl she knows her
boss is molesting, and saves her (having just lost
her own child to adoptive parents). It is a stunning,
heroic, humanistic, profoundly empathetic moment
in a very great film.

Director Sarah Gavron and writer Abi Morgan are like
US National Public Radio talk show hosts on the
commentary track, speaking softly and without pause
in their professorial, encyclopedic way. They reveal
that the policemen who force-fed the woman hunger used
to laugh at their wards, but the filmmakers elect to
omit that out of classical restraint. This is in stark
contrast to _Promising Young Woman_ (or anything by
Jane Campion). They also mention that Mulligan did
not wash her hair for weeks to achieve her frazzled
look during her prison times. Most of the film is
shot in a furtive, hand-held style, rapidly cutting
between Mulligan's face and the street scenes she
takes in. Barney Pilling's editing apparently took
a year to complete. In fact, apart from the acting,
the greatest achievement here is the organic assembly
of the visages, so that everything falls perfectly
in place like a jigsaw puzzle in motion. This deeply
beautiful effort probably deserved to be listed among
the greatest films of the decade. I'll think about
it next time I see it again.

--------------------------------------------------

I think of _Promising Young Woman_ as a non-heroic
(not anti-heroic) Iliad. Cassie loses her best friend
(just like Achilles lost Patrocius his "cousin"),
throws away her responsibilities and sulks at home.
The ultimate battle is with her friend's rapist, but
instead of slaying him, she gets killed herself.
After all, we live in an era of race-to-the-bottom
glorification of victimhood. The Trojan war, or the
Suffragette-like struggle to actually make a difference?
We don't hear a pip.

No doubt woke Generation Zers who still live with their
parents, have no career, but seem to have endless means
to fund hitman or champagne at lunch, identify with
Cassie, instead of the "serious" Mulligan character in
_Suffragette_, who actually goes to prison and loses a
son. Cassie uses herself as bait, puts herself in extreme
danger, to teach a lesson to would be sexual predators.
She could have channeled her rage and sorrow into
activism, work at a woman's shelter, gone to law school
and argued in front of the Supreme Court. But a film
like that wouldn't have scored all those awards.

(I have voted straight-ticket Democrat for 25 years;
I've increasingly wondered why.)

Mulligan's endless inventiveness and variation in her
delivery save _Promising Young Woman_ from itself.
It is fun to watch her in various outre costumes
and acting outrageously (without descending to the
caricature-like, entitled acting-out of Frances
McDormand, on screen and off). But the candied color
sets and the Wes Anderson-like static symmetric
composition gets tiresome real fast.

Seldom does a director's commentary track detracts
from a film quite as much as writer-director Emerald
Fennell's. She sounds like one of those consummate
industry insiders who write for Indiewire. "Genius"
and other coded jargon get thrown around endlessly.
Worse, every scene is explained as giving a specific
message. This is the worst type of commentary which
only emphasizes the shallowness of the script! She
claims that the static, toy-house composition reflects
the rigidity of Mulligan's character's family. No,
the rigidity is in the director's head! The rest of
us just suffer through it.

1
server_pubkey.txt

rocksolid light 0.9.7
clearnet tor