Year-End Poll: Lightning Round, Part 1 (updated) (Patreon)

Passing (Rebecca Hall, 2021)

This adaptation of Nella Larsen's 1929 novel is certainly timely, in terms of its concern with racism as a part of the American DNA. But in its faithfulness to the source material, Hall's debut as a director comes off as a bit studied and leaden. I suppose it's admirable that she avoided the ham-fisted symbolism and contemporary meta-gestures that would have provided a fashionably "updated" version of Passing, the sort of stuff Ava DuVernay might have attempted. But this restraint also means that a politically astute work of Black Modernism is trapped in the amber of Oscar-bait and "American Playhouse" respectability.

Still, there's a strong film in here looking for a way out. A lot of Passing employ a gauzy, oversaturated look that competes with the black-and-white images, creating an atmosphere of dreamlike time suspension. Its pacing is sometimes open and meandering, like a trance film. But this style is undercut by the televisual editing and framing. Scenes that might've really breathed in long takes and two-shots are sliced and diced into shot / reverse-shots, and the sense is that Hall and her collaborators did not entirely trust their material. This is also evident, although less so, in the two lead performances. Tessa Thompson's downcast naturalism clashes with Ruth Negga's aggressive fake-fabulousness, and this only made we wish for more overt stylization. While I certainly don't believe that Hall being a white-identified filmmaker renders her unqualified in any way, it may have led to a reluctance to really dig into Larsen's material. Respectability has its uses in the political sphere, but is seldom beneficial where art is concerned.

Spencer (Pablo Larraín, 2021)

As I mentioned on Twitter, Spencer is a bad film, but it's also instructively bad. In his Letterboxd review, Andrew Dignan expressed dismay at Larraín's unwillingness to pick a metaphor, but sadly I sort of think that's the point here. This is an extremely simple, simplistic film, but it feigns complexity by layering on more and more dumb ideas. It's as though you can make something obviously bad by using one big, honking visual idea or allegory (for example, Black Swan), but by giving the viewer dozens of these bad ideas, you paradoxically achieve goodness, quality, intellectual heft. We are certainly in a cultural moment defined by artistic literal-mindedness, where the basic elaboration of a subject position, and some really dank metaphors as window dressing, speaks to the middlebrow masses. (You can see this everywhere, from Taylor Swift to Succession.) This is the formula for reaching the Zoomers, who are educated by the Internet, swimming in factoids but totally lacking an apparatus for the education of taste.

Anyway, Spencer is anchored, sort of, by Kristen Stewart's most mannered, cartoonish performance outside of the Twilight series. She struts, pouts, and puts it out, and we are supposed to relate to her Diana simply because she is surrounded by the gray, bloodless functionaries of the House of Windsor. She's practically the little girl in the red coat from Schindler's List, grabbing the viewer by the throat with her overdetermined "humanity." Larraín isn't interested, or even capable, of providing coherent class analysis, challenging the mythos of Diana as the princess of the people. And this expectation, that we will cathect onto cult-of-personality wealth (cf. Elon Musk), against the faceless corporate monolith, is one of our controlling fictions right now. 

In fact, Spencer cannot even grapple with its own implications, rather clearly depicting Diana as mentally ill and in need of care. The film is as callous about this as the royals were, but because it depicts these struggles, it assumes we will fill in the empathy ourselves. My only glimmer of hope here is that maybe Stewart knew this was ridiculous and was actively trying to subvert the project. ("Saboteur!")

The Card Counter (Paul Schrader, 2021)

It's true that Schrader has been making the same film for quite some time. He's obviously fascinated with men like Bresson's pickpocket (see above) and Ford's Ethan Edwards, troubled men whose adherence to a strict moral code in no way guarantees their ability to navigate the social world. They are, in short, the "discontents" of civilization. But as I was watching The Card Counter, I was mentally comparing Schrader with James Toback, another director fascinated with outlaw masculinity. Where Toback makes a fetish of the morally dubious wild man, Schrader operates more within the confines of classical conservatism. That's to say, just because society cannot quell our most dangerous passions and inclinations, does not mean that we should embrace transgression. That's the struggle, the always asymptotic effort to keep the id in check.

As far as The Card Counter is concerned, it seems to me that Schrader's strategy here is a sound one. Identify two realms that appear to have no obvious connection -- gambling and torture -- and carefully articulate that connection. In both instances, it's a question of knowing just how far you can (or should) go, and of course trying to maintain a rational perspective with respect to acts that can very quickly become addictive. I am not entirely convinced by Oscar Isaac here. His "William Tell" is always a bit too studied, which I suppose is the point. But he's really more of a totem of Schraderian masculinity, especially as compared with Ethan Hawke in First Reformed. Just because damnation is inevitable doesn't mean we ought not to experience it as a cruel surprise.