Patreon Letter: 6th February 2019 (Patreon)

I used to watch The West Wing with my Dad. He introduced me to the show when I was a very lonely and unhappy teen in my first year of a screenwriting degree, who still naively thought that might be something they could and wanted to do with their life. These are the scientifically proven perfect conditions to introduce a human being to the work of Aaron Sorkin: a child’s understanding of politics, a depressive emptiness that can only be filled with rightness of purpose, an overinflated love of screenwriting and above all else -- Father/Son bonding.

Aaron Sorkin is always writing about Fathers. I would go so far as to say that Fatherhood is the central theme of his work. His public perception is understandably overshadowed by his work’s pathological need to re-imagine the work of American Imperialism as something inherently benevolent and noble, but depending on the day and how much I wanted to die on a stupid hill, I would make the argument that America is merely Sorkin’s ultimate Father Figure. Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men is haunted by living in the shadow of his Father’s legacy. Literally the only flaw that Sorkin gives Bartlet (the part where he perpetuates a massive fraud by illegally covering up a degenerative illness during a presidential election is surprisingly not a flaw) is that he is too smart and his daddy hates him for it. And then the other day I watched Molly’s Game, the ultimate film about Daddy Issues that has ever been, and I wanted to talk a little about that.

First things first, on a technical level I enjoyed Molly’s Game much more than I expected to. The last things this man worked on were Steve Jobs and The Newsroom, both of which rank among some of the worst and most repulsive productions ever put to screen. Sorkin directs his own work well, there’s a surprising restraint in the rhythm of the movie, which while fast-paced is not as close to as breakneck as you might expect. It flows well, I was never bored. The film is at its best during Chastain and Elba’s scenes when it is a fairly straight legal drama. It’s less good during the flashbacks, but we’ll talk about them in a minute. Also -- and this is key -- it’s a true crime story and not the glorification of any of the following: an abusive and evil man whose only definition of tech utopianism is owning the utopia (this counts two films, somehow), the staffers on a cable news show of all things, the #resistance heroes of a sketch show of even more all things, and so on and so on. The point is it’s a well made and watchable movie. I’d say it’s one of his better works.

Now I’m going to talk about why I hate it.

So Molly (of the Game) is not just someone who puts on a high stakes poker game with celebrities, she’s an Olympic level skier, she did so good on her exams that she’s overqualified for Harvard Law School, and she’s barely 20 years old. She is a more ludicrous Aaron Sorkin character than any of the fictional ones. She’s this way because of her Father, of course, who pushes her and her brothers to ludicrous extremes because you have to be the best if you’re going to make it in this dog eat dog world. 

And I want to be clear: the Father is an asshole. Not only does he abuse his children under the guise of harsh preparation, but he’s been cheating on his wife for decades. He’s an awful person and -- big spoilers -- Molly’s entire emotional arc hinges on the realisation that what she has been doing she has been doing to get back at her dad. She wants to get back at her dad because she subconsciously knew he was cheating, and he was cold to her growing up because of how deeply ashamed he was. Her father tells her that in the scene where they reconcile, by the way, not in the scene where she punches him in the face and never talks to him again. That scene isn’t in the movie.

This is prototypical of Sorkin’s approach to fatherhood. Sorkin’s fathers are always flawed: they cheat on their wives, they treat their kids like shit, they pass on unimaginable trauma to their children often without even realising, but nothing can change the fact that they love their children and no force on heaven or earth can stop them from performing their patriarchal duty.

Here’s the oh so heartwarming line Dad says at the end of the movie at the start of the scene where he reconciles with Molly: “I know, I got your e-mail. I get that I’m not welcome in your life right now as your father though you should know I could give a shit if I’m welcome or not.”

In Sorkin’s world, nobody can keep a father from their daughter. Not even his daughter. Especially not his daughter.

And it’s a strange moment not just because of the on-its-face thematic awfulness, but because of the straight line the film draws between the father’s attitude raising his daughter and his daughter’s deep, deep unhappiness. It is nigh indistinguishable from the version of this that functions as critique. Sorkin’s work does this often, most notably in The Social Network, where the movie plays as if it’s a fearless portrait of disgusting misogynists creating the world as we know it because they were rich, young men and that’s what rich, young men do. And then it ends with Rooney Mara walking up to Mark Zuckerberg and forgiving him, as if there is any planet on which that’s the catharsis the audience has been looking for. 

The best way to describe Sorkin in his directorial debut is that he is the director people mistake Scorsese for being. Molly’s Game offers us a look at people with unthinkable amounts of money and even less empathy destroy each other’s souls at a poker game while people on the street starve. Because, as Sorkin repeats in about eighty different scripts, that’s how it is in the NFL. Because our fathers raised us for a world where it is kill and be killed, and so too we shall raise our Daughters that way. And with expert accuracy he outlines this cycle of cruelty, then just when you think he is about to condemn it, he merely salutes those strong and exceptional enough to conquer it. 

I don’t talk to my Dad anymore. I miss him every day. Ever since I moved house I don’t have anyone within 150 miles I can meet up with and just go to the cinema or get something to eat, he used to be that man for me. But he did something that hurt me more than anyone has ever hurt me before or since, and so I don’t talk to my Dad anymore. There are some rifts that cannot be healed and more importantly whether they should be healed is my call to make. You can’t walk back into their life on a cold night and demand that they give you even a moment of their time. It is their call to make. I don’t talk to my Dad anymore, I don’t watch The West Wing anymore, and I don't want to write screenplays anymore.

I gave Molly’s Game 3/5 stars and signed back up for Letterboxd. I miss thinking about movies.