MOVIE DIARY 2023: THE GUY WHO KILLS ME, I HOPE HE DOES IT BECAUSE HE HATES MY GUTS, NOT BECAUSE IT'S HIS JOB.
I was working on a post last week, but it never came out because while I was writing it out, my computer died and I lost everything I’d been writing. I was too demoralized from making such a rookie move to try to write it again in time to post last week, but it’s a new week and it’s time to get back into it! Also, it’s time to remind everyone to save your work frequently, and to never write out your post directly in squarespace’s interface because it doesn’t autosave! You already knew this, I’m sure. I did too.
Quartet (1981) - dir. James Ivory
I actually found myself kind of disappointed with this one. I’m by no means a Merchant Ivory aficionado, but I’ve really enjoyed the few I’ve seen, and I was thinking that the premise of Quartet would be just what I was looking for. It doesn’t really live up to it, and I think it’s down to a couple of key things.
After Marya’s (Isabelle Adjani) husband Stephen (Anthony Higgins) has been sent to prison for his involvement in, like, art fraud or some other very cool thing, HJ (Alan Bates) and his wife Lois (Maggie Smith), acquaintances of Stephen and Marya, offer to let Marya live with them while he serves his time. What follows is this sordid look at sex and power dynamics in 1920s Paris. HJ begins an affair with Marya, but not only is Lois aware of this, she’s also sort of helping to facilitate this. It’s sort of their kink. She and HJ bring in a young girl who needs help, then HJ fucks her, and Lois manipulates her into staying in this situation by refusing to lend Marya the money she would need to move out and by telling her that she’s getting her friends to find her a job at some undefined later time (she is not actually doing this). Lois does this because she will do anything to keep HJ happy. Married freaks are the biggest sickos out there! (See also: The Comfort of Strangers (1990)). By the way, the last girl that they did this too ended up killing herself.
I think the most glaring problem for me was that I didn’t really understand how Marya’s relationship with HJ develops. I get that there’s the power dynamic at play, with Marya feeling obligated to let this happen because without HJ and Lois, she’d be out on the street, but the thing is, eventually it seems that Marya actually has fallen in love with HJ by the end of it, and I don’t get that. For one thing, HJ is just not hot (no disrespect meant to Alan Bates, who Google images ensures me was once hot), and he’s that particular type of old rich English guy where not only is he forceful and arrogant, but also he’s a huge, needy baby. As it is, I just don’t see the appeal, but I think this might have been more plausible if HJ were at least hot (again, sorry to Alan Bates). Really the only problem with Stephen is that he’s currently in prison, and when he gets out he’ll be forced to leave France, but that’s fine! France is where HJ and Lois live, and it’d be better for Marya to get as far away as possible from those two psychos .
The other problem was that the performances were all just kind of middling. I was hoping for something more emotionally charged from everyone, and Maggie Smith gets kind of close when she’s drunk at burlesque club and laying into HJ and Marya, but I don’t think it was enough. It’s possible that downplaying the emotions for HJ and Lois is a sort of stylistic thing to reflect the stuffiness of the two British expatriates (and maybe that’s also why all of their croissants looked so shitty?)*, but even Marya, who has more reason to freak out than anyone, seems too restrained. Doubly disappointing with Marya too since she’s played by Isabelle Adjani, a master of freaking out! (Sidenote: I just looked this up and Quartet was released just three days before Possession (1981), Adjani’s signature freak out movie, in the US.)
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*They keep eating these croissants that look like they came from a plastic shell container at Vons, a genre of food that my wife and I affectionately refer to as “some bullshit from the grocery store.” It’s fine for when you want a dumb snack to go with your groceries for the week, but for Paris? Paris, FRANCE?? No way.
Dog Day Afternoon (1975) - dir. Sidney Lumet
I’d never seen this one before, and I was surprised to find how funny some of it is? I always hear about Dog Day Afternoon as the movie where Al Pacino tries to rob a bank to pay for gender affirming surgery for his wife, but no one really mentioned that it’s also kind of funny before it becomes a big downer. There’s so much tension in this movie, but there are these short stretches where the characters get to breathe for a bit and we get some quietly funny, human moments. I loved that. My favorite was the head teller, Sylvia, who ends up kind of taking over the crowd control role once the bank robbery starts. She’s gotta protect the other tellers, so she stands up to Sonny (Pacino) and makes sure he knows what the ladies need, and she also stands up to the cops when they try to negotiate taking her out of the situation. She tells them that she needs to be in there to take care of her girls. Real King shit. We love Sylvia.
I guess you need stuff like that to break up how heavy this movie can get. The movie takes place in Brooklyn in 1972, with the Attica Prison uprising still fresh on everyone’s minds. The whole tone of the movie and the tension that results is informed by the 44 people who were killed by law enforcement, and the effects that had on America’s national psyche. The people in Dog Day Afternoon are rightfully distrustful of police, and Sonny constantly reminds Moretti, the police’s hostage negotiator, that without his hostages, nothing’s going to stop the police from storming in there and shooting up the place. Sonny even sort of has a short celebrity moment as the crowd cheers him on and the standoff is broadcast on TV. The crowd takes his side because they hate the cops for what they did at Attica, and Sonny plays this up by going outside to scream at the cops who have their weapons drawn while he leads the crowd in chanting “ATTICA! ATTICA!” Everyone is totally down with Sonny as he throws fistfuls of money in the air and talks on the TV news about how hard it is to be alive and live your life in America, but that all instantly goes out the window when they all learn that Sonny is gay.
It’s really pretty upsetting to see the crowd turn on him so suddenly, but that’s kind of the thing with this movie: you know that things are going to get bleak, you know that there’s no way this movie is going to have a happy ending where Sonny gets away with it and he flies off to Algeria to get gender affirming surgery for Leon, you know that the second Sonny and Sal get in the car with the police escort to the airplane it’s all going to be over for them somehow; but even when all those things happen as expected, it still feels like a real gut punch. In addition to the obvious “now more than evers” of police violence and anti-LGBTQIA sentiment still being alive and on the rise again, I think a big part of the impact of this movie happens because we know we’re watching a doomed man. He’s smart enough to see through the typical cop negotiation bullshit, he knows all of the bank’s tricks for dealing with bank robberies, and he’s savvy enough to know how to work the crowd when they love him, but that won’t be enough to save him. The movie spends a lot of time really driving home that Sonny may not be perfect, but the bigger problem isn’t him robbing the bank, it’s this country and its systems that have pushed him into thinking that robbing a bank is the only way for him and his wife to live a decent life. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone, and he genuinely seems like a man who felt like his hand was forced— who hasn’t felt the weight of desperate times in America? And why wouldn’t you rob a bank if you felt like you really needed to and you could do it without hurting anyone? All that money’s insured, who cares! (PARODY PARODY SATIRE SATIRE the staff of geoffreylapid.com and MOVIE DIARY 2023 do not condone any illegal activities). It’s bleak and it’s affecting because this is still the desperate, volatile, violent America that we recognize today.
Carnal Knowledge (1971) - dir. Mike Nichols
Really sort of harrowing, funny, and altogether mean, which is always a really potent, enjoyable combo for me. Carnal Knowledge follows Jonathan (Jack Nicholson) and Sandy (Art Garfunkel) from their time as college roommates to their 40s as confirmed bachelors. The movie deals with Jonathan and Sandy as archetypes— Sandy is a “nice guy” and Jonathan is a “bad boy,” so obviously the two are inseparable best friends. The two are both sides of the same coin. Sandy is trying his best to be sweet and kind to women and his partners, but he also deep down is mainly interested in fucking freely. Jonathan is arrogant and pushy, but he’s done a great job of disguising that as confidence and charm. He’s made no secret about wanting to fuck and it’s worked very well for him. Of course, Jonathan wants to be loved truly just like anybody else, but he can’t bring himself to ever seeing marriage or monogamy as an option.
We get to see the two of them develop their (equally misogynistic) views on women through the years, and in particular we spend time with two women who seem to have deeply affected both of their perspectives. Susan (Candice Bergen) is both of their first love. In the college years, Susan and Sandy are dating, but later Susan cheats on Sandy with Jonathan. At this point, Jonathan has been coaching Sandy on what to say and how to act so that he can get laid, but Jonathan goes behind his back and actually ends up fucking Susan before he does (fucked up!). Susan eventually breaks off the affair after Jonathan starts getting too deep in his feelings for her. The two never tell Sandy, and eventually Susan and Sandy get married.
Susan, being the first girl that they both lost their virginity to, affects how both Jonathan and Sandy relate to women. After what happened between him and Susan, Jonathan seems to have vowed to himself to never get too attached to a woman, and he gets further into being a love ‘em and leave ‘em forever single guy. Sandy marries Susan and starts a family with her, but as he confesses to Jonathan, he’s so deeply unsatisfied by the married family man life. He’s no longer interested in a physical relationship with her. Sandy ultimately sees a relationship with a woman as a kind of game that must be played. Monogamy/marriage is more a lip service that he must pay to a woman to get what he wants. Sandy and Susan eventually get a divorce which frees Sandy up to have all the no strings sex with other people that he wants, but he seems to still be attached to the structure of a monogamous relationship as everytime we see him with a new girlfriend he goes on about how much he loves her before he eventually goes on about all the things he can’t stand about her.
The longest relationship that Jonathan has is with Bobbie (Ann Margret). Bobbie is physically everything that Jonathan wants in a woman, and the two definitely have a passionate attraction to each other. Jonathan gets her to move in with him and quit her job so that he can be the one to provide for her, but their relationship starts crumbling as Jonathan develops a resentment toward her for being shallow and staying in bed all day. It’s obvious that this kept life is making Bobbie depressed, and she thinks that getting married would show that Jonathan is committed to her and that marriage would give her the emotional fulfillment that she’s been so desperately missing. Jonathan of course is absolutely not into this. The two have a massive fight that ends with Bobbie attempting suicide, which seems to push Jonathan further into his resentment towards all women.
There’s a part near the end of the Bobbie-era of the movie where Sandy, divorced and now dating Cindy, complains to Jonathan that while he likes Cindy, he just doesn’t think the two of them are compatible in bed. He wishes Cindy were more like Bobbie. Jonathan tells him that he’s attracted to Cindy and he sometimes wishes Bobbie could be a little more like her. A lightbulb goes off in Jonathan’s head and he proposes they swap partners, to which Sandy agrees. It doesn’t really go exactly as planned. Jonathan gets some mixed signals from Cindy, and Sandy finds Bobbie’s unconscious body after she’s overdosed on pills in her suicide attempt. This scene sort of stuck out to me because at this point it kind of feels like while none of their relationships with women are going to last, the relationship between Jonathan and Sandy is really what’s most important to the two of them. They probably should have just fucked each other. They’re best friends, and Jonathan has a history of wanting the women that Sandy’s involved with, perhaps subconsciously as a way to stay close to Sandy?
I sort of saw this movie as like a teen sex comedy that just sort of keeps going further as the two buddies get older and their antics get less cute and funny and more shitty and depressing. The movie stays compelling with some really clever shots. The camera will often focus dead center on Sandy or Jonathan as they talk to each other, making it feel like an intimate direct address. It’s interesting that the same thing is also done with a couple of the women characters, but the focus is more on them reacting to what’s happening or what’s being said to them out of frame (there’s this great scene where the camera focuses only on Susan’s face as she’s laughing hysterically while Sandy and Jonathan carry on with a bit just outside of frame, and another that’s a slow zoom on Bobbie’s face as she watches Jonathan and Cindy playing tennis while Jonathan is obviously flirting with her). I’m not really sure about the intention behind that, but my guess is that by having Sandy and Jonathan talk directly into the camera when they are talking to each other, it brings the viewer in as a kind of co-conspirator or confidante, and when the camera focuses dead center on a woman’s face, the viewer sees the emotional effect of these men’s involvement with them.
The movie’s last big scene feels like Jonathan’s finally fully unleashed his disdain for all women. It’s sort of breathtaking and overwhelming to watch. Now in their 40s, Jonathan is showing a slideshow to Sandy and Sandy’s new 18 year old girlfriend Jennifer (Carol Kane). The slideshow consists of pictures of all the girls and women he’s ever been involved with. Jonathan brings up a slide and then he sneeringly talks about what was wrong with these women and why it didn’t work out (there’s a funny bit where a slide of Susan pops up in there that he quickly clicks past, muttering about how that was a mistake, which maybe means Sandy still doesn’t know about their affair?). It’s really sort of hateful and awful, but I couldn’t look away, I was sort of mesmerized by it. I think that kind of applies to a lot of the movie. With all the sort of modern and open reflection about women throughout the movie, what was at its core was the energy of Jonathan’s slideshow presentation. All this grousing about how it’s impossible to find the perfect woman really comes out of this place of hurt and loneliness that Jonathan and Sandy feel as a result of wanting love but being unwilling to do what it takes to get the kind of love that they seek.
The third part of the blog, where I plug the MOVIE DIARY 2023 Discord
Beloved MOVIE DIARY special guest Tony Wilson made this new cartoon short “Brian Moves To The City,” and he had me do the voice of Brian. It’s the titular role! I think it turned out really great, so please check it out!
Filmmaker Caroline Golum, another beloved MOVIE DIARY special guest, talked about her upcoming Julian of Norwich movie (starring my beloved wife and frequent MOVIE DIARY special guest Tessa Strain!) on The Multicultural Middle Ages podcast! This movie is going to rule!
You also must read Caroline on Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) and my beloved San Fernando Valley!
Jo Barchi, yet another beloved MOVIE DIARY special guest, wrote a great piece on By Hook Or By Crook (2001)!
Don’t forget to join the beloved MOVIE DIARY 2023 Discord for the full MOVIE DIARY experience!
Street Fighter 6 update: I won my first online match! After losing like 30 of them. After my victory, I lost another 5 or 6 times before I decided to “quit while I was ahead.”
DEATH TO DAVID ZASLAV (PARODY PARODY SATIRE SATIRE)