A small thing but I'm going to assume Phil's character didn't get drafted into Great War service, eight years prior; or maybe he did and hightailed it home from France ASAP.
LOL. As an ardent fan from his "Sherlock" days, I refer to myself as one of the Cumberbitches. Such a great name to play with, his school days must have been hell on earth.
He was on Graham Norton a couple weeks back. Telling a story about auditioning for something with Madonna, who came in and asked if that was his real name. "I said, 'Yes it is MADONNA,' and, uh, I didn't get the job."
I absolutely loved this movie and I agree, you do feel sympathy for the monstrous Phil, because he’s more a monster in the Frankenstein sense – he hasn’t really chosen to be who he is as much as external forces have shaped him.
I'm intrigued to see because he is potentially drawn between two modes of mythological heroism — the Classics of his Yale education & the cowboy butchness of his home.
All men are largely Frankenstein's monsters of various gendered forces & expectations. It's tough to find out the center of identity, where one is one's own masculinity & the external voices are silenced at last.
This is of course true, but it applies to the character of Phil in a very specific way I don't want to go into because, you know, spoiler. I hope you enjoy the movie.
Just intuitive based on a premise that whatever performing a white man does as a white man, all other groups have to do to be similar generally as a white man, to get to the point where they’re in the position of your white man in the initial comment. An extremely crude example or illustration is a closeted gay person.
But as I say, just intuition and belief. If there’s any empirical proof, damned if I know.
Can’t tell through your grouchiest but did I somehow give offense??
No MM — no offense at all. I just wanted to make sure I heard you clearly or ensure that you were referring to something I wasn't aware of. I think it's likely that you misunderstood me though, & that's where I come in as a teacher.
The basic premise of modern gender theory (from Butler on) arises from the idea that gender is an entirely a social construct and is the products of extrinsic forces -- discourses and attitudes that shape and police the way that anybody in our society expresses behaviors & dress we see as 'gendered.' Therefore, it takes a great deal of introspection & self-awareness to recognize one's own way to express their gender or to identify another sort of gender along its spectrum.
My statement claim depends on SundayStyle's (extremely apt) metaphor of the "Frankenstein's monster" in that a good deal of men (you're right to identify as often straight white men to some degree) don't or are not encouraged to have that kind of introspection to question or challenge the prerogatives & demands that often lead to toxically masculine behaviors.
So with that clarification in place, I also agree with you (& Mr. Webster below) in that all humans in the society are subject to these same forces (of course articulated differently for different positions in society according to ideas of intersectionality).
The problem with our challenge becomes how much how freely or openly is one willing to just have questions about what does what the attitudes or discourses are compelling us to do. Many people (and many more str8 men) are willing to do so -- but this movie seems to offer some insight into how our myths compel men into these toxic little boxes.
More generally, all people are (in an old sense, the one used in "Frankenstein" and by Ben. Franklin) Creatures, creations of Society (like Property), of their parents particularly, of History…. We treasure our individuality, but in fact it's largely a matter of the differing proportions of different influences we embody or resist, not of their absence, only New Socialist Man and John Gault are free of them and would you care to spend much time around either?
Jonny Greenwood also did that soundtrack- you didn't mention it.Just curious.
I quite love Melancholia just because of Kirsten Dunst. Cumberbatch as Richard III is one of my favorite Shakespeare performances. I will see this film I think.
Haven't seen it but my sense is it's not at all a western but pretty much what the present's like in that part of the world just -- obviously -- not as technologically advanced.
"Gormlessness" is such a great word, although I don't understand quite how it works. Like "ruthless", the root never exists on its own, only when there's less of it.
Now that I think about it, I don't think I've ever seen the word "Feckless" except in the phrase "Feckless Democratic leadership". It's an epithet, like "rosy-fingered dawn" or "swift-footed Achilles". After our civilization is destroyed and we fall back on the tradition of oral storytelling, it will be a useful mnemonic aid to the wandering bards, a phrase that will come up more than once in telling the story of our collapse.
Great writeup, Roy. I enjoyed this movie, but I'm not sure I'd watch it again... but I think a second viewing would make me appreciate it even more. Extremely well made. Every location felt real and specific. Cumberbatch's accent was off-putting to me at first. I thought perhaps he wasn't quite nailing an American accent, but after learning about the character's education, I figured maybe his voice was meant to be a bit of a put-on, a tribute to the folk hero he worshipped? "More 'Western American' than western American?"
I don't think George is at all gormless. He has quiet strength, and he knows that responding to his brother's abuse is pointless. I think he pities Philip, who will never be happy, and as you say, he is all Phil has in the world. You're right that Rose is marrying to better her and her son's situation, but there is happiness in the union, too. She found a good man who thinks she is marvelous. Phil seethes with resentment on his lonely bed, hearing the sounds of lovemaking.
The scene where Phil is proffering friendship to Peter, telling the youth to call him "Uncle Phil", Kodi Smit-McPhee's face tells the story - you just sense that he knows that pretending to fall under Phil's spell will put him in control.
I wanted to comment on my own comment because of one thing that did bother me - George does not heed Rose's warning to keep Peter from going with Phil, thinking Phil is a good influence on the youth. I would amend my comment that George pities Phil to include that he thinks Phil's abuse is impotent. He's right that it is impotent against him, but it is not impotent against Rose. He doesn't see that Rose needs protection, while Peter does. This is a flaw in George but it is not complete gormlessness.
Sorry to introduce politics into this small Eden free of it, but what are a good number of figures on the Right but men versed in the Classics—or who think they ought to be, or at least have the right to field them as footballs by right of inheritance and vigilance for The West—butching it up as cowboys, mocking those who even more obviously fall short of the ideal of Manhood they'd like to believe they champion even if they're not up to embodying it…?
See also: the manhood-anxiety of the sons of the Civil War, holding their manhoods cheap* for not having been shot-at.
Erratum: wouldn't he be an early _20th_ Century sissy?
*As before, nearly my trademark slogan for a chain of discount massage-parlours.
I see your point, but... I'm a left-wing, hockey-loving, rock-drumming, hard-drinking holder of an MA in Classics. Never had many friends in my department, and never complained about it! Contrast he heroic ideal of, say, Achilles ("right wing" in my view: "my principles" handed down from the gods and never unchanging have been violated; cries like a baby and dies), with the heroic ideal of Odysseus ("left wing" in my view: "These assholes want me to leave my family and go to war for what...? Fine, fuck them all." Odysseus lives.). One character never changes or evolves, the other is constantly adapting to the bullshit around him.
I wasn't thinking of the classics as they are, more of how Rightists use Defending the Western Tradition as a justification for what they want.
Whenever I hear of Proud Boy or the like talk like that, I feel like asking him which translation of Dante he thinks best….
EDIT: I should have also referred to The Defense[sic] of [White ]Southern Womanhood belovèd of the Klan, or (brace for the Godwin Alarm) Nazi rhetoric of defending civilisation against the Jews and their catspaws the Asiatic hordes and Negoid masses, like Steve King equating civilisation with a set of genes.
To both-sides it, neither was bound by oath to the cause but in the end wound up most instrumental in victory. Calling Achilles a baby is like Hunter Thompson calling Hells Angels infantile -- maybe true, but he'll still fillet you like a chef. Odysseus shows up at the draft board acting like a retard but winds up leading the genocidal charge out of the horse. As for the movie -- I bet you were laughing out loud in the theater!
Well, Achilles and the Angels are still wrong. Odysseus "acting like a retard" is not really canon (but I know the tale). It was a Netflix movie, so watched at home. Thought it was a pretty good/great film. Nothing really to "laugh out loud" about. I didn't watch it with a view to Greek mythology. I was only making conversation because the original comment got me thinking
Your comment focused on the Iliad and I mistakenly thought you were referring to the 2004 movie Troy (also on Netflix) in which (spoilers) Menelaus is killed by Paris and Agamemnon is killed by Briseis in the temple of Apollo.
May I recommend another Campion movie with a strong story? Bright Star, about the painfully impossible romance of John Keats and Fanny Braun. I don't often see movies about powerful emotions other than anger and fear, and I was floored. The social/economic commie angle helps too of course.
I am of two minds, reading and hearing about this film. I can hardly wait to check it out, admiring Campion's earlier work for some of the reasons you highlight here, while simultaneously suspecting there may be elements that gang agley and ruin the intentions. That is my recollection of Campion's work for my younger self. I confess not having looked at any of her films in decades. Your piece here gives me hope that I will with this be surprised by how much she has learned over the years, as Twain found the seven years between his 14th and 21st birthdays with his father, and I may then revisit the earlier work with further surprises revelations about my own ignorance and oversight all these years.
great review. immediately after watching it i was blown away and i appreciate it more the more i think about it - i genuinely did not expect my own best-film-of-the-year to catch on so well as to be an Oscar frontrunner, but it's exciting that it seems to be Campion's year (i hadn't seen a film of hers until a few months ago and am a certified stan now). every piece of the filmmaking is so thoughtful and instead of being stately and dull as many period pieces are it's so propulsive and engaging that i was shocked at the end, not just at the concluding events, but at the fact that two hours had already gone by.
I finally saw this film. And wow did it wow me. Thank you for your insightful and encouraging review. Now, on to Licorice Pizza! Or maybe The Worst Person in the World. Or Drive My Car. Golly!
Okay, this sounds like I would enjoy this very much. Thanks for the review, Maestro.
Also, "zombie parasites" seem to be increasingly common among humans, I think. It may be lead toxicity, it may be brain worms -- but they are there.
It's an old syndrome, though it's been mechanized of late.
Out of the cow and into a snail, out of the snail and into an ant. The lancet liver fluke gets around more than I have over the past two years.
Don't forget the toxoplasmids that Shew Us the Way to worship our small masters.
(Sorry, can't help it: "Benedict Cumberbutch".)
A small thing but I'm going to assume Phil's character didn't get drafted into Great War service, eight years prior; or maybe he did and hightailed it home from France ASAP.
LOL. As an ardent fan from his "Sherlock" days, I refer to myself as one of the Cumberbitches. Such a great name to play with, his school days must have been hell on earth.
My old boss, a voracious consumer of cinema, used to refer to the actor as “Bandersnatch Cummerbund.”
LOL. And the beauty of that is, everyone would still know EXACTLY who he was referring to.
He was on Graham Norton a couple weeks back. Telling a story about auditioning for something with Madonna, who came in and asked if that was his real name. "I said, 'Yes it is MADONNA,' and, uh, I didn't get the job."
I absolutely loved this movie and I agree, you do feel sympathy for the monstrous Phil, because he’s more a monster in the Frankenstein sense – he hasn’t really chosen to be who he is as much as external forces have shaped him.
Beautiful film with an outstanding cast.
I'm intrigued to see because he is potentially drawn between two modes of mythological heroism — the Classics of his Yale education & the cowboy butchness of his home.
All men are largely Frankenstein's monsters of various gendered forces & expectations. It's tough to find out the center of identity, where one is one's own masculinity & the external voices are silenced at last.
This is of course true, but it applies to the character of Phil in a very specific way I don't want to go into because, you know, spoiler. I hope you enjoy the movie.
Can't wait, dahling!
“All men are largely Frankenstein's monsters of various gendered forces & expectations.”
Not disagreeing except I think it applies least to white men and yet more to women and POC and now that I think about it all non-CIS males.
Nah, it would be better to say all humans; better still to say all young humans. Some older folk, I think, can to some degree escape it.
It’s all but the degrees differ from group to group.
So what evidence do you have for this? What gender theory have you read to support your claim? How would you define a 'gendered force & expectation"?
Just intuitive based on a premise that whatever performing a white man does as a white man, all other groups have to do to be similar generally as a white man, to get to the point where they’re in the position of your white man in the initial comment. An extremely crude example or illustration is a closeted gay person.
But as I say, just intuition and belief. If there’s any empirical proof, damned if I know.
Can’t tell through your grouchiest but did I somehow give offense??
No MM — no offense at all. I just wanted to make sure I heard you clearly or ensure that you were referring to something I wasn't aware of. I think it's likely that you misunderstood me though, & that's where I come in as a teacher.
The basic premise of modern gender theory (from Butler on) arises from the idea that gender is an entirely a social construct and is the products of extrinsic forces -- discourses and attitudes that shape and police the way that anybody in our society expresses behaviors & dress we see as 'gendered.' Therefore, it takes a great deal of introspection & self-awareness to recognize one's own way to express their gender or to identify another sort of gender along its spectrum.
My statement claim depends on SundayStyle's (extremely apt) metaphor of the "Frankenstein's monster" in that a good deal of men (you're right to identify as often straight white men to some degree) don't or are not encouraged to have that kind of introspection to question or challenge the prerogatives & demands that often lead to toxically masculine behaviors.
So with that clarification in place, I also agree with you (& Mr. Webster below) in that all humans in the society are subject to these same forces (of course articulated differently for different positions in society according to ideas of intersectionality).
The problem with our challenge becomes how much how freely or openly is one willing to just have questions about what does what the attitudes or discourses are compelling us to do. Many people (and many more str8 men) are willing to do so -- but this movie seems to offer some insight into how our myths compel men into these toxic little boxes.
More generally, all people are (in an old sense, the one used in "Frankenstein" and by Ben. Franklin) Creatures, creations of Society (like Property), of their parents particularly, of History…. We treasure our individuality, but in fact it's largely a matter of the differing proportions of different influences we embody or resist, not of their absence, only New Socialist Man and John Gault are free of them and would you care to spend much time around either?
This soundtrack is pretty great!
https://youtu.be/cLlUeSLta88
I just reread your Licorce Pizza review.
Jonny Greenwood also did that soundtrack- you didn't mention it.Just curious.
I quite love Melancholia just because of Kirsten Dunst. Cumberbatch as Richard III is one of my favorite Shakespeare performances. I will see this film I think.
The soundtrack is great! I heard he'd done Licorice Pizza but all I can remember from it are the 70s tunes.
Adore Melancholia! You’re the only other person I’ve “met” who loves it
Haven't seen it but my sense is it's not at all a western but pretty much what the present's like in that part of the world just -- obviously -- not as technologically advanced.
An interesting distinction. Guess it depends on what the sight of signifiers like ten-gallon hats, saddles, and saloons do to you.
"Gormlessness" is such a great word, although I don't understand quite how it works. Like "ruthless", the root never exists on its own, only when there's less of it.
Ruth and Gorm would make a great pair.
And their idiot son, Feck.
Wouldn't that be Mind?
Not that I give a feck...
Now that I think about it, I don't think I've ever seen the word "Feckless" except in the phrase "Feckless Democratic leadership". It's an epithet, like "rosy-fingered dawn" or "swift-footed Achilles". After our civilization is destroyed and we fall back on the tradition of oral storytelling, it will be a useful mnemonic aid to the wandering bards, a phrase that will come up more than once in telling the story of our collapse.
Didn't she sing with Steve Lawrence?
oof...
Great writeup, Roy. I enjoyed this movie, but I'm not sure I'd watch it again... but I think a second viewing would make me appreciate it even more. Extremely well made. Every location felt real and specific. Cumberbatch's accent was off-putting to me at first. I thought perhaps he wasn't quite nailing an American accent, but after learning about the character's education, I figured maybe his voice was meant to be a bit of a put-on, a tribute to the folk hero he worshipped? "More 'Western American' than western American?"
I think you're onto something.
Probably the only time you'll ever see someone get bullied by someone else playing the banjo at them
So true, banjoes aren't normally used for anything as mild as bullying, generally being considered instruments of torture.
frailing is the technical term
I've been working on digesting the experience since my roomie and I finally got around to watching it this past weekend. This helps - thanks.
I don't think George is at all gormless. He has quiet strength, and he knows that responding to his brother's abuse is pointless. I think he pities Philip, who will never be happy, and as you say, he is all Phil has in the world. You're right that Rose is marrying to better her and her son's situation, but there is happiness in the union, too. She found a good man who thinks she is marvelous. Phil seethes with resentment on his lonely bed, hearing the sounds of lovemaking.
The scene where Phil is proffering friendship to Peter, telling the youth to call him "Uncle Phil", Kodi Smit-McPhee's face tells the story - you just sense that he knows that pretending to fall under Phil's spell will put him in control.
I wanted to comment on my own comment because of one thing that did bother me - George does not heed Rose's warning to keep Peter from going with Phil, thinking Phil is a good influence on the youth. I would amend my comment that George pities Phil to include that he thinks Phil's abuse is impotent. He's right that it is impotent against him, but it is not impotent against Rose. He doesn't see that Rose needs protection, while Peter does. This is a flaw in George but it is not complete gormlessness.
Sorry to introduce politics into this small Eden free of it, but what are a good number of figures on the Right but men versed in the Classics—or who think they ought to be, or at least have the right to field them as footballs by right of inheritance and vigilance for The West—butching it up as cowboys, mocking those who even more obviously fall short of the ideal of Manhood they'd like to believe they champion even if they're not up to embodying it…?
See also: the manhood-anxiety of the sons of the Civil War, holding their manhoods cheap* for not having been shot-at.
Erratum: wouldn't he be an early _20th_ Century sissy?
*As before, nearly my trademark slogan for a chain of discount massage-parlours.
I see your point, but... I'm a left-wing, hockey-loving, rock-drumming, hard-drinking holder of an MA in Classics. Never had many friends in my department, and never complained about it! Contrast he heroic ideal of, say, Achilles ("right wing" in my view: "my principles" handed down from the gods and never unchanging have been violated; cries like a baby and dies), with the heroic ideal of Odysseus ("left wing" in my view: "These assholes want me to leave my family and go to war for what...? Fine, fuck them all." Odysseus lives.). One character never changes or evolves, the other is constantly adapting to the bullshit around him.
How does that relate to the movie...?
I wasn't thinking of the classics as they are, more of how Rightists use Defending the Western Tradition as a justification for what they want.
Whenever I hear of Proud Boy or the like talk like that, I feel like asking him which translation of Dante he thinks best….
EDIT: I should have also referred to The Defense[sic] of [White ]Southern Womanhood belovèd of the Klan, or (brace for the Godwin Alarm) Nazi rhetoric of defending civilisation against the Jews and their catspaws the Asiatic hordes and Negoid masses, like Steve King equating civilisation with a set of genes.
Ah yes, the "Greek Statue Avatar" types with names like Biggus Dickus.
To both-sides it, neither was bound by oath to the cause but in the end wound up most instrumental in victory. Calling Achilles a baby is like Hunter Thompson calling Hells Angels infantile -- maybe true, but he'll still fillet you like a chef. Odysseus shows up at the draft board acting like a retard but winds up leading the genocidal charge out of the horse. As for the movie -- I bet you were laughing out loud in the theater!
Well, Achilles and the Angels are still wrong. Odysseus "acting like a retard" is not really canon (but I know the tale). It was a Netflix movie, so watched at home. Thought it was a pretty good/great film. Nothing really to "laugh out loud" about. I didn't watch it with a view to Greek mythology. I was only making conversation because the original comment got me thinking
Your comment focused on the Iliad and I mistakenly thought you were referring to the 2004 movie Troy (also on Netflix) in which (spoilers) Menelaus is killed by Paris and Agamemnon is killed by Briseis in the temple of Apollo.
Correct, fixed!
May I recommend another Campion movie with a strong story? Bright Star, about the painfully impossible romance of John Keats and Fanny Braun. I don't often see movies about powerful emotions other than anger and fear, and I was floored. The social/economic commie angle helps too of course.
I'm very interested!
I am of two minds, reading and hearing about this film. I can hardly wait to check it out, admiring Campion's earlier work for some of the reasons you highlight here, while simultaneously suspecting there may be elements that gang agley and ruin the intentions. That is my recollection of Campion's work for my younger self. I confess not having looked at any of her films in decades. Your piece here gives me hope that I will with this be surprised by how much she has learned over the years, as Twain found the seven years between his 14th and 21st birthdays with his father, and I may then revisit the earlier work with further surprises revelations about my own ignorance and oversight all these years.
Well when you see it tell me!
great review. immediately after watching it i was blown away and i appreciate it more the more i think about it - i genuinely did not expect my own best-film-of-the-year to catch on so well as to be an Oscar frontrunner, but it's exciting that it seems to be Campion's year (i hadn't seen a film of hers until a few months ago and am a certified stan now). every piece of the filmmaking is so thoughtful and instead of being stately and dull as many period pieces are it's so propulsive and engaging that i was shocked at the end, not just at the concluding events, but at the fact that two hours had already gone by.
I finally saw this film. And wow did it wow me. Thank you for your insightful and encouraging review. Now, on to Licorice Pizza! Or maybe The Worst Person in the World. Or Drive My Car. Golly!