Post by Dracula on Feb 22, 2021 11:14:19 GMT -5
Malcolm & Marie(2/14/2021)
Malcolm & Marie was a film conceived, written, and shot during the pandemic and was designed with lockdown restrictions in mind as it’s a film confined to a single location and featuring only two actors: John David Washington and Zendaya, who play a couple coming home from the premiere of a movie that the Washington character had just directed, which had apparently been extremely well received but apparently he forgot to thank the Zendaya character (who the film was partially inspired by) and that incident incites an argument/discussion, played out more or less in real time, takes up much of the film’s runtime. What follows is a discussion both about the couple’s relationship (which has… some issues) as well as questions about what artists owe to their muses as well as some more generalized discussions about the state of art and criticism. All of this was written and directed by Sam Levinson (son of Barry Levinson), who is probably best known as the showrunner on the HBO series “Euphoria,” which is where he began working with Zendaya. I haven’t seen Levinson’s first film Assassination Nation but know it by reputation and I could only get through a couple of episodes of “Eupohia” and I was pretty much ready to dismiss the guy as a juvenile edgelord but this film might have inclined me to give him another chance.
Malcolm & Marie had actually caused quite a bit of debate on “film twitter” and between that and the director’s reputation I was maybe expecting something a bit more provocative than what I actually got. I haven’t read too deeply into the debates but I’m guessing it has a lot to do with the fact that the John David Washington character is pretty clearly at least partly based on Levinson, so you’ve essentially got a white filmmaker casting a black man to be a mouthpiece of sorts on a variety of subjects including the extent to which racial identity is taken into account by film critics. That… kind of ballsy, and I can see why that would raise some red flags with a lot of people. Personally I would say he mostly pulls it off though, in no small part because he seems pretty aware of how provocative he’s being and the ideas expressed by the Washington character in various rants are challenged at various points by the Marie character. I must say that I also sense something of a duel agenda with this criticism as some of these monologues in the film are kind of critical about critics, and if Birdman taught us anything it’s that critics are ironically thin skinned about criticism. Personally I think these mostly just work because they’re very wittily written and the dialogue is delivered with a lot of agility by John David Washington, who manages to work wonders with some material that easily could have felt very self-indulgent. Really the whole movie kind of works in spite of itself, it’s not exactly breaking any molds in its form and I’m not sure how well it’s going to age as time and trends move forward, but I enjoyed it quite a bit and I’m more than a little surprised by that.
**** out of Five
Malcolm & Marie was a film conceived, written, and shot during the pandemic and was designed with lockdown restrictions in mind as it’s a film confined to a single location and featuring only two actors: John David Washington and Zendaya, who play a couple coming home from the premiere of a movie that the Washington character had just directed, which had apparently been extremely well received but apparently he forgot to thank the Zendaya character (who the film was partially inspired by) and that incident incites an argument/discussion, played out more or less in real time, takes up much of the film’s runtime. What follows is a discussion both about the couple’s relationship (which has… some issues) as well as questions about what artists owe to their muses as well as some more generalized discussions about the state of art and criticism. All of this was written and directed by Sam Levinson (son of Barry Levinson), who is probably best known as the showrunner on the HBO series “Euphoria,” which is where he began working with Zendaya. I haven’t seen Levinson’s first film Assassination Nation but know it by reputation and I could only get through a couple of episodes of “Eupohia” and I was pretty much ready to dismiss the guy as a juvenile edgelord but this film might have inclined me to give him another chance.
Malcolm & Marie had actually caused quite a bit of debate on “film twitter” and between that and the director’s reputation I was maybe expecting something a bit more provocative than what I actually got. I haven’t read too deeply into the debates but I’m guessing it has a lot to do with the fact that the John David Washington character is pretty clearly at least partly based on Levinson, so you’ve essentially got a white filmmaker casting a black man to be a mouthpiece of sorts on a variety of subjects including the extent to which racial identity is taken into account by film critics. That… kind of ballsy, and I can see why that would raise some red flags with a lot of people. Personally I would say he mostly pulls it off though, in no small part because he seems pretty aware of how provocative he’s being and the ideas expressed by the Washington character in various rants are challenged at various points by the Marie character. I must say that I also sense something of a duel agenda with this criticism as some of these monologues in the film are kind of critical about critics, and if Birdman taught us anything it’s that critics are ironically thin skinned about criticism. Personally I think these mostly just work because they’re very wittily written and the dialogue is delivered with a lot of agility by John David Washington, who manages to work wonders with some material that easily could have felt very self-indulgent. Really the whole movie kind of works in spite of itself, it’s not exactly breaking any molds in its form and I’m not sure how well it’s going to age as time and trends move forward, but I enjoyed it quite a bit and I’m more than a little surprised by that.
**** out of Five
