Malcolm & Marie: Levinson Giveth and He Taketh Away

If there's one scene that sums up all my feelings in Sam Levinson's “Malcolm and Marie”( Out on Netflix Today) it would be the scene in the final act in which Marie (Zendaya) goes on a monologue to say all the ways that Malcolm could have and should have thanked her for the role she played in both his life and the film he's recently made. The scene is well acted by both of the actors, but especially Zendaya who confirms to the world the level of talent she has and the potential she's capable of reaching without necessarily reaching the peak of it. The scene is monotonous, and it's self-indulgent, and yet introspective in the way that knowing that the writer is having her speak about himself - if we were to assume that he is Malcolm, which he is - is brave but narcissistic in that it seems too showy, that he wants to let us know how much he can take it on the chin as well as he dishes it. The scene is self-indulgent not only in what was said, but in the length. After awhile it moves from revelatory and cathartic to unnecessary and that is an encapsulation of all aspects of this film which trades something interesting for something unnecessary, on a merry go round for it’s full near two hour runtime.

Before I start in on what doesn't work I'd like to talk about what does work in the film. I like that the film is willing to assert itself, to assert its position, to ask difficult questions whether it be from Malcolm to Marie or in the more external sense from the creator Sam Levinson to his critics, by asserting his position. Unlike many of my peers I think criticism needs a good tongue-lashing. Be it white critics, (though especially them) or black, poc, men or women, I personally think many of us have gotten lazy and defensive in our viewpoint. Many of us not interrogating ourselves just interrogating the art and not the way that we see the art. In my mind as a critic it is my job to interrogate both. In order to properly contextualize and feel good about the authenticity or fullness of my opinion I have to first ask where these feelings are coming from and why or how they might serve the work I'm doing and where they don't serve the work I'm doing. I remember watching a Q&A with Ari Aster and one of the fans of his film Midsommer ( I believe) essentially giving him props for his film explain what they saw on film and they were so sure about it that you could tell that Mr Aster was reticent to tell them that they were pretty off base, but you could tell by his body language and his face what he was actually doing there. This is something not enough critics for my taste cop to. It's not that you have to walk around talking about how wrong you may be all day, but that in the work there should live a certain amount of humility in which you acknowedge the inherent dissolution of perspective in the transfer from how they feel creating this to how I feel watching this. This goes doubly so when it's a bad review because this is this person's child they birthed, that they went through the labor in the pains of putting out there into the world. That we can say we have no responsibility if and when we're going to come and tell them it's a piece of s*** when its exceedingly possible you don’t even have the right perspective, is an audacious take, and as nasty a take as some of the things said in the film. We as critics need a come to Jesus moment about how as people who move and feed ourselves on the idea of critique we have gotten pretty bad at taking any from anybody not titled a critic, and on certain occasions not them either. There's the other portion of the monologue where Malcolm goes off about the identity politics and the politicization overall of filmmaking and though there were definitely points that were said where I wanted to yell at him this isn't even hard, Google, it's right f****** there! You're wrong sir!” There were also times where I had to step back and say okay, actually you’re not exactly wrong there, as a matter of fact your'e spot on. Problem is as critics we’ve had enough conversation about the former next to none about the latter. I remember a while back when speaking about M Night Shyamalan to some friends I articulated that I believed after viewers saw enough of his films to expect that his films were going to contain some sort of twist they started to go into the film's reading them exactly for that, and sometimes that led to them basing the entirety of whether the film was good or not on the scale of how effective the ending was. This at least partially in my opinion is what made people so greatly screw the pooch on their reviews of “The Village”. In that same way I believe audiences and critics especially are going into movies these days reading them for their politics to an extent that misconstrues the idea behind the misnomer every movie is political. In actuality while every movie has politics that doesn't mean that the movie is meant to be political. I think that most creators or storytellers of any kind just want to tell a story ..that's how they start. They don't start with a political idea - I mean some do, but most people start with just wanting to tell a story, the politics come as a consequence of telling the story. The politics unravel themselves from and extend out of the story. Anyway we as critics of the art we act as $2 psychotherapist looking at the work and sometimes speaking to what it says about the creator to us. Now one of the most vital aspects to being able to do your job as a psychotherapist or psychologist is that the person whom you are analyzing tell you the truth, but what happens when that person is just telling you a story? Sure you can analyze what the way they're telling that story might say about them, but ultimately to get to any real truth they have to start actually talking about themselves in a way that is authentic and you're totally dependent upon them to do that. That's not what's happening here, and we are not psychotherapist or psychologist so the way in which we continue to discuss film as if we are right there with the creators with no humility about that disconnect is grossly out of turn at times. I as an artist myself understand that struggle and I understand the anger and the rage that develops behind it, and anybody not willing to engage with that in any real way and they're not doing their job as a critic as far as I'm concerned. It's that rage that pent-up frustration that in fits and starts I get in Levinson's film. Whether Levinson means it to be or not this is a great allegory for the nature of the coexistence between the artist and the critic. It is a relationship and it's as frustrating being in a relationship as an artist with critics and vice- versa as it is being in a relationship with another person. To do so you have to be willing to ask difficult questions and you have to be willing to accept difficult questions and in the script I think Levinson does a decent if not good job of doing both with Marie acting as a challenger to all of his or “Malcolms” frustrations and insecurities. Is there something grossly disingenuous and uncomfortable about using a black man as a sort of protective shield to discuss your insecurities and frustrations with the critical community.. YES, but calling out that particular bit of villainy doesn't erase ours.

Where the film doesn't work has a lot to do with its setting and how it unfolds. “Chamber films” (films that take place in one setting) are notoriously difficult to pull off because without movement from one setting to another it's hard to keep an audience engaged, so creators have to find all these inventive ways to move the action. Therefore it becomes extremely vital to understand at the onset of the undertaking whether or not your film can actually work in that environment. For a number of reasons I would say unless you intend to make this a short film or something around the running time of Steve McQueen's brilliant “Lovers Rock” then this is not the genre for a one setting film. It sometimes made me nauseous to watch two people verbally maul each other around various tables, couches, beds, tubs, and lawn furniture. There's an acting exercise wherein the actors are each given opposing objective, usually it's that one wants to leave the room and the other one wants the person to stay in the room - each actor has to act out or improvise based upon this premise. This works for an exercise and usually you'll get some amazing results, but you can only carry this on for so long and that's kind of the entirety of this movie. Many times points that were made within the first minute were carried on for further ten or more. Again it's a great exercise for actors but even then it starts to become grating, and also leads to actors creating, forcing things like some of John David's actions, for instance when he went outside and started fencing the air in the grass. Especially so for actors still struggling to find or know their boundaries, and still liable to force where one only need to allow. For all intensive purposes both Zendaya and John David Washington are young actors in different ways. Zendaya is physically young, John David though definitely not old is older but young in experience in the field, where Zendaya is older than he and it shows. Zendaya's “thank you” monologue gives her great room to explore what I like to call the power of repetition -where an actor can discover by repeating certain words the power of inferred meaning through changing and connecting to a different emotion for each time the word is said. She does on several occasions find something extremely interesting something that qualifies as magic, but I wonder if she lost interest at times? I did because though scene like that monologue and the movie could and at times did explore the power of as an audience member I was bored after the first number of times I seen a particular argument, and in the case after the first number of times that she said it, because again, pretty early on the point was made. The same goes for John David's volatile, mean, and cruel monologue that he gives to Marie when she's in the tub. It test the patience of an audience member to have to sit there and watch two people eviscerate each other for at least an hour and a half if you count the last 10 minutes as a sort of resolution - and not in a good way, even worse still if some of the arguements seem pointless and for the sake of argument itself. If the audience member is like me, they check out because ultimately it's tedious, and it's tedious because all of it , the repetition, the showiness, the constant yelling, rejects the immersion aspect of watching a film or play. You start to discover your'e in a room watching people stand around and play in between four walls or three, and that in this particular film you feel those walls because no one would stand around for this and no one should. As the aforementioned exercise goes eventually someone has to stay or go, otherwise it begins to feel like listening in on two lovers who no longer have anything to say to each other but keep talking amyway. Whether that is in love or in hate, it is not fun to be around and only interesting for them. As a big proponent of healthy conflict, of the idea that at least in this era we’re in, we’re maybe a little too afraid of combative discussion for fear it might turn into something ugly or any other number of variables and reasons, this even for me was too much. I needed breaks, it needed to show something else, and it didn't need (As Marie once tells Malcolm) to be so cruel. As Marie also explains to Malcolm you could have gotten that point across without doing it in that way. Though I could see that maybe that's a part of what he's trying to do with the movie, I feel he should have took a lesson from his own movie because it didn't need to be in there. Malcolm & Marie is a grand, wonderful at times and mind-numbingly frustrating at others example of “the lord giveth and the lord taketh away”, except its Levinson that giveth and he taketh away. He gives us the power of two actors in a common goal allowed a singular type of freedom to express and find their voice in and on film. Then it takes away from the power of that by putting it all in one setting with no real breaks for genuine moments of pure love, respect, and affection. Too in love with it’s own brand of male indoctrinated conflict, too in a hurry to get back to the expression of conflict to appreciate the healing power of love and the very gratefulness he seeks to find. That's not something that should be reserved just for an ending, that's something that should continue throughout the film. “Peaks and valleys, Peaks and valleys” used to be the refrain of one of my old acting coaches and I think it would have done Levinson's film some good to have a little bit more of the peaks to go along with his valleys in trying to have an honest discussion about relationships and critique. All in all what we're left with in the finished product of what we do have from Levinson is a work that is a challenging, messy, tedious, aggravating, self-indulgent, narcissistic, and brave actors showcase that I have no ability at the moment to really decide on whether I like or not. So maybe Levinson's done his job here, by having me and maybe a few of us think for a moment about what criticism is, have a discussion on how it works, when it works and for whom it's for, same as we are with his movie.