Joker: "The Killing Joke"

I went into Joker admittedly wary of the entire “controversy” around Todd Phillip's film. The whole thing seemed sensationalized as a ploy to create a weighty buzz around the film that would make it as close as possible to can’t miss box office. To a great extent I still believe that, but before I actually watched the film I genuinely had no idea what to expect going in. Did any of what I had read have any validity? Was the movie a rallying cry for incels? Or was it a brilliant misunderstood movie, with a message too unsettling to be heard just yet? Having now seen it, I have been converted (somewhat) to the group of critics who find the movies messaging to be problematic, though I’m still not sure future viewings might unveil the latter. I had to let the movie sit with me awhile, talk it over with family members before I discovered what it was that made the movie it so hard for me to just give the movie the unencumbered praise I was clearly ready to give Joaquin Phoenix’s performance. Ultimately I was reminded of a Dave Chapelle sketch, and something he said during the intro. Just before he begins the wildly outrageous "Dave Chapelle Story” I remember Chapelle remarking he would be afraid to write his own story because in essence he would be an unreliable narrator, and the temptation to embellish would be too great, and I found exactly in that moment what had been bothering me. In essence this was the almost inevitable folly of telling a story almost completely from the Joker's point of view. The movie wasn’t just unsettling because it took on the hard task of asking us to empathize with, and weigh the contributing factors to a murderous malcontent, it was unsettling because there was an invaluable piece missing from the execution of said task that invited an audience to not only empathize with the facts of what and who society marginalizes, or the nature of loneliness and outsidership, but to empathize with the fabrications and extremities of the Joker's behavior. What the movie did well was forcefully connect us to a person none of us wishes to be connected to through the universally recognizable devastation and frustration of being unseen, unheard, and unable to connect. What the movie omits is the line between us and him, by way of a nebulous, muddy line between what is real in the movie , and what is in the Joker's head. One could claim that many of the events that happen in the movie (it being told from the Joker’s own violently delusional point of view) are delusions, one major storyline is clearly revealed as just that, but therein lies the rub. You can make a movie like Inception and be unclear in the end about whether the whole thing is just a continuous dream , because at the end whether or not Cobb is choosing to live within his own self delusion really only effects Cobb. Being willfully ambiguous about the Joker's delusions effects the world around him and subsequently invites the audience to endear itself to a character who in no way is a hero or a reliable narrator. If you show people lionizing the Joker at the end of a movie, and the audience is left unsure as to whether he was really carted straight to the station or whether the city turned upside down as the result of a revolution started by a psychopath, (and especially if you’re saying that it happened exactly that way as a result of the superficial connection between the Joker and the rest of functioning society) you're (in the strictest sense of these words) not doing it right.

I could go on illustrating what struck me as problematic about the framing, and what I think they got wrong, but I always prefer the approach of illustrating a misstep by showing what it looks like when it’s done right. Another memorable cinematic character The Joker has a lot in common with is Anton Chigur from the Cohen brothers masterpiece "No Country for Old Men". These are two men who metaphorically represent a sort of apocalypse, an end to things as we know it. They are chilling, intimidating and unnerving precisely because they have psychopathic tendencies that can't be reigned in or anticipated by any consensus on logic or reason, because they live in a world so far outside the constraints and constructs of society, they function a lot more as a force rather than an being. They have their own sense of rules and extremely unique coding, and they're only predictability is that they are unpredictable. If you listen to other characters discuss them, you can see the bridge in the similar way in which they are described, and the complimentary construction in the similar way in which they discuss their disdain for "rules" in these two scenes. First the description of each by ancillary characters ...

Uploaded by W&H on 2018-08-18.

One, out of many, great lines from The Dark Knight. Alfred Pennyworth: [...] with respect Master Wayne, perhaps this is a man you don't fully understand either. A long time ago, I was in Burma, my friends and I were working for the local government.

And then in their own voice on rules...

Anton follows Carson to his hotel room.

The Dark Knight Blu-ray 2008

Though the Joker in the Dark Knight is clearly a different approach, it’s not entirely different, just more removed than this film, and the point I'm setting up is that though these characters are clearly very similar, one movie (Two if you include the Dark Knight) understands it's character (Chigur) and lives in the truth of the character, so that it is impossible to associate in any way Anton with righteousness, or justice. Anton makes his decisions in a way that cannot be found appealing, or imaginable, the discomfort we feel when he is around is from the injection of chaos that the film continuously honors. The Joker on the other hand, has very little integrity regarding the chaotic frequency the Joker lives on. Phoenix’s performance provides the consistent element of surprise, but for all intensive purposes the movie functions with the straightforward A to B arc of a superhero movie. A linear set of happenings congregate and aggregate to help form and create what we will come to know as the Joker. The film plays fast and loose with the reality of what someone of that disposition would act like to make a more sympathetic character under the ideologically fair stance that these people aren't just born they are also made, but without confronting the things that bring about the extremes in their behavior. Forget his glaring whiteness in this very multicultural world, what about his narcissism? The movie makes out as if DeNiro’s late night host is an unnecessarily cruel dream crusher because it never disengages us from the Joker’s perspective. It never confronts in any meaningful way the facts that Arthur is in fact adamant about his ability to do something he is clearly not talented in, that he skips steps, and more importantly doesn’t even like it. This is not Tommy Wiseau, this is (as the movie’s own creators told us time and time again) Travis Bickle. His stalking of a woman is not played for it’s terrifying truth, we get none of the existential dread we got watching Chigur stalk victims because we see it only from the Jokers perspective. Zazie Beetz is never truly allowed to be a full being, to challenge for reasons that also have to do with plot device. The movie (Intentionally or not) continues on this way, skipping, dancing, laughing well past the line of superficial connection between the audience, society at large in the film, and the Joker, to one that would have us believe this is just a broken men just like one of us, just pushed a little further. It is disingenuous, and a dismal fabrication, indeed typical of someone like the Joker, but one that should have been better addressed during the actual film. Many of us believe we have been shoved to the margins to the point we might break, many of us fight back. Many of us deal with mental health, and those that deal with the deeper more difficult forms also know how society at large seems to care very little about listening to those who do, but most people dealing with either or both don’t go off and commit a trail of heinous crimes. There is a difference between the Joker and marginalized people, the movie (in the name of telling a story true to the nature of the Joker’s identity) just isn’t interested in drawing any. The danger of this position is not that it would invite or incite others to commit similar crimes under the guise of victimhood, but that it backs their claims without any formidable counterbalance. This is why I'm not sure of the efficacy of, and find myself baffled by the somewhat new trend of telling stories completely from the villains point of view. On it's face it's an absurd approach , and if it's not approached in the spirit of that absurdity, with other characters with some version of significant roles to bounce the signal off and echo back the true essence sound and meaning of their reprehensible actions then it becomes too easy to mistake their spoiled fruit as food for thought.

I think it's okay and even important to sympathize with the social incongruities that make or mold the Joker, or any terrible human being fictional or otherwise, maybe even his/their rage, but when his actions can at all be taken for righteous retribution?

As a vehicle for an actor (especially one of Joaquins talents) Joker is once in a lifetime. It's an intriguing idea that maybe works better as a one man show on Broadway, but as a film? It's far too isolated, and to make things worse, the better the performance the more likely it is that the audience is going to empathize, and sympathize with the narrative that drives him. Villains need heroes as a counterbalance to call them on their bullshit as much if not much more than heroes need villains to reflect on theirs. If not heroes in the sense of meta humans, or insanely rich but complex men or women, then in the type of heroism, and courage exhibited in a humble but straight-talking and intelligent wife like Kelly MacDonald's Karla Jean in “No Country for Old Men”. Or in long suffering sons like Russell Harvard's grown up H.W. Plainview in "There Will Be Blood", hell even another villain like Paul Dano's Eli Sunday can be a potent mirror from which evil can reflect and be reflected upon by the audience. But Phillip's Joker has none of these . None of which could be reliable because the movie is told so singularly from his perspective. So that if he says he let a person go because "They were always nice to him", or that he didn't murder his next door neighbor, or that a black woman rather unnecessarily and more to the point unbelievably told him to stop playing with her child on the bus , we are at the very least asked to believe it's plausible that these things actually happened, because there is no one to challenge any of it who doesn't have their own challenge rebuffed by their own membership in the very system the movie has compelled the audience to take umbrage with. This is not moral complexity it's negligence. If one were looking for what moral complexity should look like on film as well as the need for counterbalances, this scene from David Fincher's "Seven". would be a fine example..

SEVEN : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114369 (© Warner Bros) SPOILER AHEAD! This 8 minute scene of mostly dialogue has three main functions. At this point in the movie, in the beginning of act three, after the previous story twists, our expectations of what is to come are already well set up.

The scene begins with the question "Who are you really?" setting up the psychological impetus of the scene as a complex unraveling of who John Doe is. The scene is full of moral complexity, but John Doe is not going to get to tell his story unchallenged. While we may sympathize with some things John says, and even a few of his attitudes, the counterbalance of both Pitt' straightforward assessment and especially Morgan Freeman's acute observations ensure it's impossible to leave that theater feeling anything but that this guy is the absolute worst. He's impotent, fragile, weak, and pathetic, a tragic figure in some sense yes , but nonetheless gross. Thinking of the difference in these films and their effect , or rather the effectiveness of their portrayals I'm reminded of one of Sommerset's observations in Seven...

“If you were chosen, that is by a higher power. If your hand was forced, seems strange to me that you would get such enjoyment out of it. You enjoyed torturing those people, this doesn’t seem in keeping with martyrdom” - Sommerset (Morgan Freeman) in Seven”

Within the context of the film this is the actual unmasking of John Doe, and of Phillip’s film. It's the equivalent of the Scooby Doo teens pulling the the hood off of the episodes perpetrator. From that point on all illusions are put aside and the villain explains exactly who he is, and the audience sees him for exactly what he is, not what he wishes us to see. Sommerset in that way has also provides us with a revelation that we never really get to see or hear in the Joker which is that this is not some martyr who kills only out of furious passion those who have wronged him. His targets conveniently all disagreeable, and unsympathetic bullies, this is a killer, a megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur, and that should've been the the ultimate resolution of Joker . It should've ended with him confronting that reality, and maybe then evading it as in Nolan's Memento - not with him being lionized in the midst of a revolution followed by him running through the Halls of an asylum after an allusion to him possibly killing a worker in an interview. I for one absolutely believe you can make movies about psychopaths, and killers, and all sorts of villainy. Mary Harron made one of the best ever in American Psycho with it's unabashedly scornful portrait of materialism, and greed as psychopathy, that embraces the very absurdity of its position as aforementioned, BUT you can't make movies ABOUT psychopaths if you catch my drift. If you don't make clear the actual motivations behind this kind of extreme behavior beyond Mental health, and victimization, then your setting up the stigmatizing of one group , and the validation of bullies and tyrants. Though I don’t know this makes The Joker a bad film, - despite my feelings about it's messaging I actually think driven by Joaquin's performance, and a long overdue interrogation of our framework around Batman and his family it's a pretty damn good movie, - but it does make the controversy and the debate around this film real , and deserved. The Joker gets to tell his own deranged story without interruption, or opposition to an audience willing and ready to listen, and while movies don't make us do anything , they do often color, inform, and help crystallize our philosophies, or ideological views. Given that realization it makes clear the responsibility of the filmmaker to tell stories that don't back ideologies that will help convince already lost, confused, and possibly deranged audience members of their own righteousness, and even if Joker doesn't necessarily defend a skewered perspective, it doesn't upend it either. Subjectivity is a killing joke in the context of heinous criminality, not in any corporeal sense as it relates to film, but in the essence of the moral drive of your film. You can make Bad Lieutenant, but not subjectively contemptible Bad Lieutenant, there is no place for subjectivity, or a lack of clarity in contempt around heinous acts of wanton violence, not in real life or on film.

Mo' Better Blues : The Blues of Blaxploitation

"Mo' Better  Blues" ,  underrated  but acclaimed director  Spike Lee's  fourth  film, is both a confident personal ode to the art of jazz and  it's roots  in the African  American  experience, and a personal portrait of the artist and his struggle with mainstream  acceptance. But wait , I said underrated, and I want to expound upon and qualify that statement, even though I really shouldn’t have to. Starting with the fact that I believe that every black director that ever existed is in some way underrated, and definitely those who have arrived to the point that their films received any widespread recognition and/or acclaim. Blackness is in and of itself in America “otherness”, and so too are black achievements. There is no space where black achievement or experience doesn’t live in and unto its own in America, and Hollywood is no outlier here. In fact they’ve been a willing accomplice, through propaganda, and discrimination. This inherent loneliness of blackness in America, is not without its merits, separation can be a great muse for creation, and the need to create, the necessity - the mother of invention, and we all know black people have created, and invented quite a lot here in the wilderness. But any isolation one cannot choose to depart or return from is confinement, it is a prison. Like all prisons, this prison restricts movement, and constricts the soul and in the case of the artist a great deal of things but none with a more insidious effect on the soul than the limitation and restriction of audience, bias, and imposed inferiority. The artist longs for an audience, and beyond the audience, recognition, art for art’s sake is romantic , but mostly a reaction to commercialization and exploitation. It is important here because there is a connection, because Lee’s Film is largely about the struggle of the central character (Bleek Gilliam as played by Denzel Washington) with obsession, and possession. Whether conscious or unconscious, Bleek’s own frustration with this isolation materializes in a drunken conversation between our two main protagonist, Bleek and the other Alpha in the band “Shadow” (Wesley Snipes). In essence Bleek’s argument is born of an obsession with/of possession, (who owns Jazz) and of audience, (who sees it, curates it). Shadow on the other hand exposes Bleek’s own hypocrisy calling out Bleek’s own exploitative actions, as well as his obsession with possession. Bleek rigidly defines the boundaries of the art refusing it and anyone around him any room, any air, any growth. In a way Bleek has become institutionalized. He understands his art only from within the walls of his isolation…

“Bleek: But the jazz, you know if we had to dep… if we had to depend upon black people to eat, we would starve to death! I mean, you’ve been out there, you’re on the bandstand, you look out into the audience, what do you see? You see Japanese, you see, you see West Germans, you see, you know, Slabobic, anything except our people - it makes no sense. It incenses me that our own people don’t realize our own heritage, our own culture, this is our music, man!
Shadow: THAT’S BULLSHIT!
Bleek: Why?
Shadow: [slurred] It’s all bullsh… Everything, everything you just said is bullshit. Out of all the people in the world, you never gave anybody else, and look, I love you like a step-brother, but you never gave nobody else a chance t- to play their own music, you complain about… That’s right, the people don’t come because you grandiose motherfuckers don’t play shit that they like. If you played the shit that they like, then people would come, simple as that.”

Its important to state here that Bleek’s institutionalization, his obsession, even his willingness to exploit his comrades, is a result of an institution, the result of his own exploitation by this institution. The argument betrays an irritation, a dissatisfaction with not only the audience, but exploitation. The first line of dialogue explores an underlying fear, beyond Bleek’s insistence on a puritanical view of jazz. “If we had to depend” implies latently a fear of the hypothetical. Drawn out from there, this hypothetical belies the source, fear of exploitation. Something Bleek and his band already suffer from. The Flatbush Brothers (John and Nicholas Turturro) prey on Giant and Bleek, who in turn prey on their band. The artist wants an audience, but they also want recognition, recognition as a form of both an expressed, and financial acknowledgment for what it is their art does for the club, for what it does for the Flatbush brothers, for what it does for Bleek, and it is in that way Mo’ Better Blues is a stand-in for the plight of the African American artist in America. Where the isolation of the “other” leaves them vulnerable to predators of all sorts, and their own insecurities, narcissism, and ambition betray their own integrity, and their own people.

Interestingly enough the themes of possession and exploitation extend beyond just the band, and the artist and beyond even the borders of the film, to the women of “Mo’ Better Blues”. There's a predictable, but charming love story between protagonist “Bleek Gilliam” and two women (Indigo  and Clark  played by Joi  Lee, and Cynda Williams), but they too are limited by both Bleek’s misogynoir, and the script.  They have no interiority,  little to no agency,  and we mostly only see them through the lens of Bleek Gilliam which impedes upon the success of the tension in the triangle, and the success of the subplot. As Bleek suffers from inside his prison, the women are only granted limited access to him, and them limited access to us. They show up for what amount to conjugal visits, and they are gone, with little or few defining moments , but what they themselves (the actresses) make of it. Bleek treats them as distractions as he exploits not their art, but their bodies, their time, and their love, and the film treats them as more of a distraction from the central story, rather than integral to it. We only become aware of their agency, their interiority (especially in the case of Cynda William’s Clark) as Bleek becomes aware of it. What Clark, or Indigo do while away from Bleek is a mystery save for exposition, until both demand their respect from Bleek in much the same way Bleek and his band mates have demanded respect from their exploiters.

As a Jazz ode this “Mo’ Better Blues” is smooth, confident,  and struggling  to find its way much like it's protagonist Bleek Gilliam.  Lee's direction in collaboration with Bill Lee's score provide a soulful historical subtext around the art of jazz (by then almost lost to an African American audience). His script functions much like jazz itself - mindful interpretation, and mastered craftsmanship,  interrupted by moments of furious improvisation.  While others decried the latter,  I find the improvisation to be some of the most charming portions of the film.   And the lighting,  costuming, and again Bill Lee's score rank among the best in Spike Lee's illustrious filmography. But the greatest achievement of Mo Better Blues, is its portrayal of a black artist, who struggles to break free from the confinement of exploitation, of isolation, and of possession. And so the greatest achievement of Mo” Better Blues is providing a cinematic parallel for the struggle of black achievement in this America. Our first fight as black artist in america was just to be allowed to create, second to have an audience, the third to be recognized, to be seen as equal to, not as axiomatically inferior, while profiting off our innovation, and ingenious. It is the blues of the many a black artist, the blues of our women, and of many marginalized groups in America, and it only gets better with time.

The Inkwell: That One Summer Spent with Just Us.

When I think about the 1995 film "The Inkwell"   I often think about my own adolescent years, and wonder just how important it was to my own growth,  and evolution that I saw a unique “Coming of age” film which featured an entirely black cast,  in the midst of a new black Hollywood Renaissance in the 90's .  That I saw the portrayal of a sweet,  awkward,  lonely young African American boy on a journey of self discovery where nobody dies,  and the worst possible tragedy is the looming possibility of divorce….

I do not own all uploaded material, uploaded for viewing pleasure.

The Inkwell is one of those movies I fight for passionately because it is  underrated,  tender,  and a warm, meandering portrait of an aspect of black life that like Eve's Bayou, (Though not as well executed) examines - from a uniquely black perspective - (a still a highly uncommon sight)  a segment of black culture rarely covered... The black upper middle class.  A film I love watching because the film loves it's characters. These films love their settings, the clothing from their respective periods, and the time and space they occupy.   Both “The Inkwell”, and “Eve’s Bayou” feel like love letters to the periods in which they take place,  and the ways in which black people resolved themselves to make something of their own both in the era in which the movies take place,  and in creation of the art,  and the storytellers who decided these stories were the ones they wanted to tell.  On a couple of small bits of beautiful land, a kind of vacuum of upward black mobility took place all over parts of this country,  creating white flight,  that left these black people with something to call their own.  A space where they could be safe to grow their fortunes and their children adjacent though not necessarily out from under the watchful gaze and influence of white supremacy.  And this tone extends to the viewing experience in both films.

Watching The Inkwell invokes the same type of feeling as that first warm ray of sunlight on your face out from the shade of a tree. There is an ease that pervades the viewing experience and that has a lot to do with director Matty Rich's soft touch behind the camera, Ceci’s costume design, and Terence Blanchard’s score.  Even more than that it feels like a reminder, of simpler times. If at times the movie feels like an extended sitcom, I believe that is a part of its charm. Rich's first feature film "Straight outta Brooklyn" was rougher in almost every single way, from its gritty setting in the inner cities of New York,  to its frank depiction of aimless black youth and minimal production value.  Earnest, and compelling, “Straight Out of Brooklyn” covered similar though not altogether the same ground as the films that would come out that same year and subsequently, like Boyz in the Hood,  and Menace to Society. But “The Inkwell” represented an almost complete pivot, and yet the roughness, the feeling of something that doesn’t aim for perfection is still there.  The Inkwell is warm,  and touching,  sensitive,  and funny.  The production value is represented not in sleek camera angles and upscale violence,  but in outstanding costume design and attention to the details of the era.  It veers off the beaten path and the results aren’t always great, but they are almost always interesting. I remember reading reviews that said the film dragged, and from a technical aspect I see that, but from my heart I found even those uneven spots, like those between a game Morris Chestnut, and A.J. Johnson as a couple teetering on divorce themselves due to Chestnut’s philandering ways, and between Drew’s own parents, and Brenda’s family - (especially a scene involving a tennis match that goes wrong) incredibly endearing or humorous. This film to borrow a phrase from Jim Kelly’s Williams in “Enter the Dragon” is just too busy looking good to be bothered with its defeats. It not only looks good , it feels good, and it feels good because of the love put in it, which permeates every aspect from cinematography to the casting and by extension the performances.  Watching these sterling,  delightful,  vibrant performances from actors whose opportunities to inhabit characters such as these were few and far between was, and is a joy unto itself that pays off in different ways every time I watch.   Joe Morton's bristles with his patent expository anger as a lost revolutionary who had been left behind in a movement that no longer has the same motor.  Suzanne Douglas's  Brenda, a woman unseen and under acknowledged by her mother,  her sister,  and of course her husband is an anchor to the films heart, as such Douglas brings a toughness similar to that of a reed in the wind. The actress has a similar skill-set to Angela Bassett, and like most of this cast was criminally under used in her career.  Larenz Tate heartwarmingly embodies a young black male trying to find his place in a world where he doesn't identify with the ready made pockets of existence that  exists for black people and in this case black men.  Tate made quite the pivot here as an actor himself,   showing off an impressive range coming from his explosive,  and menacing role as O-Dawg in Menace to Society.  Everything from his gait,  to his beats in delivery morphs to code the audience to the vast chasm between experience that exist between the two characters.  Turning that same kinetic energy on its head from terror to endearment….

At Inkwell Beach, summer's never been so much fun! It's a time and a place where cool clothes, hot music, and good friends turn a dull family trip into the summertime vacation of a lifetime! Critics everywhere praised THE INKWELL -- the hot comedy treat that delivers outrageous summertime fun and good time entertainment, all set to an irresistible soundtrack!

But Tate is not alone, from Jada Pinkett's broken ballerina to Glynn Turman's scene stealing pompous, indignant, black Republican ,  or Vanessa Bell Calloway as Brenda's buoyant,  but sometimes mean spirited sister, the actors turned in performances that in collusion with Matty Rich's direction,  and Trey Ellis (who later distanced himself from the project due to creative differences) and Paris Qualles script romanticize-  in both the best and worst ways possible-  a time,  and segment of black life in America.    I could go on a diatribe about each one of these actors at length.  All black actors whose careers we're never as full and consistent as their talent and dedication demanded.  Gathered here to tell a story centered around a people whose story has never been as fully and consistently told as its humanity and dedication demanded. The actors are allowed free reign, as Rich himself allows for scenes and camera work that feels alot more like extemporization, than preparation, even when sometimes some reigning in might've helped.  The many subplots are mostly underdeveloped and resolved in the same way you might find in a popular sitcom,  but the power of the movie is not in its technical proficiency,  or scope,  or its use of language.  It's in the story that's being told,  who it's being told about,  and the love with which it's being told. It's in Terence Blanchard's score which feels like the musical version of a comforting talk with a parent.   Or the costume design, and its appreciation for the multi-faceted nature of black hair, without condescension, and our dress without the superficiality of blatant appeals to nostalgia.  This isn't always a recipe for success,  but in the case of stories you've never been introduced to before this is often enough.  The Inkwell is a lot like a summer vacation, in that it feels too short, and full of missed opportunities,  but it also feels freeing,  and refreshing,  and is usually always remembered fondly in the leaving.   The Inkwell was and is also a vacation from the dominance of whiteness in the domain of film.   A vacation from the implicit denial of the importance of black contributions to the Americana.  A vacation away from the implicit characterizations of black men as inherently dangerous,  and menacing,  and of black women as laborious nannies. It was a vacation from Hollywood’s myopic focus on black long-suffering. It took me back to weekends over my cousins house thinking of nothing but swimming pools, girls, and staying up late.  Drew’s awkwardness is lingered on , but not punitively. A message so many black men who refuse to let go of their own ungraceful youth won’t stop doing to themselves. It doesn’t vilify or demonize Jada Pinkett’s young Lauren, it empathizes and understands her, as so many black men refuse to do with the young women of their past. There is no scene where Drew gets back at her, or a scene where she realizes what she’s missing out on, (a wish fulfillment fantasy of so many boys growing up and as grown ups) because the vital portion of Drew’s coming of age is learning how to cope properly with heartache, and disappointment rather than “Burning his own house down”. This learning curve is aided by a subplot where Drew - a young black male attends therapy, at the urging of his Aunt, and Mother. And that Therapy is rooted in black tradition, and spirituality. The resulting scenes between he and the therapist (Phyllis Yvonne Stickney as Dr. Wade) are so tender, so indelibly sweet, I tear up at the mere conjuring of them in my mind. Its a message, so poignant and unique I still have not seen the like in black film and it was worlds apart from its cinematic peers of the time.

The Inkwell is as Roger Ebert once put it, (in one of the few good reviews it received) "An innocent comic fantasy". The only shame of it being that these types of fantasies be they for women,  or other  groups within the wide spectrum of marginalization- are some near 25 years later still being told so sparingly. Which I think adds to the fond warmth and glow of the inkwell all these years later. It is black film about us, for us, that speaks to us and not at us. A film that opened up the dark room of black cinema at the time and allowed some light in. Allowing us to forget for a couple of hours the violent and oppressive abuse of inner city life under white hegemonic structures, and remember beaches, sunlight, hormones, and Marvin Gaye. Places where we created with our own loving hands a haven for ourselves. In the winter of black life in America for me, cinematically “The Inkwell” was about an escape. A summer spent with just us.

YOU....It's Complicated.

If I were to describe my feelings while watching Lifetime’s “YOU”, (now on Netflix) I would say it's complicated.  Which I think would be fitting as a description for the narrative of this show,  as well as a description of the show as a whole.  Not since my days of watching soap operas have so many feelings and emotions been stirred up about characters, plot lines, and cliffhangers. Rightfully so, the show about an imbalanced,  murderous stalker,  who believes he's found the love of his life, slowly unravels over its episodes - truths about our main character, the woman at the center of his current affection, (Beck, as played by Elizabeth Lail) and the people in her life, in much of the same way as a soap opera. Using many of the same devices, just with additional depth.   Introducing us - quite cleverly - to a world where nothing is as it seems.  Complexity wrapped in aesthetic pleasure is one of the show's strong suits. If there's a weak point or week points to this show, it's in its favoring of a good reveal to great storytelling and in that very complexity of storytelling.  Much of which lies within our antagonist Penn Badgley because you are walking a fine line creating a character who is attractive, sexy, charming, intelligent and caring while at the same time being completely manipulative, violent and dangerous.  I personally consider walking the fine line between portraying evil and danger as glaringly obvious, and full of distinctive qualities we associate with our own societal phobias and able-ism - and glorifying it - one of the most difficult tight rope walks in narrative. Much of that difficulty lies in the sway charm and attractiveness holds over most of us in society. I for one can ignore an awful lot when there is a pretty face attached to it, if that face is also backed by charm and magnetism well then it’s very hard to be objective about what may be right in front of my face. In a glass half full, glass half empty dichotomy, attractive qualities have the ability to swing the pendulum towards half full on a regular basis so that whatever rain may appear on the horizon is sure to have a rainbow. Joe is the epitome of this, and when “YOU” is at its best and its worst, it’s when Joe is in peak form. Joe like any good devil , does not just deal in lies, and he is not simply a liar, or an abuser, or an stalker and a creep. The Devil does not make up your wants and needs and give them to you, although that can also be so, he takes advantage of your real ones. He doesn’t come to you pitchfork in hand, teeth bared, tail sweeping at the floor, he comes bearing gifts, and words of encouragement , stroking at your ego. Joe’s affection for Beck in my mind is a product of his narcissism which allows him to conflate obsession with love, his desire to have a human pet, with Beck’s need of him - but he accurately assesses Beck’s issues, and he is good at playing the role of caretaker. This is a fine line, but I think indicative of a harsh reality of human interaction. That being that being a monster is firmly within the spectrum of humanity. YOU’s depiction of Joe mostly does this astonishingly well.

  The show muddy’s the line even further by making Beck such an unsympathetic character. Beck is messy, she is needy, narcissistic herself and can gaslight with the best of them. Which leads to another another harsh reality…not everybody that dies or is murdered is sympathetic as a person. I recall multiple occasions upon which while watching some true crime television show like “Dateline mysteries,” conversations in my family assessing whether or not the victims were truly an “angel” in real life, because it was so oft- said. A morbid fascination that soon led me to wonder why it was necessary to say. Are our views of right and wrong so fragile that merely hearing that a person was a dick in life makes them less sympathetic as a victim of such heinous crimes? If our judicial system is any indication the answer is yes. This I believe is somewhere along the spectrum of platitudes like “Don't speak ill of the dead” except with the misplaced concern in reverse. One overly concerned with the victim in life, the other usually overly concerned with murderers and abusers in death. But here's the tea, sometimes complete assholes are murdered too, sometimes minutes before someone is cut from the fabric of existence, they are mid stroke into being an unconscionable idiot, or mean, or cruel. It's sympathetic that they died because no one deserves to die because they're an asshole, or because they're not a nice person, or because they are messy as fuck.  But that does not mean that they were nice or good or angelic while they were alive.  Beck shouldn't have to be a perfect girl, for us to sympathize with her over a petty, self congratulating murderer, but here we are.

The point for me when the show (Im guessing the book also) crosses the line is when it made narrative punch decisions like having Beck’s friend Peach Salinger (yes.. Peach Salinger) be a stalker in her own right. It’s not necessary. Never mind that both Peach Salinger and subsequently Shay Mitchell’s performance as Peach is one of the best parts of the show, but narratively it teeters a complex, but fun drama too much towards fun, and in the doing puts too many psycho’s in Beck’s kitchen, while ethically softening the blow of Joe’s toxicity, narratively backing his claim as protector. This when the story would have been better served by having Peach be manipulative, and cruel, but not wiling to kill, or a obsessive, making Joe’s claims just what they would be in most any real life case, exaggerated proclamations meant to bolster his own idea of self, as well a his role in Beck’s life.

Since the advent of social media, that particular mode of human interaction has played an increasingly large role in our dating and friendship circles for better and for worse.  The ways that YOU connects them at all these interesting intersections without taking away from the narrative, in effect, adding punch to the narrative is astounding.  It’s ability to capture, but not preach the fragility of friendship as contextualized in the modern age is magnificent. To acutely arrive where social media leaves us all feeling less than is handled masterfully in the arc of Peach Salinger. Peach acting as an avatar, quietly providing us with a twinge of jealousy for our friends successes, and a pinch of happiness in their failures. Beck’s friend Annika as the more obvious commentary on the nature of the surrogate self that we project into society through the avatars we use in social media, represented in her vile racism uncovered through the very same medium she used to disguise it. And finally the ways that social media can help us find connection or make us targets, or allow us to target others in ways previously not available. It’s ability to help us find the truth or make it even all the more illusive. The distorted reality of Peach Salinger, the covert racism of Annika - which Joe uses to manipulate Beck, the ways in which social media drove Joe crazy about Beck, but also allowed Beck to gaslight Joe. The ways in which it enables Joe and to isolate Beck, (typical of behavior for abusers) and in which Peach uses it to manipulate just about all of her friends. The show did this in a myriad of ways , both subversively and true to form.

“YOU” is a very complicated show about male toxicity, that doesn’t make it simple for the anyone else. It complicates its relationships, and leaves just about everyone from Beck to even a young abused boy as some version of complicit in its devilry. Just about everyone is a mess, and just about everyone is harboring ugly secrets, that they are willing to harm others to hide. If there is any person on this show remotely innocent, it is Karen, the only person in a non toxic relationship, being exactly who she is, confident in who she is with a keen moral compass. Outside of her, just about everybody in the show is at one time or another somewhere on the spectrum of messy to evil.  Joe being at the very top of the list, on the very far wrong side of the spectrum.  Overall, I admire “YOU” for being a show, willing to dive and tap into these grey areas of relationships and the complications involved. Brilliant because it dares to take the risk of walking some very fine lines to point a mirror in the audiences direction. To make us look at our own obsession with aesthetics. With what things look like rather than what they are. I didn't always agree with the narrative choices, and I'm still not sure about making a killer THAT charming, but do think its too easy to lay all the blame at the feat of the narrative for our own willingness to overlook Joe’s murderous machinations because he’s good looking charming, and like a dead clock every once in awhile lands on the right thing to do. I think the show is convenient scapegoat for our own falibility in the value we place around these aesthetics which is more responsible than anything for social media’s own peculiar but understandable reaction to Joe as a sympathetic character. I prefer making a killer charming, to the overdone trope of the killer who everyone recognizes is a killer, because that's not the way it works in real life either.  There are very few predators in this world that function by letting everyone know that they are predator. In the animal kingdom, a great deal of them have various and very distinct ways of fooling their prey or placing them in a state of ease so that they are unprepared for the attack.  With human interaction and all of the complex variables that come with it, I think it's important in any narrative medium, whether it be TV, literature, or film to discuss these topics and these interactions with exactly the amount of complication that is involved with their reality in as much as any of those mediums can. With “YOU”, I think we have as excellent a show as can be in laying bare those lines (considering that it's also meant to be entertaining) and that is always going to dirty or muddy the water just a little bit. What you does so well, so brilliantly is make clear to us that when it comes to finding the right one,  or avoiding the wrong ones...in general …it's complicated.  

MANDY IS JUST MY KIND OF MOVIE

Couple of things you should know about me and movie going.  A.  That I tend to grade on a curve whenever I feel someone who is trying to deliver something truly (keyword truly) unique.  And I'm not talking about that kind of person that seeks to be smarter than their audience or surpass their colleagues with something way more clever than they believe their peers ever could have dreamed of. And definitely not that person that seeks to only arrive to us with merely a unique concept and clearly no follow through on that great concept (and Yes, I'm talking to you hotel Artemis) .  No, I'm talking about that person, with whom while watching their film you can almost feel that childlike energy,  that kinetic,  furious,  passionate,  barely contained fire, - if at all - that drives every one of us whenever we stumble upon an idea that will not loosen its grip upon our imagination. The kind that makes me imagine the writer director of this film being possessed sitting there at their desk, eyes jittering from side to side, just scribbling away incessantly,  unable to stop themselves from leaping from word to word,  sentence to sentence,  page to page,  action to action - whether or not that's what actually happens.  B.  I'm an experience type of reviewer and movie goer I'm big on my experience, I'm not necessarily a technical movie goer.   I understand film theory, I understand the importance of structure,  and often times I can see the lacking of it in a film in which my experience is already a poor one.  But as I said before, if I am already immensely enjoying my film experience in your movie I am a teacher grading on an immense curve.  All of a sudden willing to toss aside how believable your film might be,  how riddled with plot holes your film might be, how detestable your characters might be, how lacking in technical proficiency your film might be. Because ultimately I was too enamored with how beautiful your film was,  how much your film wooed me, how much it made overtures to my various senses, how much it enchanted me.  How your actors mesmerized me, how scared I was, how much I may have laughed,  how much I may have cried. If my experience feels more like a positive one than a negative one, I can forgive cardinal sins in structure, and I can somewhat put to the side - let's be honest maybe “a lot of what” put to the side - film theory for a second and just bathe in the glow of being thoroughly entertained for a couple hours or more. Mandy was such a movie.

Panos Cosmotos's wild blend of nostalgia,  video games,  fantasy,  and rock and roll,  with a committed Nicholas Cage front and center.  Cosmotos movie does not nail it for me politically. In fact, in many other cases, I probably be sitting here writing about how it's just another woman in the fridge type story using its woman, the namesake infact of the movie as a convenient excuse to take us on a journey of male aggression, gratuitous violence,  and anarchy.  But I'm not writing about that because the story was too wild, the colors too gorgeous,  Nicholas cage's performance too balls to the wall insane and committed and vainglorious. All of this in a two hour heap of dismembered bodies, exaggerated over the top monologues,  and primal screams.  Cosmotos brings us both something we've seen before, or at least know of  and yet something wholly original. A movie where I ultimately knew what was going to happen within the first thirty minutes of the film and yet I also was made to feel like I had no clue as to what would happen next from one sequence to the next through the entire duration of the film, right up until the ending,  it's typical and yet wholly unique.

It reminded me of so many of those books I used to love as a kid. Books inspired,  and clearly influenced by and from authors like Tolkien,  or Herbert,  or Robert E Howard's Conan pulp.  But nowhere near as good in the execution. They usually grabbed me with a well illustrated cover,  and an eye catching title (Im making all of these up) like ; The Gates of Baldermoor,  The Dragons of Huron,  Time and Shadows volume one.  I also gleamed portions of the film as being inspired by Ralph Bashki's underrated animation film heavy metal or at that least aesthetically influenced by it.  It harkened me back to a time of cult leaders and a time when devil worshipers were the worst of us.  And while it had me on an IV drip of nostalgia,  it fed me on a, steady diet of arresting visuals,  outstanding camera work,  and a manic,  unpredictable,  rabid performance by Nicholas Cage, and Linus Roache, that kept circling two words around my head, tigers blood and dragon juice. Because that's how bat shit crazy and amazing it was. 

I'm writing more about the experience than the technical aspects of this movie, because I believe that that ultimately is what Mandy is...the movie going experience.   Rather than a movie you go into toting your experience.  I really couldn't tell you how technically proficient, it may or may not be because somewhere along the road I just got lost in the proverbial sauce.  It was fun, it was outrageous. It was visually poetic. It was nostalgia based,  without using the nostalgia as a crutch.  There were some pacing troubles near the end there, and Mandy, the movie's namesake was unfortunately not truly apart of this film in any meaningful way beyond being a prop for Nicolas Cage's unhinged rage fest.  That was maybe the only real disappointment and I don't want to minimize it.  Mandy did a lot of things really really well and while I thoroughly enjoyed myself watching it. I felt like this movie could have moved beyond a cult classic to an actual masterpiece had it featured more about Mandy and rooted her to the story in more than name.   Not only would it have begotten more interesting narrative choices,  but considering her condition,  I think you would have had a movie with some very interesting, even if accidental commentary. And something, ultimately, that I think would have moved beyond its sort of superficial in all the best ways, cult feel, and right into pantheon of Film making. 

As it stands Cosmotos film is a movie that raises an eyebrow and makes you sit up and forward in your seat. I think if he builds upon this, this may be a director to watch in the future, and although I can't recommend Mandy for everyone those of you who like me, like it when you stumble upon something so interesting and so one of its kind, that you tend to grade the movie on a curve and never mind the devil in the details,  then this is also definitely your movie.

Check out the new trailer for Mandy starring Nicolas Cage & Andrea Riseborough! Let us know what you think in the comments below. ► Watch Mandy on FandangoNOW: https://www.fandangonow.com/details/movie/mandy-2018/MMV495A8D3D5C42B5ED2888FF3743C0852D2?cmp=Indie_YouTube_Desc US Release Date: September 2018 International Release Date: October 2018 Starring: Nicolas Cage, Andrea Riseborough, Linus Roache Directed By: Panos Cosmatos Music Composed By: Jóhann Jóhannsson Synopsis: Pacific Northwest.