Widows: Steve McQueen and Gillian Flynn Keep the Rules, but Change the Game
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The heist film is one of my favorite sub genres in movies. The hard boiled (usually male) lead, the crews made up of assorted personalities , with varying skills and crafts, the technical aspect on display both in the story and behind the camera in the good ones. The capers usually involve a high level of difficulty which require the lead have a high degree of intelligence, and thusly an intelligent script. The lead is usually unflappable, although not always (Al Pacino’s Sonny from “A Dog Day Afternoon” comes to mind) there is usually a betrayal, and some element of a “ticking clock. ” These movies are about time, relationships, and craft. When done well, they explore the humbling nature of the former, the importance of the middle, and the beauty of the latter. What these films don’t usually explore (save for F. Gary Gray’s criminally underrated “Set It Off” which is much better than “The Italian Job” remake ) is any perspective not firmly within the realm of a very familiar hyper masculine ethos. What director Steve McQueen and master craftsman Gillian Flynn have done with “Widows,” is take the very masculine heist film and inject it with some much needed feminine perspective and energy. I've seen a lot of comparisons of this film with Michael Mann's 95 classic “Heat.” On some superficial level I agree that this film does have some elements in common with Mann’s oft-imitated heist caper. However, I don't agree with any oversimplification that would label Widows as a female “Heat.” Most of its similarities are due to the fact that it also a heist caper, but outside of that these films aren't truly that similar. It's not just “Heat” with women in it, or comparable to “Ocean's Eight” (the other comparison I’ve seen). Widows is truly its own thing. This is not a buddy caper film, or a cops vs robbers caper film. Most of its key characters don't really know each other and the movie is not really about their coming together, or an intricate game of cat and mouse. “Widows” is not even about the caper coming together, it's about what makes the caper important to these women. Then extending from there, it plays with all sorts of themes and motifs about its titular widows, the men that abandoned them, and the city they live in. It gets to have a conversation with us from within a very well done heist film. A conversation about the institution of marriage, the oppression from within it and the freedom one can find without it. It's about these women reclaiming their lives. Lives spent living in the shadows of their husbands worlds. Lives spent building and erecting their dreams on the foundations of their husband’s lies. Lives spent putting men first who never placed near the same importance on their lives. The heist is a means to prove to the world and to themselves that they have worth beyond what was predestined and assigned to their gender. Through plotting, crafting, and training, they learn to demand respect from themselves, each other, and ultimately from the world. The same kind of men that are usually at the center of a film like this. That same male world that has ignored them, that has told them to sit it on the sidelines and be content with cheering as these men formed the world into their own without any attention as to what any of these women think or feel. Gillian Flynn's crackling whip smart script in combination with Steve McQueen’s soft touch makes sure to punch that ticket so that the audience can see the ways in which these men deal and interact with women. We understand what it is ultimately these women are fighting for because it is captured in the way Daniel Kaluuya looks at Colin Farrell's aide the entire time they're talking. It's in the way Robert Duvall dismisses this same woman. I think it's partially the reason the women who catches them in the act of the robbery ( probably some abused aide herself ) closes the door. It is in a conversation that takes place between Elizabeth Debicki (Alice) and a woman at a gun convention. These women refused to be sidelined anymore. They step out into the game, and with the stakes properly set, this film sets us up for the 4th quarter touchdown, and it scores.
Secondarily there is the politics of the Broken city, and the broken men that run it. The white legacy family, and the working class black men are both criminals extorting the least powerful in this ward of the city. As it slowly decays, its mostly black constituents are treated as pawns in a chess match between men for power. Much like the husbands of these women, men like Colin Farrell’s Jack Mulligan and Brian Tyree Henry’s Jamal Manning feign being caretakers of their city when in actuality all they seek is their own upward mobility from within the institutions they work for or against. They steal from their city, they lie to their city, and ultimately they kill in their city to amass more power. Convincing themselves along the way it’s about using that power to help the city. The film extends out from these women’s lives and paints a portrait of the city in moral and physical decay. Of the haves and the have-nots, of what the designs and machinations of the boys’ club do to all of us, and of the outlaws who decide to take what is theirs.
Steve McQueen is currently my favorite director working. He understands decay, whether in a man in “Hunger,” or morality in “Shame.” He also understands our will to ascend beyond our current circumstance or an institution. In both “12 Years a Slave,” and “Widows” the leads find themselves in situations not of their own making and it is through sheer will and determination that they find a way out. McQueen sets the stakes, the danger, the emotion, and the desperation though a bevy of interesting shot choices. These shots are never just for the sake of style and any argument to the contrary is incomplete. The shot choices are political, and are not meant to manipulate emotions, because they are emotion. Represented in a whirling shot around Daniel Kaluuya as he intimidates a cohort in the gym. Cemented in the choice to shoot from outside the vehicle straight into a black driver as the white people he drives around for a living (Colin Farrell) engage in a pointless and covertly racist conversation about whether or not his aide has ever slept with a black guy. It’s in point-of-view shots he uses during the heists that reinforce the emotion of his actors when they cant speak. Steve McQueen in collusion with Gillian Flynn’s script crafts one of the great heists thrillers in movie history. “Widows” not only plainly plays out the state of these women's live while setting up its superbly realistic caper, but delivers punch in-between with the sharp, clever, highly intelligent dialogue that has become Gillian Flynn's signature in many of her books. It is superbly acted from top-to-bottom (Viola Davis should be in heavy contention for an Oscar as ell as possibly Elizabeth Debicki) and the wardrobe and costume design is also magnificent. In the doing both McQueen, and Flynn have woven something entirely unique to the story type and I think setting its own standard. Placing itself quite snugly alongside films like Heat, Thief, and even A Dog Day Afternoon. Centering the women in it, and proving both from within the celluloid and from outside of it why they deserve to be there.