rogers

Tom Hanks (Finalized)

<div class="at-above-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/reviews/marielle-heller-deserves-oscar-therapeutic-beautiful-day-neighborhood/"></div>A friend once told me his theory that any exchange between two people will often take one of two modes: interview or therapy. The interview type is more common, consisting of lightweight, getting-to-know-you questions you’d trade at a cocktail party or coffee meeting. It takes time for a pair of conversationalists to reach therapy stage, and when a pair does fall into it prematurely — say, on an exceptionally intimate first date — it’s always a happy surprise. A sign you’ve found someone special.
There’s a way of viewing A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood as proof of this rule. It’s a movie about a magazine interview that turns into a lesson in empathy, making it a heart-warmer and well-timed balm with a homespun quality that’s hugely endearing.
The movie, expertly directed by Marielle Heller, is on one level a portrait of Mr. Rogers, the beloved children’s show host. It’s framed, in that age-old trope, by an interview with a journalist — in this case, an embittered Esquire reporter named Lloyd Vogel, played by Matthew Rhys. (The story was inspired by a real-life 1998 profile of Mr. Rogers penned by Esquire writer Tom Junod.) In the film, Lloyd takes a series of meetings with Mr. Rogers in which he probes — and to an extent impugns — his interview subject’s preternatural patience and virtue. He’s a skeptic and a cynic, serving as both a foil for Mr. Rogers and an extension of a sour-grapes 2019 audience.
But the interview, and the movie, slowly turn. As Mr. Rogers breaks down Lloyd’s walls, the film becomes more like cinematic therapy — which is to say, more like an episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. The film is even bookended with Mr. Rogers, played by Tom Hanks, acting out a fake episode of the show in which he tells us about his friend Lloyd, a man who’s “having a hard time forgiving.” Sometimes, Mr. Rogers explains, it’s even more difficult to forgive a person we love.
This person turns out to be Lloyd’s father, Jerry (Chris Cooper), a deadbeat and alcoholic attempting to reconcile with Lloyd after many years estranged. The two get into a fistfight upon their initial reunion, compelling Lloyd to wear a black eye to his first meeting with Mr. Rogers. Lloyd also has a newborn baby, a tiny thing he’s only just figuring out how to be responsible for and doesn’t want his dad anywhere near. It’s serendipity that his profile assignment should occur right then: Lloyd could clearly use some help figuring out how to be caring father, and what to do with the mad that he feels in the meantime.
Heller’s third feature, Beautiful Day establishes her niche: stories about real people and their messy eccentricities. Her 2015 debut The Diary of a Teenage Girl was an electrifying coming-of-age based on a cartoonist’s semi-autobiographical graphic novel; her follow-up came last year with the awards-friendly Can You Ever Forgive Me? about the late literary forger and Manhattan crank Lee Israel. Both of those earlier films center on a self-diagnosed odd duck, an outsider searching for a way to express herself in the world. Lloyd too positions himself on the outside; an early scene finds him addressing a roomful of fancy writers as his “fellow misfits” who get to “change a broken world with our words.” But in the end, it’s Mr. Rogers who feels like the movie’s real oddity, a cipher who’s always our neighbor but never our friend.
The best way to access Mr. Rogers, the movie seems to say, is through his creativity. Similar to Diary, in which Heller embellishes the screen with cartoons and illustration, Beautiful Day frequently interweaves shots of the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, reminding us that charm and fancy aren’t incompatible with the gritty world Lloyd inhabits. Traversing the city with Mr. Rogers, in fact, is rather like entering a fantasy world: His presence might inspire a bustling restaurant to grow silent for a full minute, or a subway full of strangers to burst into song. Lloyd’s character arc, in which these moments serve as beats, is highly legible: from spite to empathy, rage to forgiveness. Mr. Rogers is more complex — and Heller wisely declines to diagnose or distill him. Instead, she makes him human. He may be the superman of intent listening, but he isn’t untouchable, and we shouldn’t treat him that way.
Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood is for kids, obviously. But its lessons and sincerity don’t have to be, and the brilliance of Beautiful Day is how it infuses Mr. Rogers’ heuristic into a movie that still feels tasteful and adult. This is trickier than it sounds, and few could pull it off with as much grace and emotional intelligence as Heller. Last year, as Can You Ever Forgive Me? built up awards momentum, somewhere down the line the conversation served away from Heller, focusing instead on the fantastic dual performances from Richard E. Grant and Melissa McCarthy. To look past Heller this time around would be a great disservice. The insight she delivers through her work is gentle rather than jaw-dropping, but it’s still boldly therapeutic — not unlike a certain extraordinary-ordinary neighbor.
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Image courtesy of the Toronto International Film Festival.
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Marielle Heller Deserves an Oscar Nomination for the Therapeutic A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Marielle Heller Deserves an Oscar Nomination for the Therapeutic A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

natalia-portman

<div class="at-above-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/reviews/pop-mythos-meets-terrorism-vox-lux/"></div>While audiences across America belted the lyrics to “Shallow” alongside Lady Gaga’s fledgling rocker-chick Ally, a very different image of pop stardom opened to mixed reviews. Brady Corbet’s Vox Lux, the new pop freak-out film, offers a yin to A Star is Born’s yang. Velvety and at times vulgar, Vox Lux contains a startling blend of stylistic elements, marrying impressionism and bombast with allegory. It succeeds in spinning an audacious and provocative pop tale, and one that, incidentally, stands in opposition to the mushy earworm of a moral offered up in A Star is Born.
At the center of Vox Lux’s universe is Celeste — as with Ally, the single name is a seal of pop repute — who early in the film survives a mass shooting that leaves a bullet lodged in her neck. While her Staten Island community grieves, young Celeste (played by Raffey Cassidy) collaborates with her elder sister to produce an uplifting song that soon goes viral, catapulting her to fame. The dawn of Celeste’s stardom transpires over several years leading up to September 11, 2001 and comprises the first half of the film. We then flash forward to 2017, where we find an older Celeste (a ferocious Natalie Portman) as a full-blown pop star, yet one who&#8217;s mangled by vanity and addiction. Unfolding over the course of one day, the film&#8217;s latter half follows Celeste preparing for the launch of her new album, called Vox Lux. She’s had some rough years — rehab, tabloid scandals, a lawsuit — and her team hopes her new tunes will represent something of a reformation.
Like Corbet’s first feature, the 2014 Sartrean character study The Childhood of Leader, Vox Lux is interested in probing the complex origins of someone who will go on to wield cosmic influence. As a teen recovering from her injuries after the shooting, Celeste is willowy with an opaque expression. After her runaway hit song, she takes on an uncouth agent (Jude Law) and begins to shop herself around to managers. She practices dance routines and goes out clubbing with her sister. Though her past trauma is mentioned only in passing, she can’t fully escape it: the bullet embedded in her neck has left a long keloid scar that she conceals beneath turtlenecks and thick ribbon chokers, each of which inspire the uneasy feeling that, if someone were to untie them, her head would topple off.
Corbet maintains a certain distance between the audience and Celeste. Voiceover narration from Willem Dafoe fills gaps in Celeste’s story with a removed, fairy-tale tone. “In the beginning, she was kind and full of grace,” Dafoe says, by way of introduction. From the start, Celeste seems special, exceptional in an enigmatic way, demonstrating preternatural insight and composure. When the school shooter enters her classroom, Celeste is the sole student who attempts to negotiate with him; and later, when dealing with her manager and agent, she manifests business drive and maturity beyond her years. Corbet leaves us wondering whether these distinguishing qualities are good or bad — warm and admirable or cold and worrisome. Either way, she’s a shimmering standout.
The effect of all this is to give Celeste a mythic quality, to leave us projecting things onto her and wondering whether they’re true. This is similar to the way we treat celebrities in real life: playing pretend friend or armchair therapist, beholding and interpreting their lives from afar. Corbet understands that, in America, playing make-believe with famous people is an essential game. It provides a respite from reality. “That’s what I love about pop music,” Celeste articulates at one point. “I don’t want people to think too hard.” Pop stardom may prove painful for Celeste, shaping her into a lonely and egocentric monster, but it also allows her a release from her past traumas.
There’s an even darker side to this fame game, one that Corbet conveys by aligning Celeste’s celebrity with mass violence. Along with the shooting that caused her rise to stardom, the September 11 attacks oddly align with a pivotal night in Celeste’s life. Her subsequent loss of innocence mirrors that of the nation. And when, on the day of her album release, still another brutal attack becomes linked to Celeste, the reciprocality of celebrity and terrorism — and the tendency of both to scandalize and stir up the media — is thrown into sharp relief.
Like messed-up megastar twins, Ally and Celeste both arrive in an American era in which shallow celebrity literally reigns. Yet the characters couldn’t present starker interpretations of contemporary pop stardom. The polished punk Ally is a naturalistic vision, unsullied by hair dye or cosmetic surgery (her big schnoz is the subject of limitless interest). When Cooper’s lame-duck country star Jackson Maine makes Ally his muse, he’s drawn to her aura of realness, believing that it will transmute into an authentic musical message. “If you don’t tell the truth out there, you’re fucked,” he advises Ally before a big show. “If you don’t dig deep into your fuckin’ soul, you won’t have legs.”
In Vox Lux, Corbet envisions a young woman who begins her journey literally without legs — bedridden and wobbly after trauma leaves her nearly paralyzed. Pop music, in which she finds diverting solace, serves as her anesthetic, giving her legs while giving her life. Celeste may grow into a colossal, thrashing presence, endlessly bratty, motor-mouthed and impossible to contain, bedazzled with gems and swathed in metallic latex, but she’s also other-worldly, an unrepentant escapist invention.
The film’s final scene is a lengthy spectacle, playing out Celeste’s Vox Lux debut concert performance for far longer than most movies would dare. We watch as she performs song after song, each nearly in full, before an arena of fans who shriek and grin. Like them, we’re both dazzled and numbed.
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Pop Mythos Meets Terrorism in Vox Lux

Pop Mythos Meets Terrorism in Vox Lux

wild-honey-pie-jemima-kirke

4-22-winkelman-kirke

<div class="at-above-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/interviews/probing-gray-area-jemima-kirke/"></div>Jemima Kirke isn’t shy about sharing her opinion. When I meet the London-born actor and artist at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, she is busy promoting the premiere of her zany new relationship comedy Wild Honey Pie!, one of several films she has in the festival pipeline this spring. But it doesn’t take long for Kirke to detour toward a more contentious topic: how the #MeToo movement contributes to a culture of censorship and silencing.
Kirke became a public persona somewhat begrudgingly back in 2011, when she agreed to star in a progressive HBO series called Girlsat the behest of her longtime friend Lena Dunham. Nearly instantly, the show enthroned Kirke (who plays Jessa) and her band of bohemian Brooklynites as millennial royalty. Since then, Kirke has put down tangled roots across the art world — working by turns as an actor, painter, and video girl for a varied slate of singers including Zayn Malik, Alex Cameron, and Mick Jagger. 
In Wild Honey Pie! Kirke brings her trademark tattoos and unfettered creative energy to the role of Gillian, a restless playwright who teams up with her dweeby husband to stage a Shakespeare festival on the Welsh seaside. Written and directed by Jamie Adams, the chatty indie proves a natural fit for Kirke, who renders her roles so organically that it’s easy to conflate her chaotic onscreen presence with her personality in real life. Instead, the Kirke seated before me in red platforms and a denim jumpsuit meditates on her work and our feminist moment with clear-eyed composure and shrewd critical conviction. But fortunately, impropriety peeks through the poise — the free spirited Brit slips more than one “fuck” into the brief exchange.
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Gillian seems like such a fitting character for you — she’s an artist, and she’s so unapologetic. What drew you to the role, and how did you go about bringing her to life?
It’s funny, I didn’t even realize who she was until I saw the finished thing, because I was just taking each moment and each scenario and doing with it what I thought should be done with it. And I realize that’s a testament to Jamie’s vision. What we’ve ended up with is a real oddball person. She’s the loudest person in the room — not in volume — and she’s a bit childish. But I always thought of her as quite scholarly. She is very smart. I know where she went to school and all those things, and I know that she’s read every Shakespeare play but she hates Shakespeare. She’s just one of those people who offers her opinion on something before she’s even been asked, or before she even knows what she wants to say, and that’s how I am sometimes as well. I respect this about people. I think it’s okay to say something that you don’t necessarily always stand by. We’re just figuring it out — what we think and what we mean and what our opinions are. This is one of the reasons I’m disappointed in this scolding culture we’re in. Everyone having to be completely married to every word they’ve said I think is unfair and is kind of inhumane. You can change your mind. Smart people change their mind.
There also seems to be a fear right now of a kind of groupthink, or being held to prescribed ideas without space for nuance.
The most basic way I can explain it is religion. If you believe something collectively as a group, and there’s no exceptions to that rule or that belief, then that’s a sort of religion. And if there’s no such thing as a gray area then there’s no conversation. I believe in talking about things and intellectualizing things — and I know it’s not always about that, but I don’t know why people today are so black and white about things. It’s odd to me, and it’s scary. It is really scary that we’re being silenced. This is one of the things I love about Lena [Dunham]. Lena is not fit for this world right now. Like she’s just not a good fit. Because she says what she’s thinking about and what she’s exploring, and she hasn’t necessarily thought it all through yet. We’ve chosen Lena as our go-to person to sort of hate, to see what her opinions are and then tear them down. Everyone’s upset with her for constantly apologizing, and I’m like, well why can’t she take something back? I mean, I’m upset that she keeps apologizing. I don&#8217;t think she fucking should. But I don&#8217;t think it’s a flaw to change your mind and say, “yeah, that was wrong.”
Especially today, when paradigms are shifting so quickly, it seems right to take this as an educational moment.
Exactly. No matter how principled you are, no matter how many rules you have, no matter how steadfast your beliefs are, if you don’t make room for gray areas or exceptions, then you are no better than a religious freak. There are exceptions and there are angles. And there are many angles.
In the film, one of my favorite scenes is when your character goes to give her husband a blow job and he stops her. That kind of impotence or reluctance in a man — with the woman being the more desiring one — isn’t something you see in movies very much.
That was all Jamie’s writing. One thing I love about Jamie is he’s so specific with the details of the characters and of the story. Like the fact that they started a Shakespeare festival, and that he’s a DJ, and that the husband doesn’t like sex. I’m like, how did you think of this? And I love it. I think the most interesting stories are the ones with the most specifics. Somehow the more specific you get, the more reachable it is. For everything — a piece of writing, or a movie — when something’s general it doesn’t affect us. If you’re thinking of a Diane Arbus picture and the details in it, those things make it so accessible to us. But if you’re taking a picture of just a still life without a perspective or angle on it, we can’t relate.
It feels more true to life or authentic somehow.
Yes, because our lives are so contradictory and so strange. And that leads back to what we were saying before — that you can have contradicting beliefs and that’s okay. You can have things in your life that make you hypocritical. No one’s allowed to have two things be true at the same time anymore, two opposing things. Like that you can be a feminist and also not be part of this #MeToo movement.
You’ve also explored some of that in your painting. Your most recent series seemed to really grapple with conflicting feelings toward marriage. Is that something you see as a throughline in your work?
That’s funny, I hadn’t thought of that with the paintings. But yes, I think what was interesting to me about that project was the beauty of the dress and the commissioned style, but also having a sense of humor. I have an angle on it that is a little bit cynical. The irony of a white dress, the irony of a wedding itself is a little insane to me. If we’re going to call people hypocrites, I’d love to call out weddings. And I have no problem with them. I fucking love a wedding. I have no problem even with marrying someone that you know you won’t be with forever. I think people don’t want to admit that they are feminists but they bought into the white dress, and the role of husband and wife, and the father giving you off to your new man. It’s okay that we want to do that. But let’s acknowledge that we’re human and that we bought into it.
What’s next for you — painting, acting?
Both. I just want to keep making stuff. I don&#8217;t know where that will go. I always think of Laurie Anderson. I try to remember people like that and tell myself, you can do whatever you want. It might not make you money, and it might not be very good, but you can.
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Probing the Gray Area with Jemima Kirke

winkelman-bold-type

<div class="at-above-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/reviews/bold-type-rise-female-mentor/"></div>In the 1988 comedy Working Girl, Tess (played by Melanie Griffith), sporting the requisite teased hair and shoulder pads, works as a secretary for Katherine (Sigourney Weaver), who soon into the film steals one of Tess’s ideas and passes it off as her own. By the end, Katherine has been ousted — the villainous harridan defeated — and Tess, newly promoted to Katherine’s position, earns her own secretary. The final scene finds Tess instructing this newly appointed female underling to abandon conventions of deference. Instead, they will collaborate as colleagues. The movie has other dramatic plotlines, but this finale establishes the film’s message as one of working women solidarity: out with the severe lady bosses, in with the compassionate mentors.
That was 30 years ago. But somehow, the prototype of the malicious, self-serving female overseer has prevailed, from The Devil Wears Prada to TV Land’s Younger. Even as onscreen workplaces become more gender-balanced, it is unusual to see women under the supportive tutelage of other women. The Bold Type, the recently-renewed series on Freeform, has deliberately and overtly shattered the ice lady paradigm: a group of ambitious young women find themselves under the benevolent eye of Jacqueline, the tough but constructive Editor-in-Chief of Scarlet, the lifestyle magazine where they all work.
Strutting similar grounds as the ‘80s “career girls” of Working Girl and, of course, the ‘90s feminist third-wavers of Sex and the City, the three leading women of The Bold Type are best friends in their mid-twenties navigating work, friendship, and dating in the big city. Except this time, they all work at Scarlet (a Cosmopolitan stand-in) on separate teams: Jane (Katie Stevens) is a writer, Sutton (Meghann Fahy), a fashion assistant, and Kat (Aisha Dee), the social media manager.
Often written off as girly pulp, The Bold Type has nonetheless developed a certain popularity among its target female millennial viewership. The appeal is understandable; the storylines pivot on issues of identity — gender, class, sexual orientation — that are particularly impactful for younger generations. The show also radiates a go-girl vitality, amplified by the pop music soundscape and clever dialogue. Because their camaraderie extends outside the workplace, the three friends are able to harmonize their individualistic career drives with a sense of team spirit and mutual support. As a result, each episode succeeds in arousing an energy that is genuinely, if flimsily, unifying and empowering — like Hailee Steinfeld’s pop anthem “Love Myself” or a “The Future is Female” tank top.
Realism is lacking in certain respects — the hair and clothing on all of the characters are as flawless and lavish as you’d find in any Gossip Girl episode — but the show’s depiction of working at a publication is actually more accurate than most. There are discussions about balancing stories of substance (political op-eds) and ones that get the most clicks (getting a butt facial), what keywords are best for SEO and social media, how to find a story angle, how to perfect a pitch. The series title is, of course, a double entendre, but it demonstrates the crucial role that journalism plays in the women’s lives.
Which brings us to the show’s most radical character: the magazine’s Editor in Chief, Jacqueline, played by small screen staple Melora Hardin. Overseeing the work of each of the three women, Jacqueline commands respect and expects excellent output while acting as a kind of mother hen to the threesome. Though she has her own giant, glass-paned office, Jacqueline is most often seen stomping the floors of Scarlet in her stilettos supervising the daily mayhem as she ticks off to-do items to her high-strung male assistant trailing behind.
Like any adept employer, Jacqueline maintains a balance of sympathy and rigor, dialing up one or the other as needed. She’s also, like Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly, the top dog at a leading lifestyle magazine, and though she has little of Miranda’s ruthlessness, Jacqueline does prove equally chic, savvy, and tireless. She can be bossy, but less like an actual boss and more like a professor or parent. She has a radar for the distinct ways in which Jane, Sutton, and Kat operate, and with that insight seeks to push them, guide them, and impart her own knowledge upon them. In other words, Jacqueline’s no devil, but she’s not really an angel either. She’s the mentor who wears Prada.
With Jane, Jacqueline takes on the most overtly maternal role. At the series start, Jacqueline has just fulfilled Jane’s lifelong dream by promoting her to staff writer, the role in which Jacqueline herself started out. The most idealistic and ingenuous of the bunch (her nickname isn’t “Tiny Jane” only because she’s short), Jane grew obsessed with Scarlet when she was young after losing her mother to breast cancer. The magazine became Jane’s proxy matriarch, and now with Scarlet as her workplace and Jacqueline as her editor, Jane has managed to make the figurative relationship literal.
In a pivotal scene, Jacqueline invites Jane to her apartment after Jane publicly explodes at her in the office. The fight occurred because Jacqueline was pushing Jane to write about BRCA testing for young women, though unbeknownst to Jacqueline, Jane’s mother had been BRCA-positive. Arriving at Jacqueline’s apartment, Jane thinks she’s about to get fired. Instead, she is greeted by a fluffy, white dog alongside Jacqueline’s husband, who welcomes Jane in with the friendliest British accent you can imagine. Seeing Jacqueline outside of work — as a real person with an apartment, family, pet, Moroccan rugs — leaves Jane dumbfounded. Slowly, as Jacqueline tells Jane about her children, her cello lessons, and her Cambodian cooking hobby, the true incentive for summoning Jane becomes clear: she knows that sharing her personal life will help Jane grow more comfortable being vulnerable not only with Jacqueline, but also in her writing.
The centrality of Scarlet in Jane, Sutton, and Kat’s lives underscores the importance of Jacqueline’s affection. Days and many nights are spent in the Scarlet offices, working or just drinking wine and hanging out. When they need to gab in private, the friends retreat to the extravagant fashion closet — an intimate room cluttered with thousands of dollars worth of apparel and jewelry. Kat and Sutton may be more clear-headed than Jane about their relationship to the magazine and may require less hand-holding from Jacqueline, but, cloying as it may seem, Scarlet is still their home.
This cutesiness — the seeming cliché — is calculated. The extremity of Jacqueline’s protective, instructive nature highlights the actual lack of this type of female mentorship onscreen, not to mention in real life. As I and many other watchers of The Bold Type are sorely aware, there still exists an entrenched sense of competition among women in work environments, presumably due to our understanding that there may be a paucity of jobs available to us at any given company. It’s inexpedient to forge female work friendships, we are taught to believe, if there’s only room for one woman at the table. Characters like Jacqueline are rare and valuable, because they teach women that helping one another isn’t dangerous; it’s fruitful and rewarding.
And, though the showrunners couldn’t have known it during development (but perhaps not coincidental to the show’s renewal), The Bold Type has arrived at an especially emboldening time for women in the workplace. Misconduct magnates are toppling at record pace, and in their wake, power matrixes are shifting to accommodate fairer distributions of authority. As we continue to question the types of workplace relationships we want to foster, The Bold Type will be a valuable asset for any working girl.
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The Bold Type and the Rise of the Female Mentor

The Bold Type and the Rise of the Female Mentor

Natalia&nbsp;Winkelman&nbsp;is a writer based in Brooklyn. You can find her on Twitter at @nataliawinke&nbsp;and her work at&nbsp;<a href="http://nataliawinkelman.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">nataliawinkelman.com</a>.

Natalia Winkelman