Marriage and the Family

February 21, 2009
Posted by Jay Livingston

(Last movie post before the Oscars on Sunday night).

In rituals, a group presents an idealized version of itself. Consequently, movies about weddings often contrast this ideal version with the less-than-ideal reality of the family. Thomas Vinterberg’s Celebration (Denmark) is a particularly grim example. Rachel Getting Married does something similar in upscale Connecticut (it was shot in Fairfield). But Rachel Getting Married hardly seems like an American movie. It’s not just that nobody blows up a helicopter. There’s not much that we would call plot. Nobody’s trying to accomplish something or overcome some internal or external obstacle or solve some problem or find the right lover. There’s nobody to root for.

 Instead, Rachel Getting Married unfolds the relationships within a family – mostly two sisters and a father. Rachel is the good girl, sensible and stable. Kym (Anne Hathaway, nominated for an Oscar) is beautiful, narcissistic, destructive, and self-destructive. Kym gets furloughed from rehab to go to Rachel’s wedding. The family revisit old and current conflicts and emotions, especially those surrounding the death of their baby brother Ethan ten or so years earlier. (Kym, age 16 and high on Percocet, driving Ethan home, lost control of the car, drove into a lake, and Ethan drowned.) Rachel gets married (in a much too long wedding scene), and Kym goes back to rehab. That’s it, more or less – two sisters, a past, a wedding, and not much plot.

I kept worrying that the film would have Kym try to seduce Rachel’s fiancé, but mercifully it stayed away from such Hollywood cliches. In fact, the traditional plot elements, such as they are, weaken the film. For example, the movie flirts with the theme of the 800-pound family secret – the one that everyone spends a lot of energy pretending not to see until it becomes unavoidable. (A previous post on this theme is here.) Have they not talked about the death of Ethan many times before? It flirts also with the pop-psych idea that if the characters can just discover or admit what really happened on that fateful day, all will be resolved. In this case, it turns out that it’s all Mom’s fault. But the film would be better if it weren’t so heavy-handed about this and just let Mom’s character – cold, selfish – unfold without making it the Answer. 

Still, this is a movie well worth seeing.

Police Intelligence - One MO Time

February 20, 2009
Posted by Jay Livingston

Jenn Lena links to this BBC story about cops in Northern Ireland and the mysterious and ubiquitous driver, Prawo Jazdy, who was ticketed all over the country.


There are a couple of sociological aspects here. The economic expansion in the Republic of Ireland, which created lots of jobs, drew many Poles (with their prawo jazdys). Apparently that spilled over into Northern Ireland as well. Now that the Celtic Tiger isn’t roaring, many of these immigrants are returning to Poland.

The story is also a reflection on the parochialism of the police, so here’s my anecdote. When I was in college, I rode into Cambridge one day with a friend from St. Louis. He had a VW with Missouri plates. When we came back to the car, the parking meter had expired, and there was a ticket on the windshield. He handed it to me and said, “Throw it away.”

“But they’ll write to your state’s DMV and track you down.” (This was pre-Internet, pre 2-letter postal code.)

“Look,” he said, taking the ticket and pointing to the box marked “state” next to the box for the license number. The cop had written “MISS.” Any tracking inquiries would get sent to Mississippi.

“They always do it,” he said, crumpling the ticket and tossing it into the trash can.

Innocents Abroad

February 18, 2009
Posted by Jay Livingston

And speaking of stereotypes in movies, Penelope Cruz is nominated for an Oscar for her role in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. She’s a wild artist – hot-tempered, passionate, impulsive, sexy, sensual, dangerous – oh those Spaniards, those Latin types.

The movie is based on the stereotypical contrast between Americans and Europeans, and when it comes to love, it’s like soccer – the Americans don’t really know what they are doing, while the Europeans are on very familiar turf.

Two American girls in Spain – Vicky (Rebecca Hall) is sensible and careful, engaged to a good prospect; Cristina (Scarlett Johanssen) is more daring. But neither seems capable of any depth in a relationship. Sex yes (at least for Cristina) but no passion. They don’t know what they want. They don’t even know what they can want.

The other Americans, the older couple the girls are staying with, have a marriage that is emotionally empty. The woman is disappointed, unfulfilled, stuck with a husband who seems to care only about business and golf. (It’s pretty clear that he represents what Vicky’s fiancé will become.)

Then the girls meet Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), and they both eventually wind up sleeping with him – first Cristina, who moves in with him, then Vicky, who now understands genuine passionate involvement, even if it is fleeting.

Penelope Cruz is Juan Antonio’s ex-wife. She enters the picture about halfway through, and their tempestuous relationship becomes the center of the film. She’s crazy – she has tried to kill Juan Antonio and she has tried to kill herself – and Cruz’s performance is appropriately and hilariously over the top (do they give Oscars for this sort of thing?). But the point is that even though the Spaniards are crazy in their passions, they are still aware of their own feelings in a way that the Americans are not.

I said that the basis of the movie was the contrast between Americans and Europeans. The other basis for the movie is Truffaut, especially “Jules and Jim– friends who love the same person yet remain friends. The parallels to Truffaut are obvious if sometimes annoying – the extensive use of a narrator, the impulsive, dangerous woman who looks good in men’s hats, and probably others I missed.  (The bicycle rides on dirt roads are from an early Truffaut short, “Les Mistons.”)

A Book by Its Cover, A Movie by Its Poster

February 14, 2009
Posted by Jay Livingston

Whose Heart Is in the Right Place?


You know this movie without even seeing it, don’t you? And that may be the problem. The message in the poster is already raising hackles. The movie’s not scheduled for release until July, but Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon, knows that it’s a bad film.

Katherine Heigel[’s] . . . talents are being wasted on this shit. . . .

But obviously, this poster just about beats all. It’s the classic modern attempt to mollify women about vicious gender stereotyping

Marcotte already knows who the characters are – their motivations and the assumptions that drive the plot. She even knows how the film ends. (Duh – it’s a romantic comedy.)

Marcotte agrees with the movie’s title that the stereotype is ugly. It’s the truth part where they disagree. Of course, even if the idea in the poster were generally true, Marcotte would still object to its “vicious gender stereotyping.” Other stereotyping is O.K. It’s only this particular stereotype that outrages her. She herself has no problem stereotyping the people who go to movies like this. (“The audience for those has been whittled down to women who buy into this sexist crap, probably because they live in communities where they really don’t get much respect.”)

Lisa at Sociological Images also blogs this poster in terms of stereotypes. The trouble with stereotypes is that even when they may be generally accurate, they do not apply to all people. This poster tells us to think in terms of stereotypes. It doesn’t give us people. It gives us those universal figures that are designed explicitly not to look like real people. They’re intended to be recognizable the world over for a single characteristic – gender – so that we don’t go into the wrong rest room at the airport.

For all I know, “The Ugly Truth” may turn out to be as bad as Marcotte says. But maybe not. It might wind up giving the characters a more realistic and complicated relationship to this conflict between lust and love. (Interestingly, two recent films that used simple, monochromatic, comic-book-like drawings – “Persepolis” and “Waltzing with Bashir” – were intellectually complex and challenging.) With any luck, the characters in the movie will seem more like people than like stick figures. And we’ll get a different poster.

Happy Valentine’s Day