are you stupid? & other questions movies have asked me recently
the entity wants you to think you're stupid
Stupid? Or is it slow? Maybe it’s…useless?
Is this a quote from Sabrina Carpenter’s new single, or from the directors of the movies I’ve watched recently, trying to clock my intelligence? It certainly feels like the latter! Allow me to complain explain.
A ‘Final Reckoning’ With My Own Intelligence
When it comes to movies, I like to think I’m the opposite of stupid; in fact, I’m a pleasure to have in class. And by that, I mostly mean that I love to do my homework. There’s simply nothing I enjoy more than an excuse to binge a bunch of previous installments in a series just so I can watch the latest one and get it. Case in point: I just watched 28 Days Later, and 28 Weeks Later is next on the list. (Ralph Fiennes, I will not let you down! Not like the Academy did!)
The most recent unit of my at-home film school curriculum was the Mission: Impossible franchise, which I went into with…some degree of hesitation. I watched the first Mission: Impossible a couple of years ago, and my general takeaway from the movie was “what the fuck just happened?”
Now, that was a few years ago, and I’ll be the first to say that I might enjoy Mission: Impossible more on rewatch. It’s a De Palma movie, for christ’s sake! But there’s only so much time in a day, and Final Reckoning’s release was nigh, so I decided to skip ahead to Mission: Impossible II and catch up on the series from there.
This isn’t a review of all of the entire Mission: Impossible franchise, but I’ll sum up my two main thoughts below, just for posterity:
Mission: Impossible III is criminally underrated, and I say that as someone with a deeply personal grudge against J.J. Abrams.
They should have put the Henry-Cavill-arm-gun-cocking sound effect from the Mission: Impossible – Fallout trailer in the actual movie. It is unfathomable to me that they didn’t.
My homework done, I went into Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning hoping to have some fun and, ideally, not be treated like a complete and utter buffoon. An unreasonable expectation for a date, perhaps, but not for a movie. Or so I thought.
Alas! There I sat, M&Ms box in-hand, as Final Reckoning beat me over the head with flashbacks and exposition about…all of the previous movies in the series. As happy as I was to see my beloved, enigmatic Rabbit’s Foot — one of cinema’s greatest, dumbest MacGuffins — I was less than thrilled to sit through repeated reminders of everything I had just watched in the lead up to this franchise’s big finale. I did my homework, and the movie punished me for it. It punished me for it for AN HOUR.
This patronizing commitment to spoon feeding the audience all of the context they could possibly need is especially frustrating because of what we could have had instead. In my opinion, the best parts of the Mission: Impossible movies are the extravagant set pieces; the car chase through Paris, the aerial motorcycle duel, the Vienna opera house. THE VIENNA OPERA HOUSE. Instead of pulling out all the stops for the grand finale, we get a glimpse of London as Ethan Hunt does his trademark sprint against the clock. And then it’s back to another room for more chitchat about missions impossible past!
Don’t get me wrong, the Sevastopol submarine sequence is pretty damn incredible, and by the time Ethan Hunt was clinging to the outside of a biplane and maniacally breaking a man’s arm, I was fully locked in. But it takes over an hour to get to the Sevastopol, and the plane sequence doesn’t happen until the climax of the film. That’s a whole lot of time to spend making the audience feel like idiots.
‘Bring Her Back’ to Before She Saw This Movie
While Final Reckoning is certainly guilty of making me feel stupid, I can cut it some slack. After all, it’s the final installment in an eight-movie series, and it’s trying to appeal to as wide an audience as possible; perhaps it can be forgiven for a bit of hand-holding.
Which brings me to a much worse offender: Bring Her Back, the newest film from the Philippou brothers following their breakout debut feature, Talk to Me. Unlike Final Reckoning, Bring Her Back is definitely not trying to appeal to a broad audience. This one is for the sickos (affectionate) — which is perfectly fine! If anything, you’d expect a grisly, disturbing horror movie to have at least a modicum of trust and respect for its audience.
Alas, again! There I sat, again, as a movie looked me up and down and clocked me as an idiot. (This time was worse, because not only did I not have a box of M&Ms, but there was no Ethan Hunt clinging to a biplane to save the movie.)
I have a lot of issues with Bring Her Back, most of which revolve around its clear preference for style over substance. Let it be known that I am not such a snob as to always need substance to prevail:
…but if your movie is just a flimsy plot that basically only exists to create situations where you can indulge in ultra violence for the sake of shock value…well, ok. The Philippou brothers definitely have a distinct vision and directorial flair, but I fear a few cool camera tricks do not a movie make.
Anyway, I digress. Here’s an example of how Bring Her Back thinks I’m stupid, along with the rest of the audience. (Minor spoiler warning — feel free to skip ahead to the divider!)
At one point, foster mom Laura visits our young protagonist, Andy, in the hospital. She brings him his “favorite body spray,” ostensibly a gift from his step-sister, Piper, and places it in clear view right next to his bed. Later, we see Laura use the body spray as a means of impersonating Andy to trick Piper, who is visually impaired. So, yes, the entire point of her bringing the body spray to the hospital, announcing it to Andy, and placing it directly in frame is so that we recognize it as “his favorite body spray” a few scenes later.
This tendency to over-explain is extra annoying because there are so many elements of Bring Her Back that I would have liked some clear explanations and answers about. Such as, I don’t know…literally ANYTHING about the ritual that Laura is trying to perform? Where did she get the instructional videos? Who are the people in them? Is she part of a cult? Are there any consequences if she fails to complete the ritual? Unfortunately, the Philippou brothers are seemingly more interested in repeated displays of dental horror to engage with any of these questions.
But god forbid you wonder where Laura got the body spray from!
Save Me, Michael Clayton…
One of my favorite movie podcasts is The Big Picture, and this year, they launched a new series ranking the 25 best movies of the century. In March, they ranked Michael Clayton — a movie I had at that point only vaguely heard of — at number 25. Upon asking around and learning that it’s a staple of my beloved genre of Dad Movies, I moved it to the top of my watchlist.
And thank god I did. At a time when other movies were asking me if I was stupid, here are some questions that Michael Clayton asked me:
Are you paying attention?
Can rationality and irrationality coexist?
Can you exist morally in an immoral system?
No, really — are you paying attention?
The best example of Michael Clayton trusting its audience is the significance of Realm & Conquest, a fictional book that Michael’s son, Henry, is obsessed with. Henry is constantly asking his dad to read the book, describing it as a tale of treachery and betrayal: “it's just completely, like, everybody for themselves.”
Henry ends up on the phone with Arthur, one of Michael’s colleagues who is experiencing a manic episode and questioning his role as the defense attorney of an agricultural conglomerate, U-North. Henry tells Arthur about Realm & Conquest, and in his irrational state, Arthur sees the themes of the book as a spiritual sign that he should continue his crusade against U-North.
Later, while investigating in Arthur’s apartment, Michael finds a copy of Realm & Conquest — presumably given to Arthur by Henry. We watch as Michael flips through the book, lingering on a page with an illustration of three horses on a hill. We spend just a moment looking at this illustration before Michael snaps the book shut, caught mid-investigation by the police.
If you’ve seen Michael Clayton, you know that the movie begins with — and circles back to, in its nonlinear narrative — a scene where Michael gets out of his car to approach three horses on a hillside. Three horses that we’ll glimpse briefly in a book an hour later. Three horses that represent Michael’s tenuous bonds with his son and with Arthur. Three horses that are the only reason Michael avoids certain death, as his car explodes mere moments after he steps out of it to walk up the hill.
All of this, and more, is left open to the interpretation of the audience of Michael Clayton. There is no exposition about the meaning of the horses in Realm & Conquest, or the significance of the book in general. There’s no scene where Michael looks the audience right in the eye and says, “Whew! I’m sure glad those horses reminded me of my son and that book he loves — otherwise I might have blown up!”
Because the movie Michael Clayton does not think I’m stupid. And neither does the character Michael Clayton. At least, that’s what I’d like to believe.
Anyway, welcome to Girl at the Movies.