The latest film from director Sebastian Lelio, Disobedience offers much promise, but fails ultimately to deliver in many ways. Ronit (Rachel Weisz) returns to her hometown of London after learning of the death of her father, Rav Krushka, a prominent rabbi. She stays at the home of her old friend and mentee of her father's, Dovid (Alessandro Nivola), and his wife, her old friend, Esti (Rachel McAdams). When they were much younger, Ronit, Esti, and Dovid were apparently very close, and the film gradually reveals that Ronit and Esti were once lovers. For a reason that is never revealed, Ronit left London for New York ostensibly to pursue a career as a photographer, but there was evidently some calamitous event that precipitated this decision. Eventually, as the film meanders into the second act, Ronit and Esti's former passion blossoms, leading them into a brief affair and a tumultuous climax - or, at least it builds to a climax. As to whether there is any true pathos, I'm afraid the film misses the promise of its second act. The film opens with Rav Krushka giving a sermon in a synagogue in which he discusses the importance of a relationship between a man and a woman. He collapses just as he starts getting more passionate about heterosexual relationships, signaling his imminent demise. During this prologue, I was intrigued by the introduction of the many prominent themes of the film, namely sexuality, homophobia, and Judaism. The fact that he dies while expressing these views so passionately is a metaphor for the archaic nature of such beliefs. Perhaps a bit heavy-handed, the scene does set the tone effectively for the "disobedient" behavior we're about to enjoy. After this prologue, though, the film slows considerably to the point where there is little reason to want to pay attention. The color palette is rather gloomy throughout the entire film, focusing on black, brown, and grey - no color. I suppose this choice was to underscore the gloominess of the situation, but I found it hard on the eyes. It's difficult not to compare this ashen palette with the glorious photography of Call Me By Your Name, which is without question one of the most beautifully shot films of the past twenty years. Yet, Disobedience's drab colors only reinforce the drabness of the story and characters. The only character who felt like an actual person and for whom I had at least a mild interest was Esti, played admirably by Rachel McAdams. Truly caught between two worlds, Esti is an Orthodox Jew married to a rabbi who has forced herself to deny her true sexuality and personality. Her pain felt palpable, and I empathized with her. Ronit, however, was about as fascinating as watching water boil. Her character did little besides whine, smoke, and attempt to look cool by adopting an aloof smugness. She doesn't really do anything, and I never found her motivations believable, much less clear. The daughter of a rabbi who has abandoned her religion is an appealing trope, but not executed well here at all. Equally dull is Dovid, whom the writers clearly could not decide whether to portray as a hapless goody-two-shoes or a complete dirt bag who forced a woman to marry him. Unevenly written, he's also flat-out boring. His decision in the final sequence, which I won't reveal, makes little sense given his actions up to that point of the film. There is one long, long, long sex sequence in the middle of the film in which Ronit and Esti finally fulfill their passion. It was perhaps the most graphic sex scene I have ever seen: it actually shows mutual masturbation, cunnilingus, and snowballing. Yes, snowballing. The "dribbling," let's just call it, kept going and going and going. I could hear people recoiling in the theater; as for me, let's just say I didn't touch my Coke for the rest of the movie. I'm all for sex in a movie (I'm a Ken Russell fan, for crying out loud), but this was too pornographic. It actually surpassed the infamous peach scene in Call Me By Your Name. I see no reason to depict fluids in a movie, especially so realistically. Besides grossing me out, it actually annihilated what I believe was the true intention for the sequence: to depict a beautiful moment between two women who love each other deeply and have been forced apart because of culture. I'm paraphrasing, but the late, great Australian author Colleen McCollough had a simple rule for writing sex: if you want to make it romantic, focus on the emotion; if you want to make a horror scene, focus on body functions to the most clinical detail. Although she was referring to literature, this same principle can be applied to film. The sex in Brokeback Mountain is sexy because we can't see every biological detail of Jake Gyllenhaal's and Heath Ledger's bodies; instead, we feel the palpable tension and attraction the men share. Disobedience has almost no passion, but leaves absolutely nothing physical to the imagination (and I mean nothing). The film briefly picks up in the second act when Esti is caught kissing Ronit and her life seems to spiral out of control. One old bitty tattle-tales to Esti's school where she teaches young Jewish girls, and her job appears to be in jeopardy. Her husband (and Ronit's old buddy) learns of the affair, too. For a moment, the film picks up some momentum as the conflicts explode. The film does not sustain this momentum, though, and instead piddles out into a didactic and even more boring third act. I hate being told what to think when watching a movie, and the final monologue Esti has when she asks her husband for her freedom was so on-the-nose politically that I found it underwhelming. Real people's speech is messy and imperfect; Esti's monologue is so perfect that it feels like it came straight out of a play written by an undergraduate women's studies major. I love me some girl power, but this speech was just silly and felt completely out of character. That being said, I appreciate what Lelio was trying to accomplish both in the final monologue and with the film itself, even if it bored me to tears. It's important to note how rare it is to see mainstream A-listers like Weisz and McAdams starring in a Jewish lesbian romance, and for that I give the movie a little more credit than it probably deserves. But only a little. Grade: C-
"I've had this business of anything is better than nothing. There have got to be times when nothing is better than anything." --Alex (Glenda Jackson)
Today I felt compelled to view and write about one of my (new) all-time favorite movies, Sunday Bloody Sunday. The plot of the film is simple yet provocative: Alex Greville (Glenda Jackson), a straight woman, and Daniel Hirsh (Peter Finch), a gay man, are each having an affair with the same man (Murray Head). Here is the trailer, which definitely serves the movie's themes well:
The first time I watched this film was only back in July. I was ill that day and bedridden, and, as a Glenda Jackson fan, I had checked this film out from the library on a whim. There are only a handfull of times in which I was watching a film and wished it would never end; Sunday Bloody Sunday is one of those films. The characters' lives, fears, anxieties, and frustrations are so real, so palpable, that I could not tear myself away. As soon as it was over, I grabbed my laptop and ordered myself the blu ray. Sunday Bloody Sunday is often touted as being one of the most moving films about relationships, but to me this is actually the best movie about living alone I have ever seen. In Alex and Daniel, we see two intelligent, hard-working people who have both...settled. Bob, the lover, is a shallow, self-absorbed loser in many ways. There are some who have criticized the film for having two such complex people in love with such a bozo, but I think that's the point: throughout the film, which takes place over the course of only about ten days, we see Daniel and Alex both sampling what they want from relationships--children, stability, romance--but they never quite make it there. It makes sense for them both not only to accept Bob's greedy terms--that they have to share him, essentially--but also that they fall for him. Both Alex and Daniel feel so real in this film; I identified with Alex so strongly--perhaps more than any other character in a movie--and Glenda Jackson plays her with a blend of toughness and vulnerability. (Also, the fact that Alex takes all of the books in her divorce and nothing else--and that her family is puzzled by this--felt like something I would do. I've never been married, let alone divorced, but I completely understood that one!)
The first half of the film takes place over one weekend in which we see Bob alternating between Alex and Daniel. Alex has agreed to babysit her sister's children, all FIVE of them, while the sister, her husband, and a professor all go away for the weekend. At the suggestion of her sister, Alex decides to bring Bob along for what she calls "a proper weekend." She rushes out the door when we first see her character on a Friday night, tossing her dirty coffee cup into the sink and tripping over her ashtray, which she just leaves on the floor. The children are loud as can be and almost out of control, but so very cute. The eldest, Lucy, who appears to be about 10, is the one with whom Alex identifies, as we come to see later. Watching this movie for the seventh or eighth time (I've lost count), I did catch some new things. For one, when Alex is rushing out the door, she grabs what I realized tonight were children's books and stuffs them into her bag. She seems incredibly happy when she and Bob are watching the kids together: she plays with them outside, cuddles them, and seems blissful. It is when Bob suddenly leaves, however, on Saturday evening, that we see this all fall apart. Bob leaves to go to Daniel--of whom Alex is very aware--and Alex is devastated. Later, she makes fudge for the children, but eats some of it herself, sitting alone, crying. She tries to cuddle one of her other nieces, who only wants to get back to playing. The self-imposed isolation as a result of Bob's abandoning her reinforces the fact that this dream life--house, kids, husband--is something that will forever be out of her reach. Indeed, the next day, Sunday, we see a similar fate, which Alex and Bob take the children to the park, only to have something tragic happen, which prompts Alex to have flashbacks--done most appealingly by director John Schlesinger--in which she identifies with Lucy. Also, a bit of trivia: the park scene marks the film debut of...Daniel Day-Lewis! He's about 14 years old here, playing a little punk who scratches up cars (at 1:35):
Despite her divorce, Alex still wears her wedding ring, which is a emblem of how frozen she is. She works at a job she hates and spends much of the film composing her resignation letter; she is watching children she genuinely loves but who don't belong to her; her boyfriend is involved with another man; and her parents, we see later, want her to return to her ex-husband. Yet, Alex remains a resilient character; she endures the painful journey of this film in which she learns it is possible to reject the sentimental lie about the glories of domesticity and be okay. As the quote at the beginning of this review sums up: "There are times when nothing has to be better than anything." Daniel is in a similarly trapped position. As a Jewish doctor whose family, as we learn during his nephew's Bar Mitzvah, has no idea he is gay, he seems to exist for the sake of other people. Patients call him and pop into his house frequently, and he always puts his own life aside for them. Much like Alex identifies with Lucy, Daniel is reminded of his own Bar Mitzvah, which provokes powerful memories. When he is at the nephew's party, which is nothing short of a gala, Daniel is isolated in the crowd, so to speak. His family has seated him next to a woman in the hopes he will "finally" have a girlfriend...much like Alex's sister wants her to have a weekend alone with Bob and the children. And neither situation leads to any sort of "happily ever after." This film is revolutionary in many ways, but especially in the honesty with which it portrays a gay couple. There is a passionate kiss between the two of them, one that was shocking in its day, and we see Daniel and Bob in bed a few times. One of the most significant revelations of this film is that Daniel is a man first and a gay man second. Truly, throughout the film his sexuality feels almost irrelevant; instead, the audience is invested in his feelings, struggles, and, ultimately, disappointments. In a way, Sunday Bloody Sunday may be more important to the portrayal of gay people in film than Brokeback Mountain. As I said earlier, Sunday Bloody Sunday is the best movie about living alone that I have ever seen, and I stress this because although the movie centers on the "relationship among three sensual people" (as the tagline from the 70's goes), it's really about the failure of this relationship. Daniel and Alex are isolated and alone; they never quite fit in among their families or their friends, and neither of them find any kind of "true love" by the film's end. One of my favorite scenes is when Alex returns to her apartment after being with the children all weekend. After being bombarded constantly with so much noise and chaos, she is now completely alone; her apartment is silent--uncomfortably silent. She enters and sees her dirty dishes still in the sink. She scans the room, taking in the mess and the quiet, after which she spots her turned over ashtray, picks up the cigarette butts, and rubs the ashes into the carpet with her foot while the screen fades to black. This is a powerful image to me; as an aunt who lives alone, I could fully understand the weight of emotions flooding her in that scene. It's so simple, but so relatable and real. Sunday Bloody Sunday is one of the truest films I've ever seen, which is something absent from today's movies. The only stories we ever see are what I call "man movies": comic book films, biopics about white men, or true stories about white men. I'm at a loss trying to think of a film from the past five years with a woman character half as complex as Alex Greville--or even a man half as complicated as Daniel. There are no stories (and certainly no original stories) in today's films about everyday life. Nothing. Sunday Bloody Sunday is a masterpiece. Truly, the depth of this film cannot be overstated. I have barely begun to scratch the surface of this beautiful film, despite my lengthy review. It's a beautiful, sensual, and sentient film about two people who have allowed themselves to settle. Grade: A+
