In the seventies, Ken was unstoppable: Women in Love, The Music Lovers, The Devils, Savage Messiah, Mahler, Tommy--all of these films are masterpieces. I would go so far as to argue no other director had a more innovative, artistic, and masterful run of movies in the seventies than he. Granted, there are a few contenders--Martin Scorsese and John Schlesinger come to mind--but not even those two could touch Ken's creativity and innovation, which is what makes the critics' vilification of him puzzling and infuriating. Roger Ebert and Pauline Kael, for instance, constantly savaged his movies, branding him "extravagant" and "eccentric." In fact, Kael said she thought Ken should have a stake driven through him for The Music Lovers. As a result of so much vitriol, Ken had increasing difficulty getting funding in the eighties and by the nineties was considered washed up, a "has been."
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| Poster for Whore |
It's worth noting Whore was released the same year as Pretty Woman, a film Russell despised for its cheesy glamorization of prostitution. Indeed, Whore does not glamorize anything about the oldest profession. It's a stark, unflinching look at the world prostitutes inhabit, the title being perhaps the most blatant aspect.
The film stars Theresa Russell (no relation to Ken) as Liz, a prostitute who is trying to escape her pimp and find a better life. The film takes place over the course of one day, giving the audience a glimpse into what her life would be like, while telling her life story through flashbacks. The entire movie is edited in rondo, much like Ken's experimental (and, to me, brilliant) film Mahler. This style works on many levels, and I was deeply moved by the contrast between where she is in the present and what happened to her in the past.
The most innovative part of this movie is the narration: Liz looks directly into the camera for much of the film, which positions Whore as probably the only feminist look at prostitutes I have seen in a movie.
In 1975, Laura Mulvey crafted the term "the male gaze" in her essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" to refer to the way women are depicted in film...and how the audience views them. She basically argues women are presented as objects of the male characters; they exist only to show the men's feelings or conflicts; they have no character of their own. She also says women are objectified by the audience, too--even if women are in the audience--because we view the women on screen just as the men in the film do. Of course, I'm oversimplifying, but for the purposes of this review, these are the most important things to take away.
bell hooks, one of America's best feminist theorists, writes of the "oppositional gaze," arguing women have the power to look back. This is exactly what Whore does so well.
Think about the representations of prostitutes we've encountered on film: Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, Shelly Long in Night Watch. These women are filmed so that we view them through Richard Gere's and Henry Winkler's eyes--indeed the eyes of everyone else in stories! They exist to be pretty, sexy, but still have hearts of gold. They are not supposed to have any value in the movie other than showing us what the male characters are going through. It's an exploitative, misogynist presentation of women and perhaps the most misogynist of all: not only are they objectifying women, but they are objectifying female characters whose existence depends on exploiting their bodies and their sexuality.
In Whore, Liz stares directly into the camera, challenging you to see her as an object. She recounts horrible stories, the most terrifying being when she accepts a customer who is in a van, only to be beaten and brutalized. In that scene, and in fact for almost all of the movie, we do not see Liz naked at all. We see her pulled behind a curtain and we hear her scream and the sounds of punches, but we don't see it. This was a subtle but provocative choice on Ken's part because it places the emphasis on the terror of the situation, not only Liz's body. Her voice narrates the scene as well, which enables Liz to have power over how we as the audience interpret the scene and makes the two men's voices completely irrelevant. This simple choice actually challenges the male gaze and puts the woman at the center of the storytelling.
The entire film is shot this way. In fact, few characters other than Liz even have any dialogue. She gradually digs farther and farther back into her past, revealing her marriage to an alcoholic abuser, how she escaped him with her little boy, and how she became a prostitute. The most moving parts of the film are definitely when she talks about how her son is in foster care. There is nothing sanitized about this presentation, which I found refreshing and quite moving.
Casting Theresa Russell was an effective choice, as well. Rather than casting someone who looks like a movie star, like Julia Roberts, Ken's choice of Theresa brings more realism to the story. Theresa was not skinny and looks like someone you might know. She also brought a brashness and edge to the character, making Liz truly seem like a woman who has a rough life--a quality that strengthens the movie.
The few qualms I have with the film undoubtedly were the consequences of the minute budget in which Ken had to operate. The music is too over the top in scenes in which Liz's violent pimp shows up, and there are a few wacky scenes in the present day portions of the movie.
One narrative problem is the fact that, at least an hour into the movie, after we have become accustomed to Liz telling her story, the pimp has a few minutes in which he talks to the camera. It felt out of place and, most important, at odds with the powerful oppositional gaze we have come to relish from Liz. Still, the pimp's dialogue is revolting and reflects just how evil and abusive he is. In a way, one could argue this brief interlude with the pimp is Ken's way of truly denouncing the male gaze: we are forced to look at Liz just as the pimp does, and it makes us queasy and guilty because we have come to see her as a person.
When Whore came out, it was given a NC-17 rating although Pretty Woman was rated R. Ken felt he was being punished for telling the truth, and he did have a point. However, Whore is about reality, and I'm not sure anyone under 17 should watch this film--not because it's shocking, and not because of nudity (of which there is little), but because the subject matter is handled so unapologetically and so blatantly. Frankly, The Wolf of Wall Street is far more explicit than Whore, but Whore's embracing of a prostitute's reality and its forcing the audience to examine their own prejudices is more unsettling than anything in The Wolf of Wall Street.
Whore has some structural issues and does feel like it was made with very little money, but it definitely has value. It is not Ken Russell's best--not by a long shot--but it is a worthy contribution to his canon.
Grade: B-
