a fever of thyself (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sea_changed) wrote2019-01-11 01:46 pm
sea_changed) wrote2019-01-11 01:46 pm
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the favourite (2018)
I saw The Favourite last night (finally, good god); I'm finding that I'm having a hard time putting together a review of it. It was utterly wonderful, and I highly recommend it; it was genuinely funny and delightfully quirky and most of all very real. Those are the obvious things I want to say about it, and they're all extremely true, and yet, I don't feel any of my usual urge after watching a movie I love to immediately go back and watch it. There was something very difficult about it, and emotionally draining. Neither of these are negatives, or take away from my extreme love of it, but I don't think I realized the toll it was taking on me until after I got out of the theater. It turned out, after everything, that's an extraordinarily sad movie, and I'm not sure you fully realize that until the last ten minutes or so.
Some of the difficulty of watching it is easily explainable (heads up, people vomit a LOT in this movie; there's also a short and non-gory but still difficult to watch bit of animal cruelty); a lot of it is much less so. I think a lot of it hinges on its extraordinary effectiveness: all three of the women are such real people, and their relationships are deeply complex and portrayed with a delicacy and an attention that was riveting to watch. I couldn't decide who gave my favorite performance, as it changed almost scene by scene. Olivia Colman as Queen Anne captured all her difficult facets: she was pathetic and heartbreaking and ridiculous and tender and all of it cohered into a complex and finely-done portrait. Rachel Weisz as Sarah Churchill did what she did with such seamless perfection I'm not sure I can deconstruct it in a way that does it justice: she carried the whole movie on her shoulders so effortlessly that it didn't make you doubt for a moment that she could hold a country there as well. And Emma Stone as Abigail balanced the wide-eyed innocence and the serpent under it, as it were, extremely nicely: that moment of delight when you realized a machination of hers was always present, and made the ending hurt even more.
And, on a less difficult but no less complex note, the queerness of it was done wonderfully. The women's various personal, romantic, and sexual relationships were integral to the film without being ever the sole point; that is, they were integrated into the story without being the only story, in a way that you see constantly in films (etc.) involving heterosexual relationships but in my experience see more rarely in those involving gay ones. And, to add to that, I was continually delighted by the way the film treated heterosexual relationships, as well: they were almost unilaterally shown as consisting of bizarre and inexplicable rituals, from the odd dance scene between Sarah and Masham (who I definitely had to IMDb to get his name--men matter, individually, very little in this movie), to the equally bizarre fight-courtship between Abigail and Masham in the woods, the the hysterical wedding-night scene between the two of them. Heterosexuality is portrayed as unreal, removed and strange, in direct contrast to the painfully real humanity of the relationships between the women; it was excellently and fascinatingly done.
If you've seen it, I would love your thoughts; if you haven't, I highly recommend going out and watching it at once. I have a feeling I will be sitting with and processing it for a while yet.
Some of the difficulty of watching it is easily explainable (heads up, people vomit a LOT in this movie; there's also a short and non-gory but still difficult to watch bit of animal cruelty); a lot of it is much less so. I think a lot of it hinges on its extraordinary effectiveness: all three of the women are such real people, and their relationships are deeply complex and portrayed with a delicacy and an attention that was riveting to watch. I couldn't decide who gave my favorite performance, as it changed almost scene by scene. Olivia Colman as Queen Anne captured all her difficult facets: she was pathetic and heartbreaking and ridiculous and tender and all of it cohered into a complex and finely-done portrait. Rachel Weisz as Sarah Churchill did what she did with such seamless perfection I'm not sure I can deconstruct it in a way that does it justice: she carried the whole movie on her shoulders so effortlessly that it didn't make you doubt for a moment that she could hold a country there as well. And Emma Stone as Abigail balanced the wide-eyed innocence and the serpent under it, as it were, extremely nicely: that moment of delight when you realized a machination of hers was always present, and made the ending hurt even more.
And, on a less difficult but no less complex note, the queerness of it was done wonderfully. The women's various personal, romantic, and sexual relationships were integral to the film without being ever the sole point; that is, they were integrated into the story without being the only story, in a way that you see constantly in films (etc.) involving heterosexual relationships but in my experience see more rarely in those involving gay ones. And, to add to that, I was continually delighted by the way the film treated heterosexual relationships, as well: they were almost unilaterally shown as consisting of bizarre and inexplicable rituals, from the odd dance scene between Sarah and Masham (who I definitely had to IMDb to get his name--men matter, individually, very little in this movie), to the equally bizarre fight-courtship between Abigail and Masham in the woods, the the hysterical wedding-night scene between the two of them. Heterosexuality is portrayed as unreal, removed and strange, in direct contrast to the painfully real humanity of the relationships between the women; it was excellently and fascinatingly done.
If you've seen it, I would love your thoughts; if you haven't, I highly recommend going out and watching it at once. I have a feeling I will be sitting with and processing it for a while yet.
no subject
I don't have a whole lot to offer in terms of commentary but ugh I just really enjoyed how... messy and unattractive the wlw relations in it were? Even when queer women are portrayed as predatory or whatever there's still usually an overtone of Sexiness to it that isn't necessarily inherently bad (I myself enjoy sexy women on occasion) but there's really something so lost when queer women can't just be flawed and gross and strange but still authentic. Like, I know the line right now is 'we don't need tragic stories, we need femslash where everyone is good and perfect and supported and happy all the time' and while I like that occasionally it really ignores the loss that comes from erasing just... the reality that is that relationships are complicated!! In ways that aren't covered either by standard 'everyone dies, probably unloved' stories OR 'cutesey romcom but with 0 conflict' stories!
And something I really like about it is its portrayal of power dynamics. Normally, stories in which everyone is trying to grab power just exhaust me, because I don't see the appeal in power for its own sake, and too few actually bother to think about how people will be using this power. (House of Cards is a biiig offender here.) But The Favourite always knows what its characters want beyond that huge generalisation. Sarah wants political power, yes, and she enjoys being able to boss Queen Anne around, but she also seems to sincerely love her. (And I love that they did it this way - it makes it so much more interesting than if she was just totally cold-hearted and didn't care for her at all!) Abigail clearly wants power, but the reasons shift and change and don't become totally clear until the end - she wants to regain her status and noble pride, wants to protect herself against Sarah's machinations, but the end also makes clear she loves the lifestyle and gets a giddy, sometimes sadistic (holy hell though, even if nothing actually HAPPENED in that rabbit scene that was the most tense I've been in a movie in ages ;___;) joy out of being among the elite and powerful. And then the movie casts a pall on even this - in her struggle for power she's forced herself into two relationships she may not actually really enjoy, and now she has to live with the consequences of that. And in Queen Anne we see all of the best and worst of power - the privileges, yes, but also the heavy responsibility, and how easy it is to forget about that responsibility until it's too late, and to hurt people through your own cowardice, and how it makes you permanently unable to have normal relationships with other people. Not to mention of course that for all her power she was unable to fix the worst thing that has happened to her - the tragic death of so many children. And yet there's still a sense of pride, even if it's more about how she's perceived than about acting a queen in private, and just -
I dunno, I just love how complex it is and everyone is so selfish but they can also genuinely care about each other and don't always necessarily go after the things they really want most of all, and it's just... it's queer women who get to be selfish and mean and ugly but in ways unconnected to their queerness, where if anything that queerness can represent a hidden good side them?
But yeah, definitely very real and a very interesting (if often unpleasant to watch) movie!!
no subject
I think you've also hit on why I'm a little uneasy when people say this movie is about power, even though it absolutely, 100% is--because it creates characters with depth and reasons for why they want the things they want (or don't want the things they don't want, in Anne's case), and it's first and foremost about those people and their wants, which are of course intricately tied up in the balances of power at court. But the film always puts these three women first, and the film's storylines seen to grow out of them, rather then their characters being dictated by what the film is "about." (And I too am so glad that they presented Sarah's feelings for Anne as entirely real, if very complex--it added another layer to the movie that I love and appreciate.)
it's queer women who get to be selfish and mean and ugly but in ways unconnected to their queerness, where if anything that queerness can represent a hidden good side them? Oh yes, this is it entirely--they get to be people, whose queerness is integral to them (at least for Anne and Sarah) but not their defining trait. And the idea of queerness as somehow redemptive is one I love, and will definitely be thinking further about.
no subject