Two Cents is an original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team will program films and contribute our best, most insightful, or most creative thoughts on each film using a maximum of 200 words each. Guest writers and fan comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future entries to the column. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion.
The Pick
Nicholas Winding Refn had a mainstream hit with 2011’s Drive, and he’s never going to forgive the world for that.
The auteur behind grisly, arthouse bloodbaths including Bronson and Valhalla Rising (and also some episodes in a BBC Miss Marple series) was personally recruited by Ryan Gosling to direct the getaway driver thriller and the resulting film received adulation from Cannes and the attention of all those dudes at your gym you avoid making eye contact with, all of whom ran out to buy their own versions of the scorpion-jacket that Gosling wears.
But Drive also received harsh rebukes from many in that audience, frustrated as they were by the shocking violence, by the film’s eschewing of traditional narrative structures, and by the surrealistic flourishes that Refn peppered throughout the film. Not for nothing was the film dedicated to Alejandro Jodorowsky.
Rather than follow the playbook of other indie darlings and try to parlay his commercial success into more mainstream gigs (try to imagine Nicholas Winding Refn directing Batman. TRY.) Refn doubled down on all the things that pissed people off about Drive, and his follow-up, Only God Forgives, drew boos and fury in the same theaters where Drive had received adulation.
Refn than doubled-down AGAIN, with his next film, a poison pill Valentine to Hollywood, The Neon Demon. Starring Elle Fanning, Jena Malone, Bella Heathcote, Abbey Lee (The Dag from Fury Road!), and with appearances by Christina Hendricks and Keanu Reeves, The Neon Demon traces the journey of fledgling model Jesse (Fanning) as she tries to break into the industry. A slow motion descent into madness and mayhem, The Neon Demon sharply divided audiences again. Some saw a new masterpiece, while others saw empty provocation, a morally repulsive nightmare of nonsense.
We put it to the team to settle it once and for all (Editor’s Note: Nothing is settled, not even once).
Next Week’s Pick:
You know who’s awesome? Toshiro Mifune. This is as close to scientific fact as is possible without involving…science.
So what could be better than a documentary about him? We don’t know! So we’re going to watch Mifune: The Last Samurai, a documentary about Mifune’s life, available to watch on Netflix Instant.
Submissions can be sent to [email protected]
Our Guests
Trey Lawson:
The Neon Demon is an unconventional, visually impressive film. The cast is fine — Jena Malone in particular brings a particularly striking undercurrent of menace to her performance even in moments of friendliness. Also, Keanu Reeves is intensely creepy in the few scenes he has. That said, I didn’t much like the movie. I think the problem, in a nutshell, is that it reminds me of other films (and filmmakers) that I would have rather been watching. The deliberate, neon-lit style, especially early in the film, evokes 1980s Michael Mann. When the film shifts more explicitly into the horror genre, there are shades of 1970s/80s Dario Argento. But those references are simply that — references. Superficial affectations which belie how empty the film really is. I guess its point, such that it is, would be something about the cutthroat nature and shallowness of the modeling/entertainment industry (& LA in general), but other movies have done that better. The Neon Demon is too derivative to be experimental and yet so infused with a sense of art school pretension that it isn’t really fun on the level of genre cinema. I honestly went in wanting to like it but the result, ultimately, is a film that just leaves me wondering why I watched it. (@T_Lawson)
Derek Smith
I wanted to like this. I really did. And while I can appreciate the craftsmanship used in the filmmaking, the story told about Jesse was lackluster. I would have settled for a remake of Showgirls, but instead we got a bizarre tale with character choices that no real person would make. Beautiful images, fantastic score, but horribly written characters. (@Darathus)
The Team
Big and beautiful, but ultimately without the substance I desired from it… no, I’m not talking about Kubo, as we are following one such spectacle with yet another. While the comparisons end there, I can’t help but look at both Neon Demon and Kubo as similar exercises in fashion over function. Both are films that invest so much in construction of beautiful visuals that they are missing g so much in the way of story.
Whereas Kubo attempts to build a powerful narrative, Demon is intentionally vacuous. I could forgive this if Refn used the shallow emptiness to produce stronger ends, especially as the potential of this film is off the charts. It just severely misses fulfilling this potential and I think that’s what hurts it most for me. I’d hate it less if I didn’t see its potential to be truly magnificent.
Friend of this site, Cole Bradley, asked in his Letterboxd entry on the film (Which you can read HERE) , “How can a movie featuring Jena Malone frenching a corpse be this goddamn boring?” That really does sum up my opinion quite nicely. (@ThePaintedMan)
As the end credits rolled, with sensual, slow motion glitter being splashed upon a corpse, it became clear that The Neon Demon is most likely Nicolas Winding Refn’s version of a comedy. Whether this is a good or bad thing will be up to each individual viewer.
What is indisputable is that Refn is a director of singular vision, strong opinion, and boundless confidence. Some may think he’s becoming a parody of himself, but it seems that his collaboration with composer Cliff Martinez has continued to provide the aural heart to his remarkably visual flair, breathing a unique life into the film which can’t quite be found anywhere else. As dirty, questionable, and murky as this and most of Refn’s work can be, it’s a movie watching experience that one just can’t quite get elsewhere. [Editor’s Note: Ed reviewed The Neon Demon in full HERE.] (@Ed_Travis)
I expected to come on here and excoriate this film. I hated, hated, hated, HATED this film in the theaters, a truly miserable two hour experience. I wasn’t shocked by The Neon Demon, I wasn’t offended or sickened, or any of the buzz words that get thrown around whenever a horror film plays at a film festival and the blue bloods rush to find pearls to clutch. I was just bored senseless.
Having watched it a second time at home…well, I don’t hate it. I still find Refn’s work to be profoundly empty (part of why Drive works is that it has a good, simple pulp story with strong character actors in the margins, which gives him license to indulge his surreal streak in the margins; without that structure you get Only God Forgives) but The Neon Demon is more successful as a mood piece than I first gave it credit for. A lot of that is down to the cast, all of whom commit body and soul to whatever lunacy Refn asks of them, most especially Jena Malone.
While I still find The Neon Demon more a collection of enticing shots than movie, I no longer begin screaming in incoherent obscenities at the thought of it. So, progress. (@TheTrueBrendanF)
Neon Demon is not an easy film, and I get that. I want to defend it intensely because I love it, but I think that would be a waste of time. So I will focus on one criticism that I hear regularly, and that is the claim that the film represents “style over substance”.
In this particular case, I think that criticism is markedly limp. Yes, there are times when a piece of art relies on aesthetic accomplishments without any obvious idea of what it’s meaning is, why it exists. This is at the most egregious when it is simply pretending at someone else’s style without any innovation on it. However, a film can rely on aesthetics, on its visual style, and still use that medium as a communication of something valuable. That is: narrative, in film, is not a primary need. Yes, movies can tell stories, and I love a good story. Neon Demon does in fact tell a story, but it’s aesthetics, it’s visual style, for me at least, attain the level of “the point”. That is, the style in this case is the substance, and speaks to a modern take on the ways witch narratives address masculinity. (@liamrulz)
I could easily write a book with all the subtext hidden in the layers of The Neon Demon, the misunderstood masterpiece by one of the most divisive auteurs currently working today. It’s a film that suffered at the box office thanks to its botched release and its feminine perspective in a male dominated genre. Refn’s take on horror was a fresh deconstruction of beauty and its very limited shelf life infused with the legend of Elizabeth Báthory. This coupled with a cast of enigmatic characters led by Elle Fanning gives the material the reverence it needs to give it a truth rarely afforded to these films. The Neon Demon is a sublime fever dream for those that find solace in transgressive cinema that is still waiting to be discovered and given the fair shake it deserved. (@DanTheFan)
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Next Week’s Pick: