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BETTER MAN Deserves Your Attention [4K-Review]
![BETTER MAN Deserves Your Attention [4K-Review]](https://i0.wp.com/cinapse.co/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/image-20.png?resize=1140%2C641&ssl=1)
Put aside preconceptions and check out one of the most creative and biopics ever made
For months the internet has been stacked with dismissive opinion over Better Man, largely centered around not knowing and/or not caring about the subject of this biopic, Robbie Williams. To put it bluntly, get over it. Whether you like him or not, know him or not, Better Man is one of the most wildly original, creative, and emotionally triggering films of the past few years.
The creative leap taken here by director Michael Gracey (The Greatest Showman) is to depict Williams in precisely the way he has always seen himself: as a performing monkey. At 16, he became a key player in the boy band Take That and fueled their pop music domination in the ’90s. A separation and ensuing solo career saw his singer-songwriter work garner him a series of hit #1 UK singles, six albums entering the top 100 all-time sales charts in the UK, and a Guinness World Record in 2006 for selling 1.6 million tickets in a day for his Close Encounters Tour. He even ventured into a Vegas residency and crooned his way through a duet with Nicole Kidman. Alongside the fame and success, though, were darker moments fueled by his confrontational personality, disruptive demeanor, and substance abuse–all well chronicled by the British tabloids. Better Man is a warts-and-all depiction of Williams’ life and career against the backdrop of nearly two decades of British pop culture.
The script from Gracey, co-writing with first-time screenwriters Oliver Cole and Simon Gleeson, gives you that foundational through-line that you’d expect from a music biopic; thankfully, the end product is more reminiscent of Rocketman or Walk the Line rather than Bohemian Rhapsody and Back to Black. Gracey takes us through the beats of Williams’ career, relationships, family strife, and ever-deepening descent into addiction. Key moments are brought to life with a dovetail into musical set pieces, where key compositions from William’s catalog are married to grand visual sequences. Rock DJ lights up a Regent Street showstopper, Come Undone underscores a nightmarish sequence that wouldn’t feel out of place in Trainspotting, and Let Me Entertain You fuels a frenetic psychological battle royale as Robbie finally faces up to his own self-judgment and doubt. To be clear, this isn’t a purely whimsical endeavor; sex, drugs, and violence are all presented in unvarnished fashion.
Unlike the woeful Bohemian Rhapsody, Better Man does not alter or sanitize the misdeeds of its lead, or his expressions of sexuality. You’re not just reminded how good some of these tunes were as we become privy to how Williams pulled them out and worked them over to become hits, a process facilitated by his longtime collaborator Guy Chambers (Tom Budge). While these tracks fuel some of the more visually and audibly memorable sequences, it’s the quieter moments of the film that are among its most indelible. The time Robbie spends with his nan (a wonderful Alison Steadman), and fellow pop star and first love Nicole Appleton (Raechelle Banno) are standouts. It’s Better Man’s father/son dynamic that sets much of Robbie’s life in motion, with the abandonment and future approval of his father Peter (a spot-on turn from Steve Pemberton) serving as key informers to the damage and the drive that accompanies Williams through his life.
Voiced by Williams, this monkey man is realized by the marvelous mo-cap performance of Jonno Davis. The creation is a marvel to behold, not just from a technical viewpoint. Never acknowledged by other characters, never played for laughs or leveraged into the narrative, he is just simply a visual of William’s perception of himself. From a CGI perspective, it’s not quite at the level of the recent …of the Apes movies, but it’s pretty damn close. The film reworks old concerts, performances, and photoshoots to show this monkey-man at the center of the limelight, as Williams very much was. Robbie is imbued with personality and emotive force, whether glimpsed as a young chimp eating a bag of crisps on the TV with his gran, or a pitiful older form, slumped on a toilet with a needle in his arm. At his cheekiest or his most loathsome, it’s impossible to not feel a tug at the heartstrings gazing into his eyes.
The aforementioned element of the film that might put-off some is Williams himself. Many stateside have little knowledge of the man, and some may find his cheeky demeanor to be somewhat grating. He’s undeniably the marmite of the Brit-pop world. As an Expat, I was certainly more informed as to the background of the subject and the smattering of UK references in the film, from who the All Saints are, Knebworth, Top of the Pops, Parky, and even the endearing use of The Two Ronnies as an ongoing tether between Robbie and his Nan. Despite this, I urge people to take a chance on such a wild, creative swing that pays off in spades. Switching out the lead for a CGI monkey-man in a way adds a clever layer of curiosity and accessibility to the project. Even if you’re not familiar with the man, the film remains a remarkable take on the all-consuming nature of ego and inner demons. As commented on within the film, “How can you be miserable when you have it all?” That’s the human psyche for you. Fame is no shield from insecurities, and Better Man reminds us of that by blending the fantastical with a solid thud of reality. We see one of the biggest musical stages in the world, with over 125,000 people, and the most human thing there is this CGI monkey.
The Package
The 4K presentation tilts towards a more ‘filmic’ look than a pristine, sharp one. Some of the grain and tones give the film a softer look, but it lends to a nice aesthetic. Colors are strongly represented with good range and depth. Blacks are deep and dense too.
The package itself is a card exterior that opens to reveal one of the promotional poster images for the film. The inner liner showcases various scenes from the film.
Extra Features:
- Let Me Entertain You: The Making of Better Man — Director Michael Gracey and star Robbie Williams provide an in-depth look behind the vision and production of the film with additional insight from the cast and crew: Just over 30 minutes long and gives a good overview of the film’s conception and execution, mo-cap work, choreography and musical scene composition, and the film’s release and reception
- Monkey Business: The VFX — Meet the visual effects team of Wētā FX as they delve into the process of using cutting-edge technology to bring Better Man to life: Only 15 minutes, it’s a more focused look at the (really impressive) mo-cap work done to bring the chimpified-Williams to life
Better Man leverages its simian-styled gimmick to craft a biopic that just soars. It charts the highs and many lows of a life not just under the spotlight, but one wrestling with inner doubt. Michael Gracey’s film is a gut-punch, a tearjerker, and a toe-tapper all rolled into one. Put aside whatever preconceptions you have about the film; you’re sorely missing out if you don’t.
Better Man is available on 4K-UHD via Paramount Presents now
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FINAL DESTINATION: BLOODLINES is Grisly as it is Great!
Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein Deliver a PERFECT Final Destination film.
While Final Destination: Bloodlines may superficially appear to be Hollywood’s latest attempt at digging up another long dead horror franchise for an easy IP cash-in, there’s something to be said when you have not only a great idea, but the cast and crew to execute it flawlessly. With some of the writers from the recent Scream Reboot/Sequel, combined with a pair of fresh directors (Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein), we get just that with the sixth and easily best entry in the series. The film does all this, while also addressing some of the known issues and tired tropes these films were known for, delivering a refreshingly unique direct sequel to the pre-established canon, that is as savage and as engaging as this franchise has ever been.
Making its first big departure, the film begins with a rather spectacular period set piece in 1968 at the opening night of the Sky View restaurant — think Seattle’s Space Needle. Here we meet the bright and beautiful Iris Campbell (Brec Bassinger) and her doting fiance Paul (Max Lloyd-Jones) who take us through 15 gorific minutes that deliver everything you would expect from a Final Destination opening, but oddly more. Brec Bassinger infuses this massive blood drenched spectacle with some unexpected heart, as her character immediately locks the audience in with her empathetic and courageous actions when disaster strikes and the glass dancefloor begins cracking. In another thankful departure, they’ve pulled back the focus a bit from expendable teens and insufferable college kids, by having Iris and Paul taking the first steps into an adult life together as we then witness everyone – including them die.
While that turns out to be a recurring nightmare haunting Iris’ now granddaughter Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) in the present day, we learn it was in fact the premonition her grandmother had, before saving hundreds of people that night. Since then however, Death has been meticulously following its pre-existing plan and working its way through the now three generations of families of everyone who walked away that night. It’s something that doesn’t fully click into our family until at least the halfway point, as the series is infused with actual lore this time around, since Iris is shockingly not only still around, but has since authored a tome on how to cheat Death in the FDCU. She bestowes this book on Stefani before her own gnarly death, which somehow manages to be even harder to watch the second time around. It’s literally that gnarly someone in post was like, ‘let’s run this again!’ The other big break with the franchise that really drew me in was the family dynamic at the heart of the film, that elevates the stakes to a whole new level .
While there is some estrangement and melodrama as you’d expect, there’s still an unbreakable bond and a love that you really haven’t seen in this series until now, which really locked me into these characters. Made up mostly of first timers and TV actors, the cast here fully invests in this family and their lives, really bringing them to life on screen in a way that will definitely catch you off guard. Also the fact that we have entire families, with fathers, sons and daughters, allows Bloodlines to go multigenerational and broader than its teenager to twentysomething demographic, which helps to not alienate the older horror fans that grew up with these films. There’s even a few fun twists along the way, character-wise that will only endure these characters even more. The hook here is these are for the most part good people you genuinely care about, rather than simply waiting with bated breath to watch them get what they deserve.
While the original films ebbed and flowed in quality, I caught this in IMAX and the film for the most part held up on the big screen. There was obviously some heavy use of CGI for the flashback period beginning on the giant mid-air structure, but once it got to the kills and time jumped, the film felt much more grounded and practical in its approach compared to other entries. I also found it refreshing that we didn’t keep cutting back to the opening as you would in the previous films, which allowed some mystery to the latter half of the film and also made it a lot less repetitive in that respect. The Rube Goldberg-esque kills here still feature that level of creativity you’d expect with a Final Destination film, along with some truly nightmarish imagery that kept surprising me with just how far they would go each time. For you gore hounds out there this is honestly the closest you’re going to see Terrifier level kills in a mainstream, rated R flick.
Final Destination: Bloodlines is easily the best film to come out of the franchise and that’s not an easy statement from a longtime fan, but it’s well deserved. They’ve managed to update the series, while not trying to outsmart the original films, but instead really hone in on what made the films as fun as they were – crazy, spectacularly insane kills. This all while offering up as a bonus a cast that genuinely makes us vested in these characters who feel a bit more nuanced than previous iterations and keep us caring about whether they will make it the full 90 minutes. It’s honestly not something I thought I would be writing a few days later after viewing the film, but it’s even got some interesting musing on generational trauma hidden under the hood as well, that probably could be its own write-up. But horror fans are eating very well in 2025 and Bloodlines is just that, a blood splattered thrill ride that is viscerally unrelenting as it is engaging, with its story of a family forced to confront the choices of their matriarch.
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Weir Watch: Keep Your Eyes Open For THE CARS THAT ATE PARIS
Weir’s feature debut is a singular, esoteric look at how everything is just so goddamn weird.
This summer, we will be doing a watch through of the filmography of Peter Weir. Right now we are going through his Australian films, which are categorically stranger and more menacing than his later more mainstream American output.
I was anticipating a bit more of a separation between Weir’s work in “Homesdale” and his first feature, the cult classic The Cars That Ate Paris. Paris has something of a fabled following, a film that was something of a rare object but beloved by many who saw it. Amongst those verbose lovers was none other than Stanley Kubrick, who personally ranked it above Citizen Kane in his list of favorite films.
But in many ways, it is very easy to see precisely why Paris appealed to Kubrick. It has a sinister sense of humor to it, akin to what he tapped into most clearly in Dr. Strangelove and Clockwork Orange, but runs just beneath the surface in most of his work. And much like Kubrick, Weir’s early lens seeks to find truth in exaggeration. Just like Homesdale, The Cars That Ate Paris is an outsized brutal satire that is equally deeply empathetic and nastily cynical.
The main benefit it has over Homesdale over it’s expanded time frame giving its themes space to breathe is that it is beautiful. Leaving his scratched up 16mm film days behind, Weir opts to shoot the Australian countryside with a sense of wonder, capturing beautiful color photography that luxuriates in its lush setting all while threading the whole thing with menace. The opening sequence is a perfect encapsulation of this: an idyllic road trip between a beautiful romantic couple through small town Australia, intentionally borrowing the ersatz perfection of commercials. But this then climaxes in a sudden, violent car crash, a bloody end to an otherwise perfect day. Beauty and brutality, living side by side, is the common refrain of Paris, with a healthy dose of observed absurdity on the side.
After this jarring opening, we see the routine all unfold again. A pair of brothers, Arthur and George, set through a similar road trip, only for the car to once again go out of control. Drive George dies at the site of the crash, but Arthur (played by Terry Camilleri) survives. He quickly finds himself sucked into the world of Paris. For the record, if it wasn’t clear yet, the Paris in question is not the location in France, but a fictional Australian village, lost to time and nostalgia.
The true nature of Paris, what is going on and why precisely car accidents are so frequent, unfolds to Arthur as he gets embedded into Paris. He soon finds himself adopted by Mayor Len Kelly (John Meillon), who attempts to find somewhere for Arthur to get comfortable. Whenever Arthur attempts to escape, he has to face his own fear and trauma surrounding driving, and if he tries to leave on foot, a group of punk youth threaten him with cars that have been modded out to be covered in spikes.The specifics from here gets into the unraveling reality of what is exactly under the hood in The Cars That Ate Paris, but suffice to say that Paris is a town that is burdened under a misplaced sense of self-importance. The townspeople laud themselves for being pioneers, but in reality they are vultures who live off the misery of other people. And as time has gone on, the morals and standards these people have grown accustomed to has created a rotting at the base that, with the newest generation, reaches a boiling point.
What keeps Paris from being straight folk horror is its very off kilter sense of humor. Multiple scenes take place at the city council, which consists of four yes men sitting beneath a ten foot tall pulpit where the mayor makes proclamations; all of these scenes are shot from as low as possible, giving the visual impression that room stretches on forever. It’s visually ridiculous, and Weir injects these sorts of outrageous visual flair that cut the tension of the film’s most dire moment. But make no mistake, this is a sinister undercurrent that is the motor of the film’s heart.
A lot of the themes of Paris will be littered throughout Weir’s work going forward. Chief among them is the key conceit of a lot of Weir’s work: the individual facing down the absurdity of society’s demands. In the case of Homesdale and The Cars That Ate Paris, the ring of the society is rather small. But as Weir will go on, it becomes more clear that the scope of who the individual faces down will become wider and wider. Here the menace is localized to a single small town that is run on violence and grift. As Weir goes on, the lens expands, until the whole of everything is shown to be a prison meant to be broken away from.
Next Week: Widely regarded as Weir’s Australian masterwork, we look at the quiet discomfort of Picnic at Hanging Rock. -
Indian Cinema Roundup: Supernatural Telugu Comedy SUBHAM
It’s been said that ghosts are the spirits of the dead who still have unfinished business on earth, unable to pass into the afterlife until they accomplish their final tasks.
But what if that task is to watch the last episode of a never-ending soap opera?
This whimsical premise sets the stage for the primary conflict in the new Telugu film Subham, a supernatural comedy about husbands, wives, dead grandmas, and TV.
The film begins as almost a straightforward romantic comedy, with the courtship of Srinu (Harshith Reddy), who runs a cable TV company, and Sri Valli (Shriya Kontham), a modern woman with a college education and professional background. The pair hit it off and have a gentle affection, though Srinu’s two best pals, who are already married, fill his head with terrible advice about being an alpha male and asserting his dominance as the head of the household.
But Srinu faces another unexpected wrinkle in their newlywed relationship – every night, Sri Valli turns on the TV and zones out watching a goofy soap opera – which seems particularly confusing since she openly mocks the show and its fans.
But as it turns out, it’s not just him – as the other husbands of the neighborhood are also encountering the same strange phenomenon, and soon arrive at a horrifying truth: Every night, their wives are possessed by the spirits of dead grandmothers who won’t pass on until the finished watching Janma Janmala Bandham, an awful long-running soap opera with no end in sight.
Virtually every description I’ve seen for Subham calls it a horror comedy, but while there’s a ghost angle, it’s not presented in a frightening way and certainly not what I would consider horror any more than I would Ghostbusters or Casper (both of which are probably scarier).
The boys consult a medium and try some different tricks to put a stop to the possessions, but finally decide the only way to get rid of the ghosts is to give them what they want: closure in the form of a series finale.
The film is plenty of fun with good-natured laughs, and also has a great underlying message about masculinity and macho strutting: Srinu’s pals, who had boasted about treating their wives subserviently, suddenly become meek as lambs and eager to appease their wives whenever the scary ghosts take over. Similarly, the film clearly champions Sri Valli as a modern woman – she’s educated, professionally motivated, and deserving of respect.
The film is produced by its own talented modern woman, actress-turned-producer Samantha Ruth Prabhu (known mononymously in India as simply Samantha), who also has a small role as the medium.
Subham is now playing in US theaters.
On Streaming: Tumbbad
Elsewhere in the realm of the supernatural, the incredible horror masterpiece Tumbbad, which I reviewed last November, is available streaming on Amazon Prime.
Tumbbad is a chilling and tragic descent into the heart of greed – and also an effective and stunningly shot monster movie. Highly recommended!
Watch it now on Amazon Prime: https://amzn.to/4dicopo
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FIGHT OR FLIGHT Packs Plenty of Punches and Punchlines
I know it’s a cliché at this point, but I’m a sucker for a good in media res opening, and Fight or Flight kicks off with a humdinger: people brawling on a plane midflight. Fists are flying, bullets whiz, a hole opens up in the plane, and is that chainsaw getting in the mix? Cut to black and a “12 hours earlier” chyron and we are off and running. Or flying.
What Fight or Flight gets right about this kind of opening is that it doesn’t just overload the senses. It offers up the kind of wtf?!? imagery that makes you want to see the build-up to that moment. And you know what? The preceding action frequently reaches those same heights. All that to say this: Fight or Flight is a bloody delight. It’s a violent and funny jolt of energy.
The exposition heavy first act sets up the story efficiently. Lucas (Josh Hartnett) is a mercenary who spends his days drinking himself to an early grave in Bangkok. Two years prior something bad happened to Lucas, leading to his current seclusion and spirituous ways. The people he used to work for, Katherine Brunt (Katee Sackoff) and Aaron Hunter (Julian Kostov) need a guy to track someone down in a pinch and, despite having infinite resources, they turn to Lucas. The goal? Catch someone called The Ghost. All we know about The Ghost is that they are headed to the airport and has possibly been shot. The Ghost appears on security cam footage, with their body obfuscated by static.
After a barroom slap-around and some fun techno spy business, Lucas boards the play and begins his hunt for The Ghost. The catch? Seemingly everyone on the plane is also after The Ghost and they all have a particular set of skills. From there, the hijinks, as they say, ensue and they are glorious.
The core creative trio of director James Madigan and writers Brooks McLaren and D.J. Cotrona bring go-for-broke energy to the film that is its biggest asset. After a decade of leading second units on various action-heavy projects, Madigan makes the jump to the top spot for his feature debut. He shows a good eye for putting together action sequences. Given the confines of the plane setting, there’s a resourcefulness on display that is impressive. It almost feels like McLaren and Cotrona’s script is trying to back Madigan into a corner and Madigan is game to wriggle out of it. I mean that as a compliment. It’s like they are issuing challenges and continuing to one up each other. From the minute Fight or Flight starts there is a playfulness that is immediately endearing.
I cannot emphasize enough how amusing Fight or Flight is. The action is violent and shot clearly so it’s each to see the cool stunt work on display. But it’s also quite funny. Quips fly around as frequently as fists, and the jokes have a good hit rate. On top of that, Madigan has a great eye for visual humor. There’s an early moment where someone is trying to hide a body in an overhead compartment, but arms and legs keep dropping down that is particularly funny. There’s a shot where a flare gun goes off inside the plane with gloriously cartoonish results.
Just about the film’s only misstep is that it doesn’t find a way to get Sackoff in on the ass-kicking. Feels like a waste to have her play a pencil-pushing G-man in one of the film’s few roles that doesn’t involve fisticuffs. Alas. The rest of the cast is quite game. Almost everyone onboard the plane gets a chance to deliver a quality joke or punch, if not both. Hartnett gives a playful performance as Lucas. It’s a largely physical effort, what with all the fighting, but Harnett mixes in enough humor to give it a slapstick feel (complimentary). The other standout is Charithra Chandra’s as Isha, one of the flight attendants on the plane. After Lucas, Isha gets the most character development and Chandra makes the most of it.
Fight or Flight is the kind of movie that knows it’s a B-movie and doesn’t strive to be more or delude itself or its audience. It wants to be a kick-ass action movie that also makes you laugh, and it goes about its business accordingly. It lands on the release calendar right before the bombast of the summer movie season ramps up and Fight or Flight is a satisfying appetizer before blockbuster season brings out the main courses.
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SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 3 Keeps the Fun Rolling on 4KUHD
I should say upfront that I’m biased in favor of the Sonic the Hedgehog movies and I always will be. I barely played the games as a kid, so it’s not a nostalgia thing. It’s because of my youngest son, who went through a big Sonic phase that culminated with him wearing his Sonic costume opening weekend for the first Sonic movie. We took him five or six more times in the month or so between the film’s opening and COVID shutdown. The memories of him dressed up, striking poses, telling us everything about the movie…I’ll cherish those forever. That was the peak of his enthusiasm for Sonic, but he gets excited for the new movies and toys. On the final day of the fall semester we took a family trip straight from his class Christmas party and went straight to the theater for Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (henceforth Sonic 3).
The movies themselves are fine, dripping with Easter eggs, deep cuts, and committed performances from series stalwarts Schwartz, James Marsden, and Tike Sumpter, Jim Carrey, Lee Majdoub, and Natasha Rothwell. They have gotten better with each installment, with Sonic 3 being the best one so far. The key to the film’s success is its humor. It’s silly without condescending to its audience, and mixes in just enough irreverence to occasionally catch you off guard. Add in Keanu Reeves as Shadow and Carrey pulling double duty as Dr. Robotnik and his grandfather Professor Gerald Robotnik, and Sonic 3 has its winning formula in hand.
This time out Sonic (voiced by Ben Schwartz), is recruited by the government to help catch Shadow. With the help of Tails (Colleen O’Shaughnessey), and Knuckles (Iris Elba), the trio embark on a globe-trotting adventure. As the series shepherd, director Jeff Fowler keeps the film moving at a brisk pace, hopping from one action set piece to the next. Fowler brings a deft touch to these sequences by making them fun and exciting, without overwhelming the film’s core demographic. It’s cool when you can hear a theater full of excited kids go through each beat of a chase or fight without getting lost. Watching the film at home doesn’t hold quite the same charm, but it feels unfair to knock the film based on a crowd’s reaction. The movie plays just fine either way.
By any objective measure, Jim Carrey is the MVP of Sonic 3. His performance as Dr. Robotnik has been delightfully silly in the previous movies, as one would expect from Carrey, Maybe it’s the double duty he’s pulling here, but he feels completely unhinged. The physicality Carrey brings to bear continues to defy his age. No one will mistake Sonic among Carrey’s best work, but it does serve as a reminder of what made him so special. The report between Dr. Robotnik and Agent Stone (Majdoub) is stronger than ever. Basically, what I’ve come to realize is that Carrey is my favorite part of these films. Despite growing up in the 90s, I have very little knowledge of the Sonic universe, so I have no idea what’s coming up next. As long as we’re getting more Carrey hijinks (a triple role???), count me in.
Sonic 3’s home release comes packed to the gills with bonus features. The version Paramount sent out for review is a Steelbook 4KUHD that also comes with a Blu-ray disc, with both options featuring the film and bonus features. Most of the features are bite-sliced (under 10 minutes) behind the scenes bits and interviews with the cast and crew. The best bits across the board occur whenever Carrey shows up. Everyone else is tends to hit on the same notes, but Carrey is borderline unhinged and completely silly. But the best feature is the commentary track with director Fowler and Schwartz. The track appears to have been recorded shortly after finishing the film and well before it’s release and accompanying press tour. Fowler and Schwartz are loose and entertaining. It’s an informative listen, but mostly it’s just a good hang. They’ve been working on the Sonic films for almost a decade and there are some endearing reflections on their journey, which is set to continue with the release of Sonic 4 in 2027.
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Me and My Interview: Billy Pedlow and Maurane’s VICTIM Narrative
Controversial Fantasia Fest winner tours America
Content Warning: The film Me and My Victim involves the subject of sexual abuse in relationships, which is discussed in this interview. Please be advised.
One of the most provocative, hot-button films in years is the no-budget, nonfiction brainchild of an outsider duo. Billy Pedlow and Maurane’s romantic relationship was disastrous, to say the least. Rather than restraining orders or social media blocking, the one-time couple devised an unconventional concept. Me and My Victim is what Pedlow refers to as a “podcast film,” in which he and Maurane dissect their failed courtship with graphic, sometimes horrific frankness. Difficult though the film is, it is a brave feat of messy, humane art that has wowed some (winning Best Film at Fantasia Fest) while appalling others.
Enjoying foamy beers on a perfectly warm May afternoon, Pedlow and I sat down at Brooklyn’s Niteglow Brewery, with Maurane joining virtually from Montreal, to discuss the thematically shocking and formally audacious movie that their fellow Dimes Square filmmaker Aimee Armstrong (Envy/Desire) says “genuinely has invented a new form of cinema.”
This interview has been edited and condensed for time and clarity.
Emma James: So, first of all, I think this is an amazing, unusual film. The way you approached it is so personal and raw that it caught me off guard. Congratulations to you both on having made something that has gotten such a reaction. What led you to decide to share your story together as a film?
Maurane: For so many reasons. We both knew we had an interesting story. We knew we were able to trust each other and be honest. Billy had this idea and we just decided to do it. He proposed it to me one night, then the day after, we were already –
Billy Pedlow: We were already working on the film the next day. I had the idea in the shower, because that’s where I have all of my ideas. “This would be so evil. This would be so good.” I was just in a crazy, very creative phase, and we were at a reading together. We were both pretty drunk, smoking cigarettes out back, and I was like “what if we made a movie?” You asked, “what would it be about?” I was like, “what if it was about this,” and you were down.
EJ: Josephine Decker made Flames, a docudrama about a relationship she had that fell apart, and then of course there’s Betsey Brown’s short Shegetsey Betsey, which is very diaristic and reflective about a relationship ending, as well as the work of Jack Dunphy. I was wondering, what were the cinematic influences for Me and My Victim?
BP: We were definitely inspired by Caveh Zahedi’s work, like The Show About the Show and I Am a Sex Addict. [But for] the actual making of it, I feel like we had a very unique, singular vision that wasn’t based on anything else.
We knew we wanted it to be centered on the dialogue, and for that to be the vital heart of the movie. What makes it different from most films is the way it’s sort of like a podcast. I’ve always liked hanging out with just one other person and shooting the shit more than with a group of people, because you can get deeper into topics. With so many films, you’re jumping from character to character and the plot overpowers the dialogue. For sure, I’m inspired by films like My Dinner with Andre. A lot of people compare this movie to the Before Sunset series, but I don’t really like those films. There’s also the Woody Allen comparison, but I don’t really like his films either, honestly.
M: (indignant) You don’t like fucking Woody?!
BP: I don’t like the Woody Allen movies! Everybody’s really mad at me for it. It has nothing to do with his accusations, I just don’t like his films.
M: (laughing) That’s like the worst answer!
BP: Yeah, yeah, I know everybody loves Woody. And I love people who love Woody! I think a lot of people who love Woody Allen films also love our movie, so I’m okay with it. But I think, really, it wasn’t inspired by anything. It was inspired by itself. When you’re making an art project, you get into a portal and you start problem-solving on top of the thing you started off with.
M: Also, me and Billy don’t come from a movie background, so that’s why our movie doesn’t really look like other movies. We treat it like visual art. We didn’t really talk about the movie while doing it that much. We were not like, “oh, I want it to look like that movie.” Except Caveh, or the concept of what Caveh does –
BP: Also, what was it, the Harmony Korine movie with Travis Scott in it? I was sort of inspired by the visuals from that at one point.
EJ: AGGRO DR1FT? I can see that.
BP: Yeah, AGGRO DR1FT was in development at the time. I saw a trailer, and I was kinda tipped off to some ideas, like the red.
EJ: I was going to ask about the heavy use of the color red as a motif throughout the film. Does that signify anything?
M: When you see red, you think about love, violence, and romance. We knew we wanted a strong symbol for the movie.
BP: One of the first ideas I had aesthetically for the movie was that my character would always be wearing a red shirt. We did a couple things to kinda differentiate myself from “Billy,” to make him more of a character versus just being me. One was not wearing glasses and the other was always wearing a red shirt. I was inspired by Star Trek red shirts. “The red shirt always dies” is the trope. It’s the throwaway character– the person who is sacrificed, essentially. Also, there’s the whole monologue about the roses, so it all just tied together and gave the film a distinct visual.
EJ: It really does give it an interesting aesthetic. Maurane edited the film in an experimental, chaotic way that is disorienting but very beautiful. The editing is almost a character itself. Did you always intend such an avant-garde approach to post-production?
M: I do video art. This is my first movie, so it’s kind of high aesthetic. It’s just a style I like, and it really fits with the movie, which is about perspective on a situation that happened, and the fact that it’s chaotic and abstract represents that we don’t really know the reality. It has some scenes that aren’t like you’re used to seeing in other movies.
BP: What scenes were you thinking about, for example, Maurane?
M: The sexual assault scene. You don’t really see what happened. It’s more like symbols – video from the Internet Archive, stuff like that, and that way of doing it fits with the concept about how we both have different perspectives. I didn’t want the visuals to remove that from the movie.
BP: We tried to make it easier for ourselves because we knew we had the limitations of no budget and only two people working together when we were living in different countries. We had limited time to film and we had to maximize every day that we were working together. Truthfully, we did not cover everything in the filming. We had to fill in stopgaps, so it’s like a practical thing too. In terms of the way that you’re saying with the red, by picking certain symbols and focusing in on them, we were able to show the full spectrum of them. I think bananas can be silly, like when she steals the bananas at one point in the movie, and that’s something that makes me fall for her, but the bananas are also being eaten during some of the most intense scenes of the film and indicative of an inescapable flavor. We also show the full spectrum of red from romantic to violent; just picking these symbols and developing their entire horseshoe– narrowing in and representing them visually.
EJ: During this intense moment when you’re discussing whether sexual assault occurred in your relationship, the banana is on screen by itself for a lengthy period of time. That’s definitely something I was going to mention.
BP: Bananas have such an aggressive flavor.
EJ: Yeah. And of course, there’s the phallic symbolism too. The way you’ve managed to get around your limitations disguises the fact that it’s a no-budget film. The choices that you probably had to make out of necessity feel like very deliberate artistic decisions.
BP: Yeah, because the movie wouldn’t exist otherwise. But also, they absolutely were deliberate artistic decisions. We chose every shot very deliberately. We are playing to our strengths, essentially. When you’re a scrappy underdog, like I think this film is, you have to elaborate that to show people we’re working with less and doing more.
EJ: You went in the opposite direction of the typical talking-head documentaries with no style. Here, the style and the substance work together very well to elevate each other. It gives the film both visual and thematic depth in a way that, like you were saying, really does feel unique. It’s outsider art in a way, because you guys hadn’t made films before.
BP: It’s 100 percent outsider art. We don’t have any backing. We just recently got some money for this tour, so for the first time, we’re getting a little help, but most of the time, we’re doing everything ourselves.
In terms of the visual elements, one of the things that people catch subconsciously but don’t totally know is that we recorded all of the audio first and then we recorded video later, so anytime we’re in the quote-unquote “studio” talking to each other, we’re literally just mouthing the words. So, sometimes, it’s a little off, but we’re lip syncing. We were inspired by watching old talkie films where they couldn’t record sound, because we knew we had the sound first, and we knew the sound was the primary element of the movie. The disconnect between the sound and the visuals is also a metaphorical elaboration on the disconnect of language that is throughout the film. Even when we’re talking, our words aren’t necessarily syncing up with our actual words.
EJ: Wow, that’s so clever and adds a whole other level that I hadn’t noticed. So, since Cinapse is an Austin publication, I have to ask: for the Austin screening, your Q&A is being moderated by Joe Rogan, basically the most famous podcaster in the world. Is he a fan of the film?
BP: Yeah, he is, actually. We’re very glad that he took the time to watch it. We’ve actually had a lot of talented artists, podcasters, or whatever, who have seen the film and are big fans. But the funny thing about this movie is, even when people really, really, really like it, they don’t necessarily want to step in front of the train and say “I like this film.” There is a group of people who advocate very harshly against the film. Not everybody wants to put their nuts on the line for it, so we’re trying to tread carefully. What do you want to say about it, Maurane?
M: I don’t think I can say more than that.
EJ: How conscious and afraid of pushback in your professional and private lives were either of you in deciding to be so honest in making this film?
M: I was scared for Billy, because that’s the reality. He receives death threats sometimes. [But] when [Billy] and I were doing that project, it didn’t stop us at any point from making it.
BP: We weren’t even sure it would be seen or be successful, so that was a secondary concern. Definitely there were some times that I was in the shower being like “is this movie gonna ruin my fucking life? Will I ever be able to get another job again?” Still, to this day, if I’m applying for another job, it’s like, “do I put this on my resume or not?” I literally don’t know. (to Maurane) You can put it on your resume but I can’t. That shit’s so fucked-up and weird.
EJ: You won a very prestigious award for this film, but you’ve gotta qualify it with an asterisk or something.
BP: It’s a very strange accomplishment. I’ve always been fascinated with “cancel literature,” which is what I call the many essays of cancellation that came out in the 2010s and early 2020s. The Aziz Ansari thing was a fascinating piece of literature that a lot of people read over and over again, because they weren’t really sure how they felt about it, and there’s a lot of analysis that goes into it. I was always very fascinated with the ways those narratives become incredibly divergent. Some people read them and they’re like, “oh, this guy definitely didn’t do it, and I’m picking up on the narcissism of the accuser,” or “this guy did it and deserves to die.” So, as someone who always wanted to make an explosive piece of art –
EJ: (interrupting) Mission accomplished.
BP: – an evil piece of art, it only made sense to do something like that, which would create a similarly divergent response, but now that we’re on the precipice of getting more attention on the film and that it might actually be more successful – and I think it will – I’m definitely reckoning with the effect it’s had on my life. People look at me differently when I enter a room. To even have that feeling when you meet someone is very strange. I don’t necessarily love carrying that burden around, but ultimately, I do like being provocative, and I do like making people uncomfortable, so I guess I’ve kind of embraced it. I don’t really have a choice at this point.
EJ: I definitely think the film contributes insightfully to the ongoing conversation in society about consent and boundaries in sex and relationships. It has something to say that’s very honest and can hopefully be a positive influence in some ways, maybe as a cautionary tale of how not to behave.
BP: We’ve had people come up to us after the film and be like, “I watched this and forgave my abuser. I feel differently about it now.” They feel like their heart and their trauma have been soothed. But for sure, there are other people who watch it and have PTSD.
M: Also, a big thing in the movie is that we drank a lot of alcohol, and I’ve had the experience of people realizing the impact of consuming alcohol or drugs in sexual situations.
EJ: As a filmmaker and a woman, I don’t think Me and My Victim is, as Billy said, “an evil piece of art.” It’s provocative, maybe incendiary, but it certainly has a heart that comes through.
M: I agree. I agree. I don’t think it’s evil at all.
BP: (laughing) I like to think it’s evil and has a big heart.
M: It’s not really evil.
BP: I don’t know. Some people say it’s evil. I think it’s evil.
M: (laughing) You’re evil.
BP: I’m evil. So, Maurane, I wanted to ask you, because Emma implied that we might ask each other questions – what’s it like to work with Billy Pedlow?
M: (laughing) That’s so hard. Fuck. It’s a journey. It’s a lot of fun, but you have to push him a bit. That movie is one of the best experiences of my life, and often when I go out in Montreal, people that have seen the movie or just read a review ask me if I’m still friends with Billy, hoping that I’m not, so it’s a hard thing to live with, because I would not have done that movie if I was not close to Billy. Working with you, it’s hard but it’s fun. Also, this movie is about our relationship and it’s so emotional that, when I was doing the editing, I had a different emotion towards you, and I’m sure you have that kind of emotion towards me, so we have to live down a lot. Also, we had never done movies, so we were learning and trying to film stuff, and it didn’t always look good. Another reason why it’s hard to work with you is that, when we do Q&As – I mean, you just said it, you like to be provocative, so it brings strong reactions.
BP: Working with a boorish American as a Canadian during the Trump era?
M: (laughing) During the U.S. tour, I’m gonna be so triggered.
BP: We have a hot and cold approach. It works out really well for us. For people who don’t like me, they can approach Maurane. For people who – well, no one doesn’t like Maurane. People approach me because I’m actually just a really nice guy when you get to know me, but I scare some people, I guess.
EJ: So, it’s sort of like “good cop, bad cop.” I love the way poems that you’ve both written are incorporated into the film, and the contrast between Billy’s edgy poem “I Want to Jerk Off All the Homeless Men,” which is in his book, Terrorizing the Virgin, and Maurane’s very poignant anus poem. Both are very vulgar and sexual, but night and day in terms of emotion and approach. That says a lot about the difference between the two of you. It’s another fun framing detail.
BP: One of the things that people miss a lot in the film, even though we tried to highlight it, is that it is the second poem Maurane ever wrote. The same way that I was inspired to make a film by working with her, who does video art, she was inspired to become a poet by working with me. I like to highlight that. (to Maurane) Would you write that vulgarly if your exposure to poetry wasn’t me first?
M: I think I have that in me.
BP: Oh, absolutely.
M: For sure, you made me see poetry in a way that I didn’t see before, because I didn’t know a lot, and it seemed boring to me.
BP: The night that we decided to do the movie, I read that poem about two rivals vomiting into each other’s mouths over and over again.
M: That’s a good one.
BP: I forgot that that’s what it is in the movie, so that’s a special detail. That’s what the poem is about. It’s about two rivals in a deep embrace where they’re just vomiting into each other’s mouths back and forth.
EJ: That reminds me of the “pooping back and forth” scene in Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know.
BP: There’s also a section in Freedom by Jonathan Franzen where the son is talking to his girlfriend about licking each other’s poop – that shit was so good. That’s one of my favorite sections of a book ever. Freedom is also a theme in Me and My Victim, because we have the Budweiser can that says “freedom” towards the end, and we were trying to imply something there about freedom. That was before I had read Freedom, but they’re similar investigations of the benefits and negatives of emotional and physical freedom.
EJ: I like that, so I’ll find a way to cut around it without all the poop and everything –
BP: I like the poop part.
EJ: Okay, I’ll leave the poop. So, once the tour is over and the film is streaming, what’s next for both of you? Is there another Billy and Maurane project, or are you working on things individually?
M: We were supposed to, but I decided to start my own movie. It’s kind of linked with Me and My Victim, but it’s going to be super different. It’s about the reception of the film and my life after it. I’m really excited to be starting that soon. My goal with Billy is to do a movie when we’re like 40. I want him to have a family and be super happy, and just show up in his life and kidnap him.
BP: We’re both doing diverging sequels, essentially. I’m like the inheritor of the true lineage, because Maurane’s not doing a podcast film. Maurane’s doing a more formal film, right? I don’t want to speak for her.
M: I wouldn’t say “formal,” but it’s not a podcast film.
BP: It’s not a podcast movie, whereas I’m gonna do a second movie in the same style. It’s about some friends of mine in an experimental project to blackmail incels into fixing their lives. It’s called Beautiful Blackmail.
M: It’s gonna be good.
BP: And then, I’m also working on a 120-hour film called Don’t Look at Me, but that’s gonna be more artsy-fartsy, not really a formal film. [Beautiful Blackmail] is in development hell, but Maurane’s movie is in development hell too, so we’re on the same page. We should talk about the tour.
M: Yes, but first, you should show your elbow.
BP: (laughing) My elbow?
EJ: What’s the significance of the elbow?
BP: (confused, flashing his elbow) This is my elbow. Here you go.
EJ: Me and My Elbow.
M: (laughing) Cute.
BP: Do you like it? Wait, Maurane, can I see your elbow?
(Maurane shows her elbow)
BP: Put it away! Put that away. That’s disgusting.
(everyone laughs)
BP: Put that fucking shit away. This is the worst elbow I’ve ever seen. Bad elbow!
M: (laughing) It’s, like, small.
BP: Okay, so before you distracted me with your slutty request to see my elbow – we’re doing a U.S. tour. We sold some equity in the film for the money. This might be the only time we’re gonna show it everywhere in theaters until it comes out on streaming platforms. Go now or forever hold your peace. We’re using the money to show the movie all over America in hopes of attracting distribution companies. We’ve had a lot of universities purchase the film to show classes, because it’s such a good example of DIY, no-budget filmmaking. Eugene [Kotlyarenko] has been helpful. I love Eugene.
M: And Cass[idy Grady]!
BP: And Cass has helped with the promotion. We’re just going around showing it everywhere we can. I literally Shark Tank pitched a guy I work with about how I was trying to sell equity in the movie for a tour, and he was like “I wanna do it.” This movie has continually been a process of doing everything ourselves. I just wanna hammer home that nobody does it like us. This is the only outsider film.
Me and My Victim is currently touring the United States with directors Billy Pedlow and Maurane. Tour dates are below:
May 11 – Small Works Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
May 13 – Aurora Chapel, Houston, TX
May 15 – We Luv Video, Austin, TX
May 22 – The Virgil, Los Angeles, CA
May 25 – Roxie Theater, San Francisco, CA
May 28 – KGB Bar, New York City, NY -
Two Cents Film Club: A Conversation on THE CONVERSATION
2¢FC continues its exploration of the late, great actor’s work with the moody 1974 Coppola thriller The Conversation
Two Cents is a Cinapse original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team curates the series and contribute their “two cents” using a maximum of 200-400 words. Guest contributors and comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future picks. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion. Would you like to be a guest contributor or programmer for an upcoming Two Cents entry? Simply watch along with us and/or send your pitches or 200-400 word reviews to [email protected].
The Pick: The Conversation (1974)
Gene Hackman was truly one of the greats, and in honor of his life we’re working our way through a sampling of his filmography – from old favorites, to some that we may be catching up with for the first time.
While Hackman was a prolific actor with a huge career that spanned multiple decades, I think in our true heart of hearts, most of us probably closely associate him with the 70s, in which he arguably has his most iconic run with of a string of hard-hitting classics, and collaborations with legendary directors and costars.
The Conversation was written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and released at the height of his powers: his followup to The Godfather, and released just months before The Godfather Part II. And while those films are famously approachable and easy to appreciate, The Conversation is heavier and more demanding of its audience, dealing with themes like alienation, guilt, and paranoia, and – as acknowledged by Coppola – drawing inspiration from Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup.
The film is also famously one of only five to feature the legendary character actor John Cazale, who died in 1978 at the age of 42. All five were Best Picture nominees; three of them won. The Conversation wasn’t one of the winners, but the competition was stiff – it lost to The Godfather Part II… another Coppola joint which featured Cazale in what’s inarguably his most famous role.
Gene Hackman considered The Conversation to be one of his best performances, and this week the Two Cents Film Club explores why he’s right.
The Team:
Spencer Brickey
Released between The Godfather and The Godfather Part 2, The Conversation, in many ways, has been forgotten in the conversation (ba-dum-tisk) of best films of the ‘70s. For those in the know, though, is the understanding that The Conversation is not only one of the best films from Francis Ford Coppola, but one of the best films of the 1970’s.
A film that dives deeply into loneliness, and the paranoia that it can breed, The Conversation is a film about being so intimately close to someone under the least intimate means. Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) is a quiet, reserved man, protective of his trade secrets, his life experiences, even his birthday. Yet, he excels at extracting information from people, pulling their secrets out of the air, recording them at their most private. He is a man who stutters and stares at the floor when he talks about the loss of love, but comes alive, full of charisma, when discussing the many tools he’s built for surveillance. He is a man who says he fears murder above all else, but when put in a situation to save another, he cowers and runs. He is a man that will rip his apartment down to the studs, destroying iconography of his faith, but won’t touch the one thing he does openly love, his saxophone, even though it is the most obvious place for a wiretap. Harry Caul is not a good man, barely a man at all; he has one purpose, and in that, he is competent above all else.
All of this works, of course, due to Gene Hackman’s performance. Hackman plays against type, his usually charismatic and fiery self disappearing into a shadow of a man. Hackman plays Caul as a nobody, a body filling a suit that moves with the current. His only purpose in this life is surveillance, and he is useless at everything else. It’s a role far outside of his wheelhouse, a role Hackman himself said was incredibly difficult to inhabit, as it went against all his acting instincts to go so muted.
What we get though, through all the compacting of instinct and emotion, is one of Hackman’s finest performances, transcending expectations, and creating an iconic performance in the ‘70s film canon.
Ed Travis
I had given The Conversation a couple of shots before, having understood it to be an American masterpiece that I should appreciate. But I was too young to grasp what the film had to say; had too little life experience. So while I think this was my third time seeing The Conversation, it was the first time the film saw me. Hackman’s Harry Caul is just turning 44 at the start of our tale. I myself just turned 45. What a weird experience to view this art that was locked into place in 1974 but was somehow just waiting for me to catch up to it and get on its level.
I think my perception of the film previously was that it was cold, distant, and analytical. Boy was I wrong. Harry is a tragic figure, often quiet and aloof, certainly distrustful and unwilling to share many of his feelings. But feel he does. Caul is an expert in his field, and deeply private, but he’s profoundly human and cares a lot about the cost that his work brings about for those he surveils. He has no idea how to relate to people, but wants profoundly to be able to connect and trust. Yet as the case he’s working unravels, in spite of his obvious expertise and technical prowess, Harry is duped and suckered continuously, by his peers, his competitors, lovers, and even the subjects of his surveillance. He’s a lost soul, struggling to find any kind of connection with the humans around him who seem to baffle him with their complexity and moral ambiguity. His Catholic roots seem to only have added extra layers of guilt and questioning of his chosen profession.
And this time around, watching The Conversation, the emotional power of the film I’d previously thought clinical really broke through. Whereas I’d struggled to relate to the curt and distrustful Harry Caul, I now viewed him as a tragically bleeding heart desperate to be understood, desperate to find love and understanding, only to be metaphorically snuffed out by a world that doesn’t feel the same moral compunctions that he does. Part of me wants to give Harry Caul a big hug, and the other part of me thinks: Yeah, maybe I am Harry Caul. Maybe we’re all Harry Caul, caught up and morally compromised in a system that demands complicity. Damn, Coppola, take it easy on me, will ya?
Justin Harlan
When it comes to this classic Hackman/Coppola joint, I’d like to keep The Conversation going, as it were. The others who have contributed to this post so far are really tapped in, but something about their analysis really bugs me. I can’t quite seem to track what it is exactly. But I will go on record to say that Hackman is genuinely better than you’ve heard.
Puns aside, I dug this one a good bit and almost entirely because of the late great Harry Call… excuse me, I mean Caul… himself. This is a type of thriller that often leave me bored or, at least, not nearly as “thrilled” as I’d like to be. And, despite being told repeatedly throughout my life by friends, critics, and all type of film lovers that Coppola is the GOAT, I’m very hit or miss on his films.
What Hackman does here, though, is make you care. Without him, it’s hard to believe that Caul would be nearly as captivating a character. There are certainly implicit stakes in the story, but Hackman really puts a face on those stakes, with charisma to spare. With each week of this Hackman watchalong marathon, it becomes more and more undeniable just how amazing an actor this man truly was.
In short, The Conversation deserves all the talk is gets and Hackman’s manner in which he can tap into our very souls is why.
Austin Vashaw
As these last few weeks have certainly demonstrated, Gene Hackman was a terrific actor with an absolutely huge range. With The Conversation, we get to see a rarer – but no less powerful – kind of performance from him. His Harry Caul, a surveillance spook, is a complex man with a lot of quiet emotions and foibles, both on and beneath the surface. He is awkward, timid, petty, guilt-ridden, and deeply private – or perhaps more accurately, deeply paranoid.
But is it paranoia if it’s true?
This was a first-time watch for me, and I was surprised by how different the film was from the procedural version in my head. The style incorporates dreamlike qualities and atmosphere (including, but not limited to, an actual nightmare) in its storytelling.
It’s worth noting that a pre-fame Harrison Ford is terrific here in a now rare antagonist role, though at the time it followed another in American Graffiti. His next film, set in a galaxy far, far away, would change audience perception forever.
Goodbye to a Great: TWO CENTS Celebrates Gene Hackman
Two films still remain in our titanic selection of some of the late, great Gene Hackman’s biggest and best performances. Feel free to join us in discussing these upcoming entries!
May 12 – Enemy of the State – (Prime Video – 2 hours 12 minutes)
May 19 – The Royal Tenenbaums – (Hulu or Digital Rental / Purchase – 1 hour 50 minutes)
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In MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE The Enemy Is Always Us
With THE FINAL RECKONING On The Way, There’s One Villain Ethan Hunt Will Never Outrun
“I’m on the same side I’ve always been on. Stay out of my way.” – Dead Reckoning
Ethan Hunt goes rogue. If you needed to condense the plot of any of the famously convoluted Mission: Impossible films down to an elemental form, that’s as tidy a summation as is possible.
Ethan Hunt goes rogue.
He’s a renegade operative on the run from his own country for pretty much the entirety of the original Mission, Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation, and Dead Reckoning, while in 3 and Fallout he spends the first half of the film on the right side of the law before having to go off reservation for the second half. Even in 2, the only movie in which Ethan Hunt does not go rogue, get disavowed, and become a fugitive from his own government, he still disobeys the direct orders given to him at the outset of his mission, choosing to destroy the central supervirus he’d been commanded to retrieve.
It’s like he’s some kind of…maverick, or something.
Ethan Hunt not being able to order DoorDash without triggering an international manhunt makes more sense when considered in tandem with the Mission franchise’s series long distrust of any and all authority figures and existing systems of governance. James Bond deals with every megalomaniac with a volcano lair, but Ethan Hunt’s adversaries have always pointed more inward.
There’s been a Mission: Impossible movie in every presidential administration going back to Bill Clinton, but regardless of which way the political winds are shifting, the thesis of each film remains unchanged: The enemy is within.
The villain of the first film is an IMF agent who has turned bad in pursuit of profit. The villain of the second film is an IMF agent who has turned bad in pursuit of profit. The villain of the third film is an IMF agent who has turned bad in pursuit of…engaging an arms dealer to orchestrate a false flag operation. (Can you guess which one of these was produced deep in the Bush years?)
Ghost Protocol is the closest the series ever gets to breaking from this pattern, with a villain who is more your typical spy movie madman with nuclear launch codes. But A) this character is noticeably the least interesting antagonist in any Mission movie (if not necessarily the actual worst in overall quality [hi, Dougray]) and 2) the dramatic thrust of Protocol is that Ethan’s efforts to stop this madman are endlessly complicated and thwarted by the same governments that should be supporting him. Because come hell or highwater, Brad Bird’s movie WILL be about how bureaucracies impede genius.
And then there’s the Christopher McQuarrie essayed back-half of the series, a four film saga where suddenly continuity exists and the wildly divergent aesthetics, tones, and conceptions of the main character are shoved together into a singular dramatic statement. Sometimes gracefully, sometimes…not so much.
Just what sort of world does McQuarrie envision surrounding Ethan Hunt? A broken one, quite frankly. In Rogue Nation, Fallout, and Dead Reckoning, the powers that be are utterly corrupted, their every office awash in circular firing squads of self-defeating conspiracies and masterplans. Rogue Nation eventually reveals that British intelligence organized and funded the splinter cell of former agents turned terrorist and then engaged in some more light quadruple-bluff backstabbing to try and cover up having done so.
Fallout brings the CIA’s malfeasance back into play, while Dead Reckoning pulls the scope back far enough to reveal the Director of National Intelligence attempting to curry favor with a homicidal AI to fashion a new world order (things get weird after six movies, what can I tell you).
The villains in the early films were entirely upfront about their mercenary motivations, while the baddies in 3 and Ghost Protocol at least give lip-service to their destruction being for the greater good. The McQuarrie saga’s original main threat, a terrorist sect of former spies now known as The Syndicate, followed the latter approach, claiming to wreak havoc in the name of overthrowing the awful systems that created the need for espionage and dirty dealings.
But by the time you get to Dead Reckoning, the men pulling the strings of the various conspiracies openly mock the idea of having an ideal. The purpose of amassing power isn’t to ‘do’ anything with it, it’s to HAVE it while others don’t. The good fight isn’t just lost, people think you’re an idiot for even trying to fight it.
In such a world, the Ethan Hunt we have come to know becomes the only solution. The more Cruise’s public persona has become uncanny and unknowable, the better suited Ethan Hunt is to his increasing role as not only a superspy, but the stop-gap who will intervene to keep the world on course even after all its leaders forsake their intended purpose.
We can’t trust in anyone or anything, but we can trust in Ethan Hunt (andtomcruise) to always be ready, willing, and able to climb a tall thing he shouldn’t climb or drive a vehicle off a tall thing he shouldn’t drive a vehicle off of if that’s what it takes to save us from our worst selves.
The original Mission: Impossible (which, it is easy to forget, is a nasty piece of work beneath its popcorn bluff) emerged from the same cultural moment that gave us the James Bond relaunch Goldeneye and John Frankenheimer’s masterful Ronin. All three films grapple with what spy-craft becomes in a world where the Cold War has been won, and the question of what happens to the soul-rotted, sociopathic living weapons now left without a war to fight or a cause to kill for.
Since then, the Bond and Mission films have continued to run parallel to one another while weaving similar narrative notions and real world geopolitical threads together (both 2004’s Casino Royale and 2006’s M:I 3 involve a superspy tangling with an international arms dealer engaged with terrorist plots). But while Daniel Craig’s 007 raged against the weary toll of his work, he remained dedicated to queen and country to the (very literal) end.
Ethan Hunt, though?
Ethan Hunt goes rogue.
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WEIR WATCH: An Introduction and Trip to HOMESDALE
Our summerlong exploration of one of Australia’s finest begins with a gritty little short film about fear, class, and distraction.
Over on Letterboxd, I have a running list that outlines my favorite film that came out every year since I was born. It is an eclectic list to be sure, but one that I think serves as an overall view into my tastes as a film critic. From an auteurist perspective, it is an interesting data point that one three directors show up on the list more than once: Carl Reiner, Spike Lee, and Peter Weir.
Namely, Weir’s films Witness (1985) and Truman Show (1998) are the ones that top out their respective years. When considering these two films, they reflect a few things about Weir’s filmography. They are distinctly different films, but they reflect one of Weir’s great strengths, which is to find central performances that elevate high concepts premises into high-gloss crowd pleasures. They also are both beautiful films, both aesthetically and regarding their deeply empathetic perspective. But they never delve into the sentimental, providing deeply felt observations on human experiences. They are honest, but lovely, films that reflect Weir’s humanistic perspective as a storyteller.
But despite these two and Dead Poets Society, Weir’s filmography was a giant blindspot for me. I couldn’t quite quantify why however; I simply had never sought it out, despite having heard high praise for a large portion of his work.
So this summer I am going to fix that. Starting this week, I am going to be watching in chronological order the full Weir filmography, week by week. My hope is to discover a deeper understanding of Weir as a filmmaker, and perhaps find some new favorites along the way.
This project is split into two distinct parts: Weir Australian New Wave period, and his American films. Fascinatingly, the two acts are almost equal in length: Weir made seven films in Australia, with his last, A Year of Living Dangerously (1982) being considered a paramount classic of the Australian New Wave movement, and then eight films in America, concluding with 2010’s The Way Back. Weir has announced he considers himself retired, meaning that while he is still alive, unless he changes his mind this is an effectively complete filmography.
This split does feel noteworthy not just because of the working conditions and budgets he was working in, but also because Weir’s earlier Australian work feels like a world apart from his later output. His Australian New Waves work, for most of the run, feels esoteric by comparison, playing more with genre as a means of expression. He mainly made horror and thriller films, movies with a sense of impending dread, before closing out this period with two historical epics starring Mel Gibson (Gallopoli and Living Dangerously.)By comparison, looking at Weir’s American output, they are much more populist. While Witness might have the DNA of a genre filmmaker in its bones, it’s still extraordinarily approachable, a crowd pleaser that taps into the visual language of neo-noir but delivers a kinetic movie star performance from Harrison Ford, earning his lone Oscar nomination. Weir also bounces between genres, making melodrama, comedy and historical epics all with the same relish and attention to making fine crafted populist cinema. While his final film The Way Down received warm but not rave praise from critics and less attention commercially, the whole scope of his career is littered with the sort of serious, grown ups-oriented cinema we are increasingly lacking
But before we get to the end of the line, let’s look at the beginning. Like most up-and-coming directors, Weir cut his teeth on several short films, mostly funded by the Australian Experimental Film and Television Fund. While we won’t be covering all of his short films, we are going to examine probably the most significant: Homesdale.
This was the last and by far the longest of Weir’s short films. Similar to his others, it was shot in black and white on 16mm film that was later converted to 35mm for display. This gives the film a slightly distorted, disorienting quality, especially in digital conversion. But rather than working against this distortion, Weir uses it to the full effect as a special effect in Homesdale, offering a scratched out window into a strange alternate Australia.
The titular Homedale in the film is a hunting lodge, where we see several guests visiting, several returning guests, seeking some form of escape. But once there, the staff at Homesdale stretches the attendees past their breaking point. Through a series of disturbing conversations, it becomes clear that the purpose of the hunting lodge is less to experience the outdoors, and more to push the limits of guests’ comfort.
Homesdale is in many ways a difficult film to write about. It is deliberately opaque with its themes and storytelling, a film about people being forced to confront that which makes them most afraid that never quite spells out what exactly is going on. But it is also silly, a comedicaly large exploration of issues surrounding death and aging. While there are aspects of the short film that are unnerving, the overall effect of it is a farce, a broad comedic take on Australian elites, and how they busy themselves to avoid their actual fears of aging and death.
A lot of the themes of Homesdale will pop up in later Weir works; in many ways The Cars That Ate Paris feels like a logical extension of Homesdale’s world view. Those later takes are more thematically nuanced and certainly more aesthetically confident. But there are a lot of the things that will form Weir into the director he is bound to become. The movie’s dialogue, from a script co-written of Weir’s early collaborator Piers Davies, is sharp, but it is the way that the performances from the film’s ensemble cast that give this largely unlikable crew some veritas and empathy.
Like most of Weir’s early short films, Homesdale is a bit difficult to track down. I only found it as a special feature on Picnic at Hanging Rock. And ultimately while it is an interesting entryway into Australia-era Weir, I don’t find it especially crucial. It is more a fascinating glimpse into Weir’s identity as a darkly funny filmmaker, a trait that will become more subtle in his later work, but always lies under the surface.
Next Week: We visit another strange locale as we explore the seething politics of small town life in The Cars That Ate Paris.
