Midweek Movie Free Talk

In terms of new releases I saw:

Bardo, False Chronicles of a Handful of Truths

Which came out on Netflix. It got mixed reviews after it premiered at the Venice Film Festival and is currently rotten on RT. However, both Barry Jenkins (Moonlight) and Chloe Zhao (Nomadland) love it.

I am a big fan of Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu and, while he’s never exactly been a critical darling, most of his films are films that I’ve enjoyed immensely such as Biutiful and The Revenant. And this is no different. I thought it was incredible. It’s a beautiful looking movie and while others call it self-indulgent I think it’s rather self-aware. It’s also about being Mexican, which I’m all about.

Avatar: The Way of Water

After the absolute dominance of comic book movies, it’s refreshing to see a blockbuster that just looks incredible.

It’s not just beautiful, it’s also a really sweet and tender family drama. It’s the best writing James Cameron has ever done (thanks to his newly hired co-writers no doubt). Is it maybe simplistic and full of tropes? Sure. But this is cinema in a pure sense. It’s like a return to earnest filmmaking.

To quote Harry Styles, “my favourite thing about the movie is that it feels like a movie.”

Haven’t really watched anything else new. Been trying to watch Bones and All, Decision to Leave, The Woman King, and Aftersun. Hopefully I can get to them before the end of the year.

I also need to watch The Whale and Babylon in theaters, so we’ll see how that goes.

Violent Night is a really fun movie. Definitely going on my rewatch list for next year.

I was gonna wait until I watched Babylon to talk about both the films. But eh, whatever.

So I saw The Whale. I wasn’t planning on seeing it in theaters originally, as I felt like my experiences with my own weight would make it a tough time to watch. But my sister, who is a massive Brendan Fraser fan, wanted to go see it and so I decided to accompany her.

And... it was a tough watch. Especially as someone who deals irresponsibly with my feelings by overeating. The scenes where he’s overeating are presented in a similar way that Aronofksy has presented addiction in previous films, but with a more melancholic overtone.

Fraser gives the best performance of his career. It’s such a beautiful and empathetic portrayal of someone living with a disease that is slowly but surely killing him.

Needless to say it’s a tearjerker and I did manage to cry multiple times.

The accusations of this film being fatphobic are ridiculous for a number of reasons.

The first one being, how many 600lb actors actually exist? At that weight it’s hard to do much of anything and acting can be a vigorous and physical job. Much more than people expect. Even bigger actors like Chris Farrelly and John Candy were only around 300 lbs. Now, the closest I know of is Darlene Cates, who played the mom in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. She weighed in the 500 range (due to some injury/health problem that had her bed ridden for a long time). Also Fraser is overweight himself, not to the 600lb degree, but how many of the people up in arms about this are actually at that size themselves anyway.

The second thing is that the play that the film is based on, was written about the playwright’s own experience. He’s talked about it on the press junket awards trail, and he talks about a period of time in his life were he was gaining a lot of weight because he was coping with his depression by overeating. The character Fraser plays is also gay, which the playwright himself also is. So this is a personal project based on the writer’s real life experience. It would be insulting to discount that.

In terms of the actual content of the film. I’m not sure what people expected? That it be a happy-go-lucky life being at that weight? As someone that has gone through extreme weight gain (100lbs+) and am now fortunate enough to be at a healthy weight, being that overweight is miserable. And I was at only half that size. It takes a physical and mental toll that you don’t really know unless you’ve been there yourself. This is something that I thought the film captured extremely well. Gaining that much weight can be scary, it can damage your body in more ways than the average person knows. The movie isn’t making a mockery of overweight people, nor is it a “carnival show” as I’ve seen it described. Aronofksy is being honest about the toll this takes on the body. Similar to how he showed the toll drug addiction has on the body in requiem, or the toll going too far with your art has in both The Wrestler and Black Swan. It being a hard thing to face/watch is exactly what Aronofksy has done his entire career, this is no different. But because it’s about overeating it’s treated differently.