Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (a movie review post)

 

This is not a free-use picture but, as far as a can tell, it's supposed to be usable for reviews.

Since this is a review, I'm using it.

Is there a way to legitimately talk about this film without dealing with the death of Chadwick Boseman? I don't think so. Boseman's performance was, of course, stellar. It would have been stellar for a healthy man. Chadwick Boseman was dying. Though, honestly, he did most of his work while receiving treatment for his cancer, and who knows for how long it was affecting him prior to 2016. He was an amazing talent by any standard but that he did it while also undergoing cancer treatment is just mind blowing.

On the surface, the conflict of the movie is between Levee (Boseman) and Ma Rainey (played by Viola Davis), the conflict between the new and the old and those who refuse to change. [Look, I'm resisting the urge to point out that Ma Rainey and her refusal to change with the times is just like Republicans... oh, wait...] Also that Levee is flirting with Ma's girl, and Ma doesn't appreciate that, either. These are the conflicts that supply the emotional tension of the movie. But...

But before I go on, let's talk about Viola Davis. She was unrecognizable in this role. Ahead of seeing the movie, I had forgotten that she was in it and, so, wondered, more than once, as we were watching, who it was playing Ma Rainey. Thus I was surprised when we got to the credits to find out that it was Davis. She was amazing. The number of actors who can submerge into their roles so that you can't see the actor at all is very small, and most of those guys are fucking weird (Sacha Baron Cohen, Daniel Day-Lewis). Davis doesn't seem to suffer from any weirdness with her ability to... become.

What I'm saying here is that the acting in this film was extraordinary, and Davis and Boseman both deserve Oscars for their performances.

Though I don't think the film itself is Best Picture-worthy. Nomination worthy, certainly, but it's not quite Best Picture material, I don't think. Mostly because it's, basically, a filmed play. It's a very good play, but I'm pretty sure that when you turn a play into a movie that you should turn it into a movie and not film it as if it's a play. Maybe that's just me.

However, it does deal with an ongoing problem in American culture, the exploitation of the talent of African Americans for the benefit of fucking rich white men. That's the true conflict of the movie and part of Ma's resistance to change. She has achieved a slice of power within music culture and is desperate to retain that small amount of power she has. It's exemplified at the beginning of the movie when Ma's driver gets into a fender bender. The (white (do I really need to say it?)) police officer is ready to throw Ma in jail for her attitude: He doesn't know who she is. But Ma is "rescued" by her white agent, because the crash was in front of the recording studio, who exercises his whiteness on behalf of Ma, just so that Ma can then press him under her thumb with ridiculous demands. But she makes the studio a lot (a LOT, evidently) of money, so he's really responding to the money, not to any respect he has for Ma.

One of the more interesting aspects of the movie is the difference between the relationship that Ma has with the studio and the relationship that Levee has with it, because Levee wants to be the next big thing. And that's about all I can say about that without getting into spoilers. At any rate, it's definitely a movie worth watching. And I have to admit that I was more than a little skeptical about watching the movie to begin with. I'm not a blues fan, and the title... just isn't very inviting. Which is not to say that it's not appropriate, because the song is what the conflict is centered around. The performances alone make it more than worthwhile.

La La Land (a movie review post)

Let's have an honest moment: I really don't like Damien Chazelle. It's not a personal thing (Probably. Since I haven't met him, that's hard to say, but I did hear him on the radio, and he sounds like an okay guy other than the fact that he can't write and, so, should stop doing that.), but his movies need to go away now. (See my review of Whiplash.) No, I don't care that other people seem to like them. Actually, that's part of the problem. Chazelle's movies are like the Hershey's bars of chocolate: They're fine if that's all the chocolate you have access to but, once you've had good chocolate, you'll realize that Hershey's is kind of waxy and you won't want it again as anything other than a last resort.

Except I never want to see Whiplash again, even as a last resort.

Don't get me wrong, La La Land is a fun movie. Mostly. Fun in a cotton candy kind of way: It's all fluff and no substance. I like Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling just fine, and they do a fine job, but they never really gel. The movies feels like you're watching two people acting as if they are acting they are in love and having a relationship, which adds to the cotton candy-ness of the whole experience. None of it feels real. The whole movies feels as if it's about to dissolve under scrutiny.

I think the thing that most bothers me about the movie is the "message." Sure, it's an actual message, but it's a message that's endemic to our culture of positivity and to Hollywood in particular, so
1. It hardly seems like making a movie about this message anymore is worthwhile (especially since neither of the main characters have to go through any actual hardship (at least not within the action of the movie)).
2. It's a false message.
Oh, the message?
If you just follow your dream, if you're true to it to the exclusion of all else, your dream will come true. Even if it means giving up the "love of your life."

Maybe it's just me, but I'm really sick of that message, because it's not a true message. The problem, though, is that if someone doesn't succeed at achieving their dream, people take the stance, "Well, you just didn't try hard enough. You must have let yourself be distracted by other things." It's like the whole positive attitude with cancer patients, breast cancer especially. There's this pervasive belief that if someone just stays positive that she will beat the cancer. If she dies? She wasn't positive enough. The tragedy? Studies are showing that people who rely on positivity have a lower survival rate. (You can see my review of Bright-sided for more on this. Then go read that book.)

So, yes, the hype this movie is receiving makes me a bit mad. Probably more than a bit. It's so undeserving, especially in relation to all of the other movies, right now. Look, it's not that I have anything against people following their dreams. I'm all for it. I encourage it. However, this idea that if you are just steadfast in following your dream then it will definitely come true is a lie. Many people, people who are doggedly determined in following their dream, never see those things come true, because that's not all that it's about. To lead people to believe that it is is not just wrong, it's cruel. It leads people to believe that, somehow, if their dream doesn't come true then the fault is somehow inside of them, that they did something wrong, when, actually, they may have done everything right.

On top of all of that is this idea that Sebastian is some kind of white savior for jazz. Only he really appreciates it's true form, and only he can save it from extinction. If he can only manage to get his jazz club open. You know, if you "build" it, they will come and all that... wait for it... jazz. I find the whole thing kind of insulting. I mean, not only does he appreciate it more, but he plays it better. So, you know, you have all of these great black musicians in the movie, jazz musicians, but it's the lone white guy who is going to save them.

Give me a fucking break.

So, yes, I don't think La La Land deserved any of the Golden Globes it won, but Chazelle, especially, didn't deserve the awards for screenplay and directing.

Dying of Cancer

I've never talked much about my childhood on here, and I don't particularly care to, but there's a thing here that's important to what I'm going to say, so here's your bit of insight into me.
If you read carefully, that is.

Until I was four years old, I lived with my mother and my grandparents but, even after my mother got married, my grandfather was the primary male role model in my life. He was a large man. Quiet. Great "table muscles," as he called them. I never once heard him raise his voice to anyone, much less his hand, and my mother says she can't remember him ever once saying anything bad about anyone (my grandmother, evidently, was another story; she had the temper). He used to read to me. I'd sit in his lap and smell the engine grease on him and in his clothes (he was a mechanic, but there's more to the story than that) -- that smell was just a part of who he was -- and he would read to me, frequently the same book over and over again. Little Black, a Pony and some book about an old, beat up blue truck. See, I still remember them.

When I was 19, he was diagnosed with cancer; I don't remember what kind. It was one of the fast ones, though, but the doctors told us they'd caught it in time and that he would be okay. They continued to tell us that all through the treatment. "Everything's going well." "He's responding well to the treatment." "He should be going home in no time."

The last time I saw him was a Monday night. We'd gone to visit him at the hospital, which was in another city, but he spent most of our time there asleep. He did grip my arm before I left, a grip that was still powerful despite his weakened condition. Even that night, the doctors were telling us that he was doing "very well" and they expected that he would get to go home soon.

When the phone rang Wednesday morning, I knew what the call was. Part of me died that morning, too.

Cancer can be insidious that way. It doesn't ever really go away; it just hides. That's why we say it's in remission rather than cured. Maybe there will be an actual cure someday but, for now, the best we can do is treat it into submission and hope that we outlast it. The problem many people run into is that they treat it as if it's a curable disease so ignore the symptoms of it coming back because they don't want to confront the issue of still being sick.

Racism has a lot in common with cancer. It's not a curable thing, though many of us have wanted to treat it that way, even going so far as to declare on television that racism is a thing of the past. I understand the allure of believing that, but it's that kind of thinking that allows the cancer to spread. It's a thing that needs constant awareness just to keep it in check, and, as a society, we just haven't been doing that. We can see the results of ignoring the symptoms in the recent rampant tumor growth across the US. Well, not just the US, but I don't think other parts of the world ever thought they had "cured" racism.

At any rate, this past election has in many ways reminded me of my grandfather's cancer, not least in that everyone kept saying, "It's going to be okay. Clinton is going to win, and we're going to treat the racism (and sexism) cancer back into remission." But the cancer won; Trump won; and the emotions of that were very similar to that phone call letting us know that my grandfather had succumbed to the cancer and died. I'm not going as far as to say that the US has succumbed to the cancer, but the cancer, right now, is having its day.

This is no longer the kind of racism that only expresses itself through things like implicit bias and in systemic, institutionalized ways. It has become very explicit and in your face because people who have previously felt social pressure to keep their racism internal have suddenly found new freedom to externalize it. We have moved past implicit bias into explicit hatred and hate crimes.

So let me just be clear in case what I'm saying here hasn't been explicit enough:
Racism (and sexism) is a cancer eating this country up. It has been the great, ongoing conflict we have been dealing with since before the US became the US. Racism was one of the great issues that pushed us into a two party system with Alexander Hamilton and his Federalists (the modern Democrats) on the side of racial equality and Thomas Jefferson (the modern Republicans) and his Democratic Republicans on the side of racial discrimination and slavery. [Jefferson may have written "All men are created equal" but he only meant white men when he wrote that. He even kept his own mixed race children as slaves during his lifetime. That's just sick.]

Those of you who voted for Trump, whether you are feel as if you are racist or not, voted for the cancer. You voted for the cancer to have its day, or its four years as the case may be, and, in that, you are showing that you believe that you are more important than what Trump represents and that, my "friend" is racism. You are saying that you, you white person, deserve better treatment than the people that Trump has stated he intends to persecute, whether they be Muslim, Mexican, or female. You have said, "I know Trump is horrible and intends to do bad things to certain groups of people, but I am more important than those groups of people and I deserve my day at their expense." And, well, that, also, is just sick.

And the best part is...? Trump isn't going to give you your day, either, because you're not rich, and his policies are going to be just as disastrous for you as they will be for everyone else. So, yeah, good job.