#bold in aesthetics but not in action ......... what a hollow performance

[pastamansta]

🔥 Tim Burton (him as a person or his aesthetic, your choice!)

"Beetlejuice" (1988) reminds me a lot of another film I watched recently; "Tombstone" (1993). Sold by an aesthetic and a FANTASTIC performance from a side character, audiences were conned into loving a mediocre film. I'm not Lindsey Ellis, so don't expect me to talk about the cartoon.

"Batman" (1989) and its sequel is proof that Burton will not be giving up his aesthetic for God or money. Gotham is heavily disconnected from both the film and its source material, with little reason other than its director. There's a reason no one calls these "Keaton's Batmans," they call them "Burton's Batmans." Jack Nicholson is great as The Joker, but that's no hot take. The hot take is that Devito is too horny as The Penguin, and it makes me uncomfortable for a film that's already so sexual.

"Edward Scissorhands" (1990) is a bitter, bitter film where artist finally meets muse. Not, like, in the plot, but in the production. Depp and Burton were made for eachother... or at least that's what I'm supposed to think. This movie's just too messy, however, and can't decide where its focal point lies and leaves me wishing I had just watched "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" (2000) instead.

"Sleepy Hollow" (1999) leaves me, a fan of the original text, I know that's probably a weird thing to say, miffed, even if understanding. Outside of some pacing issues, it's a bold reimagining that feels like Burton attempting to get out of his comfort zone... but I just didn't need this story to be turned into an homage to B-horror. Go watch that Disney short, eh?

"Big Fish" (2003) is his best film. I am hardly qualified to speak on it, and even if I did, I would cry. So, you know, just go watch that shit.

"Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (2005) is destined to be compared to "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory" (1971), and why wouldn't it? In thirty-four years since the making of the original, not a single person worth listening to said "i need this done right," including Burton himself, which is why he tries to add so much, but no amount of additions changes the fact that he casted his muse instead of someone who could, you know, act like Wonka? So, you know, destined for failure and to be loved by everyone who won't watch movies made before 1987.

"Corpse Bride" (2005) is one of only two claymation films that Burton would actually direct, and he uses this time to steal a Jewish story and make it less Jewish. I don't like the ending or the songs and it feels like it could be cut in half and achieve the same effect.

"Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" (2007) literally doesn't have the iconic opening number from the stage play??? Overall, there's rarely a pairing of source material and director that works as well as this one... If only I enjoyed the source material, eh? So dark, so bitter, so edgy, so... nothing. I never think about this movie. When I do, I think of Mrs. Lovett's dream sequence and remember the good old days of "Big Fish" (2003) when Burton liked to use color.

"Alice in Wonderland" (2010) is one of my guiltiest pleasures in all of film. It is the reason why every time Disney announces a live-action remake, my ears perk up. If all of them were as wild, unhinged, original, creative, and inspired as this one... Well, I think Disney might not be fucking bleeding money right now. No one ever even mentions that it's a sequel to the original animated film. A SEQUEL, not a remake. Sometime movie-goers surprise me with how little they think.

"Frankenweenie" (2012) blows. I don't care how unique it is, I do not like it.

"Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" (2016) is one of the funniest remnants of the teen dystopia genre. Like, it hardly applies, but is trying SO HARD that it's unbelievable. Also, props to Mr. "Black People Aren't My Aesthetic" for casting Samuel L. Jackson as a dude who eats white babies. (I do not mean that.) Seriously, this is proof that Burton, as a modern director, should no longer be taken seriously.

"Dumbo" (2019) is AAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAHAHAAAAHAHAHAHA I FUCKING HATE THIS DUDE HOLY SHIT

If I didn't mention, I haven't seen it. Yes, I know I skipped some big ones. I may watch them one day, but I am in no rush.

[girlmood]

so yesterday, after crying about my phone being in the hands of some stubborn, unsophisticated uber driver, my mind kept going back to something i’m a bit obsessed with. i have had these obsessive and compulsive thoughts for around a year and a long bit now, and they make me feel unsafe because they revolve around someone. the thoughts themselves are innocent, yet they’re incessant and i feel that they get in the way of being active and focused on things. 

for a long time now i’ve tried to make sense of these thoughts.

i’ve come to the conclusion that these thoughts are in the way of something.

whenever i am daydreaming this recurring thought, i close my eyes. i reflect and become drowsy. even when i am trying to reject these thoughts i try and use sleep. needless to say that this gets in the way of things like reading and creating. however, i always insist when people ask that i am always busy reading and creating. in effect i am if i am daydreaming something all the time, BUT i am not putting pen to paper, am i? 

i close my eyes to my reality, the outside world. i live in my interior. 

i do this because it is easier.

i have said that i choose to obsess over this thing because it calms and soothes me. i always knew that the facile nature of just thinking something alone and not doing anything with it made me feel freer.

yesterday, however, it was difficult to cry about my phone OR this thing. it felt forced to encourage tears even though i felt a hollowness inside. when i noticed that this uncomfortable moment was taking place, i berated myself for not telling me how i really feel. THAT made me cry. knowing that there are things concealed from myself within myself is a fact that terrorizes me more and more each day i get older, especially because i think “I did psychology! Why don’t I know what is wrong with me?”

if i had been focusing on saturday night, i would have my phone. i was drunk and sleepy so i did not hear the uber driver trying to return it to me (or so he says). i also have no memory of the situation. i just have no phone right now.

if i admit to myself that i feel what i am scared i feel because i don’t know it, in regards to the obsession (though admitting this would no longer make it an obsession -- it would practically free me), then i must open my eyes and focus and take action towards it. it isn’t a bad thing to want what i am daydreaming about. i argue that it doesn’t make sense, but it does. my issue is that i cannot go a day without thinking about it in some form. i want to be able to focus.

i am taking a while to get to my point here but i think that this does further emphasise the importance of what my point is, to be fair.

anyways, i cried when i talked about my lack of focus, and how really, all i want to do is wri--... wri--

i couldn’t say the word “write” because i got choked up by my tears all of a sudden.

when i finally realised that “i’m not letting myself write, or create at all, by my lack of focus” i started sobbing like a child bereaved of ice cream.

i use that obsession, i use alcohol and drugs and social media and films, all to distract myself from what i truly want to do.

I want to write.

i do english. i tell myself it is because the teacher i had a crush on replied to a letter i’d given her; she said she could see me being “the next j.k rowling.” i’m sure that was meant as a compliment back then. there is also the fact that i never intended with continuing on with education past year 11 until we had to by law, but after enjoying my sixth form subjects, i found it incredulous that i had to pick just one for university, and english seems to be the perfect avenue in which to incorporate media, sociology and psychology (i also never got to do philosophy and i never continued on with french after gcses, so i also hoped to approach them in my courses).

but really, i do english because i’ve always been a good writer.

that is a bold claim to make, but in the past years i have made many bold claims. i am a sagittarius! it is our job to make bold claims and when asked to elaborate on that, we say no! like, that meme format was born out of sagittarianism.

for the sake of talking, because us sagittarians also do love the sound of our own voices, i will elaborate THIS ONE TIME.

i wrote many songs when i was younger, and used to perform them with my sister and cousins. there was this song called “girls style” that i still remember the chorus of. i must’ve written it when i was like, 7 or 8 years old? i swear, though, it’s good enough to be on a dolly advert or a song that jojo siwa could get more famous of. i think it must’ve been inspired by bratz too... anyways, that was a good song, is my point. i don’t think i could write it again and it could be as good because, for one, i don’t identify as a girl anymore. 

there was also another song that i wrote, i don’t remember how it goes, but i know once beyoncé came out with “irreplaceable” i was infuriated because the song i wrote had the exact same subject matter and tone as her song (but actually who was i telling “to the left, to the left” at 8 years old? rolling WHO around in the CAR? that I BOUGHT? for WHO?) somehow i swore blind that beyoncé had stole my song, and even though she was my whole life even back then, i had to unstan for a bit because i was mad at her.

imagine. 

i’m writing beyoncé level songs at 8 years old.

okay, i may not be THAT good -- well, actually, most of the songs on b’day aren’t so intangible for an 8 year old. not to say it isn’t a masterpiece, like every other thing beyoncé has done ever since and before and god I LOVE THAT WOMAN, but you know, i was in that ballpark, i guess, maybe...

or maybe not but ANYHOW i also learned to read at quite an early age, think it must’ve been 3 or something (despite how intelligent he is, i can’t imagine my 4 year old cousin being able to read right now, so that must have been a shock to my mother) and i was pretty artistic at a young age too, despite my main interests being in science at that time. 

i remember being in year 3 and writing a poem about ice cream that my teacher would never stop bringing up even after i left his year. i also drew a portrait of my best friend that year, and trust me, it was so good, the whole class was in awe. no joke. 

funnily enough, though, for a while, i used to deny that those things happened. you know, the pride my year 3 teacher felt or the way my best friend looked at me when she saw how well i depicted her at, again, only 8 years old. i forgot about them until now, 13 years later, in my last semester of university. 

my best friend from secondary school and my dad were so obsessed with this journal i used to bring around. my best friend used to write in it from time to time. i was so perplexed as to why she liked it so much that eventually it weirded me out and i stopped bringing the journal to school. (sorry mia, still love you!) i went to jamaica for two weeks when i was 15 and brought that journal with me, and my dad read every entry and seemed so excited by it as well that i just. stopped bringing it to show him. he still asks about it, and if i’m still writing in general. i give him mono-syllabic answers and hopes that he doesn’t ask any further questions (i mean perhaps that is because the moment i visited jamaica was also the moment i realised i really liked this one girl and since then i’ve realised i am a lesbian and since all i was doing was writing about this one girl for three years... i didn’t want to share anything too incriminating with him, a known homophobe, naturally)

in all of these instances, you can see that people enjoy my art. there isn’t an instance in which they’ve protested against it, even when i’ve explicitly named people in that journal or not everyone likes ice cream. but you can also see that i somehow conveniently forget that. like. “people enjoy my art” does not compute in my mind for a long time. it is a sentence that does not make sense, by every word. 

people? 

outside of myself? 

enjoy? 

like, actively consume and are amused? 

my? 

ME? 

art?

that’s BOLD, you believe you create art? ART? 

well, what else would you call it? what else would you say? i’m creating something whimsical here.

i’m currently studying critical aesthetics, and as far as i’ve read for this class, i can perfectly claim that the creations i allow to be consumed as such ARE in fact, poetry, by the basis of many of these conflicting philosophers.

but obviously, before three months ago, i didn’t know much about what aristotle, hume, hegel and such had to say about art and creating. however i always know i want my every endeavour to be artful. i’ve been enamoured with the concept of aesthetic for a long time -- perhaps this was vapourwave’s doing -- and i know i daydream a lot. it’s where the mental illnesses i’m plagued with permeate these naturally creative realms of my mind and distort them and they become unhealthy obsessions that i react compulsively toward. 

i’ve been to therapy and counselling and have heard the same thing. i’ve even heard it from a friend who really inspires me recently -- overthinking is not a bad thing. you just have to know how to control it so that it benefits you. overthinking could not be the bane of my existence because i probably would not be able to create without it. however, it’s dysfunctional because i don’t control it. i always think it’s about not being able to “turn my brain off”, which is impossible apart from braindeath, which i think is what i accidentally purposely try to allude to, but that isn’t what control is. 

control... is a scary word. a hell of an intimidating word for someone who is considered by many to be free-spirited and laid back. but control could have saved me the frustration of a missing phone for two days. control did save me from this obsession from furthering at one point, but after one event i lost control and have not regained it since. it is easy to blame the person in question but she hadn’t done anything wrong. i’m not really doing anything wrong. i just need to control myself.

last year, i meditated a lot. this was perhaps i was smoking weed and normal tobacco, thinking i could find myself in those vices, yet felt so paranoid and low. when you meditate, it isn’t really about controlling your thoughts by blocking them out. rather, meditation is about controlling where your mind is. where you focus. it’s choosing to relax.

strange as it sounds, relaxation is not an easy choice to make.

i often mistake relaxing for being idle. the major difference is in my thoughts. being idle allows for thoughts to intrude upon me and be incessant and unnerving. 

being idle is unfortunately a constant in my life.

it isn’t that i haven’t got anything to do. it’s just easy to be idle.

somewhere in the bible (no, i don’t care enough to go and look it up) it says “idle hands give the devil play”. or it’s a jamaican proverb. my mum says it a lot. anyhow, it rings true in every sense for me. the “devil”, my unconscious “ego”, base impulses, “play” with my mind, they swing my “idle hands”, make them shape their way, clap their way, ball their way. an innocent hand clapping game played until my hands are sore. i’m always throwing my hands at the devil to let him do what he wants.

relaxing is stopping the hand game. i put my hands down and watch the devil wait for me to parttake once again, saying encouraging things. there, i control my passivity. i spectate my own mind. 

right now, i’m relaxing. i am in bed, but also while typing this i am taking my time to focus, be honest and try not to digress. it feels so tranquil. i have written a lot but i want my point to get across so i can feel understood.

i feel like i have misguided my friends about who i am for a long time. or have i? it’s easy to be the messy black lesbian who loves one direction and is “woke” but there is this thing that i notice when i am with them: i am relaxed. well, in most instances. i listen to what they are telling me, because i enjoy listening in general but also because i love them. 

in my teenage years when i decidedly “wasn’t into friendships”, i would still listen to the people i hung around with. i’d complain about them on twitter after, which funnily enough people still joke that i do but i really do not (and CAN not) do it as much as i used to but i know by idly listening to them and not opening up i let all sorts of demons in because they can intrude unlike people you haven’t given the key to. 

now i am choosing to open up because people aren’t so bad, and people mostly like me. even if they didn’t, however, it doesn’t actually matter. 

me existing regardless of anyone else is the point here, despite me being a good writer. i think that’s what makes writing good. i think that is what makes art good. it has the ability to exist and encourage thought. 

i shouldn’t be afraid to write because i think i’m too depressed or messy or something i don’t like will come to fruition because that isn’t what its about. creating is creating. no one else would have written this. i don’t expect this to be winning the nobel book prize any time soon. i want to finally find peace in my honesty. i have been a compulsive liar for too long and it has become monstrous. now i must relax and take the true easy path in the end: the one which terrifies me the most.

i am going to be disciplined, patient, open. honest, forgiving, sensitive. 

i do love to be a mystery but it isn’t fun if it’s causing you pain and you’re a mystery to yourself for such a long time.

one way i’m going to solve the enigma that is myself, as well as the world, is writing.

[the-film-bitch]

Nocturnal Animals (2016) ★★★★

OSCARS: 1 Nomination for Best Supporting Actor (Michael Shannon).

Amy Adams’ face fills the frame, pupils dilated in fear, her mouth half-open as if she can’t take her eyes off whatever terrible thing she’s staring at. Superimposed over her face is a full image of a man – Jake Gyllenhaal, standing. The visual metaphor is vivid: he is in her head, under her skin.

This is the poster image, unequivocal in purpose, for Nocturnal Animals, Tom Ford’s Gone Girl-esque psychological thriller. Every other visual from the film proves just as painstakingly calculated; it has the look of an over-budget perfume ad, stylised to the last inch in tone, texture, timbre and composition. Shot on film by Seamus McGarvey (Atonement, Anna Karenina) and with a swelling orchestral score by Abel Korzeniowski (A Single Man), designer-director Tom Ford’s latest has shades of Blue (Velvet, that is) and harks back to Hitchcock-era Hollywood without feeling derivative of any one big name. 

Built on the central premise of Austin Wright’s bestseller Tony and Susan, Nocturnal Animals is Ford’s full-time thriller, part-time critique of artful, empty lives. Amy Adams plays the book’s titular Susan Morrow, a married art gallery owner who feels like she should be happy with her pristine life, but can’t move past the cracks: her ‘handsome and dashing’ husband Hutton (Armie Hammer) is distant – a cinematic tipoff for an extramarital affair – and she’s much less satisfied with her work as head of an art gallery than everyone else seems to be. So when ex-husband Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal) sends her a manuscript of his latest novel (titled after an affectionate nickname he gave her in happier times), she seizes the opportunity to distract from her malaise for a little while. There’s even a deliberate ego trap on the first page to entice her: the dedication reads ‘For Susan’. Attempting to open the package, she gives herself a papercut that draws much more blood than it should; a visual clue that the innocuous-seeming packet of papers is, in fact, capable of grievous harm. 

Soon, the book’s brutally violent events and its scathing sense of contempt (delivered by analogy) take over every waking moment for Susan, of which there are many (she often complains of insomnia). Chapter after chapter, ‘Nocturnal Animals’ acts like a chisel to each of the fault lines in Susan’s life, turning chip to gaping rift and fragmenting what little peace she thought she had left in her beautiful washout of a life.

Edward’s novel turns out to be the literary manifestation of all the messy hurt left over from his breakup with Susan, more details of which we learn in later flashbacks, which are indicated by warm lighting and a youthful sparkle in Adams’ eye. It’s part-therapeutic exercise – or exorcise – part-revenge piece for Edward, with Ford gesturing as much through a little scene at Susan’s gallery, where she does a double-take at a piece of artwork: the word ‘REVENGE’ arranged in staccato form. ‘Where did this painting come from?’ she asks, before Jena Malone’s caricature of the LA art world, clad in what looks like a gladiator sandal for the torso, reminds her that it was a purchase made by Susan herself some eight years ago. Edward’s novel has given Susan fresh eyes; like anything anxiety-inducing, it renders the familiar foreign, and forces Susan to take stock of the illusions in her life, exposing them for what they really are – or for what Edward (and Ford, in an interesting, though much too cursory suggestion) thinks they are. 

The critique is clearly intentional here, but it feels underdeveloped throughout the rest of the film, like an inspired, but half-formed, idea forgotten about mid-production. Nocturnal Animals wants to tell us something, but it shouts over its own voice, all at once warning us about the dangers of betrayal, of falling into false complacency early on in life – its discordant voices speak of regret, selfishness, masculinity, anguish, and of the scars that make compelling art. This is the most frustrating thing about the film – that it can’t decide where to stick the knife in – instead pricking at us in an inexact, half-hearted sort of way when it has the potential to deliver a direct stab to the heart.

Ford is more successful in cutting to the quick elsewhere. As writer-director, his overhauling of the original story is bold and ambitious, deftly tweaking finer aspects of the original story to give the film a sharper psychological edge: the gothic appeal of Texas as the scene for violence replaces the book’s more chaste original setting of Maine, for example, while female lead Susan is promoted from housewife to professional aesthete to put more sting in the film’s tail.

This last amendment gives Amy Adams a role starkly different from those we’re used to seeing her in. As high-fashion, high-flying Susan, Adams moves in a way we haven’t seen her move before: calculatedly, as if she knows she’s being watched and wants to project confidence and grace – almost as if she was starring in that perfume advert instead. And when Edward’s novel shocks her out of that carefully-poised composure, Adams skillfully produces a changed Susan, convincing us that the damage is real.

Casting also works excellently in analogising the novel’s characters with the film’s: Tony and Edward are both played by Jake Gyllenhaal, while the former’s red-headed wife (Isla Fisher) and daughter (Ellie Bamber) bear uncanny resemblances to Susan herself. What the fate of the book’s women suggests of Edward’s post-breakup feelings for Susan is left hanging in the air. Instead, Nocturnal Animals more deeply explores the emasculation of a man jilted through the analogy of a man bereaved, with the fictional Tony experiencing in action what Edward went through in feeling.

This is no better exemplified than in what is by far the film’s stand-out scene – in which Tony takes a quiet, nighttime family roadtrip through a moonless Texas night before being set upon by a group of juiced-up menacing locals. Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays their leader, Ray, in an astonishing performance (remember Angus, Thongs & Perfect Snogging?) that deftly captures the surface charm, erraticism and underlying menace of a serial killer. Indicating deep cinematic instincts, Ford has us watch the entire roadside meeting from behind our fingers as its nerve-racking disquiet steadily builds to the full sinister end that we dared not imagine. A few faltering moments for Tony, and the power dynamics slide away from him; his later tearful exasperation at the complete loss of his control over the situation is achingly palpable, because a small part of us agrees with him when he says, ‘I should’ve stopped it’. Perhaps all those Taken movies have set us up to see Edward as a father-failure here. But Michael Shannon as gravelly Detective Bobby Andes underscores this sentiment onscreen with his quizzical questioning of Tony, implying his bemusement at the latter’s passivity: ‘It’s my understanding these fellas didn’t have any guns?’ and when Tony confirms as much, ‘Hmm. Alright…’.

As you’d expect from someone whose day job is as fashion designer, Ford’s detail is immaculate; perfectionistic. Every aspect of the mise-en-scene is purposeful: when a portrait shot swings wide to reveal a classic Pontiac on window display, it’s to remind us that we’ve seen it before – in the novel’s fictional world, where it seemed to run on Ray’s testosterone. There are plenty of these interesting totems appearing in both Susan’s life and the book to indicate a parallel; twin items that remind us that Edward’s story is very much stocked with his memories of Susan.

At first glance, Nocturnal Animals might be on par with 2009’s excellent A Single Man. Looking for longer, though, it gives itself away as the flashier, less eloquent teenage equivalent of its grown-up brother. There certainly is plenty to marvel at here: its packed tight with stunning design, intricate plot weaving and a bolt from the blue performance from Aaron Taylor-Johnson – and with Tom Ford’s meticulous attention to detail, there will still be much to discover in a second viewing. But seeing the film again won’t clear up that vague sense of not quite getting the gist – does it want us to leave the cinema more protective of our youthful, romantic voice – the one Susan ignored? Or is its principal message about the nature of art, or the hollow happiness to be found in capitalist pleasures? In either case, Ford doesn’t pay these themes enough attention, dropping them in and then forgetting all about them soon after. It gleams, but Nocturnal Animals only goes skin-deep.