A movie can be good in two ways. It can be technically proficient, the set can be correctly lit, the sound can be correctly mixed, the makeup can be correctly applied etc. It can also be personally enjoyable: that is, the subject matter can appeal to the personal preferences of the audience. (I never saw last Christmas’s viral hit “Hot Frosty” but I bet the people who watched it were probably pleased with the product without it needing to be all that technically good.) A movie can also be bad in two ways. It can be incompetently made. But a movie can also be technically proficient, but offensive on a personal level. These categories overlap obviously. Most mediocre ones are technically deficient but personally appealing. The last category, technically proficient and bad, is the most rare. Since movies are such a collaborative medium, and are made for people, it is rare that a team of talented people, working well together, make a truly offensive movie.
To illustrate what makes a movie “bad” in the second sense, take the character of Rita Mora Castro, a lawyer played by Zoe Saldana. We are introduced to her as she is preparing the defense of a client that the movie strongly implies murdered his wife by throwing her out of a window. Zoe Saldana does a song and dance (this movie is a musical) in which she uses her legal acumen to thrwart the meanings of words like “love”, “justice”, and “freedom” in favor of someone she knows is guilty. At the same time, she complains and pities herself that her legal talents are not appreciated by her superiors. At no point in this song does Ms. Castro express sympathy for the murder victim.
Movies and television shows are replete with characters of dubious moral nature. But just because a movie is about a bad person, does not mean that the writers/directors/producers of this movie are justifying that character’s behavior. Some of the best cinema about bad people, think Walter White of “Breaking Bad” or Tony Soprano of “The Sopranos”, are made by creators with well honed moral compasses who know exactly why and how bad their characters choices are. That well honed morality lends greatly to the dramatic arc of the story line. The problem with “Emilia Perez” is that it supports its sleazebag attorney. She could be a good person, but she isn’t because she wants money and power. The movie is fine with that and even goes so far as to give her a song and dance at a later time in which she accuses everyone else of being worse. The argument essentially is that her character’s lack of candor and dubious morality is justified because people don’t deserve her integrity. That is offensive. As a lawyer myself, that is specifically offensive to me. Her position and education demand that she hold herself to a higher moral standard, which, at a minimum, means she doesn’t make bullshit excuses like not being able to start her own law firm (where presumably she would be able to practice law without moral compromise) because, and I quote her, she’s black.
Ms. Castro’s efforts in support of the rich and powerful are not ignored though. She is approached by the boss of a drug cartel who wants her to help him fake his own death so that he may engage in a voluminous amount of cosmetic surgery to the end of transforming himself into a woman. The plan, carried out to song and dance, is successful. He fakes his death, abandons his wife and children in the process (he did not bother to seek their counsel about it), and resurfaces from the bandages with, among other things, new skin, new breasts, a new vagina, and a reduction in his adam’s apple. Importantly, he pays for all of this by embezzling money from his drug cartel. Like a lot of money. So although he starts a new life, shorn from the responsibility of running a large organization, he still has all the money and lives his new life as a new woman in luxury in a big house with maids and newly hired goons. Imagine the CEO of the company you're working at doing something like this. Imagine your spouse doing something like this. Imagine your father doing something like this. Imagine a movie not giving a shit about your feelings and instead insisting that you should feel a great joy in this person’s journey of self-actualization.
And it gets worse. This man refers to this decision as if a woman, someone named Emilia Perez, is telling him to do it. And this is another striking example of this movie being tone deaf and in dramatically poor taste. After the transformation, Emilia Perez, feeling sorry for all the mothers of Mexico whose children have been disappeared in the drug wars, starts a non-governmental organization that denounces the cartels that are conducting this orgy of violence, and the corrupt government that allows it. This NGO aids in the retrieval of bodies from mass graves so that these poor mothers can adequately mourn. (This Emilia Perez is quite adept at doing this because she intuitively knows where the bodies are buried.) The character, and the movie, are under the impression that engaging in a sex-change operation absolves all sins and makes the character a truly different person. Emilia Perez feels no need to turn herself into the police or give back the money she has gained via the blood of innocents. She didn’t commit those crimes. The man did.
There is an old joke about the rich man and his toupee. This egocentric guy, growing old and growing bald, decides to invigorate his looks with some youth by wearing a hair piece. It looks ridiculous and everyone can tell it is fake. But no one says it to his face because he is rich. So he just goes around looking ridiculous ensconced in a delusion that only the wealthy can afford. This is the same with all transgender people who choose to engage in cosmetic surgery. We simply do not have the technology to affect what they desire and, most of the time, they end up in the uncanny valley, approaching something to what they intend to be but obviously, and unsettlingly, not what they intend to be. So, even with all this surgery, which I believe the actor Karla Sofia Gascon actually received (for personal reasons, not for the movie), there is an unspoken dirty little secret that hangs over the movie. Karla Sofia Gascon looks ridiculous and fake. This is clearly a man we are looking at. It says a lot about this movie that it chooses to engage in this pandering sensibility so much so that even in front of all the television cameras that Emilia Perez preens for, not a single person in Mexico recognizes the drug lord. Even her wife (played by Selena Gomez) and children don’t recognize him. Emilia Perez pretends to be a long lost and very rich aunt of the deceased drug boss and no one suspects a thing. It says alot about the Academy that they have decided to sustain this pandering delusion by nominating Karla Sofia Gascon in the category of Best Actress. SHE’S A MAN!
“Emilia Perez” has an ending reminiscent of the one in “The Room”, in which writer/director/star Tommy Wiseau, after dragging us through an awful awful movie, at least unwittingly granted the audience the concession of watching the hated main character commit suicide. “Emilia Perez” provides this same type of relief when we are treated to a large fireball that kills enough people to spare us a sequel. The movie believes the characters are martyrs and that this should be very sad (there is funeral parade in which the poor peasants of Mexico appear to be canonizing the memory of Emilia Perez), but we know they more or less got what they deserved and the scene works as a cleansing purge that washes away much of the repugnant build-up of toxicity and entitlement that came before it. Can this movie become a cult classic at midnight screenings with running commentaries by derisive drag queens? I don’t know, I think it might be too technically proficient of a movie, but maybe. As for the music, well there wasn’t any particular song or melody that stood out as good or distinctly memorable. The dancing was fine I guess. Whether or not the lyrics were eloquent (or even rhymed) is beyond me because I do not speak Spanish.
And now we have to address the elephant in the room here, which is that “Emilia Perez” has been nominated for thirteen Academy Awards, the most of any other movie this year. It could very well be named Best Picture. Although there is a perverse part of me that likes the idea of a movie as original and daring as “Emilia Perez” winning the top prize, I can’t help but imagining that such an honor bestowed would come off with the general populace like the movie itself, tone deaf and in dramatically poor taste. It would be a few notches worse than giving Will Smith a standing ovation after he slapped Chris Rock in the face. I suppose it is hard for certain insular groups to consider the feelings of other people. The Academy is no exception (weird though, since the point of art is to do just that). For political reasons, “Emilia Perez” should be nowhere near the Best Picture race. Maybe their high-priced attorneys can explain this to them in such a way that it doesn’t unduly hurt their feelings. If the Academy wants to be daring, it can bestow the prize on “Anora”, a movie that presents with clear eyes how the delusional entitlement of very rich people affects the rest of us. Or the Academy can be safe and honor whatever this year’s version of “Green Book” (“Wicked”, anyone?’). Almost everything we do is political and certainly at this level with so many millions of people watching. We just experienced a political election in which a manifestly defective nominee just won the popular vote. One can sit back like Ms. Castro and complain about other people, or one can take stock in this simple reality: that the American people looked at Donald Trump and then the alternative and then, after ruminating about the choice for many many months, decided that the alternative was worse. The way to get back is to get better.
