The Favourite (5/5 Stars)

“The Favourite” was directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Now here is a director whom I have a love/hate relationship with. I have seen three movies of his, rated the first (“The Lobster”) five stars, the second (“The Killing of a Sacred Deer”) with one star, and now the third, “The Favourite” five stars again. The style of Lanthimos does not change all that much, film by film. The main difference between “The Lobster” and “The Favourite” and “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” is that Sacred Deer takes place in the present day with supposedly normal people. “The Lobster” by contrast took place in a futuristic society with humans that consistently did not act like humans. The setting of “The Favourite” though obstensibly historical is more in line with a setting like “The Lobster” in fact that is part of what makes it so funny. “The Favourite” presents an absurd historical scenario. It concerns the short reign of Queen Anne of England (played by Olivia Coleman) who reigned in the first decade of the 18^th century. Queen Anne has no business being on the throne. She has been involuntarily been delegated the task of ruling a nation through the childless efforts of the past three Tudor kings. She herself lost seventeen children within fifteen years to miscarraige, still-birth, and infant mortality. Such a history would make any person a little unhinged if not completely crazy. Queen Anne is no exception. She will be the last of the Tudor dynasty and it shows.

This consistently ill (her maladies include fevers and gout), generally burnt out and severely insecure lady nevertheless has enormous influence over the fate of the nation. She never leaves the house (to be fair it is a big palace) so the most important decision makers in the nation camp out in her court waiting for her to be well enough to attempt to address the issues of the day. “The Favourite” refers to the woman who at the moment has the most weight with the Queen. This is not a merit based position. It takes fierce ambition, the capacity for much mean girl backstabbing, and a mental limberness that allows one to completely subjugate one’s thoughts and feelings to the whims of a sick crazy woman in order to ultimately manipulate all the other people around her. Does Yorgos Lanthimos show Queen Anne or her sycophants any sympathy. Absolutely none. At times this seems unnecessarily cruel, but given that all the people involved are running an incompetent and irresponsible government it is very much what they all deserve. It’s okay to laugh at these people. They are all doing terrible things. “The Favourite” would make a great double-feature with “The Death of Stalin”. If you ever feel bad about democracy, go and watch these two movies back to back.

The original favourite is Lady Sarah (played by Rachel Weisz). Her ambitions are mainly political. She wants the Queen to finance a war with France. The subject is brought up constantly in this vague abstract way that can’t possibly lead to competent decisions about it no matter what side they ultimately fall upon. Lady Sarah’s political opponent is the leader of the opposition, Lord Harley (played by Nicholas Hoult). Court dramas are generally stiff affairs what with the costumes and the elevated language. Not so with “The Favourite”. Lord Harley is dressed like an insane clown. He has this big white wig, way too much white face makeup, and stupidly high heels. Nicholas Hoult is already a tall actor. Put heels on him and he absolutely towers over the women of the story. It is rather funny how this towering man with a large powerful constituency has to ingratiate himself to a fickle weak women by his dumb dress and absurd courtly manners. Nicholas Hoult has become an eminently watchable actor. This is the same guy who played Nux in “Mad Max: Fury Road” and amazingly, the boy in “About a Boy”. There is a certain confidence he can bring to odd characters that put at least his work in “The Favourite” on the level of a Robert Downey Jr., Sam Rockwell, or Christopher Walken. The man just walks around and kills it in every scene.

Because Lady Sarah’s ambitions are mainly political, she fails to notice at first the upstart Abigail (played by Emma Stone) who has designs on the Queen herself. Abigail does not particularly care whether the war is financed. She wants the Queen’s attention to elevate her position from a servant girl into something more. Her first successes in winning the Queen’s favors draws the attention of Lord Harley. Lord Harley is willing to arrange a wedding with a Lord for Abigail that will automatically elevate her to the nobility herself, in a polite exchange of course for Abigail’s services in backstabbing mean-girl style Lady Sarah’s relationship with the Queen. The movie resembles more “Heathers” than any Merchant and Ivory costume drama and I mean that in the best way.

“The Favourite” presents the learned viewer with a view to a historical anomaly in the stature of women. Three hundred years ago, the women of England had no greater political rights than any other women in the world and no other women in the world at that time had any political rights for the last several thousand years. However, England like other countries had a hereditary monarchy, and in a hereditary monarchy, a woman (not women) could have considerable power given their access to the royal persons. (In the case of England’s Queen Elizabeth, it was possible that a hereditary monarchy could even luck into a great monarch in the form of a woman.) An influential woman in the court of a hereditary monarchy could have the type of power akin to the President’s Chief of Staff in our system. They could direct the monarch’s attention to certain matters and enable or restrict access to the monarch from various constituencies. Lady Sarah does exactly that in “The Favourite”. It is an interesting historical fact that although women were universally oppressed for all of human history, they were most able to attain power in the most oppressive of governments. It was not unnoticed by the Ancient Greeks when they compared their government, a direct democracy (which limited rights only to men), to that of Persia, whose royal courts were continually dominated by the mothers and wives of the emperors. The United States of America is a good modern example. It has been almost 250 years and we have yet to elect a woman as president. Meanwhile anti-liberal states like Pakistan and Myanmar have both had woman heads-of-state in the past 50 years. These women are not coincidentally family members of important political dynasties. Political power spread wide but unevenly as in Ancient Greece and the United States (at least until the 1970s) keeps women from power. Political power tightly held routinely ends up in the hands of a woman.

But what type of woman gains this power? The movies in today’s time have a conundrum that will be a hard needle to thread. How do we, in this newly woke society, treat women in history. We want to tell stories that show empowered women. However, as much as women in power hundreds of years ago may have been ambitious, may have been brilliant, and may have been heroic in their intentions, they were all confined by the misogynistic structure of society. Thus, to gain any power, they would all need to be cunning, scheming, and duplicitous. “The Favourite” shows this dynamic in spades and contains fully-developed interesting female characters. An example of how to not to thread this needle is the last several seasons of “Game of Thrones” TV series which has bowed to consistent pressure as to how it portrays women in its medieval fantasy land. The most annoying example is the nine-year-old Lady Mormont who speaks with vivacity and eloquence to large groups of male warriors and sometimes even persuades them to change political tacks. It is totally unbelievable that these men would let her into the room and even more unbelievable that they would be persuaded by her words, which are even more unbelievable in that they come from a nine-year-old child (you can contrast her behavior with that of Bran who was also a child lord). I suppose in this season of #MeToo, women characters must all be born with an unreal amount of pluck and wisdom lest the creators be branded sexist. A certain amount of complexity in character development is sacrificed when a movie inserts unreality into a historical situations for modern political purposes. The women in “The Favourite” given the society they live in, must adapt in sometimes deceitful and amoral ways. This makes them more interesting and, in my opinion, a better movie. Political correctness be damned.

Mad Max: Fury Road (5/5 Stars)

The main criticism that well regarded movie critics have thrown at blockbusters from time immemorial is their lowest common denominator nature. As products intended for the masses the big corporate studios (only people who can afford to make big blockbuster movies) dumbed down and sanitized the product in an effort to have it appeal to the broadest audience possible. In recent years there has been a welcome shift away from that mission plan. The causes are not completely known (although for my money I would give much credit to the silent digital revolution in movies which makes them a lot cheaper to make) but the effects can be perhaps perfectly exemplified in the movie “Mad Max: Fury Road,” a great blockbuster that is definitively not for everybody. It is what I will call (and I am coining a phrase here, (Watch Out!) a “niche blockbuster.” Its appearance was foreshadowed by the delightfully kooky yet still rather tame blockbuster  “Guardians of the Galaxy” last year, but here it has fully come of age in the grotesque apocalyptic vision of Mad Max land. To say that “Mad Max: Fury Road,” is merely a reboot of the cult B-movies of the 1980s does not do it justice. This is a new type of movie and one that should give hope to all those that care about movies. We are going through a rather intense revolution in how media is consumed right now and the local movie theater will not be spared from change as well. If George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are to be believed (and why not they should know something) we may very well be on the verge of only having very expensive blockbusters in movie theaters and everything else being delegated to the ever expanding cinema realm of one’s living room. The pessimists then have predicted a future where one’s local cineplex no longer shows anything interesting, strange, or weird, (i.e. original), but that does not seem to be happening at least not entirely. As the biggest blockbusters get ever bigger the lesser blockbusters are becoming more targeted in their subject matter, tone, and intended audience. It is of great surprise and relief and wonder that Mad Max: Fury Road has retained the look and feel of the original movies. This shows great gumption in the studio heads that bankrolled the big budget because the original movies were cult movies for a reason. They were unapologetically focused on car chases in the unforgiving desert wasteland between inarticulate anti-heroes and the grotesque caricatures of really bad really ugly men. This is essentially the same in “Mad Max: Fury Road,” the main exception being a desire to expand the audience beyond the average teenage male gearhead and allow women in on the fun. But women are allowed in only on Mad Max terms of course; the main female character Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron channeling her inner badass) has only one arm. Why? Well times are tough in the future and if women want to be part of the gang they have to be tough too. I think this movie may have broken the record for gun-toting biker grannies.

It will not take too long to summarize the plot of the movie. Mad Max (Tom Hardy) is taken prisoner by Immortan Joe, a terrifying slavemaster. As Mad Max is hanging down from the ceiling with his blood being drained out of him into a War Boy named Nux (Nicholas Hoult), news comes that Immortan Joe’s five harem sex slaves have been emancipated by one of his great warriors, Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron). Immortan Joe sets off after her with the help of his evil allies in Gas Town and the Bullet Farm (The two main economies of what is left of the world). There are also wild bandits. You can tell these guys apart because of their distinctive cars. They chase Imperator and then chase her some more. In between all of this Mad Max frees himself and teams up with Furiosa. That’s the movie essentially. Given that the original movies were no more complex this is exactly how complex the reboot should be if it were being faithful to the original material. The point has never been the screenplay. It is what is on the screen. 

And boy what is on the screen. First it should be mentioned that the world in “Mad Max” is a fully realized apocalyptic fever dream. Much like ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ it would be entirely acceptable if the movie got Oscar Nominations for Makeup, Costumes, and Production Design. I cannot imagine those three things being any better in this movie. If I were to sum up the tone of the movie I would single out one of the main bad guy’s cars. Stationed on top of this large eighteen-wheeler is an electric guitarist backed by ginormous speakers, clad entirely in red leather and suspended in midair by multiple bungee chords. When he hits the climax of a particularly intense solo the guitar doubles as a flamethrower, which spews flames out of the top. A Whole Lotta Love right there in the production design.

The performances are exactly what they should be. Tom Hardy seems to get it. He speaks as little as possible and only in gruff monosyllabic mutters. The bad guys seem to come entirely from the World Wresting Federation. Imperator Furiosa is steely and resolved and totally resourceful. And then there is Nicholas Hoult’s Nux who is completely insane. The War Body army is a group of Albino Berserkers entirely convinced that death in battle is but the beginning of a paradise in Valhalla. They throw themselves in and around the cars in these battles with an extraordinary lack of self-preservation. Hoult’s performance is perhaps the best and most original performance in the movie. Thankfully, he sticks around much longer than one thinks possible and his presence is never less than interesting. I looked him up and was astonished that he is the kid from that Hugh Grant movie “About a Boy.” Incredible what he has grown up to be capable of. What is perhaps most important is that between all the great car chases we have still scenes that do not weigh down the story with melodrama or pretentiousness. There is an emotional core here that works even though it is not required to work all that hard.

The fights and car chases are essentially theatrical wrestling matches. There is no way in hell that cars can continue to function in any of these situations (particularly with all the desert dust going around) and no way in hell that men can take the kind of beatings they do here without any type of blood or bruises. But the action is well done. The physics are within the realm of the suspension of disbelief. And the viewer is never all that confused as to where and what everybody is doing. There is no Oscar nomination for Stunt Direction but when you see a movie that does it so well like this one does you can really grasp the injustice of such an omission. Next year I will certainly include such a category in my own Oscar picks. This movie would make a great video game by the way.

I think one more note can be said about this movie’s feminism. I’ve seen enough movies now to not be all that surprised by the prospect of a woman toting a gun or engaging in something else that is traditionally masculine. There is a tendency though for movies to really pat themselves on the back for their progressive views. That is getting a bit tiring. I think from now on just give the girls their guns and spare me the speeches about how daring the movie is being. It was daring when Ridley Scott and James Cameron did it in the 1980s. I was born in 1986 and don’t really remember a time when the movies weren’t feminist. Hell, Titanic came out when I was eleven and it took me at least a decade to actually see what old movies James Cameron was giving his pro-woman finger to (cough ‘Gone With the Wind’ cough cough). I’m not saying that ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ is all that speechifying. It isn’t. But when you’ve got an army of gun-toting grannies in a major motion blockbuster franchise that is, if anything, defined by its testosterone, I think we can start giving the special treatment a rest. I’m not so impressed by the dog walking on its hind legs or even walking on its hind legs well anymore.