I don't like this movie. It is painful to watch, but probably not in the piercing introspective way that the filmmakers want. Instead it's painful in the exhaustively irritating way that a fly buzzes in your home from an unknown spot, keeping itself cleverly hidden so you don't know where to squash it. The buzzing is interminable and unyielding, with a predictable rhythm that you have a strong instinct to end as soon as possible. It starts out as something you think you can live with and ignore, move past to focus on the things that really matter in life. However, as the buzzing becomes stronger, louder, demanding more and more of your attention, you realize that the monotony of it and it's loud obnoxious insistence on itself cannot be bared. But enough with this metaphor. This is why Malcolm & Marie sends me in search of my fly swatter.
First of all, shut up. Just shut up. Second of all, fuck already. Just fuck already. Or actually don't because he's way too old and you are way too young. It's upsetting. But let's put some details in this shit.
Malcolm & Marie is about a couple who are really wealthy, but apparently have a lot of problems. They may look like a beautiful It couple living lavishly in probably the Hollywood Hills, but actually, they are a fractured, co-dependent sado-masichistic man and woman with exceptional diction and lung capacity. After credits in a style that signal that this is an "art film," we dive in. We learn that following director Malcolm's successful film premiere, former actress/model Marie is mad and the high on life Malcolm doesn't know why. Actually for a good portion of the beginning, he doesn't even notice her attitude. This, for us, the viewers who can feel and see her silent anger, sets Malcolm up as the self-centered asshole who doesn't recognize his beautiful arm candy's feelings. But Marie's feelings don't go unrecognized for long. In the first of one of the films many eloquently delivered, impassioned soliloquies, Marie expresses her disappointment that Malcolm didn't thank her at the premiere. He should have thanked her because she is the former drug addict that Malcolm based his film on. She is the woman "Emony" the damaged protagonist of his masterpiece. And he didn't thank her. So she's mad.
Marie lets all of this out and we're thanking "you're right, he should have thanked you." Then Malcolm volleys back with "I apologized for not thanking you. You said it was fine at the time." And she's like "I changed my mind." And I'm thinking, you know what, that's fine, you can change your mind and be angry and pick an argument about something that is long past been relevant. The problem I have with the film isn't Marie's insistence that Malcolm doesn't value her and her artisitc and personal contribution to this film and his personal success. This is a problem in many relationships and kudos to the film for examining it. My problem is the relentless way the film keeps hammering home this point over and over again. The film begins a pattern of fight, conclude, attempt carnal reconciliation, and repeat. The pattern becomes so predictable that all of the relevations that are dug out from these interactions become powerless and unfulfilled. The filmmakers, possibly do this intentionally to mimic and reflect the frustrating waltz of "fight, fuck, repeat" that couples fall into sometimes (although no couple, anywhere, fights this eloqently outside of a Shakespeare play), but since the film is so hell bent on showing this elevated, exceptionalized couple fighting and that it's artistic and special, that I get annoyed and it becomes one-note really.
The power of the performances, the writing which are exceptional. They are, weakens and flattens until you find yourself searching for that fly swatter, as exhausted as the characters must be and in search of your fly swatter to end it. I think after the 3rd of 4th round, we really do want Malcolm or Marie to end the relationship, not for their benefit, but for ours. Release us from this interminable pattern! Only when the film breaks this pattern and shows a fight that does not include "heartbreaking relevations" does it attain any true merit. Malcolm's enraged frustration leveled at the "white lady from LA times" who criticizes his film includes some delightful vitrole directed at "Woke" filmmaking and includes an education in classic film that this reviewer can't help but enjoy. However, just when we think the film is done playing that note, it returns and strangles it until that neck bone chokes to dust. The ending speech by Zendaya is too long. It loses it's affect and is just annoying. I don't feel anything from it. And judging by the way Michael David Whatever struggles to eek out a tear in the face of it, he doesn't either. It's highly indulgent emotional filmmaking and really pretty pretentious in how you just know the filmmaker expects us to eat all of this up and revel in all of the brilliance. I'm sorry, but I don't think this film is brilliant. I think it desperately wants to be and in that relentless search for it, loses any and all hope for it.
Despite the strong performance by marvel Zendaya. But she's a problem too. She's all of 22 years old. And looks it. How long has she known Malcolm? How could she have known him so long as to have so much history with him? He's 35, and she's 22. When did he meet her, help her through her overdose, write a film with her influence, spend years trying to get it filmed and finally live through that acheivement together. If this relationship is as old and weathered as the fights would have you believe, where is the evidence of that in Zendaya's casting? It felt like the words of someone older, but in a younger package. Which is so Hollywood. But that's another problem. This movie feels like it was conceived, written and made in a Hollywood vaccum. The characters, the setting, their voices are those of an elite group who view their problems, their fights as the stuff of art and you can tell that these are fights that people in the film industry write to elevate and glorify how they are better people because of their passion and how it erupts as eloquent solioquies, not the ignorant stutterings of the masses. But that's what a real fight is. It isn't polished and currated, it's visceral and ineloquent and more interesting than these arguments by far. Just look at a film that this film is obviously referencing "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" in that film the protagonists played by Burton and Taylor are smart, witty and cutting, but there words are also random and unfiltered. That's what makes the film a gut punch: there's restraint and authenticity. Even though the word authenticity is repeated an annoying amount throughout this movie, it has very little.
This film is highly filtered and it's from SnapChat. And it appears not to even realize the ways that it is contributing to the kind of troupes it attacks. There's this whole part where Marie attacks Malcolm's male-gaze film making...while she wears nothing but a tight wife beater and panties! Malcolm comments on this so we're not supposed to notice that low hanging fruit, but it's still true! She's practically naked or sexualized throughout the whole movie. And she's 22, not 32 which would be more realistic. It just doesn't work. I will admit, I wasn't excited to see this movie. I didn't recognize the actors and the style didn't excite me. But that's why I was so excited to be proven wrong. In some ways i was, the performances are stellar and some of the writing too, but the cliches and general lack of restaint in the filmaking, really kills it. It doesn't make it a horrible movie, but it doesn't make it approach good either. Bare with me for a moment with another metaphor: it's like a tennis match that everyone's excited for, and in the beginning it is good. The masterful players are lobbing one shot after another at each other. But then they keep doing it. And keep answering each volley with another slam, and keep going and going and going. The match becomes monotonous. I am no longer excited, I just want to leave. It goes on like this until, when the last spike (i don't know tennis) goes down in the pavement, the player may cheer but we're just like, I don't even care, I'm ready to go. That's Malcolm & Marie.
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