Due to Covid, I didn’t write a review for last year, because I wasn’t able to go see very many films on the big screen. But this year, I’ve been able to take the requisite precautions (including getting vaxed) and get out more. Now, I do disagree with the widespread belief that Covid is over; my friends are still getting it, and the winter season may create another surge. And one film, as we will see, relates to what artists have been through.
At the end of this year, it has come to pass that the major studios are in a world of trouble: my observation, for what it’s worth, is that having previously made no significant changes in their business plans, it’s become rather inevitable for these studios that “Superman Turns Out to Be Flash in the Pan!”
Despite – or even because – of the panicking in Hollywood, it’s been a fine year, especially if you enjoy the rewriting of Hollywood formulas for Christmas, bio-pic, history, and the making-of-an-artist movies.*
The Christmas Movie: The Holdovers
Of course, the winter holidays bring out complex emotions. But films set during this season tend to bow to the demands of the Christmas industrial complex, cranking up, in a cookie-cutter manner, only the most basic feelings. If such films just happen to promote greed, well, that’s not merely coincidental either. And to be sure, films that take the opposite view tend to fare no better in their supposed critiques. Directed by Alexander Payne, The Holdovers avoids this reductive binary. From the opening scenes that carefully set up the premise of a prep-school cook (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), teacher (Paul Giamatti), and student (Dominic Sessa) forced to be together for Christmas in 1970, The Holdovers refuses to simplify anything, including a hefty narrative that encompasses the turmoil of the home front, a road trip, and the exploitation of academic labor. One of the most memorable scenes is when the cook, trying to work through the loss of her son, who was killed in Vietnam, breaks down during a holiday party – Randolph’s emotional hairpin turns will hit home for many viewers. Make of the ending of The Holdovers what you will: the ambivalent portrayal of the characters compels such a challenge.
The Bio-Pic: Priscilla
It turns out that not having the rights to use Elvis Presley’s songs in Priscilla becomes a blessing, further de-centering the great-man-of-pop-cultural-history narrative (and the obsession with authenticity that has been so deservedly mocked**). And it allows writer/director Sophia Coppola to devise an incandescent needle-drop: the entrance of Priscilla (Cailee Spaeny) through the gates of Graceland set to Spectrum’s “How You Satisfy Me” will lift you out of your seat, making the teenage dreamscape – and its horrifying constraints – that much harder to get safe distance from. There are a few moments shown of Elvis’s abusive side, but the film has no difficulties suggesting that there’s much, much more under the surface. Rather than the cliché rise/fall/comeback structure of a Hollywood bio-pic, Priscilla’s story is disarmingly straightforward: she came/she saw/she left. The ending lands perfectly, which, these days, seems to be not as easy to pull off with self-consciously, women-centered films as you might think.
The History Movie: Killers of the Flower Moon
Granted, the film might’ve looked more like a traditionally-Hollywood production, if director/co-writer Martin Scorsese hadn’t been schooled by leaders of the Osage Nation on historical/cultural accuracy. Depicting a really ugly chapter of American history, the genocidal campaign against the Osage Nation in the 1920s, Scorsese knows to rely on the disciplined performances of Robert DeNiro, Lily Gladstone – and, yeah, Leonard DiCaprio, though, reportedly, it took some effort to get DiCaprio with the program. Gladstone, who debuted in the stunning Certain Women (2016) by writer/director Kelly Reichardt, is unforgettable as the Osage wife in mortal danger due to her white husband (DiCaprio). Yet her story depends on who’s telling it, and Scorsese never lets us forget this troubling reality.
As architect of the genocide, whose perspective we are allowed to see, DeNiro’s character turns being cruel to be kind into a terrifying rationale: he’s only helping to speed along the inevitable extinction, due to their perceived inferiority, of the Osage people; their land, on which valuable oil deposits are located, will then be turned over to their white benefactors. Scorsese, who acted as a hitman in Mean Streets (1973), now acts as a radio announcer, whose participation in a sanitized and sensationalized account of “what you’ve just witnessed,” further twists the knife in a murder story without any mystery at all.
The Making of An Artist: Showing Up
Much certainly could be said about the collective/individual trauma of Covid. For artists, however, the troubles started beforehand, with corporate algorithms (Spotify, in particular) determining what art is valuable, while downgrading the value of artistic labor. At the same time, artists have been priced out of NYC and LA, the traditional homes of artistic communities. Thus the name of the game is, for most artists, to think small(er), the core principle of the DIY ethos.
In downbeat, often uncomfortably-funny, scenes shot at a now-defunct (!) art college in Portland, Oregon, Reichardt, director/co-writer of Showing Up, details the unending pressures of being an independent artist, focusing on the frazzled life of a Portland sculptor, Lizzy, as she prepares for a small local gallery show. Reichardt’s long-time collaborator, Michele Williams, is note perfect as she delves into Lizzy’s seemingly bottomless well of desperation. For one, there’s Lizzy’s complex relationship, at times rivalry, with Jo, her fellow artist/landlord/neighbor. In Lizzy’s eyes, Jo (played expertly by Hong Chau) has a considerable measure of sangfroid that enables her to do less to grab more of the spotlight. And Lizzy gets hung up on necessary but minor details, such as how much wine/cheese she can afford to buy for the show, which distracts her from the dangers of overly striving for artistic perfection. There’s also the critical problem just outside of the film’s scope: Covid has closed artistic spaces and reduced attendance at shows.
Reichardt, a perennial outsider herself, doesn’t have easy solutions for these problems. All she suggests an artist can do, really, is to keep making art – and, in the film’s subtly powerful final scene, have a post-show celebration, if only a private one.
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*May December earns points in my book for its creepy setting in a Georgia mansion and aptly quoting from Safe (1995), director Todd Haynes’s earlier, groundbreaking film, but loses an equal number of points by lifting a few too many key details from Persona (1966).
**While it’s hard to believe, filmmakers have still not learned their lesson.
