The Weekly Gravy #20

By the time you read this, Christmas will be over and we’ll be closing in on New Year’s—in fact, this will be the last Weekly Gravy published in 2020. I’m sure you’re as ready as I am to put this particular calendar year behind us. But before we do, there’s plenty of time to watch movies, and indeed, things have slowed down enough at work, and the temperature is falling enough outside, that I can fit in a few more movies.

We’re still doing Obscure Movie Month on here, and each film viewed for obscurity’s sake will have its IMDb vote count in square brackets after the star rating. But the first movie I picked is not only somewhat obscure, but highly relevant to the present day…

A Time for Burning (1967) – ***½ [153]

In Murdock, Minnesota, the Asatru Folk Assembly, a neopagan religious organization which only admits members of white European ancestry, received a permit to establish a branch of their church in a former Lutheran church building. This occurred in December 2020, to considerable controversy in the community, detailed here. But even among the voices of those condemning the AFA’s stances, there are those who are reluctant to condemn:

“I find it hypocritical, for lack of a better term, of my community to show much hate towards something they don’t understand. I for one don’t see a problem with it,” Jesse James, who said he has lived in Murdock for 26 years, wrote on Facebook.

“I do not wish to follow in this pagan religion, however, I feel it’s important to recognize and support each other’s beliefs,” he said.

Over 50 years earlier, in Omaha, there was a similar tension within the city’s Lutheran community, as Rev. L. William Youngdahl of the Augustana Lutheran Church advocated reaching out to black Lutheran congregations and inviting members of his church to visit the members of those churches in their homes. Moreover, there was a series of inter-congregational visits, including one by a number of young black congregants to Augustana, who were then invited to attend that day’s services. In the moment, there appears to be no issue.

But in church council meetings, in small conferences which are casual in organization but tense in tone, questions are nervously asked. Stoic expressions and delicately phrased exchanges only enhance the tension. Is Youngdahl behaving too radically for Augustana? Is he risking alienating members of his congregation? How much ground should be given those who are “less enlightened”? Is the timing wrong? Are Youngdahl’s tactics too performative (“virtue signaling,” as it were, nearly 40 years before the phrase was coined)? Can the fellowship he seeks be truly achieved?

From what we see in the film, at least, decorum is never breached. Voices are hardly raised, windows aren’t broken, slurs aren’t screamed or spray-painted, and the cops are never called. But the people with “concerns” speak up, and too few voices to counter them respond. The church council gets cold feet on the inter-congregational visits. Finally, Youngdahl resigns, after calls for his removal are made. (He would later join the United Church of Christ, which is noted for its liberal stances and outreach to other denominations and faiths.)

Although the film focuses on quite a few people, including Youngdahl and church board member Ray Cristensen, the most dynamic figure (he appears on the poster above) is Ernie Chambers, a young black barber who would go on to become the longest-serving state congressman in Nebraska history. When we first see him, he tells Youngdahl how he considers true reconciliation between the races impossible because of the shadow cast by past wrongs, and that Christianity was used to perpetuate racism such that “your Jesus is contaminated,” all while giving a haircut. He doesn’t miss a beat on either front. Later he presses Cristensen, calmly but firmly, on how the congregation is responding to Youngdahl’s calls for outreach, and how they could object if they see him as a voice of moral authority. You wholly understand how he became a legend in Nebraskan politics.

You also understand why the film was renowned in its day (it was nominated for an Oscar) and remains a classic documentary (it was added to the National Film Registry); much of it resonates and unsettles to this very day. But it falls a bit short as a piece of cinema, especially because it tends to forego properly identifying exactly who’s on-screen, how much time has passed, or what the general context of what we’re seeing is. It’s not a fatal flaw, but it makes the film hard to follow at times—and although the brief length (56 minutes) ensures it doesn’t drag, for myself it compounds the confusion created by the deliberate lack of exposition. But it’s definitely worth seeing.

Score: 83

One Night of Love (1934) – **½ [519]

In 1934, this was a major success, both at the box-office and with the Academy, earning six nominations and winning two Oscars, one for Best Sound (it also won a special award for how Columbia’s sound engineers applied the vertical-cut method during production), and one for the new category Best Music (Scoring), even though most of the music we hear is classical and the award went to the head of Columbia’s music department; it wouldn’t be until 1938 that composers would directly be nominated for original scores. Oddly, it wasn’t nominated for the title song, which had a bit of revival years later when opera singer Anna Moffo recorded it for a solo album, even though this was the first year for Best Song.

But the other nominations are pretty odd as well, at least in retrospect: Outstanding Production (Best Picture), Best Directing (Director), Best Actress for Grace Moore, and Best Film Editing, also a new category that year. It’s no surprise that It Happened One Night beat One Night of Love for Picture, Director, and Actress; but going back to it 86 years later, it’s damned surprising Love was considered one of the best films of the year, that Moore’s performance was considered one of the best, or that Victor Schertzinger’s direction was so highly esteemed. At least it wasn’t nominated for its writing, because the writing is even worse than the rest.

American singer Mary Barrett (Moore) enters a radio contest, the winner of which will get to study under famed Italian teacher Giulio Monteverdi (Tullio Carminati). She loses, and the winner, Lally (Mona Barrie), proves an underwhelming singer whose main interest is living it up with Monteverdi, now her lover. He breaks off their relationships, personal and professional, and vows never again to mix love and business. Mary, meanwhile, has moved to Milan to try and make it on her own, but when her money runs out, she takes a job as a singing waitress. Monteverdi happens to dine at her restaurant and hears her sing, which so impresses him that he immediately offers to teach her, provided she live with him—platonically, of course.

She moves into his villa, and he puts her through a grueling regimen as focused on overall fitness as on her voice. She grows frustrated with his coldness, and contemplates giving up singing to marry her wealthy admirer, Bill Houston (Lyle Talbot). Her determination grows when she suspects that he is still involved with Lally, but she is only interested in manipulating Monteverdi into helping her career. Spoilers: Mary becomes a star, first singing Carmen in Vienna and then Madame Butterfly at the Metropolitan. And despite a falling-out with Monteverdi, he appears in the prompt-box for her Met debut, and there’s no doubt that love has won out as the film fades to black.

But by that point, do you really care? The rising-star side of the story hardly holds the attention—there’s never any doubt Mary will make it big. And the romantic side of the story is just too ridiculous, with two triangles that you can’t believe in for a second, because Mary clearly only thinks of Bill as a friend and he’s a total sap to believe otherwise, and because Lally is so obviously up to no good. And the personalities involved are hardly worth the investment; Mary is tiresomely impulsive, threatening to ditch performances on a whim and in a particularly strange montage defacing every poster for Carmen she can find, while Monteverdi is a generic temperamental hard-ass teacher whose tender side eventually wins out.

To be fair, the film has its strengths. Schertzinger occasionally shows some flair in his direction, especially in the impromptu apartment-block musicale, which makes some interesting use of sound mixing and zoom-ins. And although I can’t say the music we hear is among my favorite opera music, there’s a reason the Habanera from Carmen is a classic, and there are some other solid pieces heard as well. I can’t claim that Moore’s singing voice especially dazzled me, but I’ll trust she carries a tune well enough. Her acting isn’t all that impressive (and she was apparently as much of a pill in real life as here), but it’s not terrible.

Carminati is a bit better, even if the script forces him into some pathetically hackneyed scenarios (ex-lovers always showing up at the wrong time, amirite?). No one else is especially great, and there’s a lot of Hollywood-Italian stereotyping going on, but the acting and the overall filmmaking aren’t that bad, even if Schertzinger would do far better with his film of The Mikado five years later. It’s the script, which uses an utterly clichéd story as an excuse for some lengthy operatic performances (which I imagine even opera buffs will find somewhat sluggish), that makes you look at those Oscar nominations and wonder what anyone saw in it.

Score: 60

Party Party (1983) – **½ [350]

This was one of those films I was mildly curious about for years, possibly because I knew damn near nothing about it, before I finally got a chance to see it. Having done so and having read some of the other reviews floating around online, it seems the film has two major selling points: nostalgia for the early 80s and its soundtrack. Of course, you can listen to the soundtrack online and I myself wasn’t even born yet, rather diminishing the nostalgic value on my end. So when I say it’s not a very good film and not really worth going out of your way to see, you might take that with a grain of salt. But there’s a good chance you’ve never even heard of this film until this moment.

In the northwest suburbs of London, a group of young people (it’s not entirely clear how old they are, but they seem to be mostly late teens and early 20s) assemble for a New Year’s Eve party at the home of Larry (Perry Fenwick), who’s faked an illness so he can stay home while his parents go to a party of their own. The party grows quite large and soon gets out of hand, with various sexual escapades, personal crises, brawls, and even a pie fight before a turn of events which nearly results in a disastrous end to the party, but which instead ends with a raucous rendition of “Auld Lang Syne.”

The various shenanigans aren’t really all that noteworthy or funny, at least until the final scene, which is actually fairly amusing and cleverly handled. There are just too many characters whose stories are too sketchily told, and too many scenes which just fizzle out without a proper punchline. The script, by co-star Daniel Peacock and director Terry Winsor, is pretty sloppy, with hackneyed situations, contrived developments (three of the partygoers are cops who just happen to get the night off because the Metropolitan Police are under orders not to interfere with New Year’s parties—seriously?), and characters hardly worth investing in

Bizarrely, Peacock’s own character, Toby, is one of the most tiresome and obnoxious protagonists I’ve seen in quite a while; his desperate attempts to impress girls, his total lack of social skills, his constant mugging and his insistence on wearing a cologne which smells like horses (shades of “Sex Panther” in Anchorman) make him a really wearisome individual, perhaps more memorable than Larry or their friend Johnny (Karl Howman), but not in a particularly positive way. A bit more sympathetic is Terry (Gary Olsen), a cop who just went through a break-up and wants to get insanely drunk, and does; he spends most of the film wandering around the party like he’s moving underwater, and provides some of the film’s more accomplished acting.

Otherwise it’s a lot of asinine behavior by asinine people. The acting itself isn’t really the problem (it’s reasonably spirited), but the writing is too weak for us to really care. The film does get the feel of a big party relatively right, and it has some value as a portrait of everyday life in suburban London at the time, but for most viewers it’s the music which will be the real draw. There are contributions from Sting, Madness, Bananarama, Pauline Black, Midge Ure, and others, but for my money the best pieces are Elvis Costello’s title track and Modern Romance’s cover of “Band of Gold.” But of course, you could watch Urgh! A Music War instead, which gives you lots of great music and fine concert footage without making you sit through an excuse of a story. Your choice.

Score: 55

Promising Young Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) – ***½

On the outside, it might seem like the only connections between these films are that I saw them both in the same evening (in a theater, no less!), and that they’re both directed by women and center around female protagonists. But on further reflection, there’s a strong thematic bond between them, as both deal with the corrosive effects of wish fulfillment on the human soul, on how getting what you think you want may cost you more dearly than doing without. Both films feature women giving abusive men their comeuppance, but both show how there’s more to righting the wrongs of the world than simple vengeance.

Both films also have issues with their messaging—Promising Young Woman in particular feels like it wants to have its cake and eat it too—but both have a great many strengths which make them worth seeking out, whether on a big screen or at home.

Promising Young Woman follows the exploits of Cassie Thomas (Carey Mulligan), a med-school dropout who works in a coffee shop, lives with her parents, and in her free time pretends to be intoxicated around sketchy men so they’ll attempt to take advantage of her, only for her to reveal her sobriety and…well, it varies. Sometimes she just forces them to confront their own toxicity. Sometimes we cut away and are left to wonder what exactly transpired. It’s also hinted that she’s part of some larger network taking revenge on the Nice Guys of the world, though that thread isn’t fully developed.

Over time, we learn the reason for her mission, which is connected to the reason she dropped out of school…and the reason why she seems to be stuck in the past, unable to or uninterested in moving on, until she encounters an old classmate (Bo Burnham) whose interest in her grows into a relationship which allows her to open up and feel happiness in a way she hasn’t in years. But you just know, deep down, that the story will take a turn which pushes Cassie back into her quest. And a few more besides.

WW84 (which is actually how the title appears in the film) follows the further adventures of Diana Prince (Gal Gadot), who encounters a mysterious artifact in the course of her day job at the Smithsonian; a citrine stone with a metal ring which can grant wishes…but always at a price. Diana wishes for the return of her lover Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), and his spirit comes back…in another man’s body. Her awkward colleague Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig) wishes to be like her, and becomes physically superpowered and personally popular…at the cost of her empathy and humanity. And would-be tycoon Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal) wishes to be the stone itself, gaining the power to grant wishes and decide upon the fee…but at the cost of his health.

As Lord amasses more and more power through the granting of wishes, fueled by the instant-gratification ethos of the 80s, the world spirals into chaos, and Diana must save the day by forcing Lord to confront the truth, both the true cost of what he is doing and the truth of what really matters in this world. But she must also get through Barbara, who has become more powerful than even Diana could dream of…

Essentially, both films deal with the destructive effects of trying to play God, regardless of one’s motive. Cassie’s motivations for her mission of revenge may be laudable. Diana’s motive for wishing Steve back may be deeply sympathetic, and Barbara’s motive for wanting to be like Diana only a few degrees less so. And Lord’s motivation for wanting to become, essentially, a genie may be arrogant and short-sighted. But they all lead to far darker places than the characters could’ve imagined, and although the intended takeaway for the viewer varies from one film to the other, both affirm the fundamental difficulty of life and the futility of trying to override it.

Indeed, it’s the question of what the takeaway really is that nearly unravels Promising Young Woman. Throughout, it has extremely powerful scenes of Cassie maneuvering men into taking advantage of her while she’s seemingly intoxicated, then calling them on their toxicity as she dismantles their feeble arguments. These are contrasted with the rest of her life being stuck in neutral, and scenes like the one with Molly Shannon as the mother of…well, the reason for Cassie’s mission, let’s say, who tells her to let go and move on. So we have the question of what it means to seek revenge on behalf those unable to seek it themselves.

But then we have the series of twists which mark the final 20 minutes or so of the film. I won’t give away exactly what happens, but they not only greatly extend the film, pushing it to nearly two hours in length, and kill the pace (which was already a bit erratic), but they seriously muddle the basic message of the film, which seemingly wants to combine a cathartic revenge fantasy with a tragic warning about the unintended cost of revenge. It does get you thinking, and it’s hard not to be a bit satisfied with the film’s final moments, but at the same time they feel like the film correcting its own misstep (and relying on a pretty blatant deus ex machina to do so).

WW84, on the other hand, is considerably less subtle in its messaging (saving its complexities for the overstuffed story), as it begins with a young Diana taking part in an athletic contest on Themiscyra and being denied the win because she took a shortcut; as she is told, “no true hero is born from lies.” Later, after she has renounced her own wish for Steve’s return, accepting that their present happiness was built on a lie, and after Lord has achieved incredible power via his own wish and the wishes of others (and plunged the world into chaos as a result), Diana must force him to confront the importance of the truth, as opposed to the instant gratification of wishes, and compel him to renounce his own wish for the sake of the truth that is his son (Lucian Perez).

It’s nice to see an antagonist in a blockbuster who is redeemed rather than defeated, and a bittersweet ending which feels earned rather than extracted. And for that matter, it’s nice to see a superhero movie where it’s moral rather than physical force which really resolves the story, as Lord has become too powerful to be defeated simply by superpowered bludgeoning. But through force of will (and the Lasso of Truth), Diana leads him back from the brink of total megalomania. She does have to kick Barbara’s ass, but in a superhero movie, you have to expect a certain amount of ass-kicking.

Both films are certainly solidly crafted and well acted. Indeed, in the case of Promising Young Woman, Mulligan’s performance is probably the best I’ve seen all year. She encompasses all of Cassie’s facets—her pitch-black sense of humor, her razor-sharp intelligence, her vulnerability (exposed only gradually, and with devastating results), and the vengeful fury informing all of it—without missing a beat, even when the film stumbles structurally or thematically. She’s never less than fascinating to watch, and hopefully she gets some of the recognition for this performance she failed to earn for her fantastic turn in Wildlife. But she’s quite well supported, especially by Burnham as the absurdly adorkable Ryan, Clancy Brown and Jennifer Coolidge as her lovably parental parents, Laverne Cox as her snarkily protective employer, and in smaller roles Christopher Mintz-Plasse (as a pathetic would-be writer), Alfred Molina (as a remorseful attorney), and Shannon.

Emerald Fennell’s direction is somewhat more consistent than her script (it’s worth noting that her previous writing experience was for television, and I wonder if this material wouldn’t have worked better as a miniseries—in particular the suggestions that Cassie is one part of a larger network feel like a vestige of a lengthier conception); she offers up a number of stylistic flourishes suggesting an 80s retro aesthetic, which the film doesn’t totally commit to but which are still enjoyable to watch, like the hot pink opening credits over a sequence of Cassie walking down the street in stocking feet, eating a pastry which leaks jelly like blood. It’s well shot and has a very good score by Anthony Willis; the use of classical music and classic rock is less consistently successful, but has its highlights.

As for WW84, Gadot remains an effectively heroic lead and handles the dramatics well enough, but she’s outshone by her co-stars; Pine is likably out-of-water (the 80s-fashion montage is quite fun) but never compromises Steve’s heroism or competence, while Wiig is sympathetically funny in the early scenes and shows the gradual corruption of Barbara’s spirit convincingly, at least within the limitations of the script. Pascal is even better, playing Lord’s shallow slickness and profound desperation with relish, allowing us to believe in his own corruption and ultimate redemption. That corruption, so tied to the materialistic ethos of the 80s, justifies the period setting far beyond any aesthetic considerations.

Not that director Patty Jenkins doesn’t have some fun with the aesthetic side of things. Indeed, while the film can be a bit of a mess (and at 151 minutes, overly long), it feels like a case of the filmmakers having the clout to put everything they wanted into the film, such as the scene where Diana and Steve fly through a fireworks display in a stolen jet, then soar above the clouds and see the clouds glowing with the bursts. It exists only to look lovely, but it does. And the sets, costumes, and special effects are all as lavish as you could expect from a $200 million tentpole, with a very good Hans Zimmer score on top to boot. The script (co-written by Jenkins) has some definite logical hiccups and awkward politics—the subplot about the exiled emir (Amr Waked) in particular—but it doesn’t diminish the entertainment value of the film too much.

Ultimately, neither film is great in my book, but they’re both very good, with enough virtues of style and performance and enough compelling themes to carry one through their rougher moments. They’re certainly both worth seeing, though whether or not they should be seen in a theater is a matter of individual judgment.

Score: Promising Young Woman (82), Wonder Woman 1984 (79)