So Many Women, So Little Time: The Sexual Politics of Up in the Air and Nine

Hollywood has always been a man's town. Wait, scratch that. Hollywood has always been a middle-aged, upper-class, heterosexual white man's town. It tries to pretend it is diverse and changing with the times but, like Washington, D.C., it is still run by prehistoric white dudes. Not too surprising, I'm afraid, given the content of 90% of the crap Hollywood releases each year. How else do you explain Couples Retreat, a "realistic" movie where bloated and puffy Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn are somehow married to young, thin and gorgeous Malin Akerman and Kristin Davis, respectively? Something is obviously wrong with this and, yet, nothing ever seems to change. Looking at two of the year's Oscar contenders--Jason Reitman's "zeitgeist" dramedy Up in the Air and Rob Marshall's musical follow-up to Chicago, Nine--what stands out is that even the most progressive-appearing of this year's batch of films are still haunted by this male-dominated conservatism.

The fact that Up in the Air is being marketed as a "zeitgeist" film, the film of our times, is both laughable and alarming at the same time. It is laughable because the film's corporate downsizing/unemployment themes become so unimportant by the end of the movie, you barely realize the film has said anything about the subject. That's probably because Up in the Air doesn't. The widely celebrated "documentary" scenes with "real" unemployed people are hackily tacked on for some semblance of relevance that just does not exist. They offer nothing I didn't already glean from Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story and are so disconnected from the narrative they truly make no sense in the context of the film.


I am alarmed by Up in the Air's status as the film of our times because the film treats its main female characters as bad, if not worse, than TV treated women in the 1950's and 60's. When it is busy not saying anything about the recession, Up in the Air follows Ryan Bingham (George Clooney playing George Clooney), an unattached, isolated bachelor who works for a company that fires people, and his inevitable journey toward self-discovery and settling down. Along the way, he meets two women who help him change his lifestyle for the better. The first is Alex (Vera Farmiga), a fellow business traveler he has a one-night stand with after meeting in a hotel. Their relationship eventually blossoms into something where Ryan seriously considers giving up his jet-setting lifestyle and settling down with her. The other woman is Natalie (Anna Kendrick), Ryan's young co-worker who develops a program that further decreases the inhumanity of Ryan's job and threatens to ground him indefinitely. With these two women so vital to the narrative, you would think the film would treat them with more respect than they are ultimately given. For the most part, Alex and Natalie are portrayed as women who have many characteristics of men. Alex, at one point, rather vividly and bluntly describes herself as a man with a vagina. Natalie's introduction to Up in the Air is a scene where she introduces her video conferencing program that allows the company to fire people from the main office instead of in person. She is wearing a boxy, unfeminine business suit and adopts the cheesy mannerisms of a stereotypical 50 year-old businessman, cracking corny jokes and playfully grabbing the shoulders of her boss (Jason Bateman). To top it all off, in their own ways, both women are emotionally frigid and distant: Alex repeatedly insists that she does not want a complicated relationship with Ryan while Natalie is so focused on saving the company money, she does not see the inhumanity of the technology she has created. Normally, this would not be a problem, but Up in the Air feels the need to punish Alex and Natalie for wanting to act like men, pushing this idea that unless these women act like women, they are not truly women until they do. After a film-changing (and narratively ridiculous) twist toward the end of the movie, Alex becomes the villain of Up in the Air. According to the film, she's an evil harpy standing in the way of Our Hero from reaching self-actualization. I'm actually surprised that at no point does Ryan burn an effigy of her to further the point. Since Alex is so incapable of committing to Ryan, an unwomanly thing to do since women are wedding-crazy and solely focused on getting that ring, she must become the villain of the film. Natalie, on the other hand, gradually loses any male traits she had in the beginning, replacing them with softer, more traditional female traits. She gradually abandons her head-strong, businessman persona and becomes Ryan's conscience, urging him to give a chance on love with Alex. Up in the Air seems to suggest that successful females either have to choose between a career and love because women can not have it all. If you're a middle-aged man taking a chance on love for the first time while decrying the heartlessness of modern technology, however, you're off the hook. Puh-lease.


Even if the women in Up in the Air become muddled by the narrative, at least they occasionally appear to be real people (the scene in the hotel lobby between Clooney, Farmiga and Kendrick is the highlight of the entire movie). The same can't be said with the ladies of Nine who are nothing more than shallow, one-dimensional stereotypes parading around the film's soundstage. For a film all about a director whose entire life has been shaped and guided by women, it is disconcerting to find that none of these women are as complex or even interesting as Guido seems to find them. As Nine unfurls, it becomes increasingly hard to believe that anyone would have as many existential crises as Guido does about his wife Luisa (Marion Cotillard) and his mistress Carla (Penélope Cruz). To save time, I'm surprised no one thought to just name these characters Madonna and Whore to make the point even more clear. Think about it: what exactly do we learn about any of the female characters that we do not already grasp from their opening scene? Luisa is a saint for putting up with Guido's shit (although the film forgives Guido because, by golly, he's a hot-blooded Italian artist and fucking multiple people is a part of "being Italian"). Carla loves sex and loves Guido. That's seriously it. 'A Call to the Vatican' is a visual ode to the beauty of Cruz's body, but does not actually say anything about Carla besides she has a nice ass. Lilli (Dame Judi Dench) acts as Guido's conscience throughout the film but, even with the Dench touch, she still does not come across as anything more than a shallow plot device. Claudia (Nicole Kidman) has nice hair extensions. Loren, Hudson and Fergie are in the movie for so little of the runtime they barely register before they are quickly ushered off for more of Our Hero's insufferable suffering. Rob Marshall is so focused on the problems Our Hero faces juggling the numerous women in his life, the women become nothing more than pawns, or even obstacles in some instances, in Guido's journey toward making his movie. Not exactly a commendable attitude for a movie that has been non-stop in its marketing as a movie about all of these juicy, glorious actresses.

Up in the Air C-
Nine C-

Rants on Joshua

I have seen horror movies about murderers, psychotics, rapists, child molesters and other assorted social deviants. Monsters of all shapes and sizes, ranging from tiny bugs to vampires, have appeared before me. I have seen people stabbed in showers, attacked by enormous monsters, become possessed by the devil and catch a quickly mutating zombie virus. Aliens have busted out of guts, faces have been torn off and worn as masks and heads have become completely detached from bodies. I may not have seen "everything" when it comes to horror films, a genre I'm not as proficient in as I would like to be, but I would like to think I've seen a majority of the "types" of scares (whether an evil person, a monster or a psychological condition) horror films offer. I was wrong. One thing I have never seen was a film like George Ratliff's Joshua, a film about the horror of the emptiness and disconnection of today's modern family.

As most movies of this usually white-upper-class-specific subgenre start out, the Cairn family appears to be perfect. Dad Brad (Sam Rockwell) has a well-paying job as a financial analyst, affording his family a comfortable and privileged lifestyle. The mother, Abby (Vera Farmiga), is a stay-at-home mom who cares for her child prodigy son Joshua (Jacob Kogan). As the film opens, Abby has just given birth to a daughter, giving the impression that their perfect family has no become even more perfect with its latest member. But, as you are probably well aware, things are only starting to go downhill for the family. As hackneyed as this opening probably sounds on paper, Joshua quietly begins to play with its ideas about deceiving appearances. While presenting themselves as this "perfect" family, none of the characters seem to really fit or feel comfortable in the world they inhabit. Brad's boss acts friendly towards him, even calling him "buddy," but as the film moves in, it becomes clear that he and Brad do not see eye to eye on very important matters. As Brad's family life continuously grows more complicated and out of control, he is not able to focus his full attention on his work. Brad expects his boss to sympathize with what he's going through. Instead, his boss insists that work will provide a good distraction for him and does not seem to grasp the idea that Brad values his family's well-being over his job. Abby does not fit in with the other mothers at Joshua's school and has no outlets from her family besides her brother. Joshua is so intelligent his teacher thinks he should skip two grades, so it is no surprise that he is a bit of a loner and outcast in his school. At one point, his dad openly admits that he would have picked on Joshua back when he was a kid.

As disconnected from their upper-class surrounding as the family appears to be, they are just as disconnected from each other. Of course, neither Brad or Abby want to admit this to themselves and instead pass the blame on the baby. We are never shown what life is like for the family before the baby is born, but as soon as she comes home, the family and the film itself literally pushes Joshua out of the picture. As the proud parents, along with Brad's parents, fawn over the new baby, Joshua never appears in the same frame with them. Instead, he is always in a separate shot with his uncle, playing around on the piano. Later on, the film uses this technique again during a dinner scene to highlight even further how out of place Joshua is in the family. Ratliff continuously cuts between Joshua's awkward questions and demeanor and Brad and Abby stalling and attempting to find the right answers for his questions.

It is not as if you can entirely blame Brad and Abby for not knowing, at times, how to react to Joshua. He belongs to that beloved movie tradition of child characters who are wise beyond their years and act like mini-adults. Ratliff and Kogan amp up the natural creepiness that child actors possess for the ultimate benefit of the film. Sometimes, Joshua's creepiness serves to show just how empty Brad and Abby have become due to their upper-class lifestyle. When the family dog dies under mysterious circumstances (the film casts suspicion on Joshua but the mystery is never solved one way or another), Brad puts on a big display, sobbing uncontrollably in an exaggerated manner like he's in front of an audience. Joshua sees this and mimics him exactly, showing Brad just how ridiculous and insincere he looks. Other times, his creepiness is just a natural result of his high intelligence. How do you respond to your son when he tells you that it's okay if you don't love him or when he shows you the mummification process on his stuffed panda bear? Joshua's thought process and emotional age is so beyond what Brad and Abby are capable of handling, they truly have no idea what to say to him. This disconnect has gotten so deep that even a "normal" kid question like "Do you ever feel weird?" prompts Brad to mumble some bullshit answer that doesn't even answer the question.

As the film moves on and increasingly strange things happen to the family, all signs seem to point to Joshua. I mean, he's creepy, not exactly warm toward the new baby (video tape evidence of him telling the baby that "No one will ever love him" eventually surfaces) and has the ability to read people's emotions and manipulate them, so he must be the culprit, right? I'm not 100 percent sure. First of all, we never explicitly see Joshua harm anyone. He may say and do strange things, but the camera never catches him doing anything that Brad and Abby accuse him of. Secondly, the faster Brad slips into his increasing paranoia, the more his behaviors become suspicious. He's so convinced that Joshua is the cause of all the family's recent hardships, he literally locks him out his room and the kitchen cabinets, afraid of what he might do next. When Brad brings a psychologist to meet with Joshua and hopefully prove his suspicions, he's so anxious for vindication he practically leers at Joshua across the dinner table. After the psychologist reveals her findings (she thinks Joshua is being severely abused), Brad becomes enraged, convinced that Joshua had the foresight to look online and fake the results of the psychologist's art therapy tests. Eventually, bruises start to appear on Joshua and Brad manically tries to figure out who did it to him. Joshua refuses to answer, which makes way for a neat trick on the narrative's part. Is his refusal to answer an admittance of his guilt--he did it to himself and doesn't have anyone to blame--or is it proof that Brad is abusing him without realizing it? Has Brad descended so far into madness he starts hitting Joshua during hysterical fits and doesn't remember it afterwards? Joshua's silence makes sense since he might be afraid of prompting another attack if he accuses him directly to his face. So what's the answer? Who knows. Ratliff is clever enough to almost directly name Joshua as the bad guy but also sneak in hints that suggest that that resolution may be too clear cut. It's this ambiguity that's most striking about Joshua and will leave you pondering this film for days afterwards. A-

Rants on "The Departed"

I quickly rented The Departed the day it was released on DVD and watched it on February 14th (the perfect Valentine’s Day movie, I know). It’s taken me a couple of days to sort everything out and come up with a way to explain how much I loved it.

The whole movie is just so fucking badass and normally that’s not something that gets me this pumped (Samuel L. Jackson in Snakes on a Plane excluded). Maybe I need some more of that in my life right now, who knows? All I know is that most everyone in The Departed can kill without hesitation and/or breaking a sweat and that makes my day.

And talk about those performances…whoa. Everyone in the cast is in top-notch form. Leonardo DiCaprio proves once again how well he works with Scorsese (FYI, the first time I realized DiCaprio could act was in Scorsese’s The Aviator back in 2004) as volcanic emotions roll under his anxious and paranoid exterior. His nervous twitches and violent outbursts give the film part of its suspense (I especially love the scene where he out of nowhere smashes the guy in the bar on the head with a glass after making fun of him for ordering cranberry juice…all I could think was Damn that came out of nowhere). Matt Damon is also amazing as the weasely cop walking the fine line between good cop and bad cop (mostly teetering on bad cop, though). I also never thought much of him as an actor, but now I am totally convinced.

Don’t even get me started about all of the fantastic supporting performances in The Departed. Jack Nicholson is so over-the-top as the ultra-violent, semi-crazed Mob leader that his performance almost descends in to Baby Jane camp heaven and definitely deserved an Oscar nomination. But Mark Wahlberg also deserves his for his scene-stealing performance in which he turns ever line into a memorable one. Few small performances like his leave this much of an impression on me. Plus, we have Martin Sheen and Alec Baldwin fantastic in smaller roles (even smaller than Wahlberg’s) and the fabulous Vera Farmiga as the precinct psychiatrist who fucks both Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio. She is so amazing in this underwritten role that I wished that we could have seen more of her (maybe kicking some ass as well?).

I know this might be strange coming from me but I think that The Departed was even better than Dreamgirls (I know!). I guess I am just in love with huge ensembles with actors all at the top of their games and stories about conflicts between men (The Departed) and women (Dreamgirls) and their struggles to one up each other. C’est la vie.

My Rating: *****