Mubi Monday: Shirley (2020)

While I didn’t hate watching Shirley, a film that is nicely put together around a talented cast who fit well in their roles, I must say that I wasn’t entirely won over by the central conceit, and it made me hanker for the portrayal of Shirley Jackson I enjoyed a bit more in Set Fire To The Stars. That is a bit unfair though, as it isn’t exactly comparing like for like, but I figured I would take a minute to recommend that little gem of a film.

Anyway, this film is based on a book by Susan Scarf Merrell, and it places the famous Shirley Jackson (Elisabeth Moss) and her husband, Stanley (Michael Stuhlbarg), in the middle of a load of drama, both past and present, that allows others to see the strange and damaging co-dependency locking them together in their relationship. Odessa Young and Logan Lerman play Rose and Fred Nemser, a young couple who end up in the Jackson household, and they unwittingly become the latest distractions for two people who seem to constantly struggle to find ways to occupy themselves (when not being creative, intellectually arrogant, or unfaithful).

Directed well enough by Josephine Decker, who has helmed a number of other films I have enjoyed (and one I just couldn’t stand), this uses the script by Sarah Gubbins to sketch out some characters that are then given the time and space to breathe and play around. Making use of real people in a fictional story is a strange balancing act, but it seems to me that this doesn’t do a bad job of using the main premise to examine the relationship between Shirley and Stanley, as well as looking at how they “played” with others. Some elements may be entirely unnecessary, but they still intertwine nicely with the idea of putting the Jacksons under the glare of a bright spotlight while their dynamic is dissected.

Moss is very good in the title role, as she tends to be in almost everything she does nowadays, and she’s unafraid to play her character in a way that shows her actively repelling people. She’s cold and cool, although occasionally moved by anger, and does well to avoid histrionics and tics. Stuhlbarg plays the less likeable of the two, and he also tackles his role without any hint of concern or softness. Lerman does well in a way that has him being the least memorable of the central quartet, but it’s Young who gets to be the heart of the film, playing the observer who becomes drawn further and further into a large and dangerous web. Constantly drawn to the see the creative spark while trying not to be burned, Young delivers an excellent performance, striking just the right balance of naïveté and strength, that helps her to remain much more significant than she is considered by any of the other main characters.

I just wish we didn’t need the fictional framing device here. It feels like there’s a great film to be made about Shirley Jackson, but this isn’t it. It’s very good, but it’s not great, particularly when it comes to the darker side of her life (her mental health, the dysfunctional marriage, and more). Not one I think I will ever revisit, but I would be interested to hear from others who know a bit more about the real Shirley Jackson, and whether that makes you like this film any more or any less.

6/10

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Assassination Nation (2018)

Have I ever mentioned how much I dislike the Scissor Sisters? It's not really them that I dislike, they had a couple of hits that were fun and annoyingly catchy, but the way they seemed to be viewed as the pinnacle of naughtiness and wit by middle-aged, middle-class people who viewed leaving their socks on during an unplanned quickie as the ultimate in sexual kinkiness. I know that's an unfair generalisation to make. I also know that I've met far too many people who would seem to be in that category.

I mention that now because Assassination Nation is a film I view as similarly mistaken for cool and edgy, when it is often just desperate and juvenile. It wants to be shocking, clearly, but it's a film that feels tame and out of date already.

Odessa Young is Lily Colson, a young woman living in Salem. She has a boyfriend (Bill Skarsgård), and is also having a lot of fun, to put it one way, with a married man she calls "daddy". Lily starts off as a relieved bystander when a hacker starts to reveal sensitive private information belonging to town residents, but it's not long until she, and most of her friends, becomes a target. Everyone has their secrets, some have more than others. And all of this dirty laundry being washed in public eventually leads to emboldened and angered men becoming abusive, and assholes thinking they should make everything right by punishing those they see as being most immoral and/or causing the situation.

The second feature to be both written and directed by Sam Levinson, Assassination Nation has a few good individual moments. It's just a shame that they are drowned out in the hyperactive mess that makes up the rest of the film. And one of those better moments basically plays out over the end credits. Levinson obviously wants to comment on our modern habits (all of that data that can be out there for every one of us, be it text messages or emails or photos, jumping to the wrong conclusion about something and not listening to reason if it doesn't suit our argument), but he undercuts everything by appearing to run through a checklist of trigger warnings that are provided at the very start of the film. You get a great sequence, for example, of a man trying to explain why pictures of his young daughter in the bath don't make him a pedophile, all while a large crowd is baying for his blood, but you also get a plot point about Lily being fed up with her boyfriend's refusal to go down on her. There's a guy secretly hooking up with someone who is transgender (in scenes that reminded me of Cruel Intentions), the constant threat of being targeted by seemingly-brilliant hackers (see a LOT of movies and TV shows from the past decade, not least of them being Mr. Robot), and an escalation of heated emotions as more and more secrets come out (in scenes that reminded me, oddly enough, of the third act of Needful Things). Assassination Nation is far from original. It's also just a bit silly, certainly by the time it is pushing things even further for the big finale.

Hey, I mistrust the general public, when being coerced into one mass sway of opinion, as much as the next person, but even I couldn't buy into just how quickly things went from 0 to 100 here. The film may be a heightened experience, with everything deliberately ramped up to dangerously excessive levels, but that doesn't make it work any better. I probably would have enjoyed this more as a live piece of theatre, something that really COULD have felt more intense and daring, depending on how uncomfortable the audience was made to feel. As a film, however, it starts to fall apart during the opening scenes.

Young is fine in the role of Colson, and she makes more of an impression than any of her co-stars (with the exception of Hari Nef, and kudos to Levinson for having an actual transgender actress playing someone transgender). Skarsgård adds another toxic male role to his list of them (he does them so well), Colman Domingo is superb in his role as the school principal, and Joel McHale tries, and fails, to overcome the silliness of the script with his performance.

It's made well enough, and the good amongst the bad makes it just about worth your time, but Assassination Nation totally drops the ball. I get what Levinson was aiming for, and there's an argument to be made for the style matching the content, but the most important points are too easily drowned out by the cacophony of irritating excess.

4/10

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