About A Girl

(Two Towers Rohan King Guy) So, it has come to this. Jo March vs Galadriel, with the Time Traveler’s Wife’s Husband guy: an epic space opera without singing, directed by ~Joe Wright~, Joe Wright. (shakes head, to facilitate thought, then continues) You have so much talent, JW: such a big, Big brain…. You have shown that England can hide her tyranny, in the world of Gen X—and, perhaps, beyond…. (totally awesome delivery) But can you bring the people, justice, as well? (looks at the camera like he’s the King of Rohan, which, of course: he is!) Whatever happens: I will tell the people, the truth! (puts on helmet, mounts horse, etc.) 

…. (Jo March/Artemis vs the, reindeer, I guess) 

That girl can run fast, bro. 

…. Father Mars is a tough guy. 

…. Such a quiet movie, right. Warriors need a lot of quiet time. Time to commune with the Spirit of Death and the Eternal. (nods) 

…. It is a sort of patriarchy, right. Woman is superior to wild beast; man is leader of (superior to) woman, right. 

Although obviously it’s an unusual flavor of patriarchy. (Much like much of Greek mythology and all that.) 

Of course, the actual learning is quite pedantic: it would be a lot better if they ~were~ musing on The Nature of Life and Death, than…. School-crap, you know. Which is the right answer to my meaningless question? A, B, C, D, or E? I’m bigger than you, you know: you have to answer my ridiculous questions! 

lol. Good times…. They say. “These are the best years of your life.” ~(look of abject fear), lol 

…. (deliberates) I don’t know. I mean, she has the Grimm’s Fairy-Tales German picture-book, juxtaposed with, be prepared to wake up and fight your father play-acting the assassin, right, but…. Why? Why be a spy? Why ~not~ just (carefully memorized details of non-spy cover life), right? 

It seems like the earlier you introduce motive, the more time you leave yourself to…. Twist it round and round, and be deceived, and reinvent it, right?…. Nobody JUST practices thwarting assassination attempts, just for the hell of it, right. That would be crazy. 

…. (factoids vs the girl) OMG, did you seriously bring only a goddamn encyclopedia set, and not Shakespeare, or some real book, right…. 

…. She’s very passive, in a certain, way, Artemis. It’s like, she can will a death-battle with a woman, but she can’t even get cross with her father, right…. 

(patriarchs describing the movie over an expensive dinner, lol) “It’s brilliant!” “Bravo!”, etc…. ~lol 

…. So Athena is going after Artemis…. 

But yeah: I’ve heard about warrior stoicism, but this is cray cray, dog: battle of the statues, right…. (smirk) Course, that’s what people think that the gods are, right. Statues for Lord Grantham’s estate, no…. 

…. I don’t understand why you would do that, if your idea was ‘stay and wait to get captured’, right…. Very…. Unlike Middle Earth (original sense: not the Upper or the Lower World), right, very teenager-y; it doesn’t seem…. Real. 

(shrugs) It’s better than Joe’s movies “Pan” and “Cyrano”…. But not by much. 

…. She’s surprised that that’s how it worked out. Is she…. Not well? Was there a triggering incident? It seems like there was no triggering incident. 

(Joe Wright) (annoyed) Just wait: I’m gonna wait until the last five minutes—then I explain everything. It’ll be like a five minute movie, with an hour and a half plus set-up. Capisce? 

~I’m not one of your operatives; I don’t speak French. (laughing) 

…. It’s very, external, right; (external = male, lol…. Joe!). Like, it’s “About a Girl”, right; (is Hugh Grant in it?), but it’s like…. Like, it’s a guy, a very masc-y guy…. Putting the girl through his corn grinder, right…. 

Joe Wright’s movies: I think a safe assumption might be: they’re always interesting to watch, basically, but they’re never good. Never THAT good, anyway…. 

This is like, Joe Wright being a man, basically: he needs this girl to put under a microscope, to do that, right…. And I love the man, sometimes; the man is like wind, and fire…. 

But the man also likes to run this computer program in his head, right, like: “Warning: danger. Do not become involved with life”, basically. 

…. (running around with a gun) The story doesn’t seem “compelling” to me, as the trite designation has it: (not for lack of trying to compel, right)—but Joe Wright movies—I don’t know exactly who is responsible for these things, but I guess ultimately it’s him, in the visual sense, they are always very visually compelling, I think…. Always like expensive decor, (that somehow is appropriate for a man, right)…. Always very visually appealing: always in this, “Joe Wright” kind of way, right. 

It has entertainment value, I would certainly say. 

…. Very visual movies. Like one of those masc-y people, who either silently dread or almost visually loathe chit-chat, right…. 

…. (trying to sound like a trite reporter) We’ve never been this divided, as a gendered population, right. (beat) What I mean is, we’ve always always been this divided…. (rambles on) 

…. It’s like, this girl obviously had something psychiatric going on with her, (maybe she is German, right, and/or an encyclopedia, and/or mentally ill), and they’re not even trying to get inside her head. 

(Joe Wright) (shhh) We’re gonna have some more aesthetic-type scenes: promise. 

…. (chuckles) It’s like she’s too masculine to be a spy; I’m going to have to tell Hermes about this girl. Or…. Well, I feel like the Morrigan wouldn’t find her amusing. They find the whole thing a little…. Off. They don’t have the same sense of humor, Hermes has about everything. 

…. Like, all the characters are too much, right. There’s like the mentally ill girl, the office bitch girl, and the teen idol fan girl, but they’re all…. Stretched, you know. They’re all, too much, you know. They’re not real people. They’re not real girls. They’re some man’s caricatures of what girls are, right.

…. So many caricatures…. It’s like: an endless juxtaposition of caricatures, right…. If it was ironic, it would be quite funny. I don’t think it is funny, though: this movie really believes that this, is the way it is, right…. That’s the funny thing about propaganda: it’s only propaganda if you believe it. Stop believing it, you hit it big in comedy, right…. But then, you have to give up feeling serious, right. A sort of illness, seriousness…. 

…. Although the funny thing is: it’s not an adventure, because it’s not fun. It’s a comedy-drama, an observational piece. It’s like F. Scott Fitzgerald, as a movie, where people die, right…. It’s not like The Ballad of Azog the Unlikely, right: THAT was an adventure; you were meant to have FUN…. This is like, “Oh, a girl; girls are weird/different…. Let me put my thinking cap on, so I can figure out this strange extraterrestrial being, right….” (chuckles) So othering. 

…. (checks movie lists) Yes, it’s like “By the Sea” (2015), only people die and it doesn’t make sense, as like, an othering-tactic, right…. It’s not like LOTR, at all, right…. 

…. It’s like, I don’t know if we were in the same class and I missed a day, or maybe this was somebody I knew from work, but one time when my middle name was Azog, (I was unlikely, right)—I think it was at work, at Pathmark, in like the late 2000s, I was, 20 maybe—when you’re 20 you’re unlikely, right, you’re Azog, right, (if male, lol)—and anyway I was talking to this girl in a good class at school what she was learning, and it was about “othering”: making someone else alien, ~other~, and not like, another actor, (in the non-movie/stage sense), right: not another one who does—just, ~other~, right…. And it’s funny: because that’s Exactly how I treated her, right. You are so smart! So smart, so different! (I won’t tell you about your hair cut, but you’re sure not like me; right!) 

It’s like: wasn’t I smart, too….?…. lol?…. 

I can’t explain it. 

…. The soundtrack isn’t bad, exactly, but it’s this one-trick stuff that only plays when shit is going down. If what passes for social interactions, (perhaps an important part of being a spy?) is happening…. Silence. 

…. “I’m going to go now.” 

“Okay.”

At least, one scene, in this damn movie, was almost well done, at least by the protocols of this mad dash they’ve set up, right. 

…. “This is the sandman.” 

The German nightclub/assassin dude is a caricature, like all of the characters, right…. But he grows on you. 

No doubt. 

…. (people speaking German) 

(smirks) People shouldn’t speak German; it makes them sound too educated…. That’s my considered opinion, hahaha. 

…. —Do you have any children, lady? 

—No, because I’m a heartless bitch. I’m an antagonistic character; the audience isn’t supposed to like me. In these days, Man needs cautionary tales…. To be told…. 

…. The reference to actually going to some kind of Grimm’s Fairy Tale House in Berlin seems extremely contrived and generic, forced, you know—“we are girls, we like (strew of facts about Jakob Grimm or some crazy guy)”—but 95% of that scene—“We don’t know who you are, Hanna! But we are both girls! We are friends!”—is SURPRISINGLY good, for this movie, and Joe Wright, you know. 

…. (lots of action later) 

Well, next sitting it’ll be over, right: time for a little re-cap. Life lessons: 

—Men are bad. 

—Genetic engineering…. Action scenes…. Ah: go with the first one. 

lol: and I don’t mean that men are bad because they punch you in the face and shoot you with guns. Most men don’t do that. (Although it can be a very useful device in a story, right.) But yeah: men are bad…. Because they don’t see the truth, right. 

(Joe Wright) I understand what girls are like! 

~Where do you start with that, right?….

Still, it is amusing to see how something as contrived and irrational as an action scene can sorta—usually just, sorta, I feel like—be part of an entertaining and modestly not bullshit whole, right…. I mean, you come downstairs to eat Cheerios or whatever, and people are watching a movie, an action scene: it’s like…. What gods-forsaken bullshit is this, right. 

(shrugs) I don’t know. It is what it is. Which is full of lies, basically, about the human personality, but…. But one of the things hoomi does, is lie, right? 

…. (walks by book of quotations) (opens) I hope it’s by a woman! (It’s a quote by a famous male poet, about a fictional woman, and the quote is that her fathers from many generations back, or whatever: way on back, generation after generation, were all rich)

(nods) Men are bad, lol…. I am not a loyalist, my friends…. I’m a spy! A-hahaha…. 

…. But yeah: the whole father-daughter thing is kinda weird. I mean, they don’t even talk, practically, they just fight, theoretically together, so it’s like the maximum of masc-y emotional deadness, and not closeness, right. But Joe does want Hanna to be ~loyal~ to her father, right: even if she can’t be close to him…. I don’t know. I’ll never have kids, but of course, who, what male, right, wouldn’t want to have a lovely young female growing up, who has loved (and felt, loyal?) to him since the instant she came into existence, right…. But it isn’t good for her, even though it’s a sweet deal for him, it seems like to me. In an age when female individuals and female culture is devalued and its contribution to human consciousness is minimized: here’s Joe Wright saying, be loyal, little girl, to your father, the captain of the patriarchal family—and feel utterly alienated from the evil bitch feminist who represents all powerful women, especially that you aren’t connected to by the bands of “family”, that institution that everyone praises and no one thinks about critically, or asks to see a balance sheet about, right. 

…. The last sitting— (Joe Wright) (looks at watch) I should explain what the movie is about…. 

I found the emotional content especially sparse and nonsensical in that last thirty minutes. Lots of action…. And I don’t see the ending leading to what we’re implying that it means, right. 

But yeah: I just kinda watched through: I waited until the very end of the sitting to write, because there was less, that merited discussion…. And: to some extent, I was just kinda grateful, or, almost: it’s hard to say. I’m glad, almost, that we made a movie about a girl, right. Women are beautiful—and they’re beautiful all the time…. And believe it or not, they’d be beautiful, even without kitschy anti-feminism, and weirdo hyper-masculinity, and weirdo anti-abortion conspiracy theories, right…. Deluded pro-family-ism, right…. Women would still be beautiful without all that: because women are beautiful, all the time, right. 

They are even beautiful, when the men in the shadows, want them dead, right. Dead, like an animal. An inferior form of life, we’re told. 

(I suppose the real kick in the head, is that women would be beautiful, would be women…. Without men, right. {smiles} We think that we…. {shakes head} I don’t know what we think.) 

(shakes head) I take it back: it’s just as bad as “Pan”, right. We like white girls when we’re in Hawaii, or some crazy place like that. When we get to Fairy Tale Haus in Berlin, Germany, we tighten the screws, a little. 

(shrugs) And, it was also, in addition to being a movie about What Men Think of Women, it was also, in a certain sense, if you’ll forgive the deluded optimism, also…. a movie about a woman, right.