The Great Beauty
Blue is the Warmest Color
Observed in picturesque wide frames and Bergman-style close-ups on all the lead characters, often while they have food or snot on their mouths. This three hour lesbian love story is epic in its slow, sensuous unraveling, and the sometimes very gross close-ups are an element of the extreme intimacy that Kechiche is trying to portray. The story is of a high school girl named Adele who falls in for an art student named Emma. They meet at a gay bar, spend beautiful afternoons in the park, and eventually have passionate sex. Adele has to deal with homophobic parents and classmates, so it is clear why she would be attracted to Emma’s freedom and individuality (made vibrantly tangible by her blue hair). The narrative begins to jump forward in time without warning, leaving only small clues about how long the relationship has progressed. At one point Adele is in school and quickly thereafter she has become a teacher, while Emma evolves into a successful artist. The film is divided into two distinct halves, which provides a bit of grounding, the first of which encompasses the fast development of their relationship, and the second of which charts its downfall. There is no central moment that demonstrates why the characters fall in love with each other, but rather it is the accumulation of scenes in the first half that sweeps us romantically into their relationship. Director Abdellatif Kechiche depicts Adele’s budding sexuality in lush and vibrant tones, which slowly turn dark as she realizes she has become subsumed by her partner. The second half is a much more gloomy slow-burn, with many events transpiring off-screen but angrily referenced in heated exchange. I don’t think judging the relationship is the exact point of the film, but it’s a fun exercise to play with the people you watch it with.
Inside Llewyn Davis
This story of folk song nobodies shows the more desperate moments of becoming an artist, the moments before success, unsure if success will ever happen, witnessing the success of others without achieving any yourself - staying on people’s couches, not owning anything, travelling with crazy people, causing problems for those whose lives you complicate - all told with dark, nearly black-and-white cinematography, and no real hope. The circular narrative promises new insight into the lead character - turns out he’s just like Bob Dylan but without success - but instead narrates his slow descent into nothingness. It has a similar chiastic structure as A Serious Man, but little of this film's humor is goodhearted in contrast. No single moment stands out from the rest, instead each scene looks forward to the next hopefully, wishing for the energy that it lacks - this forward-looking starvation pattern a picture of Llewyn's life. A scene in the middle where Justin Timberlake performs a silly political song is a highlight, but mostly the film drags, again like Llewyn's life. The most significant part of the film is a spoiler: at the end, the entire opening sequence is recreated shot-for-shot, and an ounce (a bare ounce) of meaning dances in front of the viewer. The strain leading up to this moment of reflexive repetition is hardly worth it: other than Timberlake, the only bright light in the film is John Goodman's pathetic characterization of a heroin addict. Yeah, it’s a dour experience, but why not? It’s very much a Coen bros. film, just more extreme in its nihilism. Rainy day material.
Wolf of Wall Street
Not insightful about Wall Street at all, in fact the script regularly has DiCaprio's Jordan Belfort cease explaining the complicated financial maneuverings that make up the plot with a smile saying "You don't give a fuck about this do you?" Of course not, we just want to see the partying, the naked women, the outrageous office (and mile-high) orgies fueled by drugs - this movie is overflowing with sexual grossness and stupid, lewd behavior. A drug-induced slapstick sequence is long and insane enough to make the movie worth watching. Also the whole boat thing. And while the movie is swaggering around, showing its dick, it slowly builds up to a predictable comeuppance, the only reason a middle-class American audience would ever agree to watch something this openly smutty. A scene of DiCaprio committing domestic abuse is an obvious antidote to the fratboy machismo of every other scene, and the enigmatic ending leaves a sour taste. There's a strangely moral flavor that fits weirdly with a film that introduces its lead character snorting cocaine out of a hooker's rear-end. I'd say almost too obviously moral - Martin Scorsese spent millions of other people's dollars to recreate the monstrous wasteful living of Wall Street in brightly lit 90s pastels, attempting to make their sexual exploits as exhilarating as Goodfellas' scenes of violence. It's nice to say that these people behaved terribly, but by leaving out possible real solutions to the problems of human greed, or any substantial moral to be gained from this story, Scorsese leaves open the possibility that there are no solutions and there is no moral. Calling Scorsese a Catholic director may be giving him too little credit.