Pitch Perfect, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf

Pitch Perfect is in here as a palette cleanser between two fairly grim movies—some of the humor feels mean now in a way that it didn’t on first viewing & I was sorry to realize it. The announcers have some really sharp dialogue, though, and I was impressed once again that this movie was confident enough in its subject matter to dedicate a lot of time to the performances. It’s delightful.

Then Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, which I hadn’t seen before. I found it compelling, and a worthwhile watch, even if I can’t say I enjoyed it. It was released in 1966 & it was the first movie Mike Nichols ever directed. A year later, he made The Graduate—which, having seen them both almost back to back, absolutely boggles the mind. They feel like they’re from different eras. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf is a black and white movie with Old Hollywood stars. The Graduate is in color, and it made careers instead of capping off grand ones.

It’s about an established married couple, George and Martha, who invite a younger couple, Nick and Honey, over for a nightcap. By the time the younger couple arrive, George and Martha have been fighting and the arrival of guests doesn’t stop them. Instead of putting on their best behavior, they draw Nick and Honey into their dramas. Everyone drinks more than they should, things devolve, and the cycle repeats.

The whole thing escalates from an awkward, inappropriate mess into a kind of uncontrollable madness. It feels a little like a dance with the maenads—not fun maenads, dangerous ones who’d as soon tear you apart as dance with you—or a stop on Odysseus’s long journey home, a dangerous adventure spiced with a moral. George and Martha (that’s Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, while they were a couple) are in an incredibly toxic relationship but it’s less a story with a villain and a victim than one about two people who bring out the worst in one another, who deliberately provoke one another to extremes of cruelty. It’s a portrait of a bad marriage, and only makes sense in world where divorce is unthinkable.

The acting is very good—Burton and Taylor both spend this very long movie dialed up to 11, emoting intensely and harshly at one another—but the writing strikes me as uneven, and mostly where Martha is concerned. George is a character we get to know from every side: his youth, his career, his marriage, his passions. He’s complex, if not terribly sympathetic. Martha is a woman whose entire identity is constituted in relationship to the men in her life. She’s the President’s daughter, the academic’s wife, the mother of… a beanbag? Hard to tell. All her hopes, all her regrets, all her griefs derive from their triumphs or failures. To the extent that she has a life of her own, a hobby maybe, it appears to be seducing other men.

As an emotional journey, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf is still extraordinary. As a story about a couple or a marriage, it feels like a relic.

Pictures at a Revolution by Mark Harris

I finished listening to Pictures at a Revolution by Mark Harris. Quick note about the audio: I really disliked the narrator at first but started enjoying his delivery much more later on. Not sure if I’d recommend listening to it.

I absolutely loved this book. It takes a pretty narrow topic—the five movies nominated for the Best Picture Oscar in 1967—and sticks to it, while using its subject matter to throw a light on much broader issues—the fall of the Hollywood studio system, the end of the code of self-censorship that studios once adhered to, sexism and racism as relevant to these specific movies, to the industry at the time, and in relation to the broader cultural moment.

Mixed in throughout are an endless series of dishy anecdotes and fun facts. You never read for too long without hearing something shocking about, say, Warren Beatty arranging to ‘accidentally’ encounter Francois Truffaut so he could pitch himself for the role of Clyde Barrow back when Truffaut was Bonnie and Clyde’s likely director, or Ava Gardner going after the role of Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate. But the book never feels light, either; it has satisfying depth and rigor.

The five films, by the way, were: In the Heat of the Night (the winner), The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and Dr. Doolittle. I watched or re-watched most of these as I read, which definitely improved the experience.

Harris spends a lot of time talking about how few roles were available to Black actors and the narrow range of possibilities within those roles. It was pretty depressing to realize how many of the conversations about POC in Hollywood that felt new to me have been going on for a very, very long time. Sydney Poitier starred in two of the nominated movies (In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner) and everything to do with his success, the PR minefield he navigated, his involvement with the Civil Rights movement and increasingly mixed reception from Black audiences—that was really fascinating.

The sexism was shocking because it was so unexamined, so unquestioned. Reading about how Faye Dunaway was made to lose huge amounts of weight and mocked for being ugly, discounted and belittled on set, was painful. And that cute anecdote about Ava Gardner trying out for the role of Mrs. Robinson? The pitying way that the director, Mike Nichols, described her attempt made me sick to my stomach. She was the right age for the role; Anne Bancroft, who is phenomenal, was only 36 at the time.

The whole thing was really interesting. Highly recommended.

Cool Hand Luke

I’m almost done with Pictures at a Revolution & still hanging out in 1967. I really recommend this book but I’ll probably mention that again once I finish it. Cool Hand Luke wasn’t nominated for Best Picture but it came out at the right time and made a splash.

I had no idea what it was about. If you’d asked me, I would have guessed that it was an action movie, maybe involving gangsters? Something like Dirty Harry, another movie I have never seen?

Turns out out I was really wrong, it’s about Paul Newman being sent to prison over a minor infraction & then having his spirit slowly destroyed by an unjust, cruelly punitive carceral system. I ended up liking it a lot, although it’s depressing and its whiteness is very problematic.

First Newman—the titular Cool Hand Luke—shows up at the prison and slowly adjusts to life there. It’s richly depicted, the little insular society that develops among these prisoners, their leaders and squabbles, their hard labor and their games. At first, Luke seems to be fitting in but then he gets painful news from home and instead of showing sympathy, the warden punishes him preemptively. For misbehavior he might commit. Luke turns on his keepers, rebellious when formerly he’d been compliant, and… he is crushed. There is no happy ending.

In the end, it’s very clear that the prison destroys the best men who are admitted to it. It doesn’t reform or rehabilitate. At times, the guards are benign; but when they turn cruel their cruelty is extreme and there is no limit to the abuses they can visit upon their charges. The punishment is unquestionably worse than the crime.

There’s a fair bit of religious allusion which I thought was overly self-indulgent and didn’t add much to the story for me. But Paul Newman’s character is interesting and of course he’s brilliant—there’s an early scene where Luke gets into a fight with another prisoner (they’re allowed to fight on Saturdays) & while he can’t beat the other guy, or even land a solid punch, he refuses to give up. Luke is knocked down, he gets back up, he’s knocked down, he gets back up, and this continues until the other guy has lost his taste for knocking him down & walks away from the ring. That scene sets the tone for everything else that happens afterwards in an interesting way.

Die Hard, Bonnie and Clyde

So I took a break from 1967 to rewatch Die Hard. I’d only seen it once before, and it was the movie that made me realize that action movies could be good. I figured it would hold up on a second viewing and I was right. The dialogue is good, the characters are good, the setting is so deeply integrated into the plot that for years after watching it for the first time, every time I’d drive past Fox Plaza I’d think, “Die Hard.”

It’s a simple story—they’re trapped inside this one building for the whole two hours, the action takes place over the span of a single evening, so unity of place and unity of time, all the classical unities actually—but each step of the plot is so solidly constructed, forms such a solid link in the chain. There’s plenty of shooting but it always feels like a cat and mouse game, Bruce Willis vs. Alan Rickman. It’s really exciting to slowly discover the details of Rickman’s heist—it’s really clever. It’s equally exciting to watch Willis foil his plans.

Anyway. Die Hard. It’s a good movie.

Then Bonnie and Clyde. I remember watching this a long time ago, probably when I was in college, and at the time I was very into the Nouvelle Vague and I was (and am) very into Serge Gainsbourg (Gainsburg put the poem that the real Bonnie Parker wrote, which Dunaway reads in the movie, to music & then made a music video with Brigitte Bardot, styled after the film), and so of course I was very into the movie.

But at first, as I watched, I thought: maybe this isn’t my thing anymore. I wondered if some of what I’d read in Pictures at a Revolution had soured the movie for me; reading about how Faye Dunaway was constantly told that she was fat (?!?!) and ugly (?!?!?!?) and bad at acting (?!?!??!), on a really severe crash diet to lose weight & then further upbraided for being moody on set… early in the movie Bonnie is a bit fawning, a bit desperate to please, and I was feeling pretty cold.

But it all clicked into place. The transition from humor to tragedy, from madcap thrills to whole minutes that feel like the indrawn breath that precedes a scream—quiet but tense, you know what’s coming but the peace hasn’t yet been broken—is just incredible. The moment when Gene Wilder says he’s an undertaker, the visit to Bonnie’s family, the vigil over Buck as he dies, Bonnie asking Clyde what he’d do if they woke up the next morning with their records wiped clean… there are some moments in that movie that are so perfect.

Plus, it’s stylish. It really is.

The Graduate

Continuing on with my Pictures at a Revolution programming, I watched The Graduate. It’s one of those movies almost everyone has seen but which I somehow skipped, and I sat down to watch it knowing the rough outlines of the plot, knowing the role made Dustin Hoffman’s career, and knowing that I’d hear a lot of Simon & Garfunkel. Not much to go on, really.

I feel like the story can be divided into two distinct halves. There’s the first half, where Dustin Hoffman has just arrived home from college and doesn’t know what to do with himself. The onset of true adulthood leaves him confused and a little angry at the world. When Mrs. Robinson, a family friend, makes a pass at him he’s initially shocked. But eventually he succumbs to temptation and embarks on an affair.

The first half of the movie is the good half. Almost everything really memorable or remarkable about the movie happens in the first half. It’s hilarious, for one. I had no idea it would be so funny but I was cracking up nonstop. Hoffman delivers lines with diffident horror, or pained curiosity, or glum resignation—and his awkwardness is a perfect contrast to Mrs. Robinson’s amused patience. Anne Bancroft is amazing in the role, confident and cutting and occasionally vulnerable in a way that never undermines her strengths.

I was a bit startled to realize, as I browsed IMDB while watching, that when the film was made Dustin Hoffman was about 30 and Anne Bancroft was about 36. Not a huge difference! But in the movie, Hoffman is supposed to be 20 and Mrs. Robinson is meant to be at least in her mid-40s. On the one hand, this is a symptom of a bigger problem—apparently Ava Gardner wanted the role of Mrs. Robinson, for example, and she was turned down flat. Because she couldn’t have handled it? Or because she was actually 45 at the time?

But at the same time, I think that part of the reason why the movie remains funny and watchable is that whatever we’re told about their ages, what we actually see is not that shocking. So instead of fretting about Mrs. Robinson’s predatory behavior, I laughed.

In the second half of the movie, Hoffman falls in love with Mrs. Robinson’s daughter. The daughter, Elaine, is meant to be his age and she bears a striking resemblance to her mother, accentuated by makeup, which makes the whole thing even weirder than it already was. When the truth comes out, the daughter is horrified and then… I honestly have no way to understand what happens next except, “And then Dustin Hoffman descends into madness.”

He absolutely loses his mind. He goes on one (1) date with Elaine but he spends what appears to be months completely consumed by his obsession with her. He lurks in her bushes, drives by her house at night, and when she returns to college he… follows? Chases her around campus, tails her on the way to dates with other men, spends his lonely evenings repeatedly scrawling her name on a piece of paper.

At first, Elaine seems to find this as disturbing as it actually is, but eventually she changes her mind and they’re… dating? Kind of? It still mostly seems like Hoffman is mired in an unhealthy obsession while she’s indifferent at best.

This part of the movie is not good but it is still pretty funny. There’s a scene where Hoffman misses a bus that Elaine has just boarded, then chases the bus to the next stop while she pretends not to see him. When Hoffman finally boards, sweaty and absurdly cheerful, he starts chatting up Elaine and the older woman in the seat next to her gives her a look that is just priceless. There’s another moment when Hoffman has stopped at a mechanic’s to use the phone & he’s swearing into the receiver that he’s a priest & the mechanic is looking at him like: WTF. Really, everyone seems to know that he’s off his rocker except for Elaine. For some reason, she marries him.

I didn’t get it. But the final scene shows Hoffman driving off into the sunset and as Simon & Garfunkel begin to sing, “Hello darkness, my old friend,” the slightly terrifying smile on his face drops away and he stares stone-faced as the camera as the credits roll and… probably that scene is somewhat enhanced by the way that “Hello darkness, my old friend,” has turned into a meme over the years, but it felt appropriate.

Poor Elaine!