Blog post #2
Russell T. Davies was in the news this week because he spoke his mind in the RadioTimes. I read the interview before it all blew up on social media, exacerbated by Piers Morgan’s trademark exhalations on Good Morning Britain. Davies said there should be more authentic representation in television characters. Specifically: straight actors shouldn’t be playing gay characters. In the same way, he continued, non-disabled people shouldn’t play roles in wheelchairs, and white actors shouldn’t black up.
It’s a fascinating discussion, and hardly a new one. When promoting his BBC Three series We Are Who We Are, Luca Guadagnino responded to criticisms around casting straight actors Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet in Call Me By Your Name: ‘I honestly don’t believe I have the right to decide whether an actor is straight or not.’ Sexuality is a spectrum, after all. But this falls down when you realise how many gay roles are disproportionately played by straight actors. No matter how you cut the ‘ability, not sexuality’ debate, this fact is hard to avoid.
To offer a point of view from a straight white male (because the world has too few of those already…), my issue is more concerned with casting diversity than authenticity. Hammer and Chalamet can convince me they’re in love, as can Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci in the incredible Supernova. (Same with disability: I can pretend to myself that Daniel Day-Lewis has advanced cerebral palsy; I can accept Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking, sure.) But what about the openly gay performers rejected from these opportunities? I don’t buy the idea that the best option, every time, is the straight white guy. I guarantee that A-List gay talent is out there, just waiting to be plucked. Davies will probably prove that on Friday with It’s A Sin, in which all the gay characters are played by gay actors.
HIGHLIGHT OF THE WEEK
WandaVision, Disney+
WandaVision
I am one of those grumpy, pretentious critics who prefer the meaningful over the mainstream. When I went to university, I hoped to find others who were into Lynch, Godard, Malick, Bergman, or Tarkovsky – but they were all into 80s blockbusters and comic books (I grew to like and admire the latter, over time).
In a strangely brilliant balancing act, WandaVision populates the arthouse with Marvel superheroes. I was sceptical in the lead-up, those familiar, anti-mainstream feelings came rushing back. But I watched the first two episodes (dropping on Disney+ weekly), and I was struck by how experimental they felt. It’s a branch of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but its artificial sitcom settings look like Michel Gondry, Charlie Kaufman, The Truman Show, Pleasantville; there’s even a hint of Lynch in there, especially in the terror of its unreality. It also reminded me of a quest in the classic Bethesda video-game Fallout 3, in which you enter a charming but freaky B&W simulation of a nuclear family neighbourhood.
WandaVision sticks with its simulation with admirable devotion, moving through an evolution of American sitcoms – with tiny indications of an outer reality. I’m worried the concept will be deflated by the Hollywood necessity to explain everything, but I am loving this initial, surreal mystery so far. Let’s hope it doesn’t falter.
What else I’ve watched this week
This week saw the return of the always-excellent BBC Four series Secrets of Cinema from Mark Kermode, the critic who made me want to enter this ridiculous career. A preview was available to me, but I wanted to watch it properly on TV. This episode focuses on British comedies, much of which I was raised on. But even despite my back catalogue of knowledge, mostly composed of memorised Monty Python sketches, I realised I’d barely seen any of the films included. I’ll need to draw up a new watchlist…
Tenet
I watched Tenet again, this time with Mum and Dad. I neither liked nor understood the film any more the second time. Although the action and special effects, much of which playing in reverse, mark a historic moment in cinema, its perplexity is so dense as to be disinteresting. Even tedious. The linguist Steven Pinker said that the best writing makes you feel like a genius, but Tenet just makes me feel dumb, dumb, dumb.
I’ve also been catching up with The Bay on ITV, prepping for the second season next week. It’s nothing ground-breaking, clearly influenced by the success of the community detective drama Broadchurch. But it’s gripping in its own way. Although the populous isn’t examined with much depth, there’s enough to be engaged with and the seaside cinematography is gorgeous. I wasn’t really convinced by the catalytic decisions made by the main character, but it’s bingeable all the same. Season two airs on Wednesday.
The Bay, ITV
What I’ve written this week
My review for Finding Alice. After a lacklustre week review-wise, this was a delightful embrace… despite being about grief. Like the Ricky Gervais Netflix series After Life, this ITV family drama (starting Sunday, 9pm) washes together the funny with the harrowing: following the humorous Alice (Keeley Hawes) coping after her husband suddenly dies.
My review for One Night in Miami… Regina King’s film debut has obvious passion behind it, gathering four African American titans in a Miami motel room. It’s 1964, and Malcolm X, Cassius Clay, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown cross paths to celebrate Clay’s win over Sonny Liston. Although its messages and monologues resonate with today’s politics, it was too much like a play for me. The performances are worth an Oscar or two, but there’s little ambition in other areas – especially from a visual perspective. Worth watching, though.
One Night in Miami…
My review for Blithe Spirit. This has plenty of fun and charm, and I enjoyed its daring to reach beyond Noël Coward’s original play. The problem with most theatre-to-film adaptations is their being doomed to constriction, and this version of Blithe Spirit opens up the cinematic imagination. But despite attempts to chop, change, and modernise the play, the story still belongs to a different era.
The less said about Stardust the better, but I did review it. What’s so extraordinarily mediocre about this Bowie biopic is not the lack of music (the family kept the rights), but the surfeit of boredom. Instead, seek out the two-hour radio documentary Bowie: Dancing Out in Space, available on BBC Sounds.
SURREAL FILM OF THE WEEK
The Science of Sleep (2006), dir. Michel Gondry
The Science of Sleep
There are many surreal or strange movies out there featuring anxious males, obsessed (usually) with women who resist them. Under the Silver Lake comes immediately to mind, a movie with its own controversies because of a misogynistic male gaze. Annoyingly, I’m still taken by these movies (hardly surprising: I am a straight white man), and The Science of Sleep has turned into another example.
Gondry made the film after Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and is even more obscure. Set in a fractured existence that straddles between dreams and reality, the inventor/artist Stéphane (Gael Garcia Bernal) moves to a French apartment and falls in love with his next-door neighbour Stéphanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Gondry combines live-action with incredible stop-motion, crafting a beautiful, psychological confusion filled with lust and creativity. Stéphane turns into a slightly abusive presence towards the end, melting much of the sympathy I had for him. Regardless, Gondry captures what it’s like to fall head over heels, with that person invading every facet of your consciousness. That experience can be nice and fun, but also horrendously torturous.
