I was excited to see this Todd Haynes film. He was a film school favorite, and has always been held in high regard in my heart for being a real film artist. However, I haven’t really followed his career. I had a free pass to a screening of May December and I was reminded that a pre-release screening plays differently than a regular theatrical release. The audience wants to like the film. The theatre was filled and the energy was palpable.
The film opens in what at first feels like confusing fashion; it’s a soft open let’s say, like waiting in the check out line at the supermarket and picking up a magazine…it’s a perusing sort of experience, and then before we realize it, we’re just in it. There is a woman, one of the stars, in this case Natalie Portman, talking sort of far away from camera. She eventually finds the frame, the frame doesn’t necessarily find her. It’s hard to tell who she is or who she is talking to, or what she’s talking about. The second location is a home on the water, a canal or a small lake, with kids playing and a man, Joe, played by Charles Melton, barbecueing outside. There’s a couple of women inside chatting. One is the other star, Julianne Moore. She is more recognizable and by reduction, I now know that the first woman was Natalie Portman. There is a mundaneness to the scene. Nothing is really important or not important. First I found myself analyzing Joe’s barbecuing abilities–was he an actor playing barbecue or was a guy who was barbecuing in a film? He seemed relatively genuine. Then I wondered to what degree the kids in the far background mattered. Was this the same property or family or just some stuff in the background? Most importantly perhaps, I noted that Joe seems like he could be Julianne Moore’s son. But they kiss on the lips, and I know he’s not. My gut reaction was “Oh, silly Hollywood, always miscasting actors and making them play younger than they readily can….” I had no idea until after that this film is based on a real life character, Mary Kay Letourneau, who seduces and then marries a seventh grader. So, this film is about an actor playing an actor making a film about an actor making a film about a person. But the meta of it all would only grow.
The film signals its style from the outset with a clear tableau of mise en scene. In particular, the altered focus, dirty frames, and hazy lighting of extreme close ups of plants (later to be revealed as seen through netting), the distant calm observational perspective of family life, and the dramatic story demarcation of punchy camera zooms and a heightened score. The opening barbecue sequence ends with just such punctuation. Julianne Moore opens the fridge with a sense of feigned importance, the camera rushes in on the swale of the piano crescendo, and she exclaims, “Do we have enough hot dogs?” Here the “pre-release”/filled theatre aspect was interesting. The theatre laughed at her delivery of the line, but I wonder if the comedy wasn’t signaled at the camera move and musical cue? I digress. At this moment we are signaled that this film isn’t just about a barbecue but something more; like the “Murdaugh Murders” meets Eyes Wide Shut, combining heavy melodrama with fear of hot dog inventory. There was a clear tension, the kind that happens when you may be out of hot dogs for an important picnic. In many films, Julianne Moore often appears to me to be harboring a tension between herself and the character she’s playing. I feel like I watch her wrestle with herself on screen. Maybe this tension is the perfect metaphor for this story.
The multilayered opening planted seeds that would bloom at various times and places as the film progressed. First and foremost, the casting and depiction of these two lead actors, Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, as Elizabeth and Gracie respectively was striking. I couldn’t tell who was who and I couldn’t tell them apart at first. Turns out, something akin to Single White Female, the two women would become more and more alike as the film goes on. Gracie is the subject and Elizabeth the invited interloper arriving to “study” Gracie so she can accurately play her in movie. Or is Gracie vetting Elizabeth to free-up her own moral path forward? The fact that prior to knowing this was what the film was about that I couldn’t tell the difference between the two women on screen highlights the acting, hair/makeup, and wardrobe. It’s an interesting commentary on roles, and aesthetic, and aging in Hollywood as well, that these women appear to be the same at times on screen. What about the John Woo film, Face Off? Or the Stallone film Judge Dredd. Somehow through the magic of Hollywood, the two actors in these films kind of look the same, when it seems like they shouldn’t. An odd phenomenon.
The second part that was striking, was the way that the film declared itself. The mise en scene was germaine to one of the film’s main themes, the taboo of intimacy. The film kind of lets us in in the same way that Gracie opens her life to Elizabeth. The door is open, but it still feels uncomfortable to be inside. Are we allowed to be there? There is a dramatic tension to the uncomfortablness of the perspective. In a beautiful choice, even some of the tracking shots throughout the film put us almost invisibly as voyeurs and listeners to a conversation. The lack of conventional framing works in film’s favor. It makes if feel less like we are watching a movie, with all its expectations, and tropes, and cozy predictability and instead we are just nearby, listening in from whatever angle we can get. Like paparazzi.
Lastly, in another nod to the warped reality of life and fiction, prior to Elizabeth’s arrival, Joe’s friend comments that he’s checked out a nude scene that Elizabeth was in. Natalie Portman has made it clear (in real life) her thoughts on the troubling part of filming nude scenes. She says it’s often that this is all you’re remembered for, as if the film itself is secondary. Many Julianne Moore fans may or may not admit that they got hooked on her when she appeared bottomless in Short Cuts. Later in May December Elizabeth, in a wonderfully written, dense yet delicate scene, uses her guest appearance at the local high school’s theatre class to wax poetic (and in way too much detail), what it’s like to film a sex scene. Somehow the film is able to comment on itself, the making of a film, the actor’s real lives intersected by nude scenes, and a real life tabloid story in an organic throw-away conversation with an actor that never appears again in the film. Kind of insane, the meta-ness of it all. Am I allowed to watch?
We are embedded with Elizabeth in this very uncomfortable place, inside the life of Gracie Atherton. Like walking in on someone in private dispose, but realizing they don’t mind the interruption…it leaves all the feelings of embarrassment to the person walking in and leaves the one who should be embarrassed, free and clear. Elizabeth would note this about Gracie, “She had the amazing ability to not question herself and just move on to the next thing.” (I paraphrase).
The film forces us to look at the uncomfortable triangle of relationships of Gracie, Joe, and Elizabeth. It’s sort of high level directing, pulling the thread of the audience’s subconscious and asking us to carry the emotional weight of these characters. I thought the script continued to be a shining light throughout.
Every scene was filled with active dialogue; characters’ backstory hung on the precipice of each interaction and each scene lay another brick on the dramatic structure. Interestingly, this is where the directing, acting, and script, may have found a traffic jam every so often. The question I think posed is, can such a precise script be directed in this way? It’s a complicated discussion probably and I think it asks us to see the forest for the trees. That is to say, some scenes may or may not work with the given style, but the film is largely successful.
Scenes are designed to breathe more naturally and realistically. Overall, the film is a slow burn, and motifs are introduced and pay off. For example devices such as the use of the camera placement as if to mimic a mirror, the score, the camera zoom, and the use of reflections, all are part of the fabric. The natural/realistic effect of the staging is crafted so these devices can demarcate the drama. The musical score and the camera zooms are the most forceful demonstrative constructs of this style; they really prescribe a certain destiny to the whole film–all of the actors are just caterpillars in screen cages. If you make it to chrysalis and change into a butterfly, you may be free. Otherwise, you may be in a cage photographed with soft focus, destined for the tabloids for the rest of your life. Some scenes, without some of the motif’s treatment, played less well. In these scenes I felt the script leap-frogged ahead of the film–those moments when the script starts to feel foregrounded and the world of film takes a step back.
A couple scenes that felt lacking, or without finishing touches, were the scene when Georgie joins Elizabeth and the lawyer at the restaurant table. I felt an imbalance with the acting in the scene. I’m not sure I fully appreciated meeting Georgie and some of the tragedy and comedy of the script. It’s a good scene, but it feels a little messy. I think there is something here of feeling too observational, when feeling more in Elizabeth’s shoes would have been more impactful, experiencing the scene more through her. Whereas when Elizabeth meets the ex-husband, also in a restaurant, a scene with some similar staging, it worked a little better. This meet-the-ex-husband-scene too felt a little awkward with depth of field being a little too deep, giving too much weight to the extras actor at the table outside. But the comedy and tragedy of the script was allowed to play a little better, in part because the scene had less distraction, or rather I was better able to process the information. In meeting-the-lawyer-scene, it’s busier. We are asked to laugh at a “lounge” version of a popular song, and meet Georgie and meet the lawyer. I’m not sure we are given the space or direction to do so. Additionally, when Joe joins Gracie in bed after the barbecue and she complains of his smell, I felt a little left out of the character dynamic and the comedy. The comedy was broadly written, but the staging was also broad and distant. I’m not sure it worked for me. It didn’t feel funny and I didn’t really appreciate the nuance of the dynamic. But this is all the balancing act of this combo of directing and screenwriting. What is our attention pointing towards? Which angles are shaped finely, and which curves more broadly gestured? Not to sound like a sycophant of film school, but this really points to the spectacular power of the frame, even if it’s meant to be more like a window.
I wonder if the lighting concept played a larger role in the film, it would have helped by laying a bed of consistency on which some of the comedy and performances could have resided. The chosen natural tabloid news magazine style is great and totally works, but there are some instances where this umbrella isn’t large enough to house all of the scenes. This stood out when Elizabeth visits the pet store where (spoiler alert) it all went down. It’s dark and bland, It doesn’t feel as mysterious or taboo or even funny as it could. The music and camera zoom helped guide us, but especially in the final shot of the scene which is melodramatic, upping the lighting style may have done something. Of course in some scenes a more elaborate lighting concept changes the style of filmmaking, and this is the grand trade-off.
A couple of scenes where the style and script meshed in a more cinematic way was when Joe and Elizabeth walk together in one long tracking shot, it’s graceful, and beautiful, and effortless, the camera just sort of joins them (a technique that is effective often and throughout the film). As they walk, Joe proclaims, “I want to step into the light” (or something to this effect) they end up in a brief clearing and the sunlit backlight overwhelms the screen and it’s an elegant cinematic tweak to a naturalistic tableau. It was actually hard to imagine staging this or if it was good serendipity (which in my opinion emanates from the style of the filmmaking anyway). Then when Joe brings groceries to his father, in a great example of just the profound amount of information that can be conveyed in a simple scene, we get the sense of Joe following in his father’s footsteps even to his own detriment. At the end of the scene in which Joe, a non-smoker, bums a cigarette from his father, the camera pans to the full ashtray. His father is stuck killing himself one smoke at a time and Joe is on the edge of going down this same road. Just a beautiful scene.
Mirrors and reflections in any film are tricky in general, almost a Sirens’ song of visuals. A gauntlet that no matter how enticing, once you enter, it’s hard to find your way out, except maybe Lady from Shanghai perhaps. Generally speaking, the use of reflections and camera as mirror here, is effective with a couple of shinning highlights but also some trip wires. There is an element to this visual language that feels unrefined, random, and general, which is the trap…as if using the same descriptive word over and over in an essay–or maybe slight variations with synonyms. At a certain point the communication starts to feel limited, and even confused in that it’s not moving forward. I think both the reflection motif and the camera as mirror technique are interesting. The reflections in particular are evocative and have a nice fit with the soft focus extreme close up style for the bugs and leaves and some shots of Joe. However, I simply found myself at some points saying, “that’s a cool shot and it means something, but I’m not sure what and I’m not sure how it adds to the accumulation of such images I’ve already been engaged with.”
Of particular effective use of mirrors and reflections is the shot of Joe’s father on the balcony when Joe arrives. Joe’s father appears as a mysterious figured reflection, like a lake about to cracked by a skipping stone, in a scene we are already set-up to feel concerned about his health but don’t know why. Also great is Joe exiting and then reentering the house via the back deck on the morning of graduation (this one was my favorites). The mirror usage during the trying-on-graduation-dresses scene is really great, though because we enter the scene a very geometric way, I wonder aloud again if the lighting concept could have tweaked my attention. But the complexity of this scene and the choice of when to offer a different perspective was really interesting. The script handed Todd a gift and his take on it elevated the scene. In a very long take, when Gracie is making up Elizabeth with the mirror looking at them, it’s particularly striking. However in this final implication of their relationship, it feels like it could mean more than it does. The technique kind of feels forced at this point. Again I wonder if there is a certain pressure of “reality” where the camera needs to start and end in the position of the mirror. I wonder if the film explored other ideas and they didn’t work given that this position was non-negotiable. Finally, in a denouement of the theme, when camera and mirror and actor and character all become a Staff of Aesculapius, and Elizabeth does her “reading,” I fully didn’t understand it. I get it theoretically, perhaps, but I don’t feel as much as I perhaps should in a way when the journey of the motif matches the character’s. I start to tune out. Sorry, Natalie.
I appreciated how vulnerable all the actors are. Todd Haynes is a real actor’s director. Several scenes reminded me of a Woody Allen scene that cuts a lot deeper and the dramatic teeter-totter doesn’t leave comedy high in the air and tragedy planted on the ground like obligatory but unwanted playmate. We got to “watch” Elizabeth’s journey of discovery. We got to watch Joe, become aware. We got to feel for them, we got to laugh at them and with them. It was all quite moving.
The characters are all fully living in their worlds and we enter their lives in the middle of life. The film does a great job of pointing us to what’s important and not really worrying about what’s not. Do we ever learn who Joe is texting with? Do we need to? Does Savannah have any role in the film? Close to nothing I would say, other than the climate perhaps and its relationship to the coastal lifestyle and the longer growing/butterfly season. We get that one drone shot of Joe’s car on the road, with the city in the background, which feels like an outlier. Do we see much of Joe actually harvesting and caring for butterflies? Do we need to? We get just enough of Gracie’s baking endeavor I would argue. It’s a rich tapestry.
Is the film’s main theme “What happens in Savannah, stays in Savannah?” knowing you’d have to fill in the riff on the Las Vegas tourism slogan with something specific to The Atherton family, or family in general. That’s what the characters can’t break free from, right? Their own DNA…. Does anyone change? Elizabeth continues her same struggle. Only Joe at the end may be leaving his cage behind. But does the film have a different message?
As I struggled with Elizabeth’s final rehearsal(?) reading for camera/mirror, I also tried to make sense of the film’s end, the filming of the film of the story…The “film set” was completely real, maybe a little too much so. But the “set on the film” was comedically inferior as was Elizabeth’s acting and the casting of the actor playing Joe–it seemed to purposefully not live up to the aspirations for high art and life that Elizabeth brought to her endeavor. Maybe this is saying that this is where we all end up, just chiseling away at something, but never being the thing itself. Or that a character like Gracie is ultimately elusive, a character so selfish and immune from self discovery that they are constantly a moving target. Anyway, the idea that we kept striving for something real and honest in this scene (“back to 1”) was so funny. This scene would never succeed, but the scene might have. After all these were just actors, playing actors, who were playing real life people. And we’re just watching. I could probably happily watch this film over and over again. It’s a master class in many ways.