Movie musings

Remember when I said I could tell you about seeing the most disturbing two movies I have ever seen in my life? Well, I'm going to talk about it on the radio tonight (here: 16 minutes in) so I thought I'd share some of my thoughts with you.

Basically, the big movies this year are unforgivably depressing. Movies that win big in the Oscars are usually kind of downers – last year we had No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, La Vie en Rose, Michael Clayton, etc., but this year, the movies I’ve seen have just left me unable to even express thought, I mean the topics and plots were so dejecting and gruesome that I think we are seriously reaching new highs, or lows, rather, in our Oscar nominees.

Let’s start off with Revolutionary Road. It depicts 1950s American life based on a newly married couple who move to the suburbs to start their family. The movie is based on a novel written by Richard Yates, who described the central theme as “most human beings are inescapably alone, and therein lies their tragedy”. The movie is good, don’t get me wrong, but it’s fight after fight after fight and they escalate all the way up to a husband-on-wife screaming death chase through the woods. I won’t tell you how it ends, but let’s just say there is blood involved.

Alright and then we’ve got The Wrestler. The previews led me to believe I was in for a feel-good movie where Mickey Rourke’s character finally gives up wrestling to salvage his relationship with his long lost daughter. After seeing Revolutionary Road the day before, I felt like I deserved a softy. But a softy it…was…not. I should have seen the gory-factor coming since the film is directed by the guy who did Requiem for a Dream. But I have to say the famous “biting the pavement” scene from Requiem hardly was a match for the literal savage beatings the audience witnesses the aging wrestler go to through keep supporting himself. The physical trauma he goes through, however, is barely a match for the way the movie makes you feel about your own life. As we were leaving the theater after seeing it, one of my friends said he felt like there were bugs crawling all over him.

And it doesn’t get much happier. Milk left me enraged for weeks, not only about the injustice of our own history but also the fact that I had never even heard about the events that happened in the movie. Rachel Getting Married, which was one of my favorite movies of the year, stars Anne Hathaway as a recovering crack addict who essentially murdered her little brother and has to awkwardly face her family on the day of her sister’s wedding as she tries not to ruin the entire thing with her loud-mouthed and offensive existence. And of course Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York features a theater director with depression and a failing, dying body trying to make something of himself. You can guess whether he does or not.

Even superhero movies aren’t escaping this trend of shockingly bleak films. We all saw The Dark Knight and it seemed much more psychological thriller than uplifting heroism. Even Batman can’t escape the tragedy of his own ideals and comes off more like a depressed cancer patient than a lovable hero. It seems like this movie, although totally awesome, is a far cry from the downright comedic 1960s television series Batman used to be.

So why? Does sadness sell? Are happy endings trite? I guess if nothing else, we know depression wins awards. So as you’re catching up on the award nominees that you’ve missed over the past year, get ready to strap on your sad face, pop a Prozac, and remember that there is life after movies.