The best satires lampoon human behavior that isn’t that totally obvious to the people who exhibit it—or even the ones who think they understand it.
For instance, while I enjoyed critically acclaimed blockbusters Knives Out and Get Out, I didn’t walk away with many questions about the power structures both movies tackled. I mostly just received confirmation that rich, white people aren’t to be trusted—which, as a Black woman, I could’ve told you before I entered the theater! That said, I don’t think great satires have to flip your entire worldview on its head. But they do have to make you curious or, in the best cases, question your own beliefs.
Two awards contenders currently in theaters fit that bill.
It was refreshing to sit down with Todd Haynes’ latest film, May December, in select theaters now. As someone who writes about characters and how well they’re depicted for a living, the script (written by Sam Burchy) felt somewhat directed at me. The black comedy is as much about filmmaking—specifically, the ways we reckon with difficult people through stories—as it is a tale about a disturbing marriage.
Haynes’ film takes its inspiration from the late ’90s tabloid frenzy surrounding sex offender Mary Kay Letournou and her much-younger husband Vili Fualaau, with whom she began an “affair” when he was 12 and she was his 36-year-old teacher. Julianne Moore and Riverdale star Charles Melton play Gracie and Joe, a fictionalized version of the staggering couple decades after their first encounter. And Natalie Portman plays a television actress named Elizabeth, who visits their home in Savannah, Georgia, to shadow Grace, whom she’s portraying in a film.
Throughout the black comedy, Elizabeth emphasizes her intentions with the project, repeatedly assuring Grace and her relatives that she wants to tell an “honest” and “human” story. (The way the very transparent Elizabeth emphasizes these goals is a play for laughs.) On the one hand, Natalie’s character feels like a send-up of Hollywood’s faux-altruism, this belief among certain filmmakers and television creators that they’re doing the real-life subjects they portray a service by representing them in mass entertainment—often without their permission. It's a conversation that’s come up online regarding another Oscar-buzzy film this year, Martin Scorsese’s Killers of The Flower Moon.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth’s stated desire to present Grace as “complex,” despite her past crimes and the ways she continues to reign control over Joe, reads as its own critique about the ways we rationalize abuse and to what end.
It’s clear that Elizabeth only wants to understand Grace for the sake of a great, possibly award-winning performance—not to alter her own perspective. Ostensibly, the actress knows her audience will connect with and maybe even sympathize with her version of Grace if she can present her nuances. In particular, she searches for some personal tragedy to easily explain Grace’s corruption. When she finally discovers it, she decides that her research is over—only for her conclusion about Grace to completely unravel.
As an audience member, you spend much of the shockingly funny May December laughing at Elizabeth’s inflated ego and transparency on this trip. But it's just as easy to slip into her mindset, waiting for Moore’s robotic and eerily cold Grace to reveal a more humane, sympathetic aspect of herself.
It’s refreshing then that Haynes’ film radically avoids this trap. In an era where the language and psychology of abuse has become mainstream, “hurt people hurt people” logic has become a lazy shortcut to understanding abusers—and tends to only benefit them. It’s not that this notion isn’t true. Studies show that people who experience physical or sexual harm are more likely to repeat that behavior themselves. But how does this knowledge actually help people who are currently experiencing abuse? How can we acknowledge generational trauma without using it as a cop-out? While this potential trauma plot matters to Elizabeth, it doesn’t do any favors for the slowly unraveling and seemingly trapped Joe.
Another film this year, Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, makes the same choices as May December, to an extent, when portraying the problematic figure looming over its story. The biopic has garnered much attention for boldly depicting an unsavory version of Elvis Presley that chips away at his widely accepted, charismatic persona. The fact that Coppola was even willing to make this film, based on Priscilla Presley’s 1985 memoir Elvis and Me, was a daring enough move for the rock icon’s estate to denounce the film.
Nevertheless, as the writer and director, Coppola commits to presenting Presley as a egomaniacal jerk who sought out a teen girl and essentially molded her into his accessory. There’s certainly context for all of Elvis’s mood swings and bouts of insecurity. Priscilla takes place during the downslope of Presley’s chartopping career, following his Army service, and also after the death of his mother. But from Priscilla’s perspective, as a privileged but ultimately powerless young woman, none of these facts really matter to her or change how she experiences her husband’s callousness. And Coppola thankfully doesn’t spend enough time dwelling on Elvis’ sadness, so that none of his personal hardships should matter to the audience either.
Overall, I found both May December and Priscilla’s unapologetic and uncomplicated approach to capturing grooming and sexual abuse to be oddly refreshing, even if they successfully left me with a sick feeling. As moviegoers, and especially as critics, we’re always looking for entry points to emphasize with even the most monstrous characters. And to be fair, these layers can objectively make people more interesting and worth shedding a spotlight on. (I’d argue that Killers of Flower Moon’s Earnest Buckhart shouldn’t have been the protagonist because he was boring, not because he was the evil, white guy.) But is this focus always necessary? Both Coppola and Haynes’ films convinced me no.
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