Another Issue!
This month I talk about: one of the best films of the decade, why every summer is “Rohmer Summer” and I review Yorgos Lanthimos’ most recent masterpiece. All these pieces overlap in topics but t/w for self harm mentions in the first piece!
‘We’re All Going to the World’s Fair’: The Screen and The Individual
The representation of modern technology in contemporary films is an oddly touchy subject. Some of the most acclaimed working directors have actively avoided shooting a film that takes place in an era where smartphones are ubiquitous. Why is this? Well, the convenience of smartphones makes many of the points of tension told in stories before the 21st century obsolete. A film like Planes, Trains and Automobiles would cease to exist if Steve Martin could just call an uber or instantaneously get in contact with his wife. Additionally, it is frequently the case where a film attempts to represent the use of an iPad or laptop and it feels so consciously constructed. The truth is that our individual relationships to the internet and technology vary greatly. The vastness of the online world contains multitudes and seems like a daunting feat to try to tackle. It is startling then that in We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, director Jane Schoenbrun makes the audience stare right into the screen.
Schoenbrun asserts their understanding of the online sphere quite astutely. The film centres itself around Casey (Anna Cobb), a seemingly despondent teenager who spends her days walking aimlessly around her generic Eastern American town and laying around in her attic bedroom where she watches strange but magnetic videos on her MacBook. The subject of these videos all relate to a creepypasta-inspired online game called “The World’s Fair”. To participate in this niche horror game, Casey has to film and upload a video of herself where she draws a smidge of blood and smears it across her laptop/monitor screen. Casey then watches a video that is a series of flashing turquoise and purple neons that illuminate her face set to an eery droning score to complete the process. The film starts from this point.
Choosing to film World’s Fair just an hour away from their hometown, an autobiographical connection between Schoenbrun and their films focus, Casey, is evident. Much like Casey, Schoenbrun showed an interest in more morbid subjects as an adolescent which grew into fixations on horror franchises and then found the internet. Schoenbrun’s World’s Fair quickly takes on themes of dissociation and disillusionment and it is made particularly insightful because of this autobiographical connection, making it a film about individual connection to the internet. A lesser, more mainstream film would perhaps opt for higher stakes and evade such grey areas; the World’s Fair game could be framed as the narratives “big bad” that is affecting hundreds of teens, brainwashing and zombifying them as they partake in the games harmful ritual. Rather, Schoenbrun elucidates this destructive dichotomy of comfort and loneliness through Casey’s individual engagement and obsession with internet subcultures.
The content of the videos that Casey watches endlessly are made by other participants of the World’s Fair where they describe the “symptoms” that have occurred after performing the ritual. The effects manifest both physically and cognitively; in a video titled “I can’t feel my body!” a man runs on a treadmill at a steady pace in the middle of a living room and sporadically slaps himself across the face. In another, a teenage boy sits alone in a bathroom and describes how he envisions a game of Tetris being played in his body that begins at the floor of his diaphragm. The boy expresses concern as to what will happen when the blocks build toward his neck. In the film, the point of The World’s Fair is that it is a role playing game, a way for people to immerse themselves in an imaginary online game. The symptoms shown by others should then presumably be fake, all part of the game, but for Casey, it’s all too real.
Casey begins to make her own videos. In her first she explains that she has an affinity for horror films and wants to see what it would be like to live inside of one, hence why she has partaken in The World’s Fair. She continues to explain how she used to sleepwalk as a child, how she felt like she was watching herself, a viewer to her own bodily autonomy. At this point in the film a trans allegory becomes very evident and holds much credibility. Schoenbrun, who is nonbinary, is very clear about how their gender identity influences their work and hopes that their films connect correspondently.
The loss of feeling and increasing detachment from ones body all speak to the experience of gender dysphoria. In the opening scene where Casey is filming her initiation into the World’s Fair she must draw blood from her finger. She uses the needle from a reflective skull pin to flippantly hack away at her finger. Casey unusually barely flinches and shows no signs of hesitation. Casey’s willingness in this scene speaks to a pre existing dissatisfaction with her body and echoes ideas of self harm, which can be synonymous with gender dysphoria.
Casey’s relationship to the internet comes into full focus through a sudden friendship with another stray and lonely World’s Fair hyperfixator, a middle aged man mysteriously called JLB (Michael J Rogers). He reaches out to Casey after seeing her videos and expresses concern for her safety. Initially, JLB’s intentions in extending a virtual olive branch to Casey are nebulous, his reticence giving an eery air to his words, however, there is an earnestness in his concern for Casey.
JLB, who is a dilettante of all things World’s Fair, Skypes Casey and questions her knowledge of the World’s Fair; what she knows beyond the videos she’s seen. He explains how this game has a deeper mythology than many fail to recognise and how he’s seen people change fundamentally as a result. Casey expresses growing feelings of dissociation from her body, JLB reciprocates. They end the call after agreeing that Casey should continue to make videos describing her experiences so that JLB can be sure of her safety.
JLB become’s Casey’s only form of human connection in her life. The Skype call, which is shot from the perspectives of both JLB’s monitor and Casey’s laptop, reflects Casey’s relationship to the internet. Appearing in the call with her laptop camera on, Casey is visible to herself and JLB. JLB chooses to not turn on his camera, in turn, his Skype avatar represents his presence in the call; a grinning grim reaper-esque figure with hallowed out eyes that JLB drew himself. The motif of a discomfort with physical appearance is therefor present in the scene, though, a visible barrier between JLB and Casey is also built. Casey is calling out to a void in the Skype call, connection is made through their mutual loneliness and discomfort but their friendship will always lack tangibility across the screen.
Gradually, we lose connection to Casey as our only insight to her is through her videos where she grows increasingly more manic and delusional. She strolls around completely removed from her physical reality, conflating a school with a graveyard and muttering things about her absent father and ideals of disappearing without a trace. These instances are distressing but it should be noted that it is tacitly implied that we are watching her videos through JLB’s perspective; therefor we feel secure in his concern for her. Later, over an additional Skype call, JLB expresses his fears to Casey that she may cause harm to herself or others to which Casey takes umbrage to. He states that he thought of calling the police, incapable of providing direct action himself due to distance and Casey scolds him, claiming that her videos were all artifice, all part of the game. The call ends in anger, JLB attempts to call back but is denied. Their friendship, in a second, has been wiped from existence.
At this point in The World’s Fair, the screen has become a transfixing and distorting mirror. Casey can no longer recognise herself and while trying to transcend her reality by escaping into the internet, she perpetuates her disconnect from herself. JLB and her can relate deeply to one another though their friendship lies dormant due to the barrier and distance of the internet.
In the final scene, the film flashes forward “some time later”. JLB sits at his screen, recording his voice and giving insight into how things have progressed. He tells us that Casey soon after their call received medical help and that they met for coffee and pizza in New York. However initially awkward this interaction was, they eventually broke past that barrier and built somewhat of an actual rapport, being able to reconcile their falling out and plan to see each other again. It remains slightly ambiguous as to whether or not our two wayward characters may actually see each other again. As JLB recounts this day he smiles with a hint of elation, knowing that he and Casey, even just for once, looked beyond the screen.
“It’s Rohmer Summer”
“It’s Hot Girl Summer”, “It’s Brat Summer”, “It’s Hot Guy Summer”. Such mantras have echoed across the cultural sphere for the entirety of the 2020s. Summer as a way to reinvent oneself and to shake off the burdens of Winter and Spring, to gain a new outlook for the latter half of the year. It can be argued though that the people who wear these phrases on shirts or plaster them across Instagram stories or captions, probably, do not forego much change. In fact, their posts from the previous summer may closely resemble their photos and captions from this summer and presumably next summer and so on. What is it about summer that makes us so eager for redefining or even finding ourselves? Why do we continually embrace this season with open arms only to crawl into autumn with said arms burnt and our same rigid personalities well intact?
Of course I’m being hyperbolic when I claim that those who shout “It’s Hot ___ Summer” from boats or balconies seek a transformative experience. However, we are all guilty of harbouring ideals of change as we enter the Summer season. Summer is innately alluring year round. When the sun shines across your skin with a complimentary cool breeze swaying across your ears and neck you forgive the sins of Winter instantaneously. Under a heavenly firmament anything feels possible, so, why should change be so out of reach?
Refusing to look inward, which can be done at any time of the year, we go where the weather takes us; we externalise this desire for change. In the estival films of Éric Rohmer, this externalisation is realised through romantic longing. Every film across Rohmer’s filmography deals with the trappings and complexities of love; his characters are entangled by their own jealousies and lies in the pursuit of romance and sex. His films set during the Summer are no different. However, his approach to his typical themes is taken from an alternative angle.
In a film like Pauline at the Beach, 15 year old Pauline (Amanda Langlet) and her about-to-be-divorced aunt Marion (Arielle Dombasle) take a trip to Northwestern France, where multiple love triangles gradually converge. Almost immediately, Marion meets an old lover, Pierre (Pascal Greggory), who she once came close to marrying. Pierre still harbours a young desire to be with Marion but she falls for the older and more hirsute Henri (Féodor Atkine) who is secretly lecherous and sees his romance with Marion as completely temporary and disposable.
Early on in the film, our four characters are lounging around in Henri’s house discussing how they discover that they are in love. Marion claims that for her, despite never experiencing it, it should be instantaneous, the instant she meets someone. For Pierre, who Pauline sides with, love is found through engagement, through building a relationship with somebody; it is a process. Henri, who has also been divorced, mostly abstains though is transparent about his selfish tendencies in his sexual/romantic experiences.
Marion, who perhaps pines the most for love after a separation, admits that she is afraid of making mistakes in love as she has in the past but fails to recognise that her own philosophy could perpetuate her fears, which are realised in her relationship with Henri. Pierre repeatedly tries to convince Marion of the error in her ways, his philosophy of “she just has to talk to me more” obscuring the fact that his love for her does not equate to her loving him. The young Pauline observes all of these contradictions and falls in love with a boy named Sylvain (Simon de La Brosse).
The nature of summer allows all of these relationships to grow and for jealousies and lies to boil. With the long aimless days, everyone is allowed to stroll the beach, to spark relationships with strangers and to fall into tricky and sudden situations. As Pauline’s perfectly innocent relationship progresses the adults in her life eventually encroach on her happiness. Their philosophies and lies have led them to feel as though they have a superior opinion.
The ending of Pauline at the Beach is cyclical which signifies that despite all of their melodramatic turmoils, our characters have not learnt anything; apart from Pauline who may realise that she does not know what love is. As in The Green Ray and A Summer’s Tale, a Rohmer summer is a summer that reflects back to you who you are; your ambivalence, your lust, your indecisiveness; the parts of yourself you fail to reckon with. Despite all of our free time basking in warm climates, we inevitably will be proclaiming the same mantras next summer.
Clinical Lessons in Love: Kinds of Kindness Review
With Kinds of Kindness releasing 6 months after the Oscar winning Poor Things (at least in the UK & Ireland) and a new film set to release in 2025, director Yorgos Lanthimos has demonstrated a Fassbinderian work ethic. Not only bearing similarities in prolific artistic output, Lanthimos has borrowed from the German New Wave director before, especially in the lush and resplendent set design and cinematography of Poor Things which closely resemble the evocative images in Fassbinder’s Querelle and Berlin Alexanderplatz. Kinds of Kindness is no different, but now Lanthimos’ characters deal with Fassbinderian psyches; their emotions corrode the self and are used as leverage against them.
Kinds of Kindness tells the story of 3 distinct fables that concern a peculiar array of characters (all played by the same troupe of actors) who find themselves embroiled in mysterious circumstances where they become wary of loved ones and obsessed with the approval of others. The first concerns a slightly timid corporate man named Robert (Jesse Plemons) who receives directions on each minutia of his life from his nefarious boss Raymond (Willem Dafoe) who orders Robert to crash his car into a very innocuous man named R.M.F. (Yorgos Stefankos). The second shows a marriage growing increasingly more internecine and destructive after Liz (Emma Stone) is rescued from a place where Dogs ruled and “people were animals and animals were people”; her husband Daniel (Jesse Plemons) becomes convinced that his wife is not the same woman she was before she disappeared. The last tale depicts the story of Emily (Emma Stone), a cult member who avoids her previous marriage with Joseph (Joe Alwyn) and searches for a woman who can heal wounds and resurrect people from the dead, the one who her cult are in search of.
The overlapping factor across each of these fables is the presence of the man named R.M.F., his name being used in the title of each story. He never is the focus of the narrative, and rarely is of the camera, and exists solely around our characters as they grow more obsessive and desperate. His presence is crucial to the entirety of the film however and works as a very smart device that speaks to the thematics of the destruction of the self and others in the pursuit of love. As Lanthimos’ characters become more determined to prove themselves, R.M.F. often receives the brunt of their efforts.
It is obvious that Kinds of Kindness is a very indulgent film; an almost 3 hour film that investigates the cruel acts that are the result of the human need for approval. However, Kindness is utterly enthralling in its mysteries which are underscored by a deeply perturbing and resonant score by Jerskin Fendrix. The typically stilted performances that can be found in any Lanthimos film only add to the tension here. At times they feel intriguingly inscrutable and when they come to gory conclusions, it only adds to the visceral gut punch. The characters go to absurd lengths to try reckon with their need for direction, which results in very casual depictions of mutilation; they shape themselves and others (literally) and refocus their diets to perfect or obfuscate their image in the eyes of others.
The most fascinating of the three stories, the ultimate tale concerning a cult in search of their messiah of sorts presents the most interesting conundrum. This cult, which is located on a very rich and architecturally contemporary estate, believes that those outside of their commune are “contaminated” and that any water that they can drink must be purified by their leaders Omi (Willem Dafoe) and Aka (Hong Chau). Before induction, every member must be placed in a sauna and boiled until they are rid of their contaminated fluids. Additionally, all relationships are non monogamous so members are permitted to sleep with whomever they please. Everyone can request love and are built in the same image but still they are in search of the one who will heal all their wounds.
Lanthimos frames each of his central figures in tight doorways and hallways, reflecting the work of Fassbinder who’s characters are always trapped by their own emotions and the pressures of others. Lanthimos is heightening the melodramas of Fassbinder in Kinds of Kindness, gloriously dissecting each of his characters in his usual clinical style. With some of the most singular and versatile performances of the year, Kinds of Kindness is one of the best and most interesting films of the year and certainly Lanthimos’ masterpiece.
Another masterpiece!
Exceptionally well-written as per usual!