Photograph: François Duhamel/Netflix
Can a film be camp and melodrama? Can a streaming service objectify a fictional particular person? What sort of jokes are you able to make on Letterboxd about grooming –– if any? And what does Aaron Taylor-Johnson must do with this? If these questions imply one thing to you, then you definitely’ve been on-line after the Netflix launch of Might December.
Todd Haynes’s newest characteristic premiered at Cannes earlier this 12 months, the place a variety of critics deemed it “sly,” “wildly enjoyable,” and the “most fun film” of the pageant (say what you need concerning the film, but it surely in all probability is extra enjoyable than, say, Killers of the Flower Moon). Although the film had a restricted theatrical launch a couple of weeks in the past, its “vast” launch onto Netflix on December 1 prompted a flurry of on-line reactions this previous weekend, a variety of which expressed dismay at what was perceived to be mismarketing of the movie’s actual fun level. This is likely to be, partly, due to a wider understanding of the movie’s supply materials; the affair on the heart of the work relies on the story of Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau, whose unlawful relationship and subsequent marriage made for vicious ’90s tabloid fodder.
Some 72-hours and a handful of Susan Sontag name-drops later, the Might December pressure of poster’s illness doesn’t appear to be letting up, as a substitute escalating into heated again and forths about whether or not a director could make a camp film even when they don’t see it as camp themselves and whether or not Rachel Sennott ought to or shouldn’t have posted what she did on Letterboxd.
Twitter customers — some Movie Twitter, some much less so — have taken issue with the Letterboxd-fication, so to talk, of Might December, arguing that the app has inspired a less serious and more blithe perspective across the movie regardless of its subject material. No matter the truth that there are equal numbers of pithy jokes and severe opinions throughout each websites, the continued flattening of crucial reception working in tandem with a Want for Favs and Hearts neither uplifts attention-grabbing movies nor sinks dangerous ones. Like most postings, it’s simply fluff.
It’s simple to see the battle as a conflict between millennials and Gen Z, or between Movie Twitter and Letterboxd Twitter (is there such factor as a social media subfaction of a special social media website), and it’s clearly not serving to that the Lowercase Voice of Netflix is chiming in with what both is or isn’t the sexualization of a fictional character who has been groomed. None of that is that severe, except, in fact, it’s essentially the most severe factor on this planet. These questions and the disagreements they’ve provoked lack simple solutions — besides possibly that the Netflix social-media voice wants to sit back.
A part of what feels so refreshing — and, sure, humorous! — about Haynes’s movie is the best way by which it defies a singular lens, pushing you into discomfort, laughter, and disappointment. In reality, that’s a part of what the movie is actually about: the leveling of Gracie (Julianne Moore) and Joe’s (Charles Melton) story within the palms of Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) and the filmmakers throughout the movie. In an try to maneuver towards a “true” story of what occurred between Gracie and Joe all these years in the past, Elizabeth solely pushes additional and additional away from it. Proximity to them doesn’t deliver readability.
Haynes’s final two movies — his Velvet Underground documentary and Darkish Waters — may need been extra simple, however one of many hallmarks of his lengthy profession has been the elusive nature of his filmmaking. You’re unlikely to search out two individuals, not to mention a complete Letterboxd group, who can agree on Carol, or Velvet Goldmine, or I’m Not There. Why would Might December be any completely different? What movie — tv, radio (see, as soon as once more, Killers of the Flower Moon), Twitter, Letterboxd — does to tales, true or not, is compress and deform. That Haynes is ready to wring one thing each humorous and unhappy, shifting and disturbing out of what may in any other case be tabloid pulp is what units him aside.
