Author: BRWC

Undone Undoes Traditional Schizophrenia Narratives. By Brandon Topp.

We all shit our pants when Edward Norton’s narrator revealed himself as Tyler Durden in Fight Club. Several years and several ripoffs later, Mr. Robot managed to fool many of us in a similar way for its entire first season.

In Noah Hawley’s show Legion on FX, the first season tracks the confusion of main character David Haller’s ability to distinguish between what some told him were schizophrenic episodes, and what others told him were super powers. 

Many storytellers have walked the narrative line of, in this fictional universe—will delusions be the key to the greater mysteries of life and existence, or will they simply be delusions? So, how has the new series Undone on Amazon broached this in an original, compelling, and emotionally vibrant sort of way? 

The Heart Of Undone Is The Balance of Surreality and Reality

So, in Mr. Robot and in Fight Club, the protagonist begins the story fully deluded, and then has an awakening from which they realize and accept they’re mentally ill. In Undone, the main character Alma questions the visions she has of her dead father immediately. Throughout the whole season, the audience is back and forth with Alma on whether she’s a shaman or a schizophrenic. 

The only other examples I know of a narrative like this, where the protagonist is aware that they can’t really, fully know what’s real and what isn’t are Legion, and the film A Beautiful Mind. Undone sits right in the middle of these two in an interesting way. See, Legion never touches reality, because it’s a superhero show and there are powers, so while the main character’s struggle to get in touch with reality are interesting, the show is total fantasy. On the flip side, A Beautiful Mind is based on a true story, so we never consider the protagonist’s delusions at all. 

Undone taps us into the reality of our everyday world, and the reality of Alma’s mind in an even-keeled way to help us feel her anxiety, confusion, and wonder. This approach is original, and true to a universal human truth.

We Don’t Know Shit

Experts who study the universe, experts who study the ocean, and experts who study the mind all agree that there’s far more about existence that we don’t know, than what we do know. None of us can be totally certain if the reality we share is the primary reality of our existence, and not one of us has any idea what happens when we die. That same confusion feeds Alma’s limbo. 

As of now, I don’t think the show has taken a stance on which reality is real. That could all change with a second season. But for now, the ambiguity is both frustrating and the exact thing that helped Undone undo traditional schizophrenia narratives. 

By staying in the space of, I don’t know what’s real, the show stands apart from other stories that approach this subject by choosing a particular reality for a particular universe. Undone stays on the side of our reality, because its story, like us can never really say for sure what’s real and what isn’t in life. 

I think if the show ended here, there’s something interesting about the idea that we can each choose the reality that we feel is real. It’s an interesting statement on how to view life. At the same time, it’d feel sort of like a cop out from a writing perspective. It’d be an immense challenge to keep this story going for another season while keeping it as compelling, which makes the prospect of another season compelling.

Sometimes, We Just Want Things To Be Different

Throughout the whole season, it’s easy to root for Alma’s mission to travel in time and save her dad’s life. While we know very little about the father himself, and how bringing him back would alter* the lives of the family, we still hope that she can be successful. Part of that feeling is the character’s charm, and wanting to see our protagonist succeed, while the other part is this seemingly universal desire for a new reality. 

*For those who don’t know, Dark is an excellent German show on Netflix, and maybe the best thing I’ve seen about time travel and the philosophies of altering timelines.

Alma says things throughout the season along the lines of, Don’t worry, this reality will be totally gone soon, and, Don’t you want things to just be different? I think if any of us could pull this invisible curtain from hanging over our realities to discover a true existence that comes without all of the bullshit sadness, boredom, and depression so prevalent in this life, we would. That’s really what Alma seems to want in this show. 

She’s not only trying to bring back her father. She’s trying to escape her relationship*, and her family, and the monotony of day-to-day life. She’s looking for something that makes sense, and doesn’t conjure the feelings of lonesomeness that haunt most of us. 

*Forever on Amazon is a show that beautifully explores similar ideas in terms of day-to-day monotony versus the afterlife and great beyond.

Undone Is Good For The Soul

Undone is cinematically fun for a number of reasons: the music is enticing, curious, and energetic; the rotoscope* animation complements the trans-dimensional nature of the show; and of course head-trip, time travel fantasy has a broad potential to be awesome. In addition to all of that, it circles back to real human moments, connections, regrets, and broad philosophies to put everything else in its rightful perspective. 

When Alma painstakingly tries to let go of the reality of her father’s storyline at the end of the season, we see the deep struggle of going back to our “reality.” And then it ends, and we realize we’ve been sitting on the couch watching this fantastic show for four straight hours, escaping, and now it’s time to get up, and get back to our “reality.” And seeing Alma, connecting to her and relating to her, makes that inevitability a bit easier. 

*The first rotoscope film I ever saw was Richard Linklater’s Waking Life. It also uses the animation technique to put a surreal lense over human conversations, interactions, and dreams. 

Salma Hayek is one woman you won’t want to mess with in her latest role. In The Hummingbird Project, the tense tech thriller from Oscar-nominated director Kim Nguyen, Hayek plays a no-nonsense executive trying to scupper the potential lucrative plan by a pair of men (played by the unforgettable Jesse Eisenberg and Alexander Skarsgård), who are attempting to connect money markets using an audacious fibre optic tunnel.

With peroxided hair and tinted Ray-bans, a fiery and ferocious Hayek tears up the screen as Torres, saying “I can make your life hell if I decide to” – and you don’t doubt it for a second, making this Hayek’s scariest screen role since she played a deadly dancer in From Dusk Till Dawn. Here are ten more unforgettable female film bosses -some award winning, some hilarious, some truly frightening, and all of them brilliant.

Faye Dunaway in Network (1974)

Dunaway’s astonishing portrayal of ambitious newsroom executive Diana Christensen, in Sidney Lumet’s Network, won her a Best Actress Oscar in 1976. In a male-dominated media world, Christensen is absolutely relentless in her quest for unforgettable ratings, and has no qualms about sacrificing her personal life at the altar of her career: “I’m goddamn good at my work and so I confine myself to that”.

Sigourney Weaver in Working Girl (1988)

Sigourney Weaver gives a masterclass in ruthlessness as Wall Street executive Katharine Parker, in the hit film Working Girl, who steals her secretary’s idea and passes it off as her own.  Power-dressing Parker is sharp-tongued, always on the lookout for an opportunity, and extremely vengeful. When she finds out her mere secretary (played by Melanie Griffith) has been impersonating her, it’s time to hide under your desks.

Demi Moore in Disclosure (1994)

Hell hath no fury like female bosses scorned in this tech thriller from 1994. Demi Moore plays a powerful executive who accuses a former lover(Michael Douglas) – and now employee – of sexual harassment, in a bid to ruin him. Moore’s character didn’t get to where she is by being a shy retiring wallflower – she is cunning and manipulative – so Douglas has his work cut out for him trying to disprove the claims.

Frances McDormand in Fargo (1996)

Police chief Marge Gunderson (played by Frances McDormand, who won an Oscar for her role) is trying to solve a triple homicide in snowy Minnesota. Nothing, repeat nothing, will stop her from getting to the bottom of the case. She might be folksy and friendly, and heavily pregnant, but don’t let that fool you. Marge is all business, and don’t get snippy with her, she’s just doing her job for Pete’s sake.

Julia Roberts in Erin Brokovich (2000)

A single mum turns crusader in this real life story of the title character, who became a legal assistant in a bid to campaign against a Californian power company accused of pollution. Unforgettable Julia Roberts deservedly won an Oscar, a Golden Globe and a BAFTA, for her powerful performance as a woman dismissed as ‘broke, three kids, no job’, who stuck to her guns and proved a formidable force against a corporate giant.

Jane Lynch in The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005)

The brilliant Jane Lynch is hilarious as the lecherous retail manager in the raucous comedy, who makes lewd suggestions to the title character Andy (played by Steve Carell). Her rendition of a Guatemalan love song, that a former lover serenaded her with, has to be seen to be believed.

Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada (2006)

It’s a character that strikes fear into the hearts of office juniors the world over – Miranda Priestly, the editor of a fashion magazine who puts her naive new assistant through hell. Meryl Streep is quite brilliant as Priestly – icy, witheringly cruel and painfully demanding – when her flight is cancelled because of a hurricane she dismisses it as ‘some absurd weather problem’.

Judi Dench in the Bond films

Dame Judi first appeared as M, head of the Secret Intelligence Service, in GoldenEye in 1995, and went on to play the character in a further six installments. She’s a no-nonsense unforgettable boss, apparently based on real-life MI5 head Stella Rimington, and, in the early films, unlike the women who usually fall at Bond’s feet, she’s not particularly fond of 007. One of the best bosses.

Sandra Bullock in The Proposal (2009)

Margaret Tate, a workaholic New York publisher, is a woman who is used to getting what she wants. So, when she wants to get married – so that her Canadian visa doesn’t expire – her long-suffering assistant Andrew Paxton (Ryan Reynolds) has no choice but to agree to the scheme.

Jennifer Aniston in Horrible Bosses (2011)

Dr Julia Harris, Aniston’s unforgettable character in the 2011 comedy, is a dentist who makes unwelcome advances to her soon-to-be-married assistant (Charlie Day), driving him to the point of plotting to kill her. He doesn’t succeed, obviously, because she returns for the sequel. You can’t keep a good female boss down!

THE HUMMINGBIRD PROJECT is released on digital 4 October 2019

Taking The Metaphor Approach, How Midsommar Fucked Me Up.

By Brandon Topp.

It might be unoriginal to begin an analysis by saying, “If you view it as a metaphor,” but fuck it. There’s fun in opening these things up and drawing parallels between a narrative and how life is actually lived.

The latest Ari Aster film Midsommar is a dream in many ways, and considering the inspiration for that dream helps clarify some of the ideas present in the story. 

This piece is for those who have seen the movie, so there will be spoilers. Walking out of a film rife with disturbing gore, anxiety-inducing music, and brutal deaths for most of its main characters, viewers of Midsommar have been saying things like, “I don’t think it’s that scary,” and, “I think that was a happy ending,” and, “That made me feel so weird.”

On the surface, the content of the movie and the reactions its evoked makes little sense. My interpretation of the film breaks down as follows, with the overall takeaway being that it’s a film saying you have to experience the darkest before you can see any glimpse of dawn.

Midsommar is A Folk-Horror Breakup Movie

In discussing Midsommar, writer-director Ari Aster calls it both a folk horror film, and a breakup movie. In my opinion, the folk horror comes through in a mesmerizing style visible in the location, the inspired lore of the village and its customs, as well as the haunting orchestral score. On the other hand, the breakup is the structure of the entire story. This is where my interpretation of the meaning behind Midsommar’s unfolding begins to lean towards metaphorical. 

Towards the end of a lot of relationships, you end up staying with it for reasons that replace genuine love and attraction—comfort, stability, or trying to be a good person. The central relationship of the film between Florence Pugh’s Dani and Jack Reynor’s Christian is heightened to the most extreme level off the bat, when Dani’s sister kills herself and their parents. 

That context is the style of Midsommar, but adding to it, we begin with a couple whose flame is already dwindling. This sets us up for a heartbreaking dive that funnels through a surreal fantasy. 

Facing Your Worst Fears

Leading up to a breakup, relationships can linger past a healthy point because you begin to imagine all of your worst fears. Among the most common ones are visions of being totally alone, seeing your lover loving someone else, and having to truly let go—letting that person, and your vision of a life with that person die in your mind. 

The way I interpreted the story, Aster put his main character Dani through all of these fears to portray the process of getting through a breakup. 

Considering the fear of being alone, Dani’s alone this whole fucking movie. Her boyfriend puts her in a bubble from the outset, and when she has freakouts on the plane and on their first mushroom trip, she retreats to privacy because nobody can understand what she’s been through. This weirdly preps her to get over Christian. 

In terms of seeing your lover loving someone else, Dani stumbles through this universal nightmare in a couple of ways. The less obvious is Dani seeing Christian’s approach to his thesis. By stealing an idea from Josh, and sort of mimicking his research attempts, Christian unveils this desire to be someone other than who he his—a person who is self-pitying, and who happens to be dating Dani. The more obvious way this fear manifests is when Dani actually whitnesses Christian having sex with a teenager through a keyhole, several naked women of all ages standing arond them chanting and moaning. 

Going through her experiences of losing her family, watching others die in front of her eyes in Hälsingland are intense, dreadful experiences. Then seeing Christian forget her birthday, refuse to leave the village with her, and then cheat on her was all preparation—Dani endures the worst fears of her life and relationship throughout the story.

The Ayahuasca Effect

I’ve never done ayahuasca, but there feels like a general correlation here. A lot of people who have taken the psychedelic describe it as a period of death and rebirth. The death part can be dark, painful, terrifying, etc. But the general idea seems to be, you come out of that experience free of those negative influences simply by virtue of having faced them. 

To me, that type of effect is what inspires the smile on Dani’s face at the close of the film. She saw all of her darkest fears build and build until they burst. At that point, when everything hit its most dizzying and anxiety-inducing—Christian running naked to his capture, Dani wallowing echoed by a team of women on the floor—could she finally let go. She could finally kill Christian, and in metaphorical terms, kill the idea that he was the one, or that they would last. 

*BTW, there was no ayahuasca usage in this film, but the above image is lifted from a mushroom trip scene that I have to compliment for being one of the realest visual depictions of a trip I’ve ever seen. These experiences are always cartoonified to an unbelievable place in film, and this scene was refreshing.

You Don’t Feel Bad or Afraid, But You Feel Like You Should

Walking out of that movie, it feels like a happy ending, because it’s not real and Dani needed to get out of that relationship. Even though our eyes and ears just saw murder, carnage, and pure terror from the characters on screen, our souls feel catharsis because we’re with our main character and we’re out and we’re free. 

What fucked me up was how many of us have been on both sides of it. How we felt the deep dread of Dani going to watch Christian having sex, and the elation of watching it all burning to the ground. If a metaphor, I think this movie is a chillingly relevant-yet-fantastical one. The process of love so often ends with our hearts growing so sour and combative, and though its own small circle of life, it’s scary to go through and sad to look back on. 

Female Villains In Film: 6 Of The Best. By Laurie Wood.

With Halloween on our doorstep, let’s refresh ourselves with some of the best female villains in film, not necessarily horror. There are plenty more I could add, but we will be here for ages if I did. Here are my top 6, female villains in no particular order. Warning, spoilers are ahead.

Who: The Grand High Witch
Film: The Witches (1990)

The Grand High Witch played by the incredible Anjelica Huston, first appears to show elegance, with her sleek black hair and slim figure (an early Morticia Addams, maybe?).  Though this soon changes. In a meeting with her coven of witchy followers, they begin to relax and physically, show their true selves.

The Grand High Witch pulls off her face mask to reveal a terrifying monster beneath. Upon my first watch as a child, it shook me to the core. The grotesque-ness of the aesthetics really heightened her sense of evil power, especially in comparison to her followers who look fairly tame in comparison. This witch was one you did not want to mess with… Or risk being turned into a mouse.

Who: Esther
Film: Orphan (2009)

Esther, played by Isabelle Fuhrman, is a young orphan girl who gets adopted, but, things start to turn South. Esther starts showing hostile tendencies and a threatening attitude towards her adopted parents, Kate and John. As the plot unravels we discover Esther, is actually a 33-year-old woman with Hypopituitarism, which explains her maturity and obsession over John.

While watching the film, we know something isn’t right with Esther, she displays a dark and psychotic side which makes it uncomfortable to watch, asking yourself, how can a young girl be so evil? The stubbornness of her character and domineering presence on screen makes her a candidate not to get too close to.

Who: Miss Agatha Trunchball
Film: Matilda (1996)

Female Villains In Film: 6 Of The Best. Most children have some memory of a teacher they did not get along well with in school, but Miss Trunchball was on a whole new level. Played by Pam Ferris, she was a large woman with a serious attitude problem. First appearing on screen, her presence made the playground silent, her clothes were reminiscent of an army officer and she displayed something of a God complex, walking on screen with complete power.

She’s ruthless with her strict rules and if a child goes out of line they get sent to the Chokey, a small cupboard with nails sticking out of it. For any child watching this film with years of schooling left in them, she will certainly put the fear of dread in you.

Who: Regina George
Film: Mean Girls (2004)

“What could I tell you about Regina George… Her hair is flawless”. The film which took teenage girls everywhere (including myself) by storm! Regina George played Rachel Mcadams (yes, the actress featured in basically, every rom-com), is the main antagonist in the film, Mean Girls. She is the personification of a Queen Bee, always getting what she wanted, being incredibly manipulative and down-right bitchy.

She uses her sex appeal to lure men and stamping on the insecurities of girls to make them feel small. Regina, is a back-stabbing bitch, to put it politely. She is the girl you didn’t want to even look at in case she made you her next target, but at the same time, you couldn’t help but stare. A modernised female villain, she is an enemy it paid to be close with. 

Who: Poison Ivy
Film: Batman & Robin (1996)

“I hate to disappoint you but my rubber lips are immune to your charms”… Okay, so this film was not very good, however, no-one can say that about Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy. Transforming into a half-woman, half-plant with two legs, she is a woman who could seduce a person to actual death. She was also beautiful which subconsciously, makes her appear trustworthy at first glance.

Although I appreciate her eco-warrior side, she uses it in such an extreme way that she sacrifices people to save plants. That’s a whole new level of Veganism. You really don’t want to take this woman on a date to Nandos.

Who: Amy Dunne
Film: Gone Girl (2014)

This mystery thriller features Rosamund Pike as Amy Dunne, a missing and beloved wife. At first, it appears she is a victim at the hands of her evil husband, but as it turns out, she wants to escape their marriage, so frames her husband making it appear he had something to do with her disappearance. She’s been planning this disappearing act for months, setting everything up into place, right under her husband’s nose.

While her plan didn’t exactly go how it should have, she found herself yet another workaround, which involved killing her ex-partner. Amy will do anything to ensure she stays out of prison and gain the media’s trust. Even induce pain against herself, so after she was examined by medical it appeared her story of being kidnapped and abused was real. This is an intelligent but untrust worthy woman. You just never know how she could be playing you. 

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