46. With or Without You &...

Lyrics

See the stone set in your eyes
See the thorn twist in your side
I wait for you

Sleight of hand and twist of fate
On a bed of nails she makes me wait
And I wait without you

With or without you
With or without you

Through the storm we reach the shore
You give it all but I want more
And I'm waiting for you

With or without you
With or without you
I can't live
With or without you

And you give yourself away
And you give yourself away
And you give
And you give
And you give yourself away

My hands are tied
My body bruised, she's got me with
Nothing to win and
Nothing left to lose

And you give yourself away
And you give yourself away
And you give
And you give
And you give yourself away

With or without you
With or without you
I can't live
With or without you

With or without you
With or without you
I can't live
With or without you
With or without you


U2 proves here that they don't need to make some serious (political) statement to make a good song. This is a fairly simple love song, but it is one of their better songs. In fact it is so simple that I had quite some trouble finding a movie to link it to. So, um, I decided to seek out a movie involving SM, considering the lyrics 'my hands are tied my body bruised' and 'on a bed of nails she makes me wait.'

The Movie: Secretary  (Steven Shainberg, 2002)

I expected Secretary to be a slightly above the average romantic comedy with all the usual romantic comedy  cliches. I thought it would have some decent performances (Maggie Gyllenhaal got a Golden Globe nomination for it and James Spader is always fun) and that it would be about a couple who finds out about sadomasochism and has some awkward fun with it. I hoped the movie could perhaps milk some funny jokes out of this concept. Well, I couldn't have been more wrong. This is one of the most unusual movies I've ever seen. It is also one of the best movies of the last decade. It is flawlessly executed and it had to be. It took balls to make it. I can imagine that getting only one small thing wrong, could've made this a disgustingly sick disaster.

Why you ask? Well, this is a movie about a masochistic, shy woman, Lee (Gyllenhaal) who cuts herself since 7th grade. One time she accidentally cut herself too much in front of her mother, so she had to go to a mental institution. As the movie starts, she is just being released from this mental institution, trying to sort her life out. She attends a typing course, where she passes easily as the best in class. Turns out she is a damn good typist. Looking for a job, she finds an ad for a secretary to a lawyer, Edward (Spader) with a small office, specializing in paralegal cases. After one of the oddest job interviews ever, the lawyer gives her the job. The lawyer turns out to be a shy sadist, in the sexual sense. Meaning he gets of at hitting women in their ass and handcuffing them, not necessarily during sexual activities. He also enjoys bossing them around for no reason. Thus he has found a perfect secretary in Lee, who, considering she is a masochist, enjoys being hit and handcuffed and bossed around. The movie follows the development of their relationship and is totally uncompromising. In the end, they are in a relationship, without having changed. And the movie present this as an a totally unambiguously healthy and good relationship for this two people. And well, it has made us believe that this really is the case.

It is one thing for a movie to argue for SM. But this movie argues for the kind of SM in which the man is dominant and the woman is submissive, and willing to undergo the pain the man inflicts on her. It argues for something I and most (rational) people would claim is sexual and physical abuse of a woman. And in most cases we'd be right. But the movie manages to make us sure that in this case we wouldn't be right. I am kind of in awe by how this movie achieves this. And it is probably beyond my ability (I'll try anyway) as a writer to convey why this movie works and is so good. And how this movie can be so kind-hearted and such a simple joy to watch. But in the end maybe no written review of this movie can do that without seeming at least a bit ridiculous. I may have never seen a movie that is a better example of Roger Ebert's famous saying: It's not what's a movie is about, it's how it's about it.'

The soundtrack composed for this movie may be its most important asset. It is composed by Angelo Badalementi, who sounded familiar to me, but I didn't exactly know why. Turns out he is the composer of every David Lynch movie since Blue Velvet. He also scored The Comfort of Strangers, another movie about sexual abuse. It makes sense to choose him. The score very much adds to the Lynchian vibe this whole movie has. It takes its characters and their problems seriously, but has simultaneously a very light touch. It flows like a breeze and is often morbidly funny. It is also both simultaneously realistic and taking place in a hyper-stylized, slightly unreal seeming world. This is all held together by Badalamenti' score which is comforting, joyful, inviting and mysterious, often at the same time. It conveys that interesting and fun will happen in the movie and it assures us that we should relax and have fun. Nothing awful is gonna happen to this characters. I smiled from the opening credits and the opening scene which is a wonderful long take in which we follow Lee doing secretarial things, only she is in a weird SM-device (Yeah, I don't know how these things are called or how they work). All of it set to Badalamenti's score.

There are two more things adding to the mysteriousness of the movie, making it seem slightly off. First of all is the design of the interior of Edward's office. It doesn't seem seem to align with the exterior. It feels much bigger and richer than it should be. There seem to be more rooms than expected. It feels very weird. About 80 percent of the movie takes place in that office. Thus when we are not in the office, in what you might call the ordinary world, that too feels weird. The second thing is Edward's behavior. We only gradually realize that this is a sadist who is ashamed of his sadism and would like to hide it, but can't control it. When we first meet him, his office is a mess and his previous secretary is leaving, slightly befuddled. During the first weeks he too is befuddled by Lee, who does anything he says to her, even the most demeaning tasks. We understand why she listens to him so compulsively, as the movie has established her character pretty good by then. But we don't understand why Edward behaves the way he is behaving, sometimes being nice, sometimes being amazingly rude to Lee. As both we and Lee realize what's going on, we come to realize that both of these people have serious problems, and that they might seriously be good for each other. And it is to Shainberg's enormous credit that his movie manages to look seriously at their problems, while keeping its style of a light comedy. This is one of the best fusions of comedy and drama I've ever seen. The substance is dramatic, while the style is comic. This shouldn't work, but it does here, seamlessly even. None of this would probably work if it wasn't for James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhaal, who give truly great performances, always conveying what is necessary, without giving away too much about their characters. They also manage to come over as very sympathetic and eventually normal people.

In the end I guess it's possible to make the argument that this movie is anti-feminist or something like that. Or you could make the argument that it is more feminist than ordinary romantic comedies, because it gives more power to its female characters. It is also possible to try to determine whether Edward is a good or a bad person and it is also possible to make the claim that at the end of the movie Lee made the wrong decision to stay with him, instead of her shy lover she was supposed to marry (I didn't even mention this hilarious subplot). But it would be pointless to make these arguments. The movie doesn't care about such things. It doesn't work on a rational level, nor does it really want to. You can't put the movie in the context of the wider world around us, when it is totally uninterested in the wider world around us. Shainberg only wants to tell this exact story, about these specific people in this particular style. He does it and it is a great movie