328. Small Things Like These

Song - Eleanor Rigby (The Beatles)

Movie: Small Things Like These (Tim Mielants, 2024)

During my studies I briefly reviewed movies for an actual minor publication. I found it really cool to go to official press screenings with actual journalists/critics from major newspapers, and I enjoyed reading afterwards how my new 'colleagues' had experienced the film. I gained more admiration for the many  reviewers who managed to be geniunely insightful and produce great writing on tight deadlines, but also realised that a lot of folks were essentially people like me, young students, or early graduates who sometimes weren't even particularly into movies and would take any opportunity to add a job to their CV, writing for online platforms whose main business was selling ads. As someone who has managed to bluff himself to write about the stock market, procurement and Italian holiday homes, more power to them! However, some evidently didn't even try to write about what they saw, but rather obviously simply regurgitated the press kit we received at the screening. It's not a surprise that in the age of clickbait and media monopolisation, this kind of writing is increasingly accepted by increasingly prestigious publications, increasingly blurring the lines between influencers and journalists.

As marketing loves audience segmentation, and arts and journalism currently attract more progressive than conservative audiences, most mainstream/art house films are currently mainly being promoted to progressives, creating a feedback loop that alienates large swaths of people. I don't think this is good for either film culture or for progressive politics, and definitely not for progressive filmmakers who aim to make films that are more than just pre-packaged messages. When the marketing uses explicit progressive proclamations to sell a film that doesn't necessarily make these ideas visible in its filmmaking, it's not that strange that some people will feel that these ideas are rather hypocritically and untransparently imposed on them. The other side of the coin is Small Things Like These, a film that was presented as a fairly standard social issues drama about a brave man saving vulnerable Irish women, in the process helping his nation overcome its religious misogyny, rather than as a 70's style character study that's much odder than it appears. 

Small Things Like These finds coal merchant Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy) generally unsettled, for seemingly no specific reason. His business is doing reasonably well, his family is reasonably content. Christmas time requires Santa to bring gifts, which is not ideal for his finances, but most definitely feasible. His wife can even get the new shoes she keeps admiring in her favorite shop gallery. And yet, something is off. Walking around town at night, he seems to only see unspoken misery around him. In unguarded moments, the brave faces seem to disappear, something his family doesn't seem to notice, bother or question, but he knows from his own childhood how different people can be behind closed doors. Could it be that his entire town is performing his mother's act? What if the norms and values governing the life he built conceal a rot? Small Things Like These occasionally has the vibe of a horror movie like The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, with Murphy not being able to understand or articulate why he suddenly feels alienated by seemingly common sights and sounds. 

Murphy's behaviour may force viewers to become introspective! That is a much less attractive proposition than a film about how we are making progress by overcoming social ills, even if the social ills in questuon are the Magdalene asylums, forced labor camps, to various extents supported by the Irish state, where undesirable women (e.g. prostitutes, single mothers, girls born out of wedlock and others who don't comfort to religious norms about womanhood) were exploited and abused by nuns. I hadn't heard of these 'institutions' before learning of this film, but what little I've read paints a rather horrifying picture. It would not be entirely unwarranted to compare these asylums to the Nazi concentration camps; even if extermination was not their purpose many mass graves have been found around these former sites that existed all around Ireland and imprisoned tens of thousands of women. They don't exist anymore and Irish politicians are debating how to atone. In Small Things Like These Cillian Murphy eventually finds out about them, but the film doesn't really paint a coherent picture of what they are. I prefer a 70's style character study over a social issues drama, but it doesn't feel entirely right to introduce the Magdalene asylums an hour into the film and then present them this elusively, or to exploit them to sell a film that's not really about them. 

327. The Blue Dahlia

Song - L.A. Woman (The Doors)

Movie: The Blue Dahlia (George Marshall, 1946)

Riders on the Storm and Light My Fire are great, but L.A. Woman is the main reason this is called Tarantino and the Doors. The video clip, directed by Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek 14 years after the song's release (and 14 years after Jim Morrison's death), goes a long a way towards that. It starts off juxtaposing bright snapshots of 1980's Los Angeles with archival footage of the band hanging around, playing like the opening to an 80's rom-com about yuppies in ascendance. It doesn't take long however for the first hints of distress. We see a mysterious guy dressed in black putting off a cigar over Josef von Sternberg's Walk of Fame star, and a naked woman's body that we never get a full picture of, all set against the slightly ominous lights of Hollywood; by the time an angelic woman starts dancing against the backdrop of giant skeletons, the video has fully descended into expressionism and surrealism. "Midnight alleys roam/Cops in cars/The topless bars/Never saw a woman so alone." sings Morrison throughout it all, clearly inspired by 40's and 50's noir. Morrison liked to present himself as a sort of poet God living outside the realm of ordinary people, an obvious act that appealed/appeals to me, but many find (understandably) insufferable. Manzarek's video places Morrison and the rest of the band right in the middle of ordinary life, and allows its mysterious elements to directly emerge from there, rather than presenting them as separate from daily existence. That's more appealing and provocative than performative Lizard Kings.

In 1947 Elisabeth Short was found mutilated in a Los Angeles park. The murder, one of the most mysterious and publicised in American history, has never been solved, but the press immortalised Short as the 'Black Dahlia', likely influenced by 1946 noir The Blue Dahlia, a highly entertaining film that isn't nearly as dark or tough to watch as its key historic connection may suggest. That's not to say that it's comforting. In the opening scenes we meet Johnny (Alan Ladd), Buzz (William Bendix) and George (Hugh Beaumont) as they return as heroes from the Pacific. The war has ended, America has won, but everyone is on edge. Buzz has a metal plate in his head, causing bouts of temporary amnesia and unease. Whenever loud music is playing the film puts us in Buzz' headspace by placing him in an extreme close up and letting the music drown out the dialogue. Johnny has lost his son during the war, and is apprehensive to return home to his wife Helen (Doris Dowling), a twitchy, barely functioning drunk having an affair with Eddie (Howard da Silva). As the owner of The Blue Dahlia nightclub, Eddie should be at ease. He has money and access to powerful men and beautiful women, but is haunted by a dark past and his own feelings of inadequacy. He can't quite convince himself that he deserves all his riches and in the back of his mind he always seems to believe that it all will come crashing down any second. It's no wonder his wife Joyce (Veronica Lake) is constantly on the verge of escaping forever. 

The studio forced writer Raymond Chandler to change his original ending to not emphasise too much the negative psychological effects of World War 2. As a result, The Blue Dahlia is left with a solution that makes little narrative or thematic sense, and a rather uninteresting killer. It's a minor blemish on a film that constantly creates interesting connections between the characters, and keeps providing revelations that add new wrinkles and depth. The opening scene immediately signals George Marshall's fun approach. When the three friends enter a bar, they are framed sitting next to each other with Buzz in the middle, and when another patron turns on the jukebox, it's Buzz who creates a ruckus. The scene introduces Buzz as the film's main protagonist, but then reveals that it is going to follow Johnny home and that the story will center on him. The film is filled with such instances of misdirection, consistently finding small surprises up its sleeve.