May December (2023)

I thought the Mary Kay Letourneau story provided a better frame for May December than Persona or any other cinematic references director Todd Haynes and writers Samy Burch and Alex Mechanik may have planted along the way. Julianne Moore has the Letourneau role, playing Gracie Atherton-Yoo, who was caught having sex with 13-year-old Korean-American Joe Yoo when she was 36 (by comparison, Letourneau’s 12-year-old paramour Vili Fualaau was Samoan). It’s 20 years later, prison sentence completed, back at home in Savannah, Georgia, together, Gracie and Joe now married with children. A TV movie is being made about the case. Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) has been cast to play Gracie. She is visiting the family and their home to research her role. The dynamics between Gracie and Elizabeth (and one or two or three carefully composed shots) are where the Persona parallels originate. Portman and Moore are great, as they usually are, but I thought Charles Melton as Joe virtually stole the show, underscoring the kind of silent damage that goes on with sexual abuse. Joe is 36 in this picture, the same age as Gracie when she seduced him (in May December she is not a teacher but a coworker with Joe at a pet store). Their children are nearly grown—a pair of twins are graduating high school as part of the story here. Facing an empty nest at an age when many are starting a family, Joe is sad to see, a lost soul. His son thinks he is a joke. He is on the prowl for an affair but has no idea how to go about it. Deep resentments toward Gracie seem to be surfacing more and more undeniably. She still controls and manipulates him, treating him like a child. Moore plays Gracie as at once an innocent, a loving mama bear defending her family, and a monster, which is the picture’s subtle drift even as she goes on like the head of a happy brood. Portman is unsurprisingly very good as an awkward, intrusive, and in many ways unwelcome presence, asking inappropriate questions. When she’s called on it—she’s not often called on it—she grows defensive about the work and craft of the actor. She glides through many encounters on her star power. In a scene where she visits a high school theater class, one boy who is obviously a class clown asks her about shooting sex scenes. She takes the question seriously, answers in detail, and keeps calling him by name. It feels notably icky—like she might have some ideas about seducing him, inspired (she would no doubt say) by her studies of Gracie. I thought the picture at large was a bit muddled, though anchored by the stellar performances of the principals. There are times, likely because I’m male of a certain age, where Vili Fualaau strikes me not as victim, but as lucky, why if my 7th-grade biology teacher (who once told us to go home and tell our parents we had learned about “mastication” in science class) had ever approached me... Et cetera. You know how we can think. But May December in that regard is more realistic, showing the sad wreck that comes with all sexual abuse.

The Velvet Underground (2021)

This documentary on the legendary ‘60s rock band—source of Brian Eno’s jokey observation in 1982 that everyone who bought their poorly selling first album started a band—is refreshingly restrained and judicious, basically giving everyone from Andy Warhol to Doug Yule their fair share of the spotlight. It starts with John Cale and Lou Reed, as it must. Reed gets all the credit he deserves, though perhaps not as much as he asserted. Director Todd Haynes traces the Velvet Underground’s most profound roots to the New York world of art and avant-garde music, placing emigrant Welshman Cale in the welter that followed John Cage and La Monte Young. Reed, for his part, was an undergraduate at Syracuse studying under poet Delmore Schwartz. A brief snippet of a Schwartz reading is all we need to hear that influence. Reed and his doo-wop love then went on to house songwriting for Pickwick Records, exploiting the confusion of kids shopping for albums at Woolworth’s (anyone interested in my copy of The Mustang Plays the Beatles Song Book?). Later he would become a student of 2 guitars bass drums. Perhaps most sorely needed in this story, Warhol is given his due as the force behind making that first album, The Velvet Underground & Nico (also called the “banana album” for its famously peelable cover). Warhol sewed up the art bona fides and the aesthetic working ethos. He delivered the vision. He never stood near a soundboard, let alone twiddled a knob, but his producer credit was entirely warranted. Reed and Cale say so too. There’s a good argument, expressed here as well as I’ve seen it anywhere, that Warhol is almost solely responsible for producing the Velvet Underground.

There’s a lot of backstory to The Velvet Underground and it takes some time to get to the music proper, but when it does the picture is as generous as anyone could hope. I’ve always thought “Venus in Furs” and especially “Heroin” are more like overrated novelties, but they have their time and place and they may be best appreciated here. “Venus in Furs” and especially “Heroin” certainly appear to be Haynes’s favorites. But most of mine are in here too, such as “Sweet Jane” and “I’m Waiting for the Man.” Further principals, from Moe Tucker to Sterling Morrison to Nico, are brought in to the documentary essentially as they were brought in to the band. The banana album gets the most attention, but the entire catalog is featured, including the “lost album” set (now the VU album). The only exception is the very last album, when Reed was gone and Yule was trying to bear the standard ... true confession, I’ve still never heard it. The band’s ever-shifting chemistry was amazing, and it was also amazingly unsuited to its commercial times, which is cringingly obvious on their ill-fated tour of the West Coast with the multimedia Exploding Plastic Inevitable extravaganza. West Coast pop aesthetics are unfairly derided here—too much hapless hippie hatred for me, but point taken. The Velvet Underground in many ways left them all eating their dust in the long haul. “Sunday Morning” is as good as anything by the Left Banke or the Mamas & the Papas, for example. This documentary is a good way in for novices (born every day, you know) and it’s a very apt summation for fans, particularly those who resent Reed’s hogging of the show for many decades. He was only part of something very big—an important part, but only part. In a very welcome way, this has made me rethink Warhol’s contribution, which I underestimated. It’s massive. All of it, the entire arc, is massive.

Dark Waters (2019)

If you’re looking to feel good you could do worse than this docudrama directed by Todd Haynes with a star-studded cast: Mark Ruffalo, Anne Hathaway, Tim Robbins, Bill Pullman, Victor Garber, Mare Winningham, etc., etc. It tells the story of Rob Bilott, the brave and hardworking attorney who sought to hold the chemical company DuPont accountable for their deceitful treatment of so-called “forever chemicals” and other microplastics that live in most of us now with the lead and mercury. Teflon is probably the most famous forever chemical. Yes, they’re bad. Yes, they’re very bad. No, they’re not worth the easy wipe and clean. DuPont knew it, Bilott knew they knew it, etc., etc. If you’ve seen The Insider, the story of the tobacco industry and its legal reckoning (directed by Michael Mann, starring Russell Crowe, nominated for seven Academy Awards), then you have a good idea of what you’re in for with this one. Erin Brockovich is another good comparison point (directed by Steven Soderbergh, starring Julia Roberts, nominated for five Academy Awards, Roberts the winner for Best Actress). On one level Dark Waters, like the others, is simple outrage porn, satisfying in a kind of grinding morally righteous way. But I also think it’s worth asking why we love these heroic David and Goliath battles instead of simply insisting that stuff be done right in the first place. Give the government sufficient authority to provide the necessary informed oversight and make corporations behave responsibly as part of their internal cultures. That's what I say. Oh stop, oh stop now, now you’re cracking me up. I can’t remember the last time I had such a good laugh. I know how it goes. How can people be so cruel? Easy to be hard. Easy to be cold. Especially people who care about— Wait a second, that’s an old pop song. Anyway, I’ve got enough to be outraged about these days (have you heard about the $10 million cash Egyptian bribe?!?) but I guess I can save room for a little more, especially when Todd Haynes is at the helm. It’s not as lunatic inspired as some of his best stuff—it’s about a serious issue and he seemed to be leaning more toward straightforward professional restrained with this and, for that matter, with his previous picture too, Wonderstruck. But on that level he certainly delivers. You can’t say he doesn’t know how to make a picture. This one is beautiful, often gripping, and a pleasure to watch, even if it leaves you feeling mad about things.

Wonderstruck (2017)

Brian Selznick wrote the screenplay here, based on his own YA novel. Among other things (a good many other things, including deafness, cinema, and nostalgia), Wonderstruck is director Todd Haynes’s love letter and odd meditation on museums and curation. Arguably it works, visually enchanting of course, and some good music, but it’s hampered all the way by an overly busy narrative scheme. I was not entirely surprised to find that Selznick’s only other credit on IMDb is the source novel for director Martin Scorsese’s 2011 ode to silent cinema and other dreams, Hugo. I haven’t seen Hugo since it came out and thus don’t remember it well, but I often felt like I was having a déjà vu while watching Wonderstruck and I’m pretty sure Hugo was the source of it. Wonderstruck is not one but two period pieces—one set in 1927 involving Rose (Millicent Simmonds), the deaf daughter of a silent movie star, and the other set in 1977 involving a boy, Ben (Oakes Fegley), whose librarian mother has recently died unexpectedly before she ever told him who his father is. Ben now wants to find him. A freak lightning strike has recently made him deaf. Things like that happen in this one. Both Ben and Rose are about 12 and both end up running away to New York City. I was very nervous about Ben in New York in 1977—sure enough, he’s soon robbed. But things tend to fall right for both of our characters. Ben makes a friend about his age who can hear but also happens to know sign language. Ben doesn’t, but still, it comes in handy. The 1927 scenes are black & white and many establishing shots often look lifted directly from silent movies. The 1977 scenes are in color but it’s hazy and suffused with yellow and orange tones, like The Wonder Years. There are some familiar faces here—Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams—but mostly this is the same kind of dreamy soft-focused feel-good picture that Hugo is. It took a long time for these characters to reach me, but eventually I got there. If the closing scenes made me reach for a hanky, I’m dutybound to report it was more by way of manipulation than any genuine merit to the story. The story has points of genuine merit, but they tend to be lost in the complications as the two stories drive to their connecting point by way of a series of outrageous coincidences that are strictly for those who want to believe. I’ve read that Haynes likes to classify his stuff as alternating “boy” and “girl” movies. With Carol the immediate predecessor that would make this a “boy” movie. Ben probably does get more of the screen time, but Wonderstruck is not so easily classified.

Carol (2015)

UK / USA / Australia, 118 minutes

Director: Todd Haynes

Writers: Phyllis Nagy, Patricia Highsmith

Photography: Edward Lachman

Music: Carter Burwell

Editor: Affonso Goncalves

Cast: Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Kyle Chandler, Sarah Paulson, Jake Lacy, Carrie Brownstein, Cory Michael Smith, John Magaro, Kevin Crowley

Patricia Highsmith published her 1952 novel The Price of Salt under a pseudonym because she did not want to hurt her crime novel career (Strangers on a Train, The Talented Mr. Ripley) with this romantic drama about lesbians, the only one like it reportedly that she ever wrote. After twice declining to publish it under her own name, Highsmith ultimately relented with the Carol title in 1990, five years before her death. The novel was actually out of print in the ‘70s. All this may speak to how far we have come to get to this sumptuous Todd Haynes treatment, which makes the ‘50s look uncomfortably barbaric behind a sugary frosting façade of American contentment—reasonably accurate.

Todd Haynes has said he tends to divide his work between “boy” and “girl” movies: Poison, Velvet Goldmine, and I’m Not There for the boys, and Superstar, Safe, Far From Heaven, and the TV miniseries Mildred Pierce for the girls. And Carol, of course. I must say I was a little sorry to see Carol overtake Far From Heaven on the 21st-century list at They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? I think Far From Heaven is the better example of Haynes’s adoration of the melodramas of midcentury Hollywood (by way of fleeing Nazi Germany) director Douglas Sirk. But I suppose it’s not just some recency effect catapulting Carol into critical favor. The picture has a number of features to recommend it.

Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987)

USA, 43 minutes
Director: Todd Haynes
Writers: Cynthia Schneider, Todd Haynes
Photography: Barry Ellsworth
Music: The Carpenters
Cast/voices: Merrill Gruver, Michael Edwards, Melissa Brown, Rob LaBelle, Nannie Doyle, Cynthia Schneider, Larry Kole, Gwen Kraus

Todd Haynes's Superstar has won a fair amount of attention in certain circles, "the Barbie doll movie about Karen Carpenter," but along the way perhaps building such an outsized reputation (because so difficult to see) that it may seem disappointing to those encountering it for the first time. It's important to understand, for purposes of setting expectations, that Superstar is low-budget, crude, unruly, often awkwardly self-conscious filmmaking with production values just north of home movies. The voiced dialogue only occasionally and intermittently reaches the level of actual performance and the whole thing is wont to slip gears with little notice between straightforward biopic, social issue documentary, and pure fan love letter, among other things. More than anything it is a display of youthful exuberance.

It is only one of many ironies that its single greatest strength, the way it fills the soundtrack with Carpenters songs, is also one of two significant reasons it will probably never see a proper public release—at least, until that material finally slips into the public domain, well beyond any of our lifetimes. The movie gains unexpected energy from many directions. Its famous use of Barbie dolls, the thoughtful way it approaches Karen Carpenter, anorexia, and food generally, and its confident sense of the popular culture zeitgeist and how the Carpenters do and do not fit. But it is the greatest pleasure to watch always when there is a Carpenters song playing.

Velvet Goldmine (1998)

#14: Velvet Goldmine (Todd Haynes, 1998)

There are times, usually when I'm caught right up in the middle of one of his pictures, that I'm pretty sure Todd Haynes is the best filmmaker we've got going at the moment and into the imaginable future. A cooler head prevails days and weeks later and then I'm less sure, with misgivings and natural second guessing about my overheated response. Then I look at another one of his movies again.

Safe is probably the best, objectively speaking, Far From Heaven is just a wash, and I haven't seen the HBO Mildred Pierce yet. My favorites are the fables of pop mythology, which find any number of ways of blowing up history and reassembling it into cultural zombie form in order to get at the base essentials. His 43-minute meditation on Karen Carpenter from 1987, Superstar, is famous for the way it uses Barbie and Ken dolls to enact the roles and tell the story with sensitivity and a surprisingly touching way. The Carpenter family has never granted rights for the music, obviously central to the story, so it's been available over the decades only as a bootleg. It can be seen via the YouTube link below. (The strategy with the dolls is briefly reprised in Velvet Goldmine and I've included a link to that clip too; I think it's actually amazing how well Haynes can make it work.)

Safe (1995)

UK/USA, 119 minutes
Director/writer: Todd Haynes
Photography: Alex Nepomniaschy
Music: Ed Tomney
Editor: James Lyons
Cast: Julianne Moore, Xander Berkeley, Ronnie Farer, Jessica Harper, James LeGros, Peter Friedman, Mary Carver, Kate McGregor-Stewart, Chauncey Leopardi, Steven Gilborn, John Apicella, Eleanor Graham

Safe is maddeningly good at being hard to pin down. It's one of the things I like most about it, but it's also the source of its greatest weakness, which is a tendency to look like it's making broad plays for ironic laughs, particularly in its second half, finding an all too easy target in the self-actualization preoccupations and clichés of its late-'80s Southern California setting. This is unfortunate because the movie is much more often, particularly in its first half, deadly serious about articulating what I might as well call a spiritual malaise. Here it is referred to as "environmental illness," the term of art in the period of the film for an evident immune-system condition that still hasn't been scientifically validated, but has traveled under many names: chemical sensitivity, 20th century syndrome, sick building syndrome, and, currently, multiple chemical sensitivity.

I know this disease and apparently so do director/writer Todd Haynes and Julianne Moore, who plays the victim here, Carol White, in an amazing turn. This disease is there in all the scenes of Los Angeles freeway traffic, at dusk, at night, in the day, crawling along in haze. It's there in the nightmares of parking garages. It's there in the power-line towers and handfuls of parallel lines draped and running ubiquitously overhead. It's there in the interiors of the fine San Fernando Valley homes, stuffed with treated fabrics, cleaning chemicals, molded plastics, body scents, and servants in uniform. And it's there in one of the picture's canniest elements, its sound design, which simply records the ambient noise that surrounds us constantly: the drone of planes overhead, the whine of vacuum cleaners, the washes of traffic's white noise, the radios and televisions playing in the background of so many interiors, including AM talk radio in one memorable scene inside a car.