Weekly Movies is incredibly late this week because my whole life kind of got taken over by Big Academic Conference, which came to my town, and then I apparently forgot to actually publish the post. So sorry on both counts!

  1. Jesus Christ Superstar (Norman Jewison, 1973): Oh, I’m in love with this movie I could write a book about it. Jesus movies aren’t usually really my cup of tea, but this one gets it right by making the Jesus story work in terms of politics and history without really diminishing the whole son-of-God thing. It kind of leaves the God part open to interpretation: it doesn’t suggest Jesus didn’t perform miracles or wasn’t the son of God, but it also doesn’t actually show any of those miracles or anything, and in fact takes a bunch of time to acknowledge that what we’re watching is a performance, so you could either take it as a retelling of hugely important historical events or, you know, the actual God parts.
    Also, how gay is Judas for Jesus in this movie? Pretty gay, is the answer. I thought I was reading too much into the way they were acting with each other, like the way Jesus takes Judas’s hand and is all “Think while you still have me, move while you still see me” and they totally seem to communicate with their eyes what Jesus is getting ready to do, not to mention how jealous he is of Mary Madgalene. But Judas’ reprise of Mary Magdalene’s big ballad “I Don’t Know How To Love Him” is pretty much the clincher.

    FYI I talk about the endings of recent movies that aren’t from the Bible (wherein: yes, Jesus dies for our sins) after this.
  2. Baby Mama (Michael McCullers, 2008): So this was really funny — you’ve got Tina Fey and Amy Poehler and Steve Martin and John Hodgman and Sigourney Weaver, and the director does a good job of letting them be funny — but it was way more conservative than I expected. Like, for a movie about surrogate mothers, there’s not actually any surrogacy in it at all, and everyone gets accidentally pregnant the natural way and also Amy Poehler doesn’t hook up with Oscar the cute black doorman you think she’s going to hook up with, even though his character totally seems like he’s going to hook up with Amy Poehler, presumably because of Hollywood’s racism and fear of having a black comic sidekick be sexual even when it totally makes narrative sense to the point that I assumed their hooking up was cut after shooting. One thing I did like about it was how clearly it articulated a lot of the class issues that American comedy is usually about: Fey’s a VP at a Whole Foods-ish chain (and Poehler’s all “That crap’s just for rich people who hate themselves”) so she has the money to make her own rules, Poehler’s poor enough that her fertility is her most marketable skill (though it does seem like she manages to pull herself by her bootstraps at the end), and Greg Kinnear is an ex-lawyer who can afford to complain about how rich people think they can do whatever they want because he made his fortune working for big evil corporations. On the other hand, Tina Fey has a weirdly friendly relationship with her doorman where there’s no sense that he is basically her employee (much like her relationship with Poehler in the early part of the film, where she sometimes calls her her friend and other times her employee). It seems like there was a much more trenchant film in there that got Hollywooded away. (I’m not even saying that movies like this have to be trenchant about class, but more that you shouldn’t half-ass it.) I did enjoy the movie, and I like to see comedy ladies doing well, but I walked out with all these questions.
  3. Sex and the City (Michael Patrick King, 2008): Okay so I wasn’t sure what to expect with this one. I have had to admit to myself over the years that I am a fan of the series, as it’s been years, but I still remember entire storylines. I don’t think it was a great movie by any means, but I feel like a lot of the reasons that have been named for its failures are kind of off the mark. I don’t really get the length complaint, because it’s 2 1/4 hours, but it’s 2 1/4 hours where a lot of stuff happens, almost a mini-season of the series. It’s paced pretty well, I was never actually bored or anything.
    Also, the fashion? I heart the fashion. One review I read complained about the way the clothes all seem to kind of go too perfectly with the mise-en-scène, but that’s the kind of thing people love when Sirk does it. (I do think the overdeterminedness of the clothing and consumerism aspect of the movie makes for a — probably unintentional — ironic critique same.) There’s a sense amongst a lot of critics I’ve read that the centrality of fashion in the film makes it all shallow and vapid and meaningless, but I don’t think that’s true at all, especially not in the context of a movie about women’s lives. I know the standard critique that it is a commercial industry that makes money by selling images of femininity to women, but it is also art and carries meaning. Second, fashion and image have been pretty central parts of women’s public lives forever; it is not shallow to consider that as part of women’s experiences. Especially in this film, where we see a woman who’s unconventionally beautiful like SJP rocking the designer clothes, before she finally gives up her crazy-fabulous Vivienne Westwood wedding gown for a label-less vintage suit — that’s what Carrie gives up for love, which I will come back to in a second, after I note that although Carrie got married in a suit by no one, she and Big do mark their engagement with a Blahnik — that’s important because I think the movie does have this aspect of Carrie realizing that she was being selfish about the wedding (letting it “get bigger than Big”) and being embarrassed about the Vogue shoot, but it still treats the designer clothes in the Vogue shoot with reverence. This stuff is beautiful, and it’s one of the big pleasures of watching the film, so the film increases the pull as much as it (subtly) pushes back. Giving things up for love is kind of the big theme of Sex and the City: it’s about single women who are old enough to have built whole lives for themselves without partners figuring out how to make those lives work with partners. I’m sure men give stuff up for love, too, but if there’s a giver-up involved, love-wise, it has historically been women, and if you don’t believe me I will introduce you to the sacrifice-based plots of virtually every “Women’s film” made between 1930 and 1960.
    So it’s socially and generically relevant as well as heartrending when Miranda tells Steve (who she’s left after he confessed to cheating on her) “I changed who I was for you.” To me, that moment is heartbreaking, because that’s the risk we take a lot of the time when we (and I don’t just mean white heterosexual women here, but they are the main subject of this movie) decide to be in a serious relationship with someone, and it’s a risk because you don’t know if the other party will screw you over the way Steve did Miranda. Samantha changed who she was for Smith, too, but that wasn’t really a fair deal for her — hence the “I love you, but I love me more” line. Charlotte doesn’t really have a storyline in this movie, just a baby, but remember she gave things up for love too, like her career and also her religion. (Kristin Davis was great though; unfortunate pants-shitting scene aside, she was a joy to watch whenever she was onscreen.) I liked the way the movie dramatized that trade-off though.
    Is Sex and the City a particularly great feminist represenation? No, not really. But what is? Perfectly reflecting your own ideologies back at you isn’t really what art is about. I don’t think that means we shouldn’t criticize representations that are problematic, particularly because I think there’s a sort of art-imitates-life-imitates-art circle that happens especially when there are limited kinds of media representations of minority groups. It’s not that it doesn’t matter, it does; it’s just that for me it’s not the only thing. But, I still do feel comfortable criticizing the way Jennifer Hudson’s “Saint Louise” magical black lady character was written. This review at Diary of an Anxious Black Woman does a great job of talking about those problems, my favourite part of which was this: “Interestingly, Jennifer Hudson’s single ‘Dressed in Love’ is included in the soundtrack, as are a bunch of other black female vocalists, thus indicating how our voices are always shoring up white female narratives, since we are often the unseen but audible ‘chorus’ with various ‘you go, girl’ cheerleading anthems that spur on white women in their various endeavors.”
    She also touches on the way the movie treats marriage as an economic institution, which is something I also enjoyed. In conclusion, if you liked the show you’ll probably like the movie, but if you didn’t, this is not the film that’s going to convert.
    Two great meta moments, though. One, when Carrie and Miranda are at a restaurant together on Valentine’s Day because they are both on the “off-again” with their on-again off-again relationships, and the waitress assumes that Carrie’s Miranda’s girlfriend. Because of how Cynthia Nixon has a girlfriend now since the show’s ended. Second, more obvious one: the ladies are drinking cosmos. “Mmm, this is good.” “Why did we stop drinking these?” “Because everybody else started.”