The Whetstone 4/26/23
The Whetstone
A weekly newsletter where Maddie Weiner hones her thoughts about media and culture. Movies, books, television, music, and more.
Hi there subscribers! This is a newsletter test drive. I'm choosing not to use Substack because I'd like to eventually monetize this newsletter and they take a 10% cut, not to mention they appear to have very few scruples about hosting hate speech, so instead I'm using Buttondown. I've signed you all up for free and then I'm inviting the first 50 new subscribers to sign up for free, but after that I'm going to charge $1. Hopefully that works out!
Why am I doing this newsletter? Well, I think it will be nice if I can get another small income stream, first of all, since I'm now in Independent Contractor Land and have such inconsistent income. I've also been really struggling lately with focus and attention, and it's been negatively affecting how I watch things and listen to things. I'm hoping that this will help hold me accountable to myself and to you to pay attention!! And on that note...
JOANNA HOGG
I've been consuming A LOT of Joanna Hogg films lately. I got the A24 boxset of The Souvenir and The Souvenir: Part II for my birthday, and they both have commentaries by Joanna Hogg (I love a director's commentary). I also watched the short film she did for Centre Pompidou, Présages, which you can watch here - it has major Chantal Akerman vibes (specifically No Home Movie and Hotel Monterey). I also went back and watched her first feature, Unrelated, which came out in 2008 and was the first film role of Tom Hiddleston! I was surprised at its digital look, but it already forecast a lot of Hogg's go-to techniques, like filming in script order and her focus on upper class British folks.
Présages.
Maybe this is a strange sentiment, although I don't think it is, but it gives me such a thrill sometimes to be able to see the threads of influence from the works of one filmmaker to another. When I watch a Joanna Hogg film I see a creative lineage going backwards from Mike Leigh to Chantal Akerman and Éric Rohmer to Yasujiro Ozu. It's like I have X-ray vision, or like I've learned a secret code for how to read a treasure map. To me, that's the value of learning about directors as auteurs: you get a much better understanding of where they fit in a place and time in film history, and it helps your understanding of the work itself. Anyway, Joanna Hogg is mother.
Unrelated.
BEAU IS AFRAID
Spoilers!!
I saw Beau Is Afraid on Friday and was blown away. In spite of its many references and homages to other films, Beau manages to be a completely unique movie, really something I had never seen before. It was a surreal, almost grotesque ride and, even though I actually cried laughing, I'm not sure that I can say I “enjoyed” the experience of watching the film. But I think it's fabulous in its depiction of anxiety, which I found extremely true to life, and in its dreamlike disregard for narrative coherence and structure.
Beau Is Afraid.
I think it's totally understandable that Beau won't be for everyone – in fact, it makes sense: this is one of the most personal films I've probably ever seen. I got a lot out of A24's podcast conversation between Joaquin Phoenix and Ari Aster, but I think this movie also rewards those who have a bit of a background in critical film theory, and especially in the psychoanalytical and art historical strains. Beau Is Afraid is RIFE with Jungian, Freudian, and Lacanian symbolism and theory, like this, for example, from Lacan's “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience”:
When I saw the stadium in the middle of the ocean at the end of the film, I KNEW I had read something somewhere about stadiums in dreams, and finding that quote really unlocked some of the film's meaning. And, come on, "This fragmented body... usually manifests itself in dreams... in the form of disjointed limbs..."? I seem to recall a certain body part that definitely looks like a Hieronymus Bosch painting towards the end of the film! To me, it's the best kind of Easter egg: not just one that only those who are “in the know” will pick up on, but an Easter egg that actually deepens your interpretation and experience of a film.
Beau Is Afraid.
Anyway, I can't actually recommend this movie to everyone, but if you like Charlie Kaufman, Soviet cartoons, or ancient Greek epics you'll find something to love in Beau Is Afraid. The performances are all wonderful, especially Joaquin Phoenix, Nathan Lane, and Patti LuPone. I can't wait to watch it again at home and check out all the tiny details in the production design.
This Week I'm...
WATCHING: Dead Ringers and Succession
As far as I'm concerned, these are the only two shows worth watching right now, although I'm thinking about starting Perry Mason.
READING: Alison Bechdel and Sofia Coppola: The Politics of Visual Pleasure
I find myself on an Alison Bechdel kick – in the past two weeks I've reread Fun Home, Are You My Mother?, and The Secret to Superhuman Strength. I just love Bechdel's work! Especially the meta psychoanalytic stuff in Are You My Mother? Which brings me to another book I'm loving, Anna Backman Rogers's monograph on the filmography of Sofia Coppola. It's totally genius and invigorating reading about Coppola's subtle utilization of the female gaze and cliché imagery. I highly recommend it if you like film theory (justice for The Beguiled!!):
...my argument throughout this study is that what is seemingly abjured matters as much as what is seen in Coppola's work. If the Civil War of Confederate America is recuperated in The Beguiled, then, as a battle between the sexes played out within the isolation of a crumbling home that is the symbolic bastion of an ancien régime, which, despite the domestic efforts of its inmates, is on the cusp of implosion, I would suggest that the violence that emerges in this film is not only about feminist rage, but also about the outrageous violence of a social regime of power founded on the violation and disempowerment of an entire people.
LISTENING: Matthew Perpetua's “Late 90s Sophisticate” playlist
Matthew Perpetua is a music blogger who makes these incredibly well-researched playlists which depict a musical moment in time. He makes playlists which capture a singer or band's history, like Björk Universe, “A career retrospective including roughly contemporaneous works by Björk's collaborators and remixers,” or his “This Was” series which focuses on one season in one year, like This Was Summer 1984. He also focuses on musical “movements”, and I've been obsessed with his newest playlist, The Late 90s Sophisticate, “Upscale cosmopolitan sounds for discerning pre-millennium listers, 1996-1998.” I've linked to his playlists on Spotify here, but you can also find them on YouTube (and probably other places too).
Thanks for reading!