Faux Real

Water (2005, subtitled): This beautiful film by Deepa Mehta is a narrative on the lives of widows in India during the 1930s, and as such, political revolution is a major undercurrent in the film. The main protagonist, Chuyia, comes to an impoverished ashram when she is widowed before puberty, forced to live in isolation with other widows to suffer the sins of past lives, the sins that supposedly killed their late husbands. (Patriarchy, what?)

Mehta came under extreme criticism during the filming of Water because of the subjects of her previous films. However, this is the first exposure that I have to her work and I was blown away, so for discussion of the religious and political controversies you’ll have to look elsewhere. Nevertheless, this movie is one of hope in the face of unfathomable oppression. It’s a little cliche, but between the lovely music and breath-taking cinematography you won’t even notice.

Does it meet the Mo Movie Measure? Damned stright it does. Do I recommend it? Only if you enjoy movies with solid narratives in which revolution is a focus and women dicover social power. So, yes.

CSA: Confederate States of America (2004): This explosive film by Kevin Willmott is a fictional account of what the United States might have looked like if the Confederacy won the Civil War. The execuation is frequently jaw-dropping, oh-no-they-didn’t shocking. At several points I had to pause the movie to give my brain time to peel the onion skin of political commentary back and chuckle at the many facets of CSA’s thesis. The political undercurrent of the film, smartly, is that in many not-so invisible ways the concessions made to pacify racist white citizens of previous generations continue to pervade our history and our markets.

I’ve read several negative reviews of this mockumentary that posit the film is anti-Southern. I can’t disagree more — this movie is patently anti-racism. Part of the confusion might be in the medium. Considering the movie is presented as a British documentary, and because documentaries are chock full of historians, people, places and facts, some seem to think these accounts must be taken at face value despite their fiction. Many of these historical stories repackaged are poking incredibly dark humor at the expense of White America’s mythic heroes. So while the armchair historians I’ve read have a heyday with the timelines and people presented in the narrative, the most important point is lost. The question isn’t, What would have happened if the South won the Civil War? but, How might the United States have developed if state-sanctioned slavery and the ideologies it favored won?*

Lynn also liked this movie. Mo Movie Measure: Not that kind of movie, so no.

Series Seven: The Contenders (2001): Think reality game shows are trite, ridiculous entertainment?** How about a game where seven regular people in a small town are chosen at random by their social security numbers and given weapons to pick off the others, while the sole survivor “wins” the obligation to compete in the next season? Even better if this mock reality teevee show never breaks character.

This wickedly funny premise is completed, cherry-on-top fabulousness, by the protagonist’s very, very pregnant condition. Finishing this season of “The Contenders” is very important to our heroine Dawn because she is about to give birth at any minute, and also because this season is filmed in the hometown she left bitterly fifteen years before. (For some of us, this sounds like a great holiday weekend.) Brooke Smith plays Dawn, and even if you don’t recognize her name you do know the actor and will remember her after this leading role, lumbering all over town, eight months pregnant with gun in hand, reliving her goth days in high school. Smith also played victim Catherine Martin in Silence of the Lambs and is featured in cameos all over television, from Grey’s Anatomy to Six Feet Under.

In any case, Series Seven isn’t a gun-slinging, action-packed thriller, no matter how violent it may sound — this is a deliciously dark comedy making commentary on the fucked up things people will do in front of a camera to make a dollar and satisfy some sad desire to win at all costs.

Useless trivia: Writer and director Daniel Minahan also wrote “I Shot Andy Warhol.” Mo Movie Measure: Yes.

Lipstick and Dynamite, Piss and Vinegar: The First Ladies of Wrestling (2005): Okay, so I like documentaries. Even if you don’t, this one is chock full of trashy feminist camp, tackling everything from the fetishization of women’s bodies to vaudevillian sexism, to how racism and classism shaped these women’s showmanship, to the peculiar position of common women as sexed up professional athletes in the 1940s and 50s.

The filmmakers packed the movie with stock film footage and a rockabilly soundtrack, interlaced with scads of commentary from six women wrestlers that made their living fighting in a ring for a largely male audience. Some, like The Fabulous Moolah, have managed to continue their careers in modern wrestling venues today (see the burly beefcakes beat up the old ladies in WWE), while others compete in organized sports fifty years later. Still others fell off the map entirely, finding themselves wholly normal mothers and office workers. Worse, others find themselves completely forgotten, mired in total poverty. Gladys “Killem” Gillem sticks with me — hired as a heel for her entire career, she was never deemed beautiful or ambitious enough to be allowed to win a single match.

The contradictions between the women — who tells the truth and who continues to promote herself — becomes one of the more interesting things about the film. This is a great look at womanhood and competition in one of America’s most prescriptive periods, and a little love letter to the women who took part in the movement. Meets the Mo Movie Measure? Totally.

Mean Creek (2004): Lately I’ve been drawn to movies about suburban teen life (See also: The Chumscrubber, L.I.E., and 12 and Holding). I love the young adult fiction genre so this is a logical move for me as a story lover, but when Chef suggested we watch this movie I wasn’t all that excited. A bunch of kids try to teach the school bully a lesson and things go too far. Seen it, sure. But this is not merely that story.

First, whoever is casting these movies is not only finding good young actors but they also have a clear vision of what kind of actors this kind of movie needs. The sheer lack of Dakota Fanning is fantastic, I tell you. Secondly, there is no sugar-coating the recklessness of the kids’ lives. Some critics pooh-poohed the movie as a caricature — how badly to adults think teenagers act? — but having been a stupid reckless teenager recently and working with a startling number of teens during my university days, this isn’t a caricature. We stole cars, drank beer and smoked cigarettes, played mean rounds of truth or dare, and frequently someone was physically or emotionally scarred by some stupid decision somebody made in favor of ego tripping and power games. My students did the same stupid things. In my opinion, this movie isn’t meant for a teen audience. Trained as an educator with a fair amount of adolescent psychology under my belt, this is actually a pretty accurate account of the wide swings adolescents make between alienation and mob behavior, and considering the plot and setting of the film the outcomes are plausible, in which case I could easily see the movie being shown in a classroom as an exercise for future teachers to explore.

Mo Movie Measure? Not so much. But the score is good and the cinematography is better. Even if you aren’t blown away by the story you’ll probably look forward to the director’s next piece.

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* I realize that one could make the point that these ideologies did persevere and I sound though I’m writing off the next 150+ years of state-sanctioned racist inequality, but you’ll have to trust me here and watch the movie. No spoilers.
** Even if you secretly love them?