<PERSON>
<PERSON> once wrote of <PERSON> that he would ‘satisfy the voyeuristic needs of the god-abiding by showing them what they were missing by being good and then soothe them by showing them the terrible punishments they escaped by being good.’ and certainly <PERSON>’s excited to show us what <PERSON> called the ‘glamour of wickedness’; these vampires are roguish even in murder, and <PERSON>’s leatherbound sunnies-at-night charisma exploits the double-meaning behind ‘wicked’. (see <PERSON>’s reaction!) this is fine, and even enjoyable, (for a season,) and i’d probably enjoy the film more if it harped more on this φάρμακον, and especially if it were more imaginative about it. (so, for example, the bar scene overstays its welcome by three or four minutes, no matter how grinning its grimness until then. maybe that’s the point? but that sets up other tonal problems.) unfortunately, bigelow’s also interested, just like <PERSON>, in fairly conservative moral arcs, and so of course the protagonist vampires get to return to ‘goodness’, associated with non-outcast status, steadfast ‘traditional’ family, and so forth. you know all this. you don’t need me to say it again and again. but past all its rad aesthetics i think this really might just be (at least cognate with) lady bird in leather, with even less room for readings against the grain.
which, of course, makes me sad. 295
i adore any last picture show we-gotta-get-out-of-this-place batting-out-of-hell to extents i cannot explain. but also this film reminded me of fury road—banged-up monster vehicles rampaging across the desert, fuelled (however indirectly) by blood—and i think of how blood transfusions here are tied to coming home, to returning to normality and to ‘traditional’ family (bloodline), which of course can never be normal again precisely because of the journey taken. (i’m sure that bigelow’s aiming for at least some <PERSON> allegory here, though i’m trying not to believe that because if so then, haha, i strongly protest identification with a confederate soldier and a nonce.) in fury road, by contrast, the deliberateness & gravity with which <PERSON> gives his blood to <PERSON> is in anticipation of her return, not to the home where she grew up, which of course no longer exists, but to a place that she’s changed not implicitly but explicitly to become her home, and as such his transfusion extends familial bonds well beyond any kind of tradition. i like it when outcasts get to be outcast-and-good. or i guess when the category doesn't get collapsed onto badness. i don’t know. maybe i ask for too much. i don’t want to ask for less.
(2019 hoop-tober 2/31) 378