Agreed I don't understand why Kolbert's book reviews were elevated to the level of feature, although I did like the piece more than you did. I'm already interested in reading Material World and this review pushed me more in that direction.
Nothing really gripped me this issue, though. Osnos's piece on China's age of malaise is an interesting topic, but he didn't bring much new to it that I hadn't heard in other venues.
Agree that it’s always nice to see Anthony Lane do an actual review instead of a tap dance, but I thought his complaints about the film missed the point. In order to understand just how despicable the white men are in this story, you have to witness them at work. Telling the story from the FBI’s perspective makes a hero of the State while insinuating that the criminals here require deep investigation to be caught. The reality is, these men are stupid, careless, and evil--they’ve gotten away with so much because the law either doesn’t care about them or is actively involved in their murders.
Leo is actually perfect as a go-between here. He’s simple enough that he doesn’t really seem to understand what’s going on most of the time, but this gives him enough plausible deniability for us to truly believe he loves Mollie. At the same time, from the first scene he displays a gleeful desire to participate in needless violence that plays out over the course of the film. How much he is actually not grasping and how much is willful ignorance is part of the friction of the film, and it reflects a common American approach to history--refusing to look at and engage with the true violence of our country’s past (and present) is an excuse for false absolution.
I felt that Mollie’s perspective was well illustrated. One of the strongest aspects of the movie is that it trusts the viewer to understand the characters’ motives without giving them a speech in which they explain them directly. Most people don’t really know why they do what they do, and have a variety of motives that rotate precedence depending on context.The acting and dialog here does the work of providing insight into character cumulatively, rather than dumping it on you directly, all at once. By the end, I could articulate why Mollie married Burkhart, why she stayed, and why she finally left, without her telling me in so many words.
If the movie were closer to Mollie’s perspective, I think we’d have trouble, again, understanding just how incompetent and brutish these murdering men are. We understand the depth and breadth of the death and violence here, but seeing just the results of the violence, divorced from the perpetrators and act of perpetration, would create a mystery into which the viewer could project, as is their wont, a more devious mastermind--instead, it’s clear that these plans were made in haste, thoughtlessly and cruelly, not as part of a scheme, but out of a sense of brutish entitlement.
I’ve noticed a knee jerk tendency in reviewers to see endorsement in depiction, which I feel is a bit at work here. To me, the point of view here avoids giving the viewer with the grace that alignment with the victims or the eleventh-hour investigators would provide, forcing them instead into complicity with the villains and their heedless, heartless violence.
I totally agree with your reading of the film, and your annoyance in the insistence by some that the film has to focus on the "good guys." It's always hard for me to review reviews of films I haven't seen yet; in this case, having watched the brilliant work at hand (for my money, best American film of the decade so far) I agree some of Lane's criticisms were more annoying/trite than I felt initially.
Agreed I don't understand why Kolbert's book reviews were elevated to the level of feature, although I did like the piece more than you did. I'm already interested in reading Material World and this review pushed me more in that direction.
Nothing really gripped me this issue, though. Osnos's piece on China's age of malaise is an interesting topic, but he didn't bring much new to it that I hadn't heard in other venues.
Yes, as you can probably tell by my fairly lukewarm review of the must-read, I didn't find this to be an issue with any particularly high points.
By the way, a few good recommendations on responses to the China piece from another Substack I subscribe to, Following the Yuan.
https://twitter.com/sanguoromcom/status/1717026682220237115?s=20
https://twitter.com/CaiweiC/status/1717204235073249666?s=20
Agree that it’s always nice to see Anthony Lane do an actual review instead of a tap dance, but I thought his complaints about the film missed the point. In order to understand just how despicable the white men are in this story, you have to witness them at work. Telling the story from the FBI’s perspective makes a hero of the State while insinuating that the criminals here require deep investigation to be caught. The reality is, these men are stupid, careless, and evil--they’ve gotten away with so much because the law either doesn’t care about them or is actively involved in their murders.
Leo is actually perfect as a go-between here. He’s simple enough that he doesn’t really seem to understand what’s going on most of the time, but this gives him enough plausible deniability for us to truly believe he loves Mollie. At the same time, from the first scene he displays a gleeful desire to participate in needless violence that plays out over the course of the film. How much he is actually not grasping and how much is willful ignorance is part of the friction of the film, and it reflects a common American approach to history--refusing to look at and engage with the true violence of our country’s past (and present) is an excuse for false absolution.
I felt that Mollie’s perspective was well illustrated. One of the strongest aspects of the movie is that it trusts the viewer to understand the characters’ motives without giving them a speech in which they explain them directly. Most people don’t really know why they do what they do, and have a variety of motives that rotate precedence depending on context.The acting and dialog here does the work of providing insight into character cumulatively, rather than dumping it on you directly, all at once. By the end, I could articulate why Mollie married Burkhart, why she stayed, and why she finally left, without her telling me in so many words.
If the movie were closer to Mollie’s perspective, I think we’d have trouble, again, understanding just how incompetent and brutish these murdering men are. We understand the depth and breadth of the death and violence here, but seeing just the results of the violence, divorced from the perpetrators and act of perpetration, would create a mystery into which the viewer could project, as is their wont, a more devious mastermind--instead, it’s clear that these plans were made in haste, thoughtlessly and cruelly, not as part of a scheme, but out of a sense of brutish entitlement.
I’ve noticed a knee jerk tendency in reviewers to see endorsement in depiction, which I feel is a bit at work here. To me, the point of view here avoids giving the viewer with the grace that alignment with the victims or the eleventh-hour investigators would provide, forcing them instead into complicity with the villains and their heedless, heartless violence.
I totally agree with your reading of the film, and your annoyance in the insistence by some that the film has to focus on the "good guys." It's always hard for me to review reviews of films I haven't seen yet; in this case, having watched the brilliant work at hand (for my money, best American film of the decade so far) I agree some of Lane's criticisms were more annoying/trite than I felt initially.