The fight for a life

This is my final Roe v. Wade post. For now. I think.

Last night I rented another abortion-themed movie from iTunes, this one for $6.99 rather than $3.99, further donating my rental dollars to the cause. (If you want to see what I'm talking about, read this post.) This time it also counts toward my current year movie rankings.

Happening was released in France last year, but has made its way to the rest of the world in 2022, and I'm not sure how it could be more timely. Audrey Diwan's adaptation, which she also directed, of Annie Ernaux's eponymous novel about her own experiences looks at what it was like to try to get an abortion in France of the 1960s, when it was illegal, when it could lead to the jailing of the person in question, and when the attempt could also lead to her own death due to such ill-considered home remedies as trying to put bleach in her uterus.

When they started making the movie, they couldn't have known the Supreme Court was about to overturn Roe v. Wade -- though of course it's only an American-centric worldview that considers the U.S. to be the only country where reproductive rights are being fought over. 

For me as a viewer, the film reminded me most of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Cristian Mungiu's 2007 film that became my #2 of 2008 when it had a similar release a year later outside of its home country of Romania. That film really stuck with me, despite only that single viewing, and made my top ten of the decade. I still haven't seen it again, perhaps because the subject matter is so hard to watch.

Happening is not the film that is, but it's an important film. Interestingly, though, it could make the case for both sides of the argument.

The right to a legal abortion is clear in every moment of this film, given the lead character's attempts to end her pregnancy -- which she can't even talk about in the open without fears of imprisonment. The lack of anyone to help her leads her to take matters into her own hands at one point -- though fortunately not with bleach. She does eventually find someone with medical training who may be willing to help under the shroud of heavy secrecy, though even this is not an experience without its significant travails and threats to her life. (It's not a spoiler to tell you she survived, since we already know the novel was based on the life experiences of its author.)

However, the movie might give just as much ammunition to a pro-lifer. As the pregnancy ticks on into later and later stages and an abortion becomes increasingly less viable -- not quite but almost to the period of time depicted in the title of the Romanian film mentioned earlier -- we get, shall we say, certain biological reminders of just how far along this fetus is in its development. There's a "money shot" here just as there was in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.

Of course, no one but the most deluded conservatives could think that Diwan was making a movie that argued for the right to life of the fetus. Really, her movie is just about the horror show that is this whole process, and why it can't be allowed to get to this point of visceral reality. Legal abortions keep the whole thing within the realm of medical safety and prevent the sort of body horror we see here.

Although some of the scenes in Happening will be the thing people talk about most for their unsparing biological detail, the real message here is not how an abortion occurs, but why a woman might want one. 

Anne (Anamaria Vortolomei) is not a promiscuous type -- not that that should matter anyway (no slut shaming here) -- but an extremely studious one, who aspires to teach or write. She has all the answers when her professor calls on her, in direct contrast to the "je ne sais pas" ("I don't know") offered by her classmates. There's no doubt she could go far, and will -- unless she's consigned to the role of a "housewife."

Although Anne does try to be discreet when all the people around her try to shush her, never knowing who will report her to the authorities, she takes a risk at one point to explain to her professor why she's fallen behind in class and needs his lectures to catch up in time to take her exams. He asks if she's been ill, and she confirms she has -- "the illness that only affects women and turns them into housewives."

If we shouldn't slut shame Anne, we shouldn't housewife shame those who want to do that. But that's not Anne, and even if she were inclined that way, the father has no interest in it. Anne wants to retain control of the trajectory of her own life, explaining that she's not sure she could love a child if that child prevented her from having the life she believe she's capable of -- the life she wants.

So Anne is fighting for life alright -- her own. She's fighting to have a life, and the sacrifice she must make is a child who isn't a child yet, who she wants eventually but who came along too soon. And when she's ready for that child, she'll be that much better of a mother to it. 

Anne is pro-life by being pro-choice, though that term probably didn't exist back then. It's what pro-lifers don't seem to understand. Women who choose to have an abortion are fighting for the net good of one life, when the other option is the net bad of two . And it will be the net good of two lives eventually, when and only when she's ready. 

Monday night movies

If we just watched Rachel Getting Married, it must have been a Monday night.

My wife and I have developed a tradition of saving "difficult" movies for Monday nights. We don't watch one every Monday night -- in fact, the last three Mondays prior to this one, we went to a bar and ate Korean BBQ tacos, because that's the night this bar is least crowded. (And last week when we came home, we watched Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist -- which was difficult only in the sense of being difficult to sit through).

But the point of the tradition is, we don't want to watch these movies on weekends. Weekends are for escapism, or at least movies that won't drives us into a deep depression. On Monday nights, I guess we're okay with the depression.

Some examples of other things we've watched on Monday nights? Glad you asked.

1) Control. The story of the life and eventual suicide of Ian Curtis, lead singer of the band Joy Division.

2) Down to the Bone. A bleak look at a blue collar drug addict (Vera Farmiga) trying to recover but continuing to ruin her life in predictable ways.

3) The Edge of Heaven. A multi-character story taking place in Germany and Turkey, featuring terrorism, prostitution and death.

4) The Wrestler. The character piece about a broken down wrestler (Mickey Rourke) living in a trailer park, trying to avoid a heart attack, and making futile strides toward reconciling with his daughter.

Just to name a few.

The funny thing is, the movie that first helped us coin the phrase "Monday night movie" was something we actually saw on a Tuesday: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, referred to in shorthand as "the Romanian abortion drama." But a Tuesday is, for all intents and purposes, a Monday, right? (We watched its thematic cousin, the Romanian drama The Death of Mr. Lazerescu, on a Sunday night, but that was mostly because it was two hours and 20 minutes, and we wanted to start it earlier).

But it's a tradition I like, in part because it means we have a regular habit of challenging ourselves. It's hard to look forward to a movie where you know a drug addict shows up to ruin her sister's wedding, or a poor girl tries to get an abortion in the thick of Communist rule, or a talented musician spirals downward to the point of killing himself. But these movies have more often than not knocked our socks off, even if they haven't gone down easy.

I remember in my youth feeling somewhat frustrated when I would go to the video store with my friends. In retrospect, it shouldn't have surprised me that we always picked up a dumb action movie or a dumb comedy. After all, we were in high school, or maybe in college, and it was a Friday or Saturday night. It makes sense that we didn't want to see Schindler's List (trying to find something enriching but depressing that's approximately from that era).

Well, I'm glad I have a partner now who wants to watch the dumb comedies when I want to, the dumb action movies (or as close as you get these days) when I do, and yes, will watch the Romanian abortion dramas with me as well.

But only on Monday nights.

The list-maker's crisis

It's only Day Two, and I already need your help.

Ever since I saw the amazing Romanian abortion drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days last week (that's a lot of time periods, but please follow the capitalization and italics), I've been struck by the 2008 version of my annual quandary:

How does a film get fixed with a definitive release year?

If that seems like a rather esoteric thing to get hung up on, read on and I'll explain why it's bothering me.

You see, ever since 1996, I've been keeping a year-end list of my favorite films released each year. It's not like most year-end lists, which stop at 10. In this case, "favorite" is a relative term that also encompasses "least favorite." I rank all the new releases I see each year -- from #1 to all the way down to #82 (or so it was last year, besting my previous high of 80 set in 2002). I also see plenty of other films from other years, though that probably goes without saying.

When I first started, I would wait until the end of the year to take a hard look at everything I'd seen, and then try to make some kind of sense of it. But in the last ten years or so, I've decided it's both easier and more fun to rank as I go. Which system produces a truer representation of my feelings about these films is hard to know -- but I like this system better, so I'm sticking to it.

Naturally, I have to set a deadline by which I stop ranking these films, otherwise I'd continue to obsessively shuffle my rankings forever. By tradition, I give myself until the morning the Oscar nominations are announced -- which this year, in a break from Oscar's own tradition (nice to know that Oscar is less anal-retentive than I am), will be on a Thursday rather than a Tuesday. Thursday, January 22nd, to be exact. I assume they are still sticking to the ungodly hour of 5:30 a.m. PST. (Yes, I get up to watch.)

Unlike the full-time critics who see everything, I don't get invited to all the special screenings (nor could I attend many of them anyway, since they tend to occur during the day). So I have to allow myself a few extra weeks more than their editors allow them, to catch up on late-year releases -- trying to stick more to the Revolutionary Roads and the Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons than the Marley & Mes and Bedtime Storieses. (Those titles don't really pluralize, do they.)

Anyway, that gives me a less than two-and-a-half more weeks to see everything I'm planning to see this year, or forever hold my peace. I may see another 2008 movie the very next day, but it'll be too late -- the "official record" will be sealed.

Over the years, these year-end lists have been fun to revisit. Not only do they give a good snapshot of who I was at that time (and in most cases I'm proud of it, my #1 ranking of Titanic in 1997 notwithstanding), but a lot of times they show me how wrong I was (though I do refuse to throw Titanic under the bus). I don't generally berate myself for the things I ranked really highly -- in most cases I still think those films have exceptional merit. Rather, it's the films I didn't know would endure so well that I laugh at. Let's take the excellent year of 1999. Who could have known that I would rank the cult favorite Office Space a lowly #42 out of 57, below such classics as Varsity Blues, Outside Providence and Ed TV? Not I. That ranking is probably the best example of the flaws inherent in the rank-as-you-go system -- I saw that film early in the year, and by the following January it was getting elbowed aside by schlock. Funny, because even now I remember how hard we laughed in the theater. Then again, that could have been a release -- a group of grad students and I had just come from the funeral of a classmate's father. In fact, we were all still dressed in our funeral attire. Quite surreal.

That, my friends, is what you call a digression.

So as I write this, I'm at only 66 for 2008, which puts me on a pace to see one a day from now until the 22nd if I want to break last year's record total. And though I've been cramming lately, let's say it's probably not going to happen.

And now we get to the crisis. That number may actually be as high as 69 ... or as low as 65. That's right, I have four films of indeterminate vintage, and as of right now, I've only assigned one of them to the year 2008. And only tentatively at that.

Here's my problem: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days was sure as heck a 2007 film in Romania. But it wasn't released in the United States until January 25, 2008 -- three days after the Oscar nominations came out. There simply would have been no way for me to include it on a year-end list for 2007. Short of flying to Romania, that is.

I used this logic to convince myself to include it on my 2008 list. It's no small decision, as I currently have the film ranked at #2 for the year. Doesn't a film this good deserve to be recognized in my own "official records," especially since I saw it in the first year I was realistically eligible to see it?

But just when I'd decided to wash my hands of the affair, I came across moviefone's year-end movie list. Quite a strange list to be sure. But who am I to criticize? Anyway, as I was going through the rankings, I came across 4 Months -- it was ranked a lot lower than it deserved to be, but its mere inclusion convinced me that I'd made the right decision.

This certainty lasted all of about two minutes. Soon afterward I came across The Counterfeiters, another film I'd recently seen and quite enjoyed.

Which just so happened to win the Oscar for best foreign film of 2007.

How could it be more cut-and-dried that a movie belongs to 2007, than to have it win a 2007 Oscar? In fact, when I saw it in August, I used that same logic to exclude it from consideration. Yet it was released even later, stateside, than 4 Months -- not until February. In fact, its very nomination for the Oscar was probably a factor in its US release (forgive whatever minor liberties I'm taking with cause and effect in the process of distributing foreign films). That's quite a paradox for my own personal ranking system.

My reasoning for keeping The Counterfeiters on the sidelines for now, yet including 4 Months, is that The Counterfeiters was nominated for an Oscar and 4 Months was not. That's quite flimsy reasoning, especially since the Romanian film was nominated for numerous other awards last year, including a Golden Globe. In fact, the very reason it was even on my radar is that I saw it on some critics' top 10 lists last year. I guess those critics had the money for that ticket to Romania (or to Cannes, where it won the Palme d'Or).

Foreign releases are tricky. I so want to shower praise on 4 Months -- however privately, in the confines of my blog and a Microsoft Word file called "2008 Film Rankings" -- that I can't believe it would be ineligible for such praise under any of the rules I've established. But those rules also make a certain amount of sense, don't they?

So I'm asking you, dear reader, to weigh in on this issue. What do you think I should do about these two movies? Do you qualify them, or disqualify them? Or do you observe a distinction between them? And don't just tell me what you think I want to hear. I'm not looking for a Yes Man. (Especially if it's Jim Carrey). I'm looking for a real dispassionate, academic consideration of this. Or at least, the best you can give me with the morning's first cup of coffee.

Remember when I said my current number of films for the year could be as high as 69? (Heh heh). Well that brings up another issue. I've seen two movies this year that haven't been released yet. And in fact, they don't even have a future release date.

You see, my wife is one of the judges for a horror film festival called Shriekfest, which takes place in Los Angeles in October. Her own short film played the festival in 2006, and this year she became one of the judges, who would help decide this year's slate. Naturally, I watched some of the films with her -- both shorts and features.

The three features were pretty sketchy in terms of quality: Midnight Movie, iMurders and Shadowland. The best of that bunch, Midnight Movie, appeared at Shriekfest as well as the possibly more acclaimed Chicago Horror Festival a week earlier. (The Chicago Horror Festival is mentioned on IMDB -- Shriekfest is not). According to IMDB, Midnight Movie also got a limited release starting October 24th. Done and done.

But what about the others? iMurders played Shriekfest, I'm sure in part because it had a name cast that included the likes of Billy Dee Williams, Charles Durning, Gabrielle Anwar and William Forsythe. But as mentioned earlier, this appearance is not noted on IMDB -- though something called the Downbeach Film Festival is. And then the thing that really throws things into chaos: IMDB suggests that iMurders will have a 2009 release, but offers nothing more in terms of specifics. Does that mean I have to save iMurders until next year? (Shadowland, by the way, has yet to materialize in any shape or form, though at least it finally has an IMDB page).

When I first moved to LA, I used to accept those invitations you'd sometimes get to see a film that was basically complete, but didn't have a release date yet. Awaiting audience feedback to see if any tweaking was needed. That's how I saw the Kevin Costner thriller Dragonfly and Alexander Payne's About Schmidt (then called something like Introducing Warren Schmidt). I don't do this anymore because I don't want to see an unfinished movie any more than I'd want to see the first day's work on the Mona Lisa. But I did do it then, and it wasn't such a worry because I knew both films were sufficiently high-profile to get releases the following year. But what if Shadowland never turns up anywhere? Is it now or never? In this case, I ask it more as a philosophical question than out of any concern for this particular film.

I've prattled on and on, and if these are the only two postings I've made at the time you read this, you'll think I want you to bunker in for 20 minutes every time you come to my blog. Nah -- most of the time I'll ask for no more than 15. ;-)

But in any case, if you want to answer my question, I'd love to hear what you think.