Breaking up is hard to view

I've written before about the movies I save to watch when my wife is out of town, enough times that it probably does not serve to try to link to any of those previous posts, if I could even find them. It's obviously a topic that interests me.

Usually, though, those films would be either of a prurient nature, something erotic designed purely to titillate, or something so gruesomely violent that it would raise all sorts of different questions about where my head's at.

Of course, I don't mind writing about them here -- if she does read the post, though she's not in the habit of it (my content volume is pretty high you will admit), it will come complete with the explanation that I always laboriously write. What I worry about is her noticing what I'm watching and not asking about it, leaving her to reach her own conclusions about why I'm watching this particular movie now -- or leaving me to stammer out an unsolicited explanation, which is probably worse.

But there's a category of film that I also save for a night like Sunday night, when my wife was on an overnight out of town, that aren't embarrassing in the slightest -- but could send her mind to bad places if she were so inclined. (She really isn't, making this whole discussion sort of academic.)

Those are movies in which characters are breaking up.

And, just to capitalize on the opportunity, I watched two of them. 

There shouldn't really be an issue with me watching either The Break-Up (which I watched Sunday afternoon) or Marriage Story (which I watched Sunday night) on a random Tuesday evening, when my wife is making her usual trips back and forth through the living room where my viewing is taking place. They are mainstream movies with big movie stars, and they have artistic credibility, one more so than the other.

But she knows I've watched both of these movies before -- definitely Marriage Story, since she watched it with me -- so what I'm trying to avoid is her jumping to conclusions about why I'm rewatching these movies now. Is the last argument we had sitting with me particularly poorly? Am I finding something all too relatable about two people arguing and dissolving their relationship? 

The answer to both of those questions is "no." We haven't been arguing much at all lately (during lockdowns it was sometimes inevitable), and at this particular juncture I'm not examining any of the little difficulties in our relationship (also inevitable when you've been married for 13 years).

But I do find the themes explored here perpetually interesting, as I think they both contain astute perspectives about what it means to be in a relationship, especially as it relates to your obligations to the other person. These movies actually help quite a bit, I imagine, in the perennial goals of being mindful, doing your share and not taking your partner for granted.

Can I rely on her to intuitively understand this is my motivation for watching these movies? 

I cannot.

And so I watch them when she's out of town, like a criminal. 

Why these two movie in particular?

I've always been part of a vocal minority -- including two of the Filmspotting hosts -- who thought The Break-Up had more to recommend it than it was generally given credit for. The film was judged at the time as a romantic comedy, when that's not really what it is -- it uses some of the romantic comedy tropes, but is mostly turning them on their head to show a relationship in disrepair. It wasn't trying to have a happy ending, as should have been clear by the fact that it did not have a happy ending.

(Interesting sidebar, though: The ending I originally saw in 2006 was different than the ending I saw on Netflix on Sunday. Similar in spirit, but different in execution. In the ending I saw 15 years ago, Jennifer Aniston's and Vince Vaughn's characters cross paths at the end when they are each with a new partner, a partner who actually looks remarkably like their ex in both cases. The meeting is a bit flat and, therefore, so was that ending. I now see that this is the alternate ending -- why I got it as my primary ending in 2006, I'm not sure -- and the standard ending now has them crossing paths when they are each by themselves, with a twinkle of the possibility of reconciliation. This is more of a rom-com ending, though I think the other ending might be more true to the spirit of the movie.)

(Second sidebar: There is something about the five-year intervals as it relates to The Break-Up. I saw it in 2006, and then had occasions to mention it on this blog in both 2011 and 2016, though without actually revisiting the movie either time. When I did revisit the movie, it was another five years later in 2021.)

Anyway, back to the movie proper. When I watched it this time, I felt it worked even better than when I watched it the first time. I'd remembered many of the set pieces being very broad, but for the most part, that's not how they struck me this time. There needs to be some levity to distract from all the arguing, but it was not nearly as oversized as I'd remembered it.

And the real reason I love this movie -- the scene where Aniston cries at the end as she gives up hope of a reconciliation -- struck me just as hard. I'm sad the ship has probably sailed on Aniston ever getting an Oscar nomination, because she just kills it in that scene, and her natural sympathetic quality just makes me want to run over and wrap her in a big hug. (Not to mention that this scene also reminds me of one of my own break-ups, undeniably contributing to its power.)

As for Marriage Story -- a movie in which a sidebar is explicitly evoked -- I'm pretty sure it's the better film, but I didn't like it significantly more than the first time, when I gave it four stars out of five and ranked it #20 in 2019. (That's compared to the three stars I retroactively gave The Break-Up on Letterboxd, which now seems ungenerous, and came from a time when I thought it was more broad than I do now.) Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver are both great here, though I don't feel the details of their fights the way I do the details of the fights between Aniston and Vaughn -- maybe because I can relate to characters who are not famous better than I can relate to the lives of a celebrated actress and director. Or more specifically, because I can relate more to the spats over domestic duties ignored or forgotten, plans to do fun things not initiated, than I can relate to strife caused by competing ambitions. (That said, Marriage Story is more pertinent to my situation in terms of moving to a place for the other person's career, which I did for my wife when I came to Australia. If we ever broke up and I wanted to return to the U.S., things could get verrrry sticky.)

One funny similarity between the two: Both Vince Vaughn and Adam Driver are very tall, like me. Appearance-wise, I'm more of a Vaughn than a Driver, though. 

Part of the reason I rewatched Marriage Story was because some people I know absolutely loved it, particularly one friend who called it the best of 2019 and in his top five of the decade. I'm pretty sure he loved it as much as he did because he's gotten divorced, so it really spoke to him. And though a common-law marriage ending (as in with Aniston and Vaughn's characters, who share a condo but not a wedding certificate) and a real marriage ending shouldn't feel that different, maybe they are. Even setting aside professions and specific points of contention, I related a little more to the feel of Aniston's and Vaughn's breakup than Johansson's and Driver's. (Again, this could be because of that protectiveness I feel toward Aniston, whom I have always loved, and who was dealing with the end of her relationship to Brad Pitt at the time as a little bit of extra-textual information.)

I do think the actual comedy may be more successful in Marriage Story. Still love that scene where Driver accidentally cuts himself while doing the knife trick and then rushes the court-appointed evaluator out of the house before he bleeds to death. Conversely, I actually didn't find either of the Sondheim songs as impactful as I thought I would find them, given that a big deal was made about them in all the 2019 year-end discussions I consumed after I'd already seen it the first time.

In any case, I was glad to say that I really welcomed the return of my wife from out of town, and may have hugged her a little more forcefully than I otherwise might. 

What did Jen have to do?

This post also could have been entitled "I finally saw: Cake," not because going so long without seeing a movie that was released about a year ago was a big shock, but that for this particular movie it sort of was, since my wife was involved in the screening competition from which the writer of Cake emerged -- with Cake as the winning script in that competition and attracting the attention of Jennifer Aniston. (The director is also an alum, making it sort of a double win for that organization.)

Thinking of it sort of as her baby (my wife's baby, not Jennifer Aniston's), and it being available for viewing on Netflix months ago, it did seem like kind of a long delay for us to eventually sit down with it. But that we did on Monday night.

And after finishing it, I'm finding myself wondering why the Oscar nomination I prognosticated for Jen in this post never transpired. (I wasn't just nominating her in that post, which I thought was a foregone conclusion -- I was giving her the damn award, sight unseen.)

What did she have to do, anyway?

She did what you have to do -- she uglied herself up. But then she also gave a really assured, angry, touching performance. It may have been a calculated attempt at accolades, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't have worked.

Yet she had to be content with that Golden Globe nomination. Oscar didn't come knocking at her door.

I've always thought Aniston was a good actor who was just choosing beneath her. When you're that type of person, you get a lot of rom-coms thrown in your face, and those are the ones that tend to carry the big paychecks. As much as you're addicted to the idea of accolades, you're also addicted to the creature comforts provided by big paydays.

Aniston made her share of those movies. She did her time.

But she's also been showing us what she could do throughout. I think specifically of a film like The Break-Up, one of those typical rom-coms that the people involved transgressively turned on its head. (At least, I don't think the marketing department knew it wasn't really a romantic comedy.) Aniston pours her all into a story about a relationship with Vince Vaughn that doesn't work out. The stakes are a lot lower than they are in a movie like Cake, but Aniston doesn't care here. She respects the material and she shows you how the workaday inattentions and betrayals of the person you think you love can really cut you. That performance kind of destroyed me, actually.

Aniston doesn't do as much destruction in Cake, maybe -- but it seems like maybe a more challenging type of destruction. She plays a woman in a support group who is basically awful to everyone around her, not only the other group members, but her live-in maid and her estranged husband. She's got a good reason for it that Cake smartly reveals by degrees. But Aniston's got to make the character pretty unlikable before she can become likable, and that she does. I'm not going to do her the indignity of going and searching the web to figure out how much weight she put on for the role, but it was just enough that this is not the glamorous tabloid fixture we know and love. This is a scarred woman, both literally and figuratively. They aren't pretty scars, either -- either literally or figuratively.

So I wonder why the Oscars didn't find a spot for her in the nominations? I guess we have to look at the other 2014 nominees to try to find out:

- Julianne Moore, Still Alice - Eventual winner. No way she's giving up her spot among the five nominees.

- Marion Cotillard, Two Days, One Night - Powerhouse performance in the role of a woman struggling with some of the things Cake's Claire struggles with. She can stay.

- Felicity Jones, The Theory of Everything - I still haven't seen this one, but my skepticism about the type of movie it is also makes me skeptical about how good Jones could possibly be in it. Nominating the actress opposite Eddie Redmayne in one of his nominated roles seems to be a thing, as Alicia Vikander was also nominated opposite Redmayne in The Danish Girl this year -- and I also suspect that to be a certain type of movie (though I also have not seen it).

- Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl - I stand by my assertion that Pike is not a good actress. But she does career-best work in a movie that had everyone's tongues wagging. She can stay too.

- Reese Witherspoon, Wild - Not having seen this either, I'm sure this was a fine performance. I'm not sure it was more than that.

So Aniston could have taken the spot of either Jones or Witherspoon, if only in the latter case because Witherspoon already has an Oscar (and I think it's fair when the wealth is spread on these awards). On that basis you could also exclude Cotillard, but I'm loath to do that simply because she was so damn good in Two Days, One Night.

And yeah, I'm kicking out the only two nominees whose work I haven't seen, which is always dangerous. But I still think Aniston deserved a slot.

Is Aniston not popular enough with her fellow members of the acting branch? I tend to think of Jennifer Aniston as a well-liked celebrity, but maybe not. Maybe Angelina Jolie put out a hit on Aniston's nomination chances, threatening anyone who voted for Aniston that they can never talk to Brad Pitt again.

Anyway, I do think it's a bit of a shame as these roles don't just come along every day. Aniston will be turning 47 in two weeks, and pretty soon she won't even have to ugly herself up anymore. (That's a claim based entirely on the linguistic serendipity of being able to call back to something I wrote earlier, not a reality based in fact.) Okay, so Aniston will still be gorgeous for a while yet, but will she be offered the right roles? Or have the shrewdness to find them herself? Then again, she does figure to be offered fewer and fewer rom-coms ... not only because of her age, but because those rom-coms don't really exist in the same way they did just a few years ago. When Aniston was still in her so-called prime.

Because not every role gets you something as meaty to sink your teeth into as Cake. Sarah Silverman just tried it this year with I Smile Back. And while her instincts on how to play that character were beyond reproach, nothing else about the story or the script could be described that same way.

It takes a lot to line up for you to ever even get a nomination, let alone win the damn thing. And Aniston would join a perfectly respectable -- nay, a downright exclusive -- club of people who never have. Nor would she even have the same convincing list of roles that should have won the elusive prize as many of the others in that club.

But I don't know, I think back to those tear-streaked, hopeless monologues of frustrated generosity of spirit from The Break-Up, and think that I'd like to see the efforts of one of my unabashed soft spots finally rewarded.

Jen should one day have her Cake and eat it too.

Is naked the same as nude?

So I joked on Thursday about "dirty old men" being one of the intended demographics for Red Riding Hood. That may have been a somewhat subjective assessment of the film, and it may be closer to the truth than I'd like to admit. (Most good jokes are, aren't they?)

You see, I seem to have developed something of a fascination with Amanda Seyfried. There's just something unique about her. She's beautiful, there's no doubt about that -- but she's not cookie-cutter beautiful. Her big, round eyes set her apart, and there's something girl-next-doorish about her. I guess you'd describe it as an unconventional type of beauty, but that's not exactly it either, because unconventional beauty is not traditionally agreed upon by everyone -- and I think almost everyone can see the beauty in Ms. Seyfried. (Sigh-fred, not Say-freed, as I've learned just this past week.)

And so I'd be lying if I didn't admit that the promise of Ms. Sigh-fred appearing nude in Chloe was one of the reasons I prioritized watching it. Fortunately, since I am also a follower of the career of director Atom Egoyan and have seen most of his movies, that wasn't the only reason. But I try to be honest with you, my dear readers, and I know you won't hold it against me if I admit that I wanted to see what Ms. Sigh-fred's boobs look like. (She's 25 years old, or only 12 years younger than me, so it really doesn't make me that dirty.)

Only I didn't get to see them, or I didn't really. I never got what you would call a clear look at them.

And that made me ponder the difference between "appearing naked" and "nudity."

Seyfried is definitely naked, a couple times, in Chloe. But I wouldn't say she's ever actually "nude." And that's because there are lots of ways to film/photograph people being naked, without showing "the good parts." It's why celebrities appear "naked" on the front of countless respectable magazines, but never appear "nude."

In order to have actual nudity, you have to have show one of the following:

1) The right nipple;

2) The left nipple;

3) Public hair;

4) A penis (men only, ha ha).

And if it's male nudity, only the fourth one really counts -- male pubic hair is not real nudity.

This introduces a lot of paradoxes. It means you can spend an entire movie without a stitch of clothing on, and never once actually be "nude," depending on how cleverly you're shot. It also means that you can have all your clothes on, and still be "nude," if the action calls for one of your nipples poking out of your shirt (and only if you're a woman; male nipples, of course, are not nudity).

Another paradox is that showing your butt is no longer considered nudity. It was at one time. But possibly around the time Dennis Franz showed his butt on NYPD Blue (which was probably 20 years ago now), the derriere was officially no longer nudity. This is why when we saw Jennifer Aniston's butt in The Break-Up, no one really got all that excited about it. Yeah, there was talk about how Aniston was showing her butt, but it couldn't properly be characterized as a "nude scene" -- even though Aniston was naked in the scene, and she showed her butt. Nor could it be characterized as a risk on Aniston's part -- it was just keeping with her career-long attitudes toward showing her goods.

And so yeah, not much that you could characterize as actual nudity on Seyfried's part in Chloe. A lot of butt. A lot of back and legs. A lot of "side boob" -- another kind of one-time nudity that has since been de-classified as such. Even one shot from the front that's so brief and so obscured that it doesn't really qualify. You couldn't walk away from Chloe saying that Seyfried wasn't naked -- she most certainly was. But nude? Not really.

You do get nudity in Chloe, but it's all courtesy of Julianne Moore, who practically has a clause in her contract requiring nudity. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that Moore has appeared nude in a third of her films, and at least half the films she appeared in that had an R rating. In fact, one of the most famous bottomless scenes in movie history is from Robert Altman's Short Cuts, when Moore has something like a five-minute argument on screen, all the time completely naked from the waist down.

And this brings up another interesting thing about nudity, something I am certainly not the first person to observe. Why is female pubic hair considered the Holy Grail of nudity? Again I am not the first to say this, but it's just hair. There shouldn't be anything inherently titillating about hair. Yet when a woman goes nude below the waist in a movie, it doubles or triples our notion of how daring she is, how much she's willing to expose herself. And of course it sends ratings boards into a tizzy. Just from a little hair.

In an era where a bikini can be shown on TV as long as there are teeny, tiny patches of fabric covering the nipples and the pubic hair, it makes me wonder if the societal opposition to nudity will one day fall entirely, just as the word "fuck" may one day be permitted to play on TV. I guess I have to say I doubt it. The political groups on both sides of the aisle who oppose indecency, for different reasons, may have less and less of a leg to stand on, but it'll be a long time before they allow themselves to be legless.

But here's the real thing about nudity -- it's not even really what we're looking for, per se, when we watch a movie that's meant to titillate us. One of the sexiest performances I can think of in a mainstream film is the performance submitted by Naomi Watts in Mulholland Drive. As far as I recall, Watts is neither naked nor nude at any point during the film, though she's done both things since then. And she does have a famous scene of masturbation in Mulholland Drive, but that's not even what I'm talking about when I say her performance is sexy -- that scene has more to do with a weird kind of violence against herself. No, I'm thinking of the scene where she's on that audition, and she's involved in a kiss with one of the other auditioning actors -- who I think may also be one of the producers or something, creating a weird power dynamic during the kiss. I saw the movie only once, ten years ago, and frankly, did not like it very much. But that scene sticks with me because of how hot Watts made it, and probably always will.

So, Chloe. It had some of what made Mulholland Drive sexy, but it also ended up feeling fairly banal to me in many other respects. It's what I'd heard about Chloe, with one exception -- another blogger whose opinion I trust. Well, if you're reading this, sorry -- I just didn't see it. Mild thumbs down for me.

But it was fun to see Amanda Seyfried's side-boob. ;-)