Ice in her Veins: Ozark, Deep Water

In Ozark, Marty Byrde started laundering money for a drug cartel innocently enough. It was kind of fun and exhilarating, and it was good money. And he wasn’t involved in the nasty side of the business, but just doing the math on his computer… until the cartel killed his partner and threatened to kill him if he didn’t come up with the money his partner had skimmed. That made him desperate, not unlike Walter White, but the arc of his story is a continual attempt to get out of the business. Marty Byrde does plenty of bad things, but he feels bad about these. But Wendy Byrde has ice in her veins. Sometimes Wendy talks herself into thinking that she has high ideals. It’s just that she’s willing to do whatever it takes to get that good thing she wants. Wendy’s behavior shows that she believes that the end justifies the means. That is to say, actions themselves aren’t right or wrong, it is only the effects or consequences of those actions that are good or bad. 

At the start of Ozark Season 4, Wendy Byrde wants her family to become the most powerful family in the Midwest. She acknowledges that things can get kind of messy. “But think of all the good we could do,” she protests. In her view, those actions aren’t really bad if they bring about something good. Will Wendy finally come to see that adopting evil means to do good is self-defeating? Will Jonah be forced to compromise his rather idealist views and “grow up” as his mother tells him he needs to do? Will Marty finally get extricated from the cartel? It’s not easy to come up with criteria for right and wrong that can be generalized for all circumstances. That’s why stories like Ozark that display the complexity and ambiguity are fascinating. How it ends will say a lot about the moral vision its producers have. Source: medium.com

Laura Linney says she isn't sure if she views her Ozark character, Wendy Byrde, as a villain. Wendy’s position as a lobbyist and her political strategies have saved her family at times, but undercutting Marty has threatened their operations, as well as their family’s dynamic. She also bears responsibility for her brother’s death, and the first half of season 4 saw Wendy become more coldblooded in her actions, to the extent that an antagonist like Omar Navarro was able to see a piece of himself reflected in her. In an interview with GQ, Linney revealed that she does not see Wendy as a villain. "I don’t know if she’s the villain. She certainly does not behave well (laughs) It is not a character who you aspire to be, I hope. I don’t know if she’s the villain because she’s not trying to hurt her family. She’s trying to save her family. I think if she were actively, intentionally trying to derail her family then she would be a real villain. Normally, the villain is the person who goes after the protagonist, tries to thwart the protagonist. That’s not who she is. I don’t know quite what she is but she’s not that." Source: screenrant.com

Adrian Lyne popularized cinematic eroticism in the 1980s. Lyne would go on to challenge audiences with dark visions (“Jacob’s Ladder”), burning questions of trust (“Indecent Proposal”), and the power of jealousy (“Unfaithful”), creating quite an impressive oeuvre. And then he walked away for two decades, distancing himself from moviemaking. Lyne is suddenly back with “Deep Water,” and he’s attempting to revive his aesthetic for a different era, returning to the ways of lustfulness and suspicion, taking inspiration from a 1957 novel by Patricia Highsmith (the adaptation is written by Zach Helm and Sam Levinson). Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas share terrific chemistry, giving the helmer something to work with. The couple lives together but doesn’t sleep together often, struggling to communicate as Vic pulls away from the world, tending to his snail farm in the basement. Vic is a tech wizard who became a millionaire by producing a software employed by the US military. Melinda is restless, and “Deep Water” explores such energy, ogling her time seeking new, younger lovers while Vic remains observant, agreeing to an open relationship without clearly defining the parameters of such an arrangement. 

The feature initially examines the growing tension between the pair, as Melinda is more than happy to parade around her latest acquisition, Joel (Brendan Miller), at a party, raising concern from Vic’s friends, including Mary (Devyn A. Tyler) and Grant (Lil Rel Howery), who question the man’s stony reaction to such casual cruelty. Lyne’s genius here is to play with the very function and charge of the innuendo, the allusion, the hint – that staple of the erotic film, here repurposed as the central mechanism of a thriller. When Vic meets Joel, he makes a joke about the disappearance of Melinda’s previous lover, which introduces uneasy tension to the picture, giving Lyne opportunity to study these characters from different angles, finding Vic and Melinda navigating complicated feelings of love and resentment, playing dangerous psychological games. “Deep Water” is an interesting reunion with the helmer’s old interests in the ways of corruption, impotence, and bitterness, with lustfulness overriding all logic when it comes to a partnership involving two distorted individuals. It’s been a long time since a movie like this was produced. Source: blu-ray.com