Ozark surpassing Breaking Bad (Spoilers)

When it premiered, Ozark was met with a certain degree of skepticism and even suspicion. Though it garnered positive reviews, many TV critics had mixed emotions about the latest sleek Netflix drama. In Vox magazine, Emily St. James argued she found the white guy antihero trope somewhat clichéd. Not helping matters was the fact that a critical darling loomed large over the show, inviting some comparisons with Ozark. That show, of course, is Breaking Bad, the crown jewel of the good-guy-turned-drug-kingpin genre. It was inevitable to put them side by side given some of their similarities. After all, in Ozark’s earlier episodes, it did seem like Marty (Jason Bateman) was going to be the heart of the show. It’s his voice we first hear, waxing poetic about how “money is, at its essence, that measure of a man’s choices.” In both Ozark and Breaking Bad, we had two middle class men trying to provide for their families, while complicated circumstances drive them to the underworld of drug trafficking. 

These comparisons did not stop it from becoming a Netflix hit. When the fourth season debuted, it hit a historic high of 4 billion minutes of viewing, per Nielsen ratings. What made it so irresistible? Five years later, the Byrdes are still at it. Its reputation had steadily but stealthily grown – a rarity in our short span times. The first episode of Season 4 starts with a flurry of activity: the Byrdes are now prosperous casino owners, but somehow their list of antagonists is longer than ever. In the first season, The Byrdes had landed in Missouri. There, financial adviser Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman) and his wife Wendy (Laura Linney) had to somehow find a way to launder $500m for a criminal cartel. The word “Ozark” had a certain obscure mystery, at least to non-American viewers. Ozark sounds like dark: spiky z’s and k’s.  

Ozark’s unexpected triumph is partly down to those old-fashioned qualities of writing, acting and directing. Classic. Ozark’s violent twists and dark mood are leavened with intelligent humour. In the face of all this misery, what is there to do but wisecrack? It has a distinctive gloomy aesthetic all of its own, which makes oppressive use of the landscape, all looming forests and brackish water, lit in milky sunshine. In Laura Linney’s brilliant hands, Wendy has evolved from something like a stock wife into an unpredictable, power-thirsty anti-heroine all of her own. Although Jason Bateman was best known for holding the erratic Bluth family together in Arrested Development, he had shown in Juno that he could be a really creepy nice guy. 

His shifty smile told you that for all his outward respectability, in another world he could do shady things. In Ozark, he has been able to show just how immoral, sleazy, and tricksy anti-hero Marty has become. Ironically, Ozark has superseded the original potential Breaking Bad had once long time ago. Especially if you think Breaking Bad might have been a bit overrated. Of all the great TV dramas since The Sopranos, it is only Mad Men that portrayed a rather optimistic view of America, and that was set in the postwar glow of the Fifties and Sixties. It certainly says something that so many of the country’s great dramas are about drugs. Breaking Bad dealt with meth, Better Call Saul deals with meth, too. Dopesick was a devastating portrayal of the opioid crisis caused by the Sackler family. 

Ozark also plays out against the legacy of the opioid epidemic, with its lingering boost for the heroin market. Baltimore, Albuquerque, or the Lake of the Ozarks: these are the left-behind places of America, far away from technology gold-rush or clean-living finance executives. Drugs turn the individual against themselves, and the drug trade turns Americans against each other. In a subtly different scenario, Marty, a drab financial adviser, would never have been obligated to operate in this shadow world. It’s not just these individuals that have broken, but the system has, too. Linney’s and Bateman’s outstanding performances are the reason this despicable pair can be so enjoyable to watch while they go wallowing into their moral misery. During its four seasons, the Byrdes become less sympathetic, less relatable. 

Specially, Wendy leaves behind our initial sympathy we had for her as a mom screwed out of the labor force after a depressive episode following her miscarriage. Marty might have made the deal with the devil, but only with her blessing. And once Wendy realizes that her strategic power can surpass that of her husband, she appears chilling, insane, and using up every benefit of the doubt afforded to educated white women. Wendy becomes a more formidable presence with every passing episode. She has her reasons for her behaviour, though. Camila Navarro was relentless in her vengeance, and even Clare Shaw did not hesitate to put her self-preservation first. Paradoxically, the Byrdes have distinguished from other criminal characters being unusually effective by manipulating people who are often worse than them. It’s like the show finally found its footing by being its unabashed self: hyperbolic, dizzying, and unwilling to give real redemption to Wendy and Marty. While previous seasons had relished in plenty of deaths, those killed were by no means innocent bystanders. 

They all had blood in their hands, and the world was probably better off without them. With the exception of Ben. As it's made apparent in the series conclusion, Ben's ashes will follow the seemingly indestructible Byrde family forever. Unlike Breaking Bad, Ozark wasn’t really a story about a family’s fall from grace. It was a story about how a system built up around the American middle class family is already rotten. Shaw Medical is going nowhere. The Navarro cartel will continue to thrive, thanks, in no small part, to the FBI’s dependence on the cash seizures it can get from them. The Byrdes will get to play do-gooders thanks to their foundation. It is a tale as old as America, but television has not always had such a pessimistic outlook. In this sense, the show was unflinching in its critique of the American Dream. Source: www.independent.co.uk

“The question of whether America is in decline cannot be answered yes or no. Both answers are wrong, because the assumption that somehow there exists some predetermined inevitable trajectory, the result of uncontrollable external forces, is wrong. Nothing is inevitable. Nothing is written. For America today, decline is not a condition. Decline is a choice.” —American political columnist for The Washington Post -and Pulitzer Prize winner in 1987- Charles Krauthammer (1950-2018)

"A Hard Way to Go": the bleak ending of Ozark

Wendy Byrde (the exquisite Laura Linney), has checked herself into a mental hospital in an attempt to prevent her father, Nathan (Richard Thomas), from taking their kids back with him to North Carolina. Wendy might be a terrible parent, but she refuses to let her children suffer at the hands of Nathan, an alcoholic who was sometimes abusive to her as a kid. Marty has finally reached a breaking point as he attempts to simultaneously assuage the cartel, the FBI, and his family, so if Ruth doesn’t help him win back his kids, he might tell the cartel that she killed Javi. Marty meets with Camila, Omar’s sister and the Byrde family’s ally as they attempt to a) kill Omar and b) fulfill their deal with the FBI. They sketch out their plan, which involves a cell transfer in which Omar will “escape” only to get gunned down, and Camila will take over the cartel, so long as she continues making regular payments to America's finest law enforcement agency. But Camila wants to meet with the FBI first to soothe any doubts, and Marty agrees. Meanwhile, Ruth confronts Wendy at the mental hospital, where she tells her she’ll try to get the kids back on her side. 

Ruth finally admits she’s sorry for letting Ben (Tom Pelphrey), Wendy’s brother, out of the same exact mental hospital last season. If she’d have left him alone, despite his suffering, he’d still be alive. Ruth withdraws a gun from her safe and visits Nathan in his motel room at the Lazy O, with the premise of toasting Ben's life and death. For the first few minutes of their conversation, Ruth and Nathan discuss Wendy’s “reputation” for promiscuity, a trait Nathan clearly resented. “Well, you beat her,” Ruth says, with a sweet smile. After Nathan’s face falls—“How's that?”—her eyelashes flutter. “You won! You got Jonah and Charlotte!” But we know the act won’t last long, and within minutes, Ruth’s switched off the doe-eyes. “You don't even fucking want them, do you?” she asks. Increasingly agitated as the conversation grows frosty, Nathan admits his real intentions: He only wants custody over Charlotte and Jonah to punish his daughter. “She was a slut and an embarrassment,” he says. As he turns to place the whiskey bottle on ice, Ruth pulls out her gun and shoots a glass on the counter, exploding it into pieces. Charlotte and Jonah come running, and Ruth demands Nathan tell them the truth behind his custody battle—or she’ll shoot him in the dick. (This show has a thing for dick-shooting.)

Showrunner Chris Mundy says: “Marty and Wendy love each other, but they’re also the only two people who have lived through this. How can they have a normal relationship with anybody else or in any other situation?” After leaving the mental hospital as a family, Wendy has accomplished her task of getting the gang back together. As she climbs into the passenger seat, she shoots Marty a sweet, almost bashful smile. “You really didn't have to threaten Ruth,” she says, as if it’s the most romantic gesture her husband has ever attempted. In the Byrdes’s love language, it probably is. Season 4 has spent many of its best Marty-Wendy scenes emphasizing the dynamics of their marriage: Wendy pushes for control, and Marty acquiesces, in part because she's erratic, but also because he loves her. (Keep in mind that, in Ozark’s pilot episode, Marty spent the first half obsessed with the fact that his wife was cheating on him, and the second half desperately trying to protect her.) Whether or not it’s true, he feels, by now, that everything he’s done this season—going to Mexico, cooperating with the FBI, distancing from Ruth—is for his wife. Marty visits Ruth to confirm Nelson’s at the bottom of her pool. Marty offers to give her a new identity after Omar's assassination, but Ruth refuses: “I like my name.” So Marty invites her, as the casino's new ownership, to meet with the cartel and FBI, where they’ll hammer down the details of their laundering arrangement. Source: elle.com

Showrunner Chris Mundy tells Vanity Fair that the writers room argued spiritedly about which of the show’s still-standing characters, Byrdes included, would survive the finale—considering that so many people who crossed Marty and Wendy during their criminal descent wound up dead. Ultimately, the room wrote the finale in accordance with its season-four credo: “Building a myth. Creating a curse.” But in plotting out the death of Ruth, it was important to Mundy that her fate be self-propelled. So Ruth’s death is a direct result of her decision to avenge Wyatt’s death by killing Javi. “I wanted everybody to have active choices in the last seven episodes,” says Mundy, pointing out that Ruth had a decision to make after Javi killed her cousin Wyatt. “Ruth could go for revenge or not, and she knows if she did, it is going to unleash things that might end up with her getting harmed. People keep saying Ruth got caught in the crossfire of the Byrdes, but Ruth's actual death had nothing to do with the Byrdes. Ruth killed Javi, and the Byrdes tried to help her stop it but Ruth held them at gunpoint. Wyatt's death happened because of his association with Darlene, not the Byrdes. Darlene even had positioned against the Byrdes and had crossed the cartel. The Byrdes couldn't save Ruth or they all would've gotten killed. They actually showed remorse and were trying to think of anything they could do to stop it, including calling a hitman, but everything was in play already...” 

The show winds down after Ruth’s death with a coda scene in which the Byrde family returns home to find Mel (Adam Rothenberg), the private investigator who had been looking into Ben’s death. Mel’s holding the cookie jar containing Ben’s ashes, and reveals that he has discovered that Wendy offered up her brother like the ultimate sacrificial lamb in her quest for power. “You don’t get it, do you?” Mel tells Wendy and Marty, in their backyard. “You don’t get to win. You don’t get to be the Kochs or the Kennedys or whatever fucking royalty you people think you are. The world doesn’t work like that.” At that moment, Jonah appears with a shotgun—a callback to the season-one finale, in which Jonah pulls a gun on Garcia only to find out it is unloaded. (Buddy, played by Harris Yulin, saved the day.) This time, though, the gun is loaded. Jonah pulls the trigger, the screen cuts to black, and a gunshot is heard—meaning that the Byrdes have miraculously survived Ozark’s deadly fate. In a way, Mundy says, Jonah killing Mel signifies “the family being brought back together through this act of violence.” The showrunner wanted to end the series on a note so unexpected that it took viewers a beat to process whether Jonah killing Mel is “a thing to cheer for or not.” He adds, “We wanted people to think about the reality of what happened, not just in the context of watching a TV show, but also in whatever reality these characters are going to keep living in.” Source: www.vanityfair.com

Ozark Season 4 Part 2 Theories

I spent an embarrassingly long amount of time dissecting the trailer of Ozark Season 4 Part 2. Wendy is my favorite character, and I just want her and Marty to somehow come out of this together. Unlikely chance, but one can dream. Based on the trailer, Netflix stills, and comments I’ve read from the show runner and actors themselves: Wendy is clearly headed towards a mental breakdown. She cannot accept what she did to her brother Ben and she is basically dissociating. She’s so consumed with guilt and grief that I think she’s beginning to truly believe the lie she started on Season 4 Part 1 - that he is missing. 

From what the show runner said, it sounds like they will be focusing more on Wendy’s mental issues. So I’m assuming she’s going to do some more crazy things when it comes to “looking for Ben.” I think Marty will be conflicted about Wendy's choices so far. I do not know what’s going to happen with Javi. Maybe Ruth shoots and kills him right away and that sets everything into motion. Either way, Navarro has to begrudgingly use Marty and Wendy to find a way back on top. So Marty goes to Mexico to take care of businesses. I wonder what role Javi’s mom will play? Meanwhile Wendy could be at home dealing with detective Mel and her dad looking into Ben’s disappearance. Maybe she’s confronted by them with a photo. I’m sure it’ll all blow up and Marty will learn about it when he gets back. 

Somehow they have a plan to meet up with the FBI as discussed in the van. Jonah is with them probably because he has nowhere else to go, but he’s still pissed at Wendy. Wendy seems like she’s on a relaxed mood but Marty is iffy. I think the significance of the car crash is that it’ll be the thing that brings the family together. They will realize they only have each other and could lose each other at any moment. It’ll change their perspective. I think it’ll happen maybe in the penultimate episode. Perhaps this will be the event that snaps Wendy back into reality. I think the Foundation event will happen and it will be real. 

But something will go wrong. And somehow at the last minute, the Byrdes might come out on top. They’ve outsmarted everyone (both intentionally and not intentionally) so far and have elevated themselves higher and higher each season. So everyone expects them to die or go to prison, but instead they’ll “win.” Other theories I’ve seen: Wendy gets committed at some point, Marty or Wendy betray each other (I don’t think that will happen), or they will be killed at their big event. If I'm remembering correctly, Navarro's relationship with his sister is strained, and the reason he brought up the whole "those closest to you are the first to abandon you" speech. I’d like to hope Ruth and Marty end on good terms regardless of what happens. I have a hard time truly feeling bad for her because most of what has happened to her family is her fault or at least a result of things she’s done. I do feel bad about the guilt and grief she must feel over Wyatt. 

I don’t think we know who attacks Wendy. I don't think it's Jonah, Sam, or her dad. Wendy is trying to get the Byrde name out there, the brand, very publicly. Perhaps it is someone related to the rehab centers or someone who knew Ben. I think Marty sees Wendy get attacked by some man, reacts emotionally, and pounds the guy. He just snaps. I think he looks so upset walking away because he is coming off adrenaline for snapping. There is another scene in the trailer where Wendy is being attacked again. It looks like she is being dragged up some stairs. I am 99% sure that it is her dad. I saw a still of him wearing the same clothing. Seems like he was abusive to her as a child. Maybe he finds out what happened to Ben. I also think the poster that shows Wendy dead-eyed with blood on her head is after whatever this incident is. It looks like the same colonial brick building in the background. Perhaps a court house, a police station, a church? Source: medium.com

Bruce Willis stepping away from his film career

The news of Bruce Willis’s retirement on health grounds brings its own special kind of sadness. Admittedly, he has been booking some dodgy films in the last year or so – I recently sat through a pretty sorry action thriller called Out of Death with Bruce in his comfort zone as the retired cop who has to take on a terrifying situation. But even there, Willis’s coolly amiable, faintly contemptuous, always battle-ready presence sprinkled a little much-needed vinegar in the blandness. And so often in so many different kinds of film, Bruce Willis has been the wild card, an iconic action hero with a heart and tons of humor.

He has been the archetypal super-testosterone male-pattern, the guy who made wearing a vest – not a t-shirt, a vest – look iconic. Despite being the rebel with bullshit-detector on high alert, Bruce has often been cast as the authority figure. For all of us, he will always be the legendary maverick warrior-cop John McClane in Die Hard saving his estranged wife in a high-rise office block on Christmas (perhaps saving Christmas itself) with that bizarre battle-cry: “Yippee-kai-ay, motherfucker!” and putting the all-American smackdown on loathsome Euro-Brit terrorist bad guys like Alan Rickman and Jeremy Irons. But what a superbly subtle, gentle performance as child psychologist Dr Malcolm Crowe in M Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense, deeply troubled by the state of his marriage. Somehow, the film’s whiplash final twist does not diminish Willis who maintains a plain-speaking humorous dignity throughout.

In Wes Anderson’s comedy Moonrise Kingdom he plays another cop, the quietly spoken small town officer Captain Sharp who has to deputise kids in the local scout troop for the search party when two young lovers go missing. It’s such a lovely, gentle performance – maybe my absolute favourite of his. But for sheer impact, it can’t match his great performance as Butch Coolidge in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction: the punchy prizefighter with the troubled childhood memories who contrives to kill the hitman sent to kill him for winning a fight he’d been bribed to throw – and then rescues the guy who wants to kill him from an awful fate.

Willis, the grizzle-haired tough guy with a sense of humour, is the only actor who could have carried off this supremely bizarre role and even endow it with sympathy and even underdog charm. It’s so sad for all of us that Willis will not take any more movie roles. It’s like seeing a great sports star suddenly getting an injury or a sandwich shop deciding to withdraw one of its tastiest flavours. All we can do is wish all the best to Bruce and his family for a happy retirement. Source: theguardian.com

Jessica Chastain (Oscar Contender) shines in "The Eyes of Tammy Faye"

Jessica Chastain’s portrayal of the notorious American television evangelist and gospel singer Tammy Faye is at the moment the favorite contender in the battle of the biopics which is dominating the Best Actress category at this year’s Oscars race. Chastain will go up against Nicole Kidman (Being the Ricardos), Kristen Stewart (Spencer) and Penelope Cruz (Madres Paralelas). Chastain had her eye on Tammy’s story since 2012 when she bought the rights to a documentary made in 2000 by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato. Unlike Jerry Falwell, who had a selective view of those eligible for a block of heavenly real estate, Tammy Faye Bakker was convinced that all would be welcomed into the afterlife. As a result, she openly defended gay rights and advocated support for AIDS sufferers when her church was stigmatising them. 

In "The Eyes of Tammy Faye," Vincent D’Onofrio plays Jerry Falwell as a gruff power broker who considers gay people to be evil, and we see, through him, how the new Christianity will market itself, competing with secular America on its own corrupt terms. Tammy Faye, by contrast, is chirpy and volatile, but by offering God’s embrace to people with AIDS, she shows what true Christianity is: love versus what some Christian sects around her are turning (into hate towards the misfits).

"Fall From Grace" TV film, 1990: Kevin Spacey as Jim Bakker, and Bernadette Peters as Tammy Faye Bakker.

Tammy’s abundant cosmetic armoury–wigs, false eyelashes, tattooed eye and lip liner–is showier over the years, as if she’s afraid she might disappear without it. Chastain herself does the opposite and disappears into it – yet it’s not a performance made up of prosthetics and mannerisms. Chastain catches the fear beneath the pretence, along with Tammy’s urgent desire to maintain her vision of herself as a good person despite the hypocrisy that underpins her existence. Although Chastain was at first a bit suspicious of devoutly religious people, she learned a valuable lesson through Tammy Faye's character. 

Jessica Chastain: “In some sense, Tammy Faye's openness is something we all have. We all have this earnestness inside of us, but it’s taken out of us by the cruelness police. There is so much celebration of that cynicism nowadays. Random acts of love are sometimes seen as weakness, and, in reality, I see that as courageous and brave and beautiful. We are trained to make fun of that, so I had to get over that, and it made me so much happier. As I was studying her, I found her to be a very sensual person in all aspects. I saw that in how she hugged strangers or how she tasted food. Tammy grew up in a community that was Pentecostal, and there were so many restrictions. Tammy talks in her book about how could God not love something that makes you feel beautiful, that makes you feel loved and makes you feel joy. For her, God and faith didn’t equal deprivation.” Source: www.smh.com.au

The most boring person in the world has been revealed by University of Essex research—and it is a religious data entry worker, who likes watching TV, and lives in a small town. The paper, published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (March 8, 2022) also discovered the dullest hobbies were seen to be religion, watching TV, bird watching and smoking. Boring people were also perceived to live in small cities and towns. Led by the Department of Psychology’s Dr Wijnand Van Tilburg, the research revealed that stereotypically boring people are generally avoided due to preconceptions. Van Tilburg explained: “The irony is studying boredom is actually very interesting and has many real-life impacts. Perceptions can change but people may not take time to speak to those with ‘boring’ jobs and hobbies, instead choosing to avoid them. They don’t get a chance to prove people wrong and break these negative stereotypes. It was interesting to me to see the study showed that boring people were not seen as very competent.” Dr Van Tilburg added: “The truth of the matter is people like bankers and accountants are highly capable and have power in society—perhaps we should try not to upset them and stereotype them as boring!” According the study, the top five most boring jobs are: Data Analysis, Accounting, Tax/Insurance, Banking, and Cleaning tasks. The top five most exciting jobs considered are: Performing Arts, Science, Journalism, Health/Medicine, and Teaching. —“Boring People: Stereotype Characteristics, Interpersonal Attributions, and Social Reactions” by Wijnand A. P. van Tilburg, 8 March 2022, published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Source: www.essex.ac.uk

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

Floyd Mutrux's "Aloha Bobby and Rose" (1975), Jean-Luc Godard's "Breathless" (1960)

In 1971, Floyd Mutrux made his directorial debut with the critically-acclaimed docudrama Dusty and Sweets McGee. Despite the film’s rave reviews, Warner Bros. pulled the picture from release after only one week after Time magazine questioned its graphic depiction of drug addiction. That same year, Mutrux wrote and produced The Christian Licorice Store, and found screenwriting work on Monte Hellman’s classic Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) starring Beach Boys' Dennis Wilson and Laurie Bird. During this period, Variety predicted that the five greatest directors to emerge from the so-called “New Hollywood” era would be Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Floyd Mutrux, Martin Scorsese, and Terrence Malick. In 1975, Mutrux wrote and directed Aloha, Bobby and Rose for Columbia Pictures. Filmed for a mere $60,000, Mutrux’s lovers on the road worked as a sort of homage to Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960). Mutrux then helmed the seminal rock-and-roll film American Hot Wax (1978), which has since become a cult hit—despite its prolonged absence on the DVD market—earning Mutrux accolades and rave reviews. For his work on the film, Village Voice dubbed him the year’s Best Director in 1978.

As LA Weekly film writer Chuck Stephens observed, Mutrux was a “white-light guy in the white-heat moment of New Hollywood. His films were funny, freaky, dangerous as rock-and-roll, and portended a potential combination of Mean Streets edginess and Badlands beauty.” However, due to a string of films which have been shelved, rewritten by others, or continue to languish in development hell, Mutrux remains a virtual unknown. After directing the mainstream comedy The Hollywood Knights (1980), Mutrux took a lengthy hiatus from filmmaking. It’s interesting to note that Mutrux has sold over ten screenplays in Hollywood, but most of them have not yet been produced. He conceived and co-wrote Brian De Palma’s hit film The Untouchables (1987), but did not receive any screen credit. In 1990, Mutrux served as executive producer on Warren Beatty’s film Dick Tracy. In 1994, Mutrux returned to the director’s chair for the comedy There Goes My Baby, a semi-nostalgic film set in 1964, starring Dermot Mulroney and Kelli Williams. While the film was well-received, it fell victim to an untimely bankruptcy at Orion Pictures and received a limited release. Some of Floyd Mutrux's favorite films are: From Here to Eternity (1953), Giant (1956), Shoot the Piano Player (1960)—based on David Goodis' novel—, Breathless (1960), Jules et Jim (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), Chinatown (1974), and Pulp Fiction (1994).

-Andrew Rausch: Variety magazine once predicted that the five greatest directors to emerge from the seventies would be Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Terrence Malick, and Floyd Mutrux. But after filming The Hollywood Knights, you took a fourteen-year hiatus from filmmaking. What happened?

-Floyd Mutrux: Look, I have a lot of regrets. I made a lot of choices that were not smart. I went on to work on a lot of projects that never got made, and wound up feeling sorry for myself. In that period in the late seventies, early eighties, I just sort of dropped out. The pictures I cared about weren’t getting made. I just disappeared from the scene. Then I wrote a lot of scripts. Some executives I knew from the studios got fired, and the pictures I’d written got shelved. Sometimes I feel like the movie business betrayed me, but that’s kind of a whiny attitude. Basically, I don’t give a fuck because the movie business betrayed itself. It makes a lot of shit now. It’s almost unwatchable. There are no longer any movies you really want to go see. Name your ten best pictures of the last five years, and they don’t compare to the best of the Golden Age, the fifties, the sixties, or the seventies. —Fifty Filmmakers: Conversations with Directors (2008) by Andrew Rausch

Aloha, Bobby and Rose: There’s a good chance you’ve never heard of Floyd Mutrux, and that’s a shame, because he directed two of the great American movies of the 1970s (no small accomplishment, that). One was the infectiously energetic (and, these days, impossible to find) early-rock snapshot American Hot Wax; the other is this foggy 1975 delight, in which Paul Le Mat and Diane Hull high-tail it out of Hollywood when a date-night prank turns deadly. But Mutrux handily transcends the cliches of the “lovers on the run” movie, thanks to the oddball sadness of his characters and the wild unpredictability of his storytelling. Aloha Bobby and Rose is a primo portrait of 1970’s existential aimlessness disguised as a drive-in movie and is audaciously shot by William Fraker, one of the truly gifted cinematographers of the era. Aloha takes us back to the low-rent L.A. setting to show us how a smidgen of fatality propells the story through its star-crossed lover scenario. Bobby is an unambitious auto mechanic who drives a souped-up ’67 Camaro. When his co-worker Moxey shows enough initiative to apply to transmission school, Bobby derides such blatant careerism. Who wants to wake up that early? 

Bobby is played by Paul LeMat, fresh of his tough guy role as John Milner in American Graffiti. Diane Hull plays Rose, a single mother whose life seems so stifled her boozy mom encourages her to kick loose and go out with Bobby when he delivers her car from the garage. While on their date a dumb prank spirals out of control (leading to one of the cinema’s freakiest car crashes) and the two set off for Mexico in an attempt to escape the law. The 1970’s were the last time that popular films would be so casually fatalistic. Much like DeNiro’s character in Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973), Bobby is a character that seems less likely to survive the film the more we get to know him. Apparently nearly broke throughout the entire film, Bobby seems to have no visible support, dreams or prospects. He’s more passive than self-destructive but his insouciance seems so profound you can’t imagine the future having a place for this guy. The “Aloha” of the title is a reference to a passing thought about running off to Hawaii, a dream Bobby and Rose seem to choose because of its very improbability.

Diane Hull makes her under-written role appear truly poetic and vivid. But the real star of this film is cinematographer William Fraker. The former President of the American Society of Cinematographers, Fraker shot some of the iconic films of the sixties and seventies, including ROSEMARY’S BABY and BULLITT. In ALOHA he seems to have been given a free hand to shoot some of his boldest work, as Fraker delivers a pictorial essay of L.A. at night. As Bobby and Rose escape towards the Mexican border they end up briefly riding with another couple, Buford and Donna Sue. Played by Tim McIntire (who had a mesmerizing turn playing rock and roll pioneer Alan Freed in Mutrux’s following film AMERICAN HOT WAX) and Leigh French (of the San Francisco comedy group The Committee), this duo pretends to epitomize the American Dream to Bobby and Rose. Buford wears a cowboy hat, owns a Cadillac and with his old lady Donna Sue, seems to just drive around and raise hell wherever he goes. Rose barely tries to play along, quietly distressed at Bobby’s boyish admiration for this insufferable blowhard.

But there’s no future in being this guy’s lackey and with no real place to run Bobby and Rose have no choice but to turn around the Mexican border and meet their fate. At 88 minutes, ALOHA plays like an American take on BREATHLESS, succeeding at what American films do best: taking a pulpy and recognizable genre and revving it up with an individualistic personal vision. Now, almost 50 years later, ALOHA BOBBY AND ROSE’s period stylizations have mellowed beautifully, turning what might have been a tossed-off youth film into a dreamy, blissed-out and tragic reverie. Source: flavorwire.com

Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless is a film driven by a series of paradoxes which appear to present mainstream film elements yet subvert them throughout. Godard’s use of key imagery and character traits from the Hollywood film noir genre to create an internal dissonance by visually, such as the lighting of Michel, representing the inverted Hollywood film noir protagonist, using jarring cuts to disorient the viewer. The character of Michel is a direct reference to the archetypal Hollywood film noir male protagonist: he is dressed in a fedora and suit; smokes constantly; provides narration; he sees himself as a seducer of women,  engages in “tough guy” banter; he knows his femme fatale counterpart, Patricia, on the street as she tries to sell him newspapers. While Michel exhibits these traits which initially seem to categorise him as a mainstream Hollywood character, Godard challenges this characterisation through mise-en-scène and negating his protagonist’s overtly masculine dialogue by making him vulnerable visually and in his discourse with the quintessential femme fatale. 

During the scene in which Michel speaks with Patricia as she tries to sell newspapers, the power assigned to the Hollywood film noir male protagonist is given to the woman; even before Michel engages in conversation with Patricia, he has already been disempowered because of how the conversation is begun: Godard chose to have Michel look for Patricia in multiple places until finally finding her, rather than have the female chase after the male’s attention. This dynamic continues throughout and is made increasingly prominent as Michel and Patricia’s conversation progresses. Although the conversation has begun with Michel mocking Patricia, the formation of the misogynistic male archetype is subverted when Godard has Michel talk about his feelings, a subject about which Patricia has no interest in speaking. In having Michel harass Patricia with incessant declarations of love, which continue throughout the film, and speak about his sadness, Michel loses his film noir male protagonist categorisation. 

This paradox of the sensitive gangster created for the viewer is extremely difficult to reconcile and insists in the duration of the bedroom scene as in the rest of the film; soon after Michel acts as the antithesis of the mainstream Hollywood criminal, Godard again disrupts the audience’s attempt to label Michel as either being film noir or anti-film noir when he finishes the conversation with Michel stating in an authoritative and suddenly masculine tone that he has to find someone who owes him money, reintroducing Michel as the fearsome and forceful man character. Godard further argues against film noir’s governing male protagonist in a verbal, and visual, contradiction through Patricia’s stealing of Michel’s narration. At the ending of the film, as Michel speaks, Patricia begins to narrate for the audience and delivers her internal monologue as the camera follows her and ignores Michel, the first instance in which this occurs in the film. This rejection of the male protagonist, which would not occur in mainstream film noir, further disempowers and dissociates Michel from not only being a gangster, but as a leading character in the film. 

Furthermore, since Godard subjects his other characters to filmic darkness, Michel appears vulnerable in comparison to his counterparts by being more visible; other characters in Breathless are allowed to hide visually through the shadows while Michel is unable to do so, akin to the powerlessness Godard verbally represented through Michel’s conversations with Patricia. The final way in which Michel as a character is robbed of power and dignity is the final scene, in which he dies. When Michel is shot by the police, Godard films Michel running, injured, away from the police while Patricia runs after him. In showing the viewer only Michel in one frame then only Patricia as she runs after him and never together creates a haunting power dynamic; by filming them both separately, Godard defines visually the person who is running away and the person who chases him relentlessly, rather than making it appear as though Patricia and Michel are running together as equals by putting them together in the frame. In making this impactful decision, Godard characterises Patricia as the hunter and Michel as the hunted, wounded animal which cannot comprehend its inability to physically run from death. The visual emasculating of a potential film noir protagonist is further impressed upon the viewer when Godard films Michel lying on the ground on his back overhead with the police and Patricia’s feet encircling him, their bodies thereby being made to seem indomitable by comparison, then finishing the film with Patricia speaking and looking directly into the camera, reclaiming the film from Michel, now forcibly removed by Patricia's betrayal.

A major paradox to Breathless is its presentation to the audience of what would structurally appear to be a mainstream film noir in that the major features of the film are centralised around a gangster, money, and a femme fatale, while visually, it is a totally unique departure from the genre to the extent that it transcends its categorisation. A radical component of the filming of Breathless is that the camera is at eye-level with its characters for most of the film; rather than physically moving the camera by utilising high or low-angle shots to set the tone of a scene, Godard instead uses jarring and sudden cuts to create motion in the film. In the beginning scene of the film, in which Michel drives the stolen car along a road flanked by trees, and during the nighttime scene towards the end of the film in which Michel and Patricia converse in another stolen car, for instance, the audience is confronted with an unsettling dissonance: while the car continues to move forward, as does the narration or conversation, without interruption, the background as a result of the cuts, stutters and changes abruptly. 

This in itself creates another paradox embedded in this film: the logical nature of physical and verbal forward movement contrasted against an illogical background of the unexpected disruption of an assumed forward moving scenery. Also, the opening of Breathless is “unprecedented,” in that we never learn what route brought Michel Poiccard to the Vieux Port of Marseille, where he surveys the future from the very edge of France. This first shot strikes a match to touch off an oil fire that will race through the film’s incidents and images, indeed through the New Wave altogether. We can feel Godard’s own outlaw freedom in this sequence, carjacking a Hollywood genre and putting it into drive. The film lurches forward as he shifts up with wild shot changes; it charges ahead on bursts of music and sound effects, and on Belmondo’s spontaneous speeches. Breathless is still the definitive manifesto of the New Wave. The movement was well under way when Godard made his entrée. In a much-discussed 1957 inquest, the pop­u­lar weekly L’express had dubbed the ascendant generation “la nouvelle vague.” Claude Chabrol had come out before the triumph of François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows and Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima mon amour at Cannes in spring 1959. But Breathless sealed the movement, defining it as simultaneously nonchalant and sophisticated. In Breathless, Belmondo gave to his character an engaging insouciance that resonated with Godard’s unapologetic way of making his film. 

Jean Seberg, though a well-known ingenue (particularly at Cahiers du cinéma, on whose cover she appeared in February 1958), likewise plays at finding her character—perhaps at finding herself, an American in Paris—as she adopts pose after pose for close-ups that come to make up over 20 percent of the film. Similarly, the editing and music constitute elements as well as signifiers of tone and rhythm, visually and aurally structuring our experience. Godard’s writings have always sounded brash, yet his earliest projects often sang the purity of artistic expression. Poe, Baudelaire and Rimbaud were his models. Godard could write without irony, “What is difficult is to advance into unknown lands, to be aware of the danger, to take risks, to be afraid.” Breathless announces this as its principal theme early on, when Michel Poiccard passes a movie poster advertising Robert Aldrich’s Ten Seconds to Hell: “Live Dangerously Until the End!” 

Godard believed that the powerful writers of the past (Stendhal, for instance, who provided the epigraph for Godard’s scenario) would surely have been auteurs of cinema in the mid-twentieth century. Long before Gilles Deleuze, Godard called on popular genres—the musical, the western, and of course the film noir—to address the philosophical issues of his day. Sartre, after all, had worked in film, as had Malraux, who lent his personal support to get The 400 Blows to Cannes. Merciless and intrepid, Godard took himself to be a loner even within the Cahiers du cinéma clan, tying genuine art to courage and solitude. “The cinema is not a craft. It is an art. It does not mean teamwork. One is always alone on the set as before the blank page. And to be alone? means to ask questions. And to make films means to answer them. Nothing could be more classically romantic.” Source: criterion.com

Weird Love Stories: "Strawberry Mansion" (2021), "Aloha, Bobby and Rose" (1975)

Few directors are able to truly grasp dream logic and the surreal flights of fancy that accompany such subject matters. David Lynch’s name comes to mind, given his ability to craft intricate narratives surrounding the imaginary waking world. While the term "Lynchian" is often misconstrued, applied to anything that defies comprehension from a surrealist point of view, this is exactly how Albert Birney and Kentucker Audley’s Strawberry Mansion (2021) can be defined. Combining the delightful and the absurd, Strawberry Mansion is a sweet triumph, an ode to imagination, and a manifesto on the wonders of love. Anabella Isadora (Penny Fuller), is a widow who has not filed her dream taxes in years, as they have been recorded on VHS tapes instead of the mandatory “airsticks.” A maze of conspiracy is revealed: the government surreptitiously places products in people’s dreams, and the taxes imposed are ones that infringe on our innermost desires. Bella is aware of this, and the younger Bella (Grace Glowicki), whose dreams James Preble (Kentucker Audley) is auditing, comes off as mysterious, propelling the dream auditor to fall in love with her. And it is the kind of love that helps shatter the boundaries of reality and dreams, freeing the imagination in the most whimsical of ways, crafting a way for a world where anything is possible.

Considering Strawberry Mansion was made on a scant budget and the filmmakers wear their “go-along-with-your-wildest-visions” badge with pride, the film is a triumph in every sense of the term. Audley and Glowicki play star-crossed lovers divided by the oceans of space, time, and dreams, imbuing their bond with a special brand of whimsical authenticity worth rooting for. Even when the film stretches the limits of imagination, everything is still believable from a dream-logic perspective. There are so many fun connections here: shades of Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Stranger Than Fiction, The Congress, and even Kusturica's haunting Arizona Dream, where the four insomniac protagonists wander in and out of each others' often-incompatible dream worlds. Rather, the film’s low-budget virtuosity comes off as an end in itself—as a vital example of possibilities untapped, as an act of resistance to reclaim fantasy for independent filmmaking, for imagination that pays no rent to the overlords of intellectual propriety. Sources: rogerebert.com and newyorker.com

Watching 1975's Aloha, Bobby and Rose on long-time awaited Blu-ray (2018), courtesy of Scorpion Releasing, I became convinced that Floyd Mutrux could have been a great American director and that we failed him. There is so much Americana in Aloha, Bobby and Rose that it should be a movie talked about in the same breath as Badlands (1973). This is the movie that Jim McBride's remake of New Weave classic Breathless wanted to be, and I say that as a fan of Jim McBride's Breathless (1983). Mutrux's film is a neo-noirish poem (which dates back to Gun Crazy) that seeks beauty -- and when it can't locate it invents it -- and then unapologetically indulges in it until it reaches a state of delirium. Bobby (Paul Le Mat, who played John Milner in George Lucas' American Graffiti, 1973) and Rose (Diane Hull, who played Ellen Anderson in Elia Kazan's The Arrangement, 1969) are very much in love, but their future seems bleak. He works at a tiny LA gas station while she struggles to be a good mother. While out in the city Bobby and Rose stop at a convenience store to pick up drinks. When Bobby decides to pull a prank, the owner empties his rifle and accidentally kills the young man behind the counter. The lovers panic and instead of waiting for the police to arrive jump in Bobby's '68 Camaro and disappear into the night. 

Mutrux's film offers one of the purest nostalgia trips that one could get without being placed in an actual time machine. The story and journey that the film chronicles are simply astonishing. The director had a modest budget to work with which is why he incorporated a lot of authentic footage and yet this is precisely the reason why the whole thing feels so special now. From the trendy billboards to the busy fast-food joints to the darker corners of old Hollywood, this film oozes an unfiltered '70s atmosphere that is incredibly attractive. Adding to the magic is a brilliant soundtrack with classic tunes by the likes of Elton John ("Tiny Dancer" and "Bennie and the Jets"), Lenny Welch ("Since I Fell for You"), Stevie Wonder ("Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours"), and Little Eva ("Locomotion"). Some of the segments where the music is used are so nicely done and are so effective that they easily could have replaced the trailers that were cut to promote the film. Mutrux made the film with his best friend, William Fraker, who a few years earlier had lensed Bullitt and Rosemary's Baby. It's a secret American classic (The New Yorker's critic Richard Brody called it "a minor masterwork of doomed romanticism") and makes me think the industry somehow did Floyd Mutrux dirty, because if he had a movie like this in him, they needed to have given Mutrux a vote of confidence. Source: blu-ray.com