Don't Worry Darling (2022)

R for being aggressively sexual at times.  I don't actually know if I saw nudity.  I know I saw near nudity for sure.  But it's more of the actions of sex than the nudity itself. Then it also gets a bit violent, often dealing with ideas of self-harm and suicide.  It's not an easy watch and often balances a horror aesthetic when least expected. Also, there are some questionable moments when it comes to imagery and race.  Very R.

DIRECTOR:  Olivia Wilde

I have so many movies to write about again thanks to Oscar season and here I am writing about Don't Worry Darling.  I have plenty of things to say.  Heck, I hope I have too many things to say.  But I'm also sitting under this bomb of Academy Award nominees and here I am, schlepping Don't Worry Darling, the last movie I watched before the nominees were announced.  (My next movie is the Netflix DVD I watched so I could start getting nominees from Netflix DVD.  My life is very specific and unique.) 

I gotta Elephant-in-the-Room this one.  I often have the following commentary about movies that make a  bigger splash through controversy than people who actually went to see the movie.  I don't know who to sympathize with here.  It's really hard to watch movies when there's controversy in personalities on set and off of set.  A few years ago, my students said I should listen to Harry Styles.  Now, I'm a grown man who didn't need to be listening to music aimed at teeny-boppers (again, proof that I'm of a certain age).  But I also have an Amazon music account and it's no skin off my back. So during dishes for a week, I'd put on some Harry Styles.  Not 1-Direction, mind you.  Just Harry Styles.  I discovered that, while he probably won't be making a ton of money off of me, he is kind of talented and I could listen to him if I was more into music instead of podcasts.  Then I saw that he was this guy who wanted to become an actor and I was very cool with that as well.  But then this is the movie that established him as potentially our next Jared Leto: a singer who becomes a complete diva and toxic influence on set.  It's a shame, because I'm kind of jazzed to see him as Starfox.  

But when we have this kind of drama on set, it taints everything we watch.  It all comes down to that argument of accepting the character over the actor.  As much as I loved Bullet Train, I'm watching old man Brad Pitt do some amazing stunts and amazing acting. Instead of seeing Alice, Jack, Frank, and Bunny; I was watching Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Chris Pine, and Olivia Wilde.  I know it is tempting to throw performances under the bus, but I had no problem with any of the performances. Heck, some of these performances were amazing.  It didn't change the fact that I kept on imagining Harry Styles spitting on Chris Pine.  Or Olivia Wilde dumping Jason Sudekis for Harry Styles.  Or Olivia Wilde begging Florence Pugh to stay and finish the movie because Harry Styles was toxic.  All of these things kept overshadowing a movie that, by its own right, wasn't that bad.  Yeah, the end probably needs a little more work and ambiguity, but it's a functional film that is now almost known for its infamy than its contribution to the cinematic canon. 

But it doesn't stop there.  I know too much about Olivia Wilde and Jason Sudekis at this point. Do I follow either of them?  Not really.  Have I ever Googled either one of them? Nope. Their relationship, somehow, has transcended into the cultural zeitgeist and I feel bad for them.  Okay, I feel bad for him, but that's because I'm a Ted Lasso fan and it probably had to suck to film divorce stuff for that show. What I know about their relationship can fit on a post-it note.  But still, that's more than I really need to know.  Here's my long-winded point: is this movie a commentary not on men, but on Jason Sudekis?  See, I shouldn't have to say that out loud.  I shouldn't have to.  Artists use their real lives as templates.  They write what they know.  But the role of the audience is to be an avatar in this world.  There's the notion of something being universal that needs to stick. Because this movie garnered so much attention behind the scenes, I can't separate (there's no way to not make a divorce or separation reference here) Olivia Wilde from Bunny or Olivia Wilde as filmmaker to include Jason Sudekis as part of the story. The thing is, it probably isn't Jason Sudekis.  It may be Olivia Wilde's anger about Jason Sudekis.

But the idea that Jack is the nice guy inverted archetype keeps resonating with me.  Jack is the villain of the piece.  Even more than Frank is the villain of the piece, the real villain is Jack.  Frank did something really gross to begin with. He extorted men and imprisoned women in a VR world.  Okay, fine.  (I really shouldn't put the crime against men in that sentence, but I did want to stress that he had a lot of crimes happening and none of it was done out of a false sense of altruism.) But if Alice is the main character, the thing keeping her in this golden prison is Jack.  Jack is the one keeping her alive and captive in a room.  Frank, for all of his bluster, isn't there to hold Alice in Jack's apartment. (There's a thin threat that they have to get to Alice's real body, but that seems like an impossibility from moment one.) Frank is society, where the patriarchy lock up their wives in sociological and emotional prisons.  He's the setting.  That makes Jack...Jason Sudekis?

Wilde gives Jack two seconds of sympathy in this movie.  I want to make this clear: there is a difference between likability and sympathy.  We're supposed to like Jack for a lot of the movie.  He's the fun husband who genuinely is attracted to his wife.  He listens to her and somehow seems less misogyinistic compared to his peers.  But that's Wilde setting up the carpet only to tear it away.  We're supposed to like Jack for the inevitable turn to have meaning. But Jack honestly only has a breath to make him sympathetic.  There's a moment told in flashback in the real world.  Alice, revealed to be a talented surgeon, comes home late.  She barely has given any consideration to her spouse (which is supposed to be okay.  To a certain extent it is, people are allowed to be tired.  But it is in this split second that I give him sympathy) and he seems desperate to save their marriage.  Now, Wilde is going out of her way to make him seem like a lunatic.  He hasn't eaten dinner, a passive-aggressive way to mope and manipulate.  It doesn't work, so he then goes to the extreme of kidnapping her and sticking her in a prison.  Okay, I get it.  It's allegory.  Sure. But let him get to that point.

There are almost too many influences on this movie.  Watching the trailer, I thought, "Oh, another Stepford Wives" adaptation.  I mean, that's me dismissing the movie too quickly, considering that I haven't seen any version of The Stepford Wives.  I mean, a lot of this is owed to Get Out and The Master, right?  Okay, Get Out, The Master, and The Matrix, right?  It just seems like there isn't its own movie in here.  I'm a guy who thought that this movie is alright.  But there also is a real problem with a lot of the elements of this movie trying to be other things.  It's because the imagery and the influences are so prevalent without a real understanding of that imagery.  This leads me into something big and it might be a real problem.

I mean, we acknowledge that this is meant to be a progressive movie, right?  I mean, it's a full-on assault against the patriarchy, as it well should be.  Okay, let's talk about that racial casting.  The film, like many Hollywood movies, is primarily White.  There are a few exceptions to the rule about this, most notably Margaret.  Margaret is the precursor to Alice's character.  What happens to Margaret portends what happens to Alice.  Okay, that's cool.  But I can't ignore the fact that Alice, played by Florence Pugh, is a blonde White lady while Margaret is Black.  Now, there is nothing about Margaret's race or status in this community that is analyzed.  You could force something in saying that she is the first community on the outs, but that kind of gets neutered when the same thing happens to the White lady.  The real issue is that Margaret, in a not subtle-at-all way, is meant to be a mirror reflection of Alice. Wilde literally does this.  Alice looks in the mirror to see her reflection as Margaret.  Now, Wilde has this entirely for artistic value.  She's juxtaposing them for effect.  But that means that Alice is not looking in the mirror and seeing race.  She's seeing color.  KiKi Layne is hired for this movie entirely for the shade of her skin, but none of the meaning, culture, or baggage that comes with it.  She's being relegated to a sense of "other" once again.  It's a striking image, but it's an entire backwards way at looking at who Margaret is as a person.

Don't Worry Darling, which is apparently a command --not direct address--isn't as bad as people make it out to be.  It's just mired by a bunch of content that should stay distant from the narrative presented in the movie.  There are parts that are gorgeous and fascinating.  But it also is messy when it shouldn't be messy.  It's unfair to expect perfection with any movie, but when one highlights its mistakes, one can't blame the audience for picking up on those flaws.