It’s serendipitous that I came across the film Passing when I did. I happened to screen it as I’m almost half way through a staggering book about race – and so much more – in America by Isabel Wilkerson titled Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. I’ve been making my way through Caste for about two months now. I’m a notoriously slow reader, and I’ve found myself only able to read so much of this particular book in one sitting. Wilkerson includes gut-wrenching, disturbing examples of the rigid hierarchical system in place in America to keep Black people at the bottom of society, known as a caste system.
The serendipity comes in one text informing and unlocking nuance in the other. It’s easier to recognize, because of what I’ve read in Caste, that everything you see and hear in Passing is a result of white supremacy. The very idea that some members of the subordinated – read: Black – group could gain the privileges and respect of the dominant – read: white – group because their skin is light enough to pass for a white person speaks to the ugly and destructively nonsensical idea of white supremacy and using skin color as a way to asses human worth.
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The best movies about poker are often about more than the game itself. A great example is Rounders. That movie isn’t so much about turning a losing hand into a winner through the power of bluffing as it is loyalty and the limits of friendship. So, too, is screenwriter Aaron Sorkin’s work rarely just about what can be covered in a plot synopsis. The 30-year veteran of stage, TV, and film writing crafted two of the best biopics of this decade with 2010’s The Social Network and 2015’s Steve Jobs. Those films are character studies that seek answers to questions concerning true genius and the uglier traits of driven and brilliant men.
Critics and audiences have often lamented Sorkin’s less deft skill at writing female characters. The women he writes are sometimes two dimensional; they serve to add overwrought hysterics or a love interest to the story. With Molly’s Game, Sorkin has challenged himself to confront this weakness. His protagonist, Molly Bloom, is as driven as the subjects in The Social Network or Steve Jobs. Her story is also as complex, fascinating, and as rewarding of a character study as anything Sorkin has ever written.
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It would be reductive of me to call Yorgos Lanthimos the new Stanley Kubrick. The Greek director responsible for the provocative films Dogtooth, Alps, and my initiation into his twisted imagination, The Lobster, is nothing if not a unique talent. Still, there are certain undeniable Kubrickian flourishes in his new film, The Killing of a Sacred Deer. Chief among them are a penchant for inserting nihilistic black comedy in otherwise bleak subject matter, and his facility with patient, beautiful camera movement and framing. Sacred Deer is one of the most challenging, most disturbing films I’ve seen this year.
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