May December (Todd Haynes, December 1, 2023) Movie • Page 3

Upset I wasted 2 hours on this

 

Watching this now!

 

you are barely a person at this point

 

amorphic purple blob dislikes one of the best movies of the year, more at 10

 

The rooftop scene with Joe and Charlie…wow. It’s one of the top scenes from any movie this year. The significance of it is so devastating. Charles Melton and Gabriel Chung really did that.

 

I am surprised to hear disapproval. It seems like the kind of film that can reach a lot of different audiences.

 

I don’t even know where to start talking about how incredible this was.

We’ve talked to death on here about how media literacy is at an all time low. With that in mind, I do think sometimes the lens we tell these stories through is completely wrong. Thinking specifically about the Hulu series A Teacher and how off putting so many of the choices made in that series were. This is somehow subtle and completely explicit in asking the viewer “why would you possibly be okay with this?”

Julianne Moore is entirely unsettling throughout the entire movie. You can see every gear turn in the character’s head. There’s a crucial display of being so clearly older and more mature while also being stuck in a severe state of arrested development while also being self aware and using that to manipulate others for potential empathy. Gracie knows she’s completely fucked up but to try and change it would mean she’d have to admit she’s a monster. Staying where she is and claiming naivety is a defense mechanism.

Natalie Portman completely balances the thin line of curiosity and obsession. You never know exactly which way she’s going to lean until she does it. The scene where she tells the director none of the 13 year olds reading for the role are “sexy enough” has a chilling casualness to it that I’m not sure how many others could pull off.

Charles Melton is a revelation. Dude is acting like he knows this movie could change his life. I hadn’t seen the quote about his physicality and moving like a child and an old man until just now and it’s completely true. His speech pattern in particular fully displays the state of Joe’s mind and the reality of his life. You understand immediately that he’s been controlled and isolated from education and personal growth to keep him from being able to leave. In the rooftop scene, you buy him as someone weighed down by both his youth and experience in life.

And perhaps most importantly, A+ for the hot dog line

 

Man I can’t remember the exact line but when Natalie is talking to Gracie’s older son in the bar and he turns and yells at his bandmate “you can’t fucking sing that” really got me

 

But also very good points @Meerkat

 

I lost it at him singing of all songs Baby I Love Your Way

 

this was good

 

Best movie I’ve seen this year.

don’t need to repeat all the great points made in here already about what this movie is doing, what it’s about, the great performances etc etc. A deeply layered and nuanced movie, it’s honestly insane to me that Todd Haynes and co were able to pull this off. Seeing something you have never really seen before pulled off in a way that shouldn’t work but absolutely knocks your socks off is why we go to the movies. This is the one. There’s still a handful of movies left on the slate (Zone of Interest, Poor Things, La chimera, Evil Does Not Exist) and a few I have yet to see (Passages, Ferrari, Monster, Priscilla)….i just don’t see anything surpassing this.

 

My students jump to touch things all the time.

 

What a ride. I’m not sure what to praise first, but I think I need to go with Todd Haynes who takes a wildly delicate subject and manages to create an incredibly layered, nuanced, empathetic, and somehow funny approach to the fallout of a strange, traumatic event. And trauma is really at the heart of the movie, always simmering under the surface, informing every scene and slowly turning the screws of unease and tension. You simply never know where it’s going to head from scene to scene, or even within a scene.

If the idea is that trauma traps you in the age you are when the event happens, then give the Oscar to Charles Melton right this second. And even if that's not the message, give it to him anyway. The body language, the delivery, the facial expressions and ambiguous side glances—not a single moment is wasted. And the way Haynes frames so many of these moments of solitude and conversation is significant: the use of mirrors, not just as a reflection of the self but also as the lies we tell ourselves and the masks we wear to reconcile and rationalize a different side of ourselves. Maybe it's a side that we think we've moved past, or maybe a side that's still with us. The message is clear: it's still there, even if we don’t recognize it or flat out ignore it.

It would be more than enough to have a movie that excels at merely focusing on the incident and its aftermath, but the way that Haynes adds in this deep, insightful, lived-in commentary on the art of performance, media literacy, and the way we tell stories is sublime. Credit to Portman for her ability to keep the audience off the scent of her character's motivation: a struggling actress with something to learn and then prove? A human with a heart hurting for the people involved? Someone who's in over their head, unable to comprehend what's right and wrong or what’s truth and fiction?

The brilliance of the movie isn't in the questions it answers, but rather the questions it asks. And those questions stick with you long after the film's perfect, wrenching final sequences.

 

You understand what he is going through the minute you see him at the grill at the beginning; he is performing middle-aged dad without really feeling it at all. It is like a kid going up to a girl at his first dance.

 

Or the way she almost treats him like her oldest kid. Whenever he’s snacking and watching TV and comes in and is basically like “go clean your room”.

 

Him watching the graduation from afar and breaking down is just so god damn gutting.

 

he is performing middle-aged man and is obviously stunted as a child emotionally but he carries his weight around like he's in his mid-50s. it's an incredible performance.

 

He mentioned in a Q&A that he found his process on set and preparing for this and it definitely shows. Impressive to be able to pull focus so fluidly from two heavyweights

 

Great movie. Can't stop thinking about Charles Melton. Definitely one of the best acting achievements I've seen in a while. He at least deserves an honorary award for taking on one of the most complicated roles I can imagine and holding his own as a less established actor against Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman, who are both incredible. It would be an entertaining (if gross) melodrama with them alone, but the movie haunts me because of him.

 

I just can’t stop thinking about how the tone of the film shifts per character and their relationship to the central incident.

 

I keep thinking about Joe telling asking Gracie to help him when they’re arguing at the end. There were so many single lines that carried so much weight