Review By Alan Champion
The After-Party Debacle: Malcolm & Marie
Malcolm & Marie, a black and white melodrama, produced by Netflix, is its first feature, entirely written, produced and shot during the Covid-19 scourge of 2020. And, like the avalanching scourge’s havoc and destruction, engendered by this Zoonotic virus/disease, Malcolm & Marie‘s eclectic thesis, antithesis and synthesis conjure up agnate wreckage, ravage and ruination.
Two, little, inconsequential words, – “Thank you!” – oft’ forgotten, neglected, foregone or sublimated and overshadowed by an artiste’s narcissistic, egomaniac aches and cravings for accolades and critical acclaim; who may be distracted, and, submerged in the euphoria of the moment of masterdom – that, upon apprehending such acclaim, they’ve, eagerly manage to recognize/acknowledge, even their chimeric envisaging or apriorism’s interns, but, haphazardly, forgot about those, who, tirelessly believed, anchored, corroborated, and, suffered the slings of over-budgets, ineffectual acting or having to reedit or re-shoot, long after a rap party – and, in this specific case, exposed, unmasked, and left themselves open – warts and all – the sacrificial lamb – to enable the newly, extolled/lionized icon to vampiriously, usurp, exploit, and adapt their fated/God-given, quintessence, vicissitudes and roughhewn journey, rife, in drug abuse and borderline, psychosis, into their masterpiece. Yet, caught up in the glow of love – by critics, fans, producers – the darling of the industry – convenient lapses, absentmindedness, and disregard for appropriation/plagiarism – the borrowing, co-opting, siphoning off and confiscation of a narrative, a hyperbolic tale – that isn’t theirs’, but, belongs to someone else – someone dear, someone, who, in spite of their own demons, fed them their story-line/diegesis; who, in spite of their addictions, paranoiac insecurities, scant self-worth, generously shared, and allowed you to usurp their life. “How dare they, forget?”
… A breeze picks up and swells… On the horizon, white cirrus clouds from the outer band of the storm appear. The hurricane is upon us – torrential rains, gusty winds, ominous, pitch-dark clouds …
A modish, Whose Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, Best Of Enemies, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Scenes from a Marriage, 12 Angry Men, Days of Wine and Roses, Sweet Bird of Youth and/or Lady Macbeth’s tour de force, brainchild, Malcolm & Marie takes you deep into the kaleidoscopic viscera; its bloody, putrefying depths; its nauseating, funk and stench, via, the lives of Malcolm, the egocentric, career-driven filmmaker, and, Marie, his seemingly meek, apprehensive, neophyte actress, girlfriend, with an arguable past, upon their homecoming, following the screening of Malcolm’s premier launching of his new film, which, critics agree, is nothing short of a masterpiece; but, which, engenders a labyrinthian compendium or myriad of arrestive, controversial, hot button, leitmotivs/motifs – akin to: media’s censorship vs. artist’s creative license; unfettered envisaging vs. responsible/responsive media; authenticity vs. appropriation; “black” allegiance vs. universality; misandry vs. misogyny in film making; stereotypical misrepresentations vs. bona fide portrayals; old, Hollywood and its jaundiced response to diversity vs. modish, Hollywood’s “Diversity and Inclusion Rules”; being designated and labeled, the consummate, “Black” filmmaker vs. being recognized as a “virtuoso” film maker; and Capitalistic intendments, vs. social responsibility/de-individualization, philanthropy and altruism, which, loom, coalesce, unfold, capsize and veer off into a pandemoniac debacle, riddled with amplitudes of excruciating, scathing vitriol, whereupon, Malcolm & Marie, cycle, ventilate, avouch, lament, lachrymose about their misgivings, dire vicissitudes, maniacal exasperations, cataclysmic hurts, acquired disillusionment, and, yes, their aspirations – fulfilled or unfulfilled – within – their unfaltering, perpetually, unremitting, merry-go-round-esque, acerbic, vitriol and repartee.
Censuring, castigating, indicting, sharp-witted, incisively penetrating and perspicacious, Malcolm & Marie is a cacophonous whirl blast and enshroud of eviscerating diatribes, haranguing, vitriolic persiflage; dysfunctionality, carnage and disarticulation; an avalanching, catapulting, pummeling, plummeting source of ventilation – wrecking, ensnaring and annihilating everything within its path, deep inside the acidly, astringent, “Belly of the Beast…” Yet, Malcolm & Marie, a buoyant, bombastic roller-coaster ride, with clamorous crescendos and counterbalancing pianissimos – rails, in subtle rushes of tenderness/jocularity, brushes of amalgamative cohesion/coalescence, and heartfelt, epiphanic breakthroughs, but, only to spiral, degenerate and sink back into its dark conjuration/sphere, wherein, the dyad – Malcolm & Marie – dwells in a shadowy, subterrane, sensing and espying everything around them in off-colored, adumbrations/obscurations.
Another polemical topic canvassed/dissected by our incendiary, protagonists is, “Art and Politics”; whether, art should reflect the body politic; and, whether, it should be circumscribed in accordance to race, physicality, skin-pigmentation, age, sexual preference and gender to achieve authenticity, or whether it should reflect, an aesthetic, barring judicious, scrutiny/diplomacy – in its truest, unfettered form, whereupon, the actor, regardless their physical attributes, conjures up that “enabling essentia” – authentic feelings derived from their individualized/intimate, oft’ heterogeneous, vicissitudes and experientiality, to incarnate, embody and bring life into a character. Accordingly, should film portrayals be prohibitively, exclusory – whereupon, blacks would portray blacks; whites, whites; gays, gays; geriatrics, geriatrics, etc.? Malcolm & Marie also address art as a mass-produced, profit-engendering commodity vs. non-traditionalist brands – wherein, the exterior shell of the actor is, but, inconsequential to the vicissitudes they’ve internalized, while, avouching that, actors should, be countenanced/encouraged to personify, embody, and penetrate the psyches of characters, with contrastive/anomalous traits, by infusing them with requisite, eccentrism and visceral impulses, as roles occasion – which, tap into humankind’s universality and commutuality.
“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” ~ William Congreve
In-depth, bombastic, a visceral, blood and guts, sinewy character study, Marie, audaciously portrayed by the fiery, but, pulchritudinous, Zendaya – a statuesque, alluring heartthrob/ archetype of today’s unfettered woman, with an avalanche of grit, sass and incinerating calenture, is a commanding, commandeering, turncoat at the drop of a hat – penetrating, impulsive, patient, intolerant, long-suffering, corroborative, eruditely; a gutsy, ominous damsel in distress, she’s a woman in peril, a woman in control, a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown – who should’ve been cast as the headliner of Malcolm’s – our brilliant, evocative, effusive, schizoid, pathologic, miscreant; the self-effacing provocateur, visionary; self-centered, egocentric, madcap/corybantic, artist, whose, yet, trapped within a vacuous, asphyxiating, rabbit hole, deeper and more perilous than Alice’s – tour de force, “masterpiece” of a film, but, wasn’t due to Malcolm’s refusal to share his coruscant, crowning point/moment with her. Yet, Malcolm & Marie is an unsettling, ominously caustic, avant-gardist, battle of the sexes – a labyrinthine minefield – whereupon, no one sex emerges as victorious, thus, nullifying/eschewing the archetypal, chauvinistic, despotic, alpha male myth/figment.
Malcolm, portrayed by the astoundingly, consummate artiste, Mr. John David Washington, whose visionary characterizations and personifications, culled from professional training as well as fine-spun, genes/congenital traits – Denzel’s progeny, but, who, will, undoubtedly, vie for “Best Actor” Oscar nods, simultaneously, with his patriarch, in the near future – brings his adroit stylizing/acting abilities, culled from his unique vicissitudes and empiricism, to this phenomenally, challenging role. He is sensually erratic, maniacally, driven – a pulsating, channelized, siphoning of delusively neurotic/psychotic energies/dynamisms; a funnel of pulsating/exploding, puissance/astucity, which, align well-honed, extempore proficiencies; yet, as much as Malcolm & Marie – the cancer, and the antidote – are two, highbrow, dysfunctionally, codependent wunderkinds, whose, compensatory, synergies and symbioticism forge/beget them, an interhybridized functionality, they are, but, one in the same; doppelgangers, they are avatars/nemeses – their very own self-serving, eviscerating, Greek Chorus or derivative, Stream of Consciousness – exemplarily evincing the profundity, paradoxical dissonance and quasi-pathology of the “artiste” – the perennial, “To Be, or Not to Be” paradigm – the love, hate dynamic. Hence, as what was supposed to an exhilarative, blithe celebration disintegrates into a cataclysmic mass of spiraling twists and turns; a cesspool; spine-chilling, Tsunami; or an anticlimactic calamity, our fiery, combative dyad are fueled by its indomitability, hard-earned sagacity and raw/crude, street smarts – deviatory of systematic raciality and misogynism – at once, insuring their ultimate, preservation and survival.
A fine-tuned, cautionary tale, Writer/Director’s, Sam Levinson – who, just happens to be white; but, who, unapologetically, decimates the myth of cookie-cutter, one-dimensional black folk – symmetry, eccentricity and distinctive visual and narrative style, and, preference for a minimalistic, mise en scene, aptly, portray the asphyxiatingly restive, neurotically oppressive, claustrophobic thrust/purport, our protagonist-antagonists find themselves ensnared by. Levinson’s choice of stark black and white cinematography, oblong/diagonal close-ups accentuate the eviscerating, disarticulated, annihilative entanglements that Malcolm & Marie subject one another to/within. The no-holds-barred, script is modish, unshackled, individualistic, and, readily captures today’s anarchic, nihilistic milieu/epoch. Levinson’s queries are poignantly postulated, disseminated, rehashed, thrashed out and wrangled. And, although they are ne’er reconciled or resolved, they perpetually, pillage, plunder, transgress and invade the mental/affectual recesses of all artists, and will continue to throughout eternity. Withal, a causatum/denouement of, but the creative processes.
An ensuingly, stentorian spectacle, a cascading avalanche, a one-man band, a non-ending conundrum, Satan’s eclipse from Alyssum, Malcolm & Marie is the dysfunctionality, the apex of love/hate equivalences; the collapse of the universe, Armageddon – it evokes infamy, bafflement, a recognition of our very darkness, of everything we are, but, can’t acknowledge or admit – it is evincive of our aborigenous, cannibalistic selves – a sublimated self, gainsaid and nullified within contemporary society. Yet it steeps, and lies dormant within us, alive and well, surfacing when provoked, transgressed, discounted and/or spurned.
DENOUEMENT:
Prolongated, verbose, drawn out, similar to its progressivist, neoteric precursor, Whose Afraid Of Virginia Woolf – and, with a total viewing time of nearly 2 hours – two, long, excruciatingly painful hours of espying Malcolm & Marie‘s evisceration, and literally, being torn to shreds – as the forlorn lovers, who, ultimately, find themselves immobilized, but, reunited, on the horizon in the early dawning – I, too, was left paralyzed, and too shaken to retire. Hence, I sat, alone in the dark, reeling from the internalized pain, Malcolm & Marie provoked/inflamed; and, as it disembogued from within my every pore; I, too, faced-off with my innermost, fame-chasing, megalomaniac, cock of the roost, demons of ingratitude/thanklessness.
Rating: 5/5