Malcolm & Marie

"It's not just about you forgetting to thank me, Malcolm. It's about how you see me. And how you view my contribution; not just to this relationship, but to your work. Specifically, in a movie you made about my life." Marie (Zendaya) If you've ever wondered why a film or play has been called a "two hander," here's a fine example: writer-director Sam Levinson's Malcolm & Marie. No other actors are needed, thank you. These two, John David Washington as Malcolm and Zendaya as Marie, eat up the lines without eating up the scenery without other actors. Living together, they wait at their lavish beach home for the reviews of his new film, whose premiere from which they have just returned. Fueled by passion, narcissism, and plain old intelligence, they argue about the authenticity of his directing and the elements of the film based on her life as a recovering addict (See quote above). Think of just Taylor and Burton in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? without the two younger characters (in fact, the name of the unseen actress in his new film is "Taylor").

Through cycles of bitterness and love, the two characters in Malcolm define many of the important elements of art, most about the honesty of character and point of view or perspective of the artists. But underneath is the nagging is our suspicion that their solipsistic obsession with their craft keeps them from fully loving each other.

This romantic depiction of the conjunction of life and art is to be sipped like a fine Cognac, perhaps revisited to savor the brilliant script and watch two fine actors update the histrionics of Burton and Taylor into modern minimalism. Thanks, Netflix.

The acting is good and it's beautifully shot but it's soooo repetitive. A character puts on music, a character smokes. They argue. They make-up. They discuss filmmaking and "art". Characters talk while shoveling food down their mouths. Wash, rinse, repeat. It could have been a good short film. You get everything you really need in like 30 min. But alas its feature length film. So instead you're just hit with the same points again and again. It never adds anything new.

To my surprise, this was a very compelling film that featured captivating and powerful performances mixed with brilliant writing. The shifting balance between the two characters keeps us on edge the entire time and we're never quite sure where it's taking us next. It's definitely a daring film to make and I'm sure it will split audiences by a large margin. It's not very easy to digest and I believe it would be better suited for the stage than the screen. However, it's a bold and confident move from the director to make this kind of film, especially in this day and age of cinema, even though it doesn't entirely work to the level of his ambition.

This film contains 100 minutes of constant bickering. I find it unbearable.

This is a fascinating one to read reviews for, including, if not especially, the ones with which I disagree. I think that's because "Malcolm & Marie" is explicitly about the creation and appreciation of cinematic art. The two-hander, one-house lockdown set (made as it was during the pandemic) talkfest takes place after the eponymous couple return home on the night of the premiere of Malcolm's debut film, which he wrote and directed. Their series of monologues--organized almost as if they were part of a formal debate, each talking at length largely uninterrupted and each taking time to formulate rebuttals--begin and end over his neglecting to thank Marie, herself a former actress turned "muse," in his public remarks at the premiere. Another focal point of the couple's arguments is an LA Times review of the unseen film-within-the-film. Indeed, the review makes some similar criticisms that have been leveled against "Malcolm & Marie," over authenticity, authorship, gender, race, stylistic choices. It's an argument about artistic values, within the film and continued in reviews of it.

I'm a sucker for this sort of reflexive construction. Initially, or instinctively, I had the urge to dismiss it, though, which some others seem to have, as an artsy and self-indulgent stagy exercise in overwrought overacting on black-and-white celluloid. A lot like in some ways two recent filmed plays, both of which I also liked, "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" and "One Night in Miami" (both 2020). All three are unrealistic and dialogue heavy in their own ways where actors are sometimes playing ideas or arguments more than they are characters, and they're all artistically reflexive debates about art. "Malcolm & Marie," however, is more cinematically designed than them, while in form highly reminiscent of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (adapted from the play in 1966), with so much attention given to composition and the highlighting of that by its unusual nature as a modern black-and-white film. It's also focused on film--down to the celluloid vs digital debate--whereas the other recent movies are more about music or other media.

Regardless of whether this is semi-autobiographical of writer-director Sam Levinson's marriage, as filtered through actors John David Washington and Zendaya, and all the gender and racial issues that brings up with a white man telling the story of black characters, one female, within the film the neat suggestion is that it's making itself: that it's the result of the writer-director character, Malcolm, and actress, Marie, having made it themselves--and that it, too, is about talking about a prior film that's also semi-biographical. It's a multi-layered narrative mise-en-abyme. On top of that, the gorgeous high-contrast black-and-white cinematography is often framed through the home's many windows, creating another framing within the already-existent frame of the film--a visual mise-en-abyme alluding to the fact that this is a film. I like, too, how most of the score is diegetic.

Of course, this review is a reflection of how I interpret the film and approach cinema in general, while others may be more interested in discussing character deficiencies, the supposed realism, or socio-political issues and especially race, if they don't dismiss it out of hand as artsy, self-indulgent, etc. All valid criticisms, more or less, and I even agree with them in part, but every time a diatribe verged on obnoxious or at least exhausting, it's turned around, just as Malcolm and Marie go tit-for-tat in their verbal abuse and, then, to shared joy, breaking for a cigarette now and again in between. I found a lot of it to be quite funny. A film where the two characters unnaturally speak in long-winded monologues, as photographed in black and white, but which also plays out largely in real time and is so realistic that the camera follows them to the bathroom. Some of Malcolm's anti-academic rants, also for instance, ironically become academic in their criticisms--bringing up race and politics or the male gaze to refute them, as if Levinson were defending against accusations made of "Malcolm & Marie" even before it was released. Malcolm's movie criticized for gratuitous nudity while we see Zendaya as Marie in various states of undress, only for Malcolm to point out that if this were a film that could be similarly rebuked. Marie, an actress who may sometimes be acting and as played by a real actress, has her moments, as well, especially at one point when it seems as though the lovers' quarrel has really gone off the rails. It's not whether it's right, or who wins the argument, or even that the picture is profound or pretentious, but it's a thoughtful engagement with film on film.