January 2, 2012
 My feelings-based responses to 50/50 (Jonathan Levine, 2011) were: 1. I totally cried like more than once at the places it wanted me to cry. (When Adam finds the how-to-help-your-friend-with-cancer book in his friend’s house, heavily annotated, and realises how much he really does love him; the scenes with his parents right before he goes into surgery.) Understated melodrama is the new overstated melodrama. Melodrama’s great power is making itself seem “realistic”, which this did. I can recognize the strategies at work, the way it’s structured for maximum emotional impact, but that doesn’t mean that it didn’t still have that impact. 2. Totally made me nostalgic for Vancouver. Adam’s neighbourhood looks so much like my old neighbourhood (maybe it was?). Running on the seawall! Drinking coffee! Half an hour after the movie was over, I was like, oh yeah, there’s nothing to do but run on the seawall and drink coffee. I’m glad I lived in Vancouver for a few years, it taught me to be someone who jogs and does yoga, and I loved my friends there, but I’m so excited that we’re not going back. For the most part it is a pretty good movie though. I don’t consider sentimentality to be a negative quality, and the performances were so great and “believable,” particularly Anna Kendrick and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. There are a few things that could have been improved. For one, Anjelica Houston’s wig. I do wish they had given Rachael, the bad girlfriend character, a bit more room to breathe. Her reactions to the situation - wanting to be there for him even though she knew she didn’t love him, and then totally not being able to deal - weren’t laudable but were pretty believable. Given that the movie was so generous to everyone else involved, it kind of sucked that they didn’t give her any little moments of grace or sympathy. I mean, they had her say what was going through her head, but they could easily have shown this by giving us like two minutes of her point of view. The other thing I wish they’d done was dealt with the whole therapist-patient relationship issue. It’s clear that some time had passed and she wasn’t treating him anymore and whatever before they went on a date, but it still seems like they could have addressed this in a way that wasn’t clunky, because the cutesy way that the relationship was played vaguely horrified me. Being in a relationship with someone who was your therapist seems like a really bad idea! Especially since he totally formed an attachment to her when he was at his most vulnerable! And she is really inexperienced at therapy! How are they not explaining why this isn’t an awful idea? I bet she doesn’t write about this in her dissertation! I would go so far as to say that the narrative reason that they felt the need to pair Adam off with the therapist is to resolve any perceived homosocial tension between Adam and Kyle. Especially since the story kind of positions Kyle as “in competition” with Rachael and makes her the villain. (Which in itself was unnecessary. I think I Love You Man made it clear that  you can make a movie about male friendship without writing the female character as a humorless jerk and romantic relationships as a total drag.) Since Katerine’s the only woman besides his mom that Adam formed a meaningful relationship with, you get the impression they’re paired off by default. I mean, mostly, it’s a good movie, and I walked out thinking about the good performances and the feelings, but in retrospect they screwed up in some small ways that could have made it really great.

 My feelings-based responses to 50/50 (Jonathan Levine, 2011) were:

1. I totally cried like more than once at the places it wanted me to cry. (When Adam finds the how-to-help-your-friend-with-cancer book in his friend’s house, heavily annotated, and realises how much he really does love him; the scenes with his parents right before he goes into surgery.) Understated melodrama is the new overstated melodrama. Melodrama’s great power is making itself seem “realistic”, which this did. I can recognize the strategies at work, the way it’s structured for maximum emotional impact, but that doesn’t mean that it didn’t still have that impact.

2. Totally made me nostalgic for Vancouver. Adam’s neighbourhood looks so much like my old neighbourhood (maybe it was?). Running on the seawall! Drinking coffee! Half an hour after the movie was over, I was like, oh yeah, there’s nothing to do but run on the seawall and drink coffee. I’m glad I lived in Vancouver for a few years, it taught me to be someone who jogs and does yoga, and I loved my friends there, but I’m so excited that we’re not going back.

For the most part it is a pretty good movie though. I don’t consider sentimentality to be a negative quality, and the performances were so great and “believable,” particularly Anna Kendrick and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

There are a few things that could have been improved.

For one, Anjelica Houston’s wig.

I do wish they had given Rachael, the bad girlfriend character, a bit more room to breathe. Her reactions to the situation - wanting to be there for him even though she knew she didn’t love him, and then totally not being able to deal - weren’t laudable but were pretty believable. Given that the movie was so generous to everyone else involved, it kind of sucked that they didn’t give her any little moments of grace or sympathy. I mean, they had her say what was going through her head, but they could easily have shown this by giving us like two minutes of her point of view.

The other thing I wish they’d done was dealt with the whole therapist-patient relationship issue. It’s clear that some time had passed and she wasn’t treating him anymore and whatever before they went on a date, but it still seems like they could have addressed this in a way that wasn’t clunky, because the cutesy way that the relationship was played vaguely horrified me. Being in a relationship with someone who was your therapist seems like a really bad idea! Especially since he totally formed an attachment to her when he was at his most vulnerable! And she is really inexperienced at therapy! How are they not explaining why this isn’t an awful idea? I bet she doesn’t write about this in her dissertation!

I would go so far as to say that the narrative reason that they felt the need to pair Adam off with the therapist is to resolve any perceived homosocial tension between Adam and Kyle. Especially since the story kind of positions Kyle as “in competition” with Rachael and makes her the villain. (Which in itself was unnecessary. I think I Love You Man made it clear that  you can make a movie about male friendship without writing the female character as a humorless jerk and romantic relationships as a total drag.) Since Katerine’s the only woman besides his mom that Adam formed a meaningful relationship with, you get the impression they’re paired off by default.

I mean, mostly, it’s a good movie, and I walked out thinking about the good performances and the feelings, but in retrospect they screwed up in some small ways that could have made it really great.

1:32pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZSRIbyE9Wfiv
(Notes: 5)
  
Filed under: movies i saw in 2012 film 50/50 feminism 
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