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I Worried, Darling: Don’t Worry Darling Review

Eliza Niblett

CW – suicide, abuse, violence

Spoiler warning!

My expectations going in to see Don’t Worry Darling were not particularly high. I was expecting it to be awful, but hoping it would at least be awful in an entertaining way rather than just being rubbish and dull. It was somehow both better and worse than I expected.

It’s difficult to talk about this movie without spoiling it, so, spoiler warning: the idyllic 1950s town that the characters inhabit is revealed to actually be a computer simulation designed by the town’s leader Frank (Chris Pine) where modern-day men kidnap women and insert them into the simulation as their wives, leaving the women’s physical selves entirely in the care of the men who have kidnapped them while they exist in the simulation unaware of what’s really going on.

The movie implies that something is amiss through Kiki Layne’s character Margaret, whose questioning of the real purpose of the town and subsequent gaslighting by the men around her drives her to suicide, which Alice (Florence Pugh) witnesses, starting her on a path to discovering the truth.

There were definitely some things to like about this movie –mainly Florence Pugh and Chris Pine, who gave fantastic performances. I wish they’d had more scenes together to give Pugh someone to really play off rather than acting in spite of the brick wall of a scene partner that is Harry Styles (more on him later!). Gemma Chan (as Frank’s supportive-turned-randomly-murderous wife, Shelley) and Kiki Layne were also wonderful but drastically underutilised, especially considering how interesting both their characters had the potential to be. Visually, the film was stunning, with the gorgeous 1950s aesthetics contrasting the town’s desert setting beautifully, as well as including some unsettling dreamlike sequences that are revealed to be linked to the process of logging in to the simula-

tion.

However, the film seemed preoccupied by its own aesthetics – it could have got to the point much quicker if we didn’t have to sit through so many admittedly gorgeous show-off shots that did very little to advance the plot. desired. The reveal comes too late, and it doesn’t get explored in a way that feels satisfying or really builds upon anything we’ve seen before that uses the same plot point. It feels like it was ultimately set up to be a cheap horrifying twist, at the expense of doing anything actually interesting with it or providing any real critique of incel culture past ‘misogyny bad’. It also makes Olivia Wilde’s comments about her feminist female-pleasure-centred sex scenes sound out-of-

touch and offensive, considering every one of those sex scenes turns out to be nonconsensual on the part of the woman. Ultimately, the ‘trapped in a computer simulation’ plot has already been done, and better, particularly in the Black Mirror episode ‘USS Callister’ which explores similar themes of women’s agency and is well worth a watch if you come away from Don’t Worry Darling feeling somewhat cheated.

The other problem with this film aside from its lacklustre execution of a promising concept is its leading man: Harry Styles. He just cannot act. He simply reads the lines with some degree of appropriate emotion in an accent that I think was meant to be his natural British but keeps bizarrely lapsing into American. The preview scene released where Jack is arguing with Alice that was met with much criticism of his performance is pretty representative of how he is throughout the movie. When that scene came on the entire cinema burst out laughing, which happened again several times whenever he attempted to convey a strong emotion. And don’t even get me started on his overly long and utterly weird dance sequence! The role of Jack needed an actor that could do subtlety and give his character an inner life. Harry Styles mainly did shouting.

Ultimately, this film falls apart the moment you start to think about it. An audience member who spends more than 30 seconds thinking about this film will be left with many unanswered questions, such as: What was up with that plane crash? Why did Shelley stab her husband out of nowhere? Why was Olivia Wilde’s character even in this film? Why did they cut most of Kiki Layne’s scenes? Did Harry Styles really spit on Chris Pine?

Tár - Review: 9/10

Jason Chau

Directed by Todd Field. Starring Cate Blanchett, Nina Hoss, Noémie Merlant, Mark Strong.

In the midst of all the cheers and jeers at this year’s Venice Film Festival – now in its 79th iteration – ‘Tar’, the latest film from Todd Field in 16 years, has emerged as a film as close to a unanimous critical and audience favorite as one can. No surprise here, as Field has weaved together a profound and deeply sensitive piece on the fragility of success that is as calculating and meticulously crafted as a delicate doll house. He presents a singular creative vision, unmarred and uncompromising in its fastidious execution. It demands unwavering attention from its audience and captures it with throat-squeezing intensity as he slowly conducts a crescendo of tension, mystique and control to its rousing, pulsating finale.

In Tar, Cate Blanchett gives a performance of a lifetime as the titular character, the principal conductor of a world-class German orchestra in Berlin. She is widely celebrated for her ingenuity and talent, living a jet-setting life of luxury and fame, obscured from the world’s problems. As we follow her various endeavors at the apex of her career, from her preparation for a live-recording of Mahler’s fifth symphony, to the release of her autobiography, the aptly titled Tar on Tar, we start to slowly detect the cracks in her austere façade, and the walls of duplicity she has carefully constructed around her seemingly immaculate world. Along the way, she has to deal with the dangerous obsession of a former mentee, the pestering of Elliot Kaplan (played by Mark Strong), a parttime conductor whom she has founded a fellowship to promote aspiring female conductors with and the arrival of a new, impertinent and prepossessing Russian cellist in the orchestra, all with a sense of menace and dread lurking in the background amplified by abrupt but spellbinding sequences of dreams, illusions and distortedmemories.

Tar unfolds like a puzzle with disparate storylines and disparate relationships. How Field slowly glues the pieces together over its protracted runtime is an act of patience and subtlety. He lets his scenes play out, sometimes longer than necessary, to give audiences the space to absorb every minute detail presented and to allow his actors the maximum expanse for their performances.

Blanchett, in a masterful exercise of emotional control, presents an aura of elegance, authority and high-society hubris, but offers just the right amount of inconsistency to reveal the buried insecurity, paranoia and understated anger in the character. In her performance, the passionate and the fearful coexist, swaying the character from the likeable to the abhorrent. The supporting cast is also top-notch, with Nina Hoss and Noemie Merlant giving standout performances as Tar’s partner/concertmaster, and her assistant respectively. Aided by studious cinematography from Florian Hoffmeisteren and an engrossing score by Hildur Guðnadóttir, this is an exemplary showcase of cinematic craftsmanship.

The film is replete with sensational set pieces, not least of all its expertly staged opening scene. In an onstage interview with the real-life New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik, we are introduced to all we needed to know about Tar’s background, achievements and personality, all through an enthralling conversation between the two. Another scene where Tar guest-lectures at Julliard and berates a BIPOC pangender student for expressing a distaste for Bach is also a highlight, featuring some of the sharpest writings and strongest acting on film in recent memory that thoroughly captures the patronizing disposition of the titular character.

Field is not offering definitive messages here, nor is he prone to melodrama. The open-ended epilogue is a testament to that. He is not interested in pleasing the audience, or to provoke certain feelings of empathy and antipathy in them. This may lend the film a layer of aloofness, augmented by a high-brow subject matter that can leave viewers cold and unmoved. Many may proclaim to admire the film but find it hard to love. There is much veracity in those assessments. Yet, Tar is razor-focused in depicting the rise and fall of a great contemporary artist, a celebrity, an icon, a success story, a human being. In doing so, it cements Field as a watchful observer of the cultural discourse of our times, and a documentarian of the polarizing and conflict-ridden society that we inhabit, filled with an antagonistic media, antagonistic politics, and antagonistic human relationships.

At its core, Tar is a slow-burn, multilayered and transfixing character study. It is about the glorification of artistic license and the indictment of cancel culture. It is about cruelty and emotional violence. It is about the loss of our capacity to empathize and to communicate. More importantly, it is about our innate ability to reinvent and revive. The destination of the film is secondary, but like the whirlwind nature of life, it is the journey of downfall and

The Banshees of Insherin - Review: 8/10

Jason Chau

Directed by Martin McDonaugh. Starring Colin Farrell, Brendon Gleeson, Barry Keoghan

Two friends living on a distant, desolate island off the coast of Ireland ends their friendship one day and entangle themselves in an incessant and depressing feud over why their friendship ended. If you think this plot is too simple, banal and uneventful for a feature film, then Martin McDonaugh’s latest black comedy-drama ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’ is setting out to prove you wrong.

Very much in the veins of ‘In Bruges’, McDonaugh’s 2008 sharp and acerbic crime comedy, ‘Banshees’ is a return to Farrell and Gleeson, to the witty dialogue and tonguein-cheek wordplay, and to the hilarious banter. This film is replete with a lot of fecking Irish banter, but it is the banter that gives the film its heart and soul; that is, McDonaugh’s caustic, penetrating and irreverent screenplay.

Colin Farrell plays Pádraic Súilleabháin, a simple man who lives a monotonous life of tending to his animals, drinking at the pub, frolicking and arguing with his sister and repeat. His dullness defines him and is apparently the explanation for all that ensues. One day, he finds his disgruntled friend Colm Doherty at the pub, played by Brendon Gleeson, who has abruptly decided to cease his relationship with Pádraic, and is so committed to do so that he is willing to resort to self-mutilation. Bewildered and angered by Colm, Pádraic equally devotes himself to the frustration of Colm’s commitment, as their animosity quick turns from trading abrasive insults to blood-shattering violence.

Farrell shines as the lonesome Pádraic. As McDonaugh likes to repeatedly point out, there is seemingly nothing interesting about this character (aside from his name which he finds blatantly uninteresting). It is a testament to Farrell’s acting that he makes Pádraic interesting, imbuing him with intense, earnest and exhaustive sense of despair and heartache as he plays out the complete collapse of a man’s purpose, self-worth and ultimately sanity. Meanwhile, Gleeson sells the stubbornness of his character convincingly, revealing the solitude and melancholy of a bitter men who has sorrowfully watched the world and time go by and realized the fleeting nature of his own life. In supporting roles are Barry Keoghan and Kerry Condon, both of which deliver respectable performances as the ‘clown of the town’ Dominic and Pádraic’s sister Siobhan that shine a light to the inanity of McDonaugh’s world. The donkey also deserves a shoutout.

There are visual filmmakers, and there are literary ones. There seems to be little doubt that McDonaugh falls into the latter camp. His dialogues are his forte, fitting for a playwright, and is what saves ‘Banshees’ from being a tedious, exasperating ‘chamber piece’, filled with deeply irritating and unlikeable characters. Yet, McDonaugh manages to capture surprisingly sweeping, if not particularly inspiring, visuals, aided by Ben Davis’ lush cinematography of the Emerald Isle (that is Emerald with a big capital E). The loughs, the cliffs and the hillsides provide a rugged and secluded backdrop to the unraveling of the friendship and the violence that follows, accentuating and aggravating the isolation of these broken, dreary men.

The Irishiness is proudly on full display, from the Guinness to the ‘craic’ at the local pub, but what’s most Irish is its honest, brutal and incisive commentary on the ludicrous, nonsensical, and pointless nature of the never-ending civil conflicts that have plagued the country. More importantly, it is a biting satire about the loss of civility, the toxicity of men and the fragility of peace, all of which are solemnly tragic and universally understood (or as history has repeatedly shown us, misunderstood).

As much as ‘Banshees’ explores these weighty themes, its plot and setting limit its ambitions and constrain it to its smallness and staginess. It’s a double-edged sword, ensuring that the film is easy to digest but hard to impress. There is nothing too boundary-pushing, awe-inspiring or cinematically ingenuous. Nonetheless, it is a refreshing viewing experience, and stands apart from most of the late-season movie offerings for its originality. Indeed, ‘Banshees’ is so full of absurdity, of irony, of extremities and polarizations, that supposedly the funniest film of the year is also, in reality, one of the saddest. And that in itself is a small act of brilliance.

‘The Banshees of Inisherin’ will be released on October 21st in the United Kingdom.