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A warrior is in a cell. His guard approaches, showing him a wooden sword that he will receive when he earns his freedom. The warrior grabs the sword, uses the unlocked cell door to knock the guard down, and presses the blade of the sword against his throat. He slams it into a post like a hammer, causing a brutal and gruesome death. Then, for some reason, as the warrior rocks back and forth, he screams at the dead body, “Wood or steel, an edge is an edge!”
An ailing tycoon lies in a luxurious bedroom. His young, money-hungry wife enters with her lover, with whom she cynically discusses the old man's condition. “How do you feel about this boner?” the invalid says provocatively, pointing to the pointed tuft of hair on his lap. He pulls back his clothes to reveal a golden bow and arrow, with which he shoots his wife. Then, for some reason, as the phallic arrow penetrates her breast, he says, “You Wall Street whore, this is your last call.”
A blond, blue-eyed real estate mogul walks into the mayor’s office to pitch a new project. He sets a model on the table: a small black tower with gold block letters at the base that say TRUMP TOWER. He pontificates with pompous swagger. His lawyer offers a few words to sweeten the deal. Then, for some reason, the mayor asks, “What are you going to call it?” The mogul leans back and tells us what we already know: “Trump Tower.”
These scenes from the recent films Gladiator II, Megalopolis, and The Apprentice respectively serve as examples among many—many!—of what I have come to call the new literalism. It is not a new genre, but a new style. Each of these films belongs to its own genre—action/adventure, sci-fi/drama, and drama/history, respectively—and none of them seems interested in the tradition of documentary realism, even in biopics.
When I say “literalism,” I don't mean merely realistic or simple literalism. I mean literalism when we say that something is on the nose or heavy, that it hits us or hits a dead horse. As these phrases imply, paraphrasing the obvious does a kind of violence to art. “A period is still a period!”
There’s a meme from an episode of Family Guy in which Peter, the patriarch of the animated comedy family, admits to his family that he never liked The Godfather. And why not? “It’s too intense,” he says with a shrug. Many recent productions deserve this disdain — in the most literal sense. It’s gotten so bad that lately the highest compliment I can give even the best of them is, “Well, at least it’s a movie.”
The prevalence of this trend was evident in the films nominated for Best Picture at this year’s Oscars. Some of them reflect phenomena we’ve long bemoaned. We have the sci-fi sequel Dune: Part Two and the fan-fiction prequel Wicked, both of which use CGI more for operatic purposes than creative ones. And we have another Bob Dylan biopic, The Complete Unknown, which ends with clips of the real Dylan so we can see how well Timothée Chalamet played him, another entry for social media lists comparing old celebrities with the new ones who play them in movies.
Even the season’s originals, if you can call them that, felt rumblingly literal. Sean Baker’s “Anora,” the best-picture winner, is a self-proclaimed “Cinderella story” about a sex worker who falls for the oldest trick in the book: a rich man who wants to marry her. After their hasty Vegas wedding, the heroine says she wants a Disney princess suite for her honeymoon, to which her best friend obligingly yells, “Cinderella!”
More a retelling than an homage to classic horror films, Coralie Farjit's Substance dramatizes older celebrities' fears of repression by casting Demi Moore as a 50-year-old star who gives birth to a genetically engineered younger version of herself—literally through her back.
Jacques Audiard's Emilia Perez is a series of improvised scenarios (what if the head of a Mexican cartel had sex-change surgery? What if she were reunited with her children, like “Mrs. Doubtfire”?) and droning musical numbers that describe events as they happen: “I'd like to know about sex-change surgery.” “I see, I see, I see. From a man
Sourse: newyorker.com
