Malcolm & Marie (2021)
Written and Directed by: Sam Levinson
Starring: John David Washington, Zendaya
Streaming on Netflix.
It's 90 mins of yelling at each other. Yelling is such an American thing. I can't stand yelling. But I could with this film, because he yells against people who politicize everything, and bring in political correctness all the time - I was laughing out loud. 'Won't they let us have some fun with art?' Sam Levinson has an unflinching honesty, whether it's with this film or with Euphoria. The way he goes into deep dark conversations out loud - we often don't do that within too. It's like an exercise I do sometimes, where I type all my exact thoughts and it's tough even for me to read it - I'm like - oh god! His way of putting out such thoughts on paper, and making them into a film should be something else. I'm practicing putting out my vulnerabilities by casually talking about it to strangers, so that if I have to write it - I can.
Whatever that happens in the film, I don't know if it's healthy - but I felt like after this, if they're still together - nothing can break them apart. They've confronted their deepest vulnerabilities with each other and have had them roast the fuck out of them. The ending scene was so good - where Marie talks about how she wishes he thanked her. The extreme highs and lows that happen over a single night show us how things happen in relationships over the course of days too. It's apparently the first Hollywood film to be written, financed and produced during the pandemic. I didn't know this, and it didn't feel like that. All the choices felt conscious - black and white, a single location film with two actors, the minimalist drama. I think the minimalism let him write the film from a personal space with sheer honesty. The matte look is also interesting, it's a different visual world because it's different from the B/W we see in Roma, or Mank.
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