I Like to Watch | Promising Young Woman (2020)
In the pantheon of films made, only a handful stand out as truly understanding and communicating its time. Not documentaries or those based on true events but fictional stories that likewise mirror the specific zeitgeist (yeah, I used that term with a straight face) of a given time period or social movement.
Fifty years from now, when discussing the Black Lives Matter movement in the country, Get Out will be among the films watched for context on the American experience. It grasps the indelible feelings of the movement without mentioning it and is a stand-alone epic horror film at the same time.
The French Connection (1971) is not only brilliant but perfectly tells a tale of the beginnings of the War on Drugs instituted by Richard Nixon.
Casablanca (1942), unlike the propaganda films of most pre- and post-WWII movies, demonstrates an incredibly timely portrayal of the horrors of fascism, the values that heroes like Victor Laszlo hold, and illustrates an America that is a place for refugees to find freedom.
The Graduate (1967) is both a wonderful film and also expertly captures the transitioning from the idealism of post-Kennedy assassination to the craven capitalist emerging from the ashes.
High Noon (1952) is a grand cinematic device using clocks and real time as well as a window into the hysteria and paranoia of the McCarthy Era.
The Deer Hunter (1978), Fast Times of Ridgemont High (1981), Norma Rae (1979), The Great Dictator(1940), Wall Street (1987), and American Psycho (2000). The list is almost exhausting but spectacular at the same time. No question that you will, upon reading this, think of ten movies that fit this particular bill that I haven't mentioned.
While I gravitate to the optimism of Rocky (1976), the film of that year that depicts the isolation and torment of a young man disillusioned by the trifecta of the Kennedy assassination, Vietnam, and Watergate is Taxi Driver.
Set in a decaying and corrupt post-Vietnam New York City, Travis—played by a stunningly grim Robert De Niro—dreams of ridding the city of the filth and perversion he witnesses during his overnight shifts as a cabbie. The more Travis drives, the more he questions his purpose in life and grows deranged, ultimately leading down a path of violence, hatred, and even redemption.
If there is a modern parallel, while Joker is a DC comics version of Bickle's journey into madness (although it more accurately makes a case for the existing madness of Incels), the more appropriate equivalent is without question Emerald Fennell's Promising Young Woman.
I'll confess that I didn't really want to see it. These days so much of film has become a series of lectures on social justice that, after the insufferable reboot of Charlie's Angels and the ugly one-sided and exploitative Them I just couldn't bother with more of the same.
It didn't help that they wanted twenty bucks to watch it. Then, when Dana and I were flying back to Vegas from a visit with my father-in-law in Pennsylvania, she watched it for free on the inflight. She loved it and, being that Dana is a notoriously finicky critic of film, the recommendation did not fall on deaf ears.
The premise is not what I gleaned from the trailers (Carey Mulligan does not play a serial murderer so much as serial justice seeker) and, like all superior satires, everyone (including the protagonist) gets a bit of shade.
In the opening minutes of Promising Young Woman, Cassie (a deeply sardonic and wearily angry Mulligan) walks down a street with blood dripping down her leg eating a hot dog. She’s just left the home of Adam Brody, a beta-male who couldn't resist the temptation. She must have murdered him. Nope. It's ketchup from her phallic snack. In a single moment, you realize that Fennell has decided to subvert the male revenge fantasy for something wholly different.
Cassie, a medical school dropout, lives with her parents and works as a barista. She lives with the trauma of her best friend Nina Fisher's rape by a classmate. As a response, Cassie spends a night a week pretending to be the drunk single hot chick in bars. She's looking for the 'nice guys' who invariably offer to take her home and instead take her to their home with the intent to rape the helpless inebriate. She lets them go far before snapping the rubber band and revealing she's completely in control.
Cassie has a book of names. In it she keeps track of every 'nice guy' she confronts as well as another list directly related to Nina's rape. The college dean (Connie Britton) who did nothing when Nina reported her rape; the med school friend (Alison Brie) who dismissed the accusation as crying wolf; the lawyer (Alfred Molina) who bullied Nina into dropping the court case. She plays twisted pranks on them if they haven't yet seen the Nina she knew. She wants them to understand the gravity of their collective action.
After a chance meeting with an actual nice guy (a disarmingly adorable Bo Burnham), Cassie sees a way out of her dark quest. From this point, Fennell does something unexpected and remarkably effective: the film bounces back and forth from dark revenge fantasy to heartwarming romantic comedy in a whiplash manner. It's hard to keep up and serves to keep us guessing throughout.
Fennell (who also wrote the thing) has described Cassie's rage as "like an ingrown toenail" and Mulligan portrays Cassie with the numb pain of that feeling. Fennell isn’t content to simply paint the men as the problem; everyone involved, men and women, are culpable agents. Certainly the men who rape are the actors of personal destruction but the men and women who do not rape yet cover-up or minimize the damage are equally as guilty and ripe for Cassie’s meted out justice.
Travis Bickle was a young man traumatized by war and the abandonment he felt as society realized he was fucked up by a system designed to fuck him up. Cassie Thomas is a young woman traumatized by a system in place designed to fuck her and discard her like a piece of trash.
In fifty years, when college students are watching popular culture for insight into the #MeToo movement, Promising Young Woman will be on the watchlist.
