 |
| Anya Taylor-Joy and Olivia Cooke in Thoroughbreds. Image courtesy Focus Features. |
In reality, the importance of maintaining appearances
would prevent the two protagonists in Thoroughbreds
from associating with each other. Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy) is wealthy,
popular, and privileged, a teenager bound for an elite lifestyle.
Amanda (Olivia Cooke) is an emotionless outcast with no notable
aspirations beyond eating chips. This is a pretty formulaic setup for
a generic, cheap teen movie where the shed their differences and bond
to become better people or whatever. And, well, that sort of happens
in a backward sense in Thoroughbreds.
Whatever improvements they make results in some horrible
consequences, and their most notable bonding moment involves
blackmailing a loser drug dealer (Anton Yelchin) to commit murder.
It’s sort of funny in the humorous way, and funny in the
uncomfortable way, with the joke being how easy it is for awful
people to get what they want with minimal, if any, true consequences.
Thoroughbreds is a masterful
little bit of filmmaking, an incredible feat for first-time
write/director Cory Finley. Finley frames his shots effectively,
maximizing the distance between his characters by showing a lot of
empty space between them. Rarely are they allowed to even touch one
another, let alone show any true emotional affection for the others.
Once the divide is broken the moment is small but momentous, a moment
of growth for the characters despite the darkness surrounding them.
Finley opts to show the characters' isolation to one another,
visually conveying the theme and not forcing the dialog to carry the
brunt of it. Thoroughbreds
is an exhibition for showing and not telling, as well as implying
without showing, amounting to some terrific subtle filmmaking.
There's
also a lot
of rule breaking in Thoroughbreds.
Finley violates very basic standards for tension and suspense,
spurning
Chekhov's dramatic principle for showing what amounts to irrelevant
things on screen. Sometimes it amounts to a very strange but
effective joke, a little bit of mocking from the film to defy these
rules because the joke is
there isn’t really a reason something ever has to happen.
But, really, Finley cleverly violates those rules to build dramatic
tension and obfuscate the inevitable ending to his movie. With
hindsight, it's clear the Thoroughbreds
has to end the way it does, because otherwise it would ruin the arcs
for Amanda and Lily,
but in the moment Finley makes it difficult to know for sure which
way the movie is going. He breaks the rules for a reason, because
following them would be too easy and to convenient.
And, really, nothing is that easy in Thoroughbreds.
Lily
and Amanda are awful for each other, enabling the worst aspects of
their personality and justifying their pursuits. Yet, strangely, they
both come out for the better at the end of everything,
each evolving into a
somewhat better version of what they wanted to be. What Lily becomes
is pretty horrifying, but
she's more honest with herself, a bolder capable person eager to
pursue her wants and desires. Amanda
gets what she needs from their relationship and is punished and
rewarded for it in equal measures. Her
last moment on screen is sad and joyous, showing a woman who is
trapped but finding feeling after years upon years of emptiness. It's
my favorite part of the movie, Amanda in a room by herself with just
an inch of emotion cropping
on her face,
revealing the possibility she might have
some feeling somewhere deep down.
The movie makes that moment honest by clearing the room
of anyone but herself, removing the need to put on an act for someone
else’s benefit. Few moments in Thoroughbreds
are designed to be that honest because appearances matter as much, if
not more, than truth. Lily has to appear perfect because she is
defined by that idea of perfection, living the life of a spoiled girl
in an upper-crust part of Connecticut. Amanda had the same life until
she gave up on trying to fake that perfection, adopting a more honest
persona that is still a bit of facade, acting odd to prove she
doesn’t care about being perceived as odd. Thoroughbreds
makes the point that those fakeries serve as a glue to keep society
together, because being honest to yourself can be a dangerous thing.
Amanda and Lily become honest with themselves, and the result is
dangerous for the people around them. It’s a rather odd coda for a
movie to end on, but one that feels right for something as
complicated as Thoroughbreds.
Review: Four and a half out of Five Stars
Click here to see the trailer.
Rating: R
Run time: 92 minutes
Genre: Dark Comedy
Ask Away
Target
audience:
People who
like dark teen comedies.
Take the whole family?: Definitely not.
Theater
or Netflix?:
It
is good and odd enough for a trip to an art-house movie theater.
RIP
Anton Yelchin: This
is one of Yelchin's final roles before he died, and it reinforces
just how much he could have contributed as an actor. He's not in this
film for very long, but he takes advantage of every minute he has on
screen to bring life to a skeevy loser. Yelchin sells him as a young
man with aspirations for greatness, despite being too incompetent to
ever realize them.
Watch
this as well?:
Thoroughbreds
is the
dark alternative to Heavenly
Creatures,
Peter Jackson's fantastical movie about two teenage girls who fall
head over heels for each other.
No comments:
Post a Comment