#35: The First Hoot and Holler of the Year
You gotta go see Black Bag!!!
Obviously this is a newsletter about whatever I want, but OG readers might recall that my first post was an anatomy of the Hoot and Holler, a designation I have for movies that make me hoot and holler, that is to say, movies that are specifically designed to elicit a Zendaya-in-Challengers “COME ON!!!” from its audience.
The king of this dumb list has always been Steven Soderbergh, the beloved movie-a-year workaholic and forever tinkerer who has made many, many qualifying masterpieces. His movies are frequently about beautiful criminals getting away with it (Ocean’s Trilogy, Logan Lucky, Out of Sight) and beautiful competent people doing their jobs thrillingly well (Contagion, Erin Brockovich—which has the added fun of everyone underestimating Erin so we can all go Zendaya “COME ON!!” when she starts rattling off the phone numbers of class action clients from memory to the rude astonishment of a stuck up lady with “two wrong feet and fucking ugly shoes”). I am stupidly moved by what feels like a fundamental optimism in these films, or at least a deep commitment to entertaining me in the most basic way (hot people, happy endings). Soderbergh is known for a sleek, cool, clinical, unsentimental, tech-oriented (the man loves an iPhone!) style but he sure does make a lot of movies about people who are good and smart and sexy and winning.
All this to say, you gotta go see Soderbergh’s latest: Black Bag.
You’d be forgiven for not knowing what Black Bag is or that it’s out because I barely did and it seems like nobody else did. It had a whimper of a $7.5 million opening last weekend, bested by the Jack Quaid vehicle Novocaine and will probably be on VOD in 9 days, but forget I said that because you should GO SEE IT, IN A THEATER.
Black Bag is a 94 minute thriller about British spy George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) who is tasked with finding out which of a list of five suspects leaked a top secret, super scary, nuclear something-something software outside of the agency, only to find that one of the names on the list is his beloved wife and fellow spy Kathryn St. Jean (Cate Blanchett). Will they choose their marriage? Their job?
The magic of Black Bag is that this tension doesn’t hold too long (if you’re familiar with my affection for the absolutely frictionless Downton Abbey films, you know this is just how I like it). Soderbergh posits that if you want to be happily married, you better trust your beautiful wife and be prepared to die for her. If you pass these two tests, everything will turn out great.
Kathryn and George are the kind of couple I usually don’t find particularly compelling onscreen because they are very fancy and very serious. They live in a gorgeous, careful, expensive looking apartment that looks like a really tasteful showroom. Kathryn wears bland knits and silk slips that probably cost $2500 apiece. Fassbender plays George like if David the Robot from Prometheus was a genuinely devoted husband, making elegant little dinners for his wife. They’re really, really rich in a way I don’t find particularly enviable because it’s put to use on such cold clothes and furnishings. This is no Roman Coppola’s house1. Yet Soderbergh and screenwriter David Koepp sell me pretty quickly on the idea that these two love each other so much. George spends his 5-9 staring adoringly at his wife from various doorways, which strikes me as a fair and relatable reaction to being married to Cate Blanchett at her most exquisite. I like the idea that these two fancy statue people can only access a human spark through their love for each other.
Where George and Kathryn are ethereally calm and cool, their colleagues (and Kathryn’s fellow suspected traitors) are drunk, ambitious, stupid-in-love human messes who are all sleeping with each other. Clarissa (Marisa Abela, pure dynamite!2) a young, horny, just-a-little-bit insane satellite hacker (?) (it doesn’t matter) is dating the older Freddie (Tom Burke), a charming drunk. Dr. Zoe Vaughn (Naomie Harris—one of the more beautiful people on planet Earth??) the office psychologist is sleeping with office golden boy James (Regé-Jean Page, who is good in everything) against her better judgment. This cast is great! I like all these actors so much. Abela was the big revelation for me, as someone who hasn’t seen Industry or her ill-fated Amy Winehouse biopic. Early in the film, George invites them all over to dinner and feeds them drug-spiked chana masala (to encourage truth-telling!) which means you get to watch this perfect assemblage of talented people unravel in front of you. This is as much fun as a person can have at the movies.
This is a spy movie where the spy stuff doesn’t matter (if you find yourself confused by the specifics—don’t worry, you really just need to get the basic gist of what the MacGuffin means for our characters) because it’s really about being married. Soderbergh has more twists and turns in store, all totally fun, but the hook is these beautiful married people and how their devotion to each other kind of makes the people around them crazy. A few weeks ago, when I told my boss via Zoom call that I was engaged she said “That’s so exciting, I love being married” which I thought was very charming. George and Kathryn love being married. There’s a real sexy thrill to knowing a person as completely as you can know a person and then filling in the rest with faith. It’s fun and sexy to watch this on screen, and I hope, fun to live it too.
I need, need, need that tiled bathroom… the backyard tiki bar…
Adam keeps saying she’s so good he’s going to watch the Amy Winehouse movie and I’m pretty sure I’m about to watch Industry (I’ve been 2.5 episodes in for… years?).
Okay, okay, I’ll watch it!
if we all watch the bad amy movie together maybe it will be fun.....???