Malcolm & Marie

The acting is good and it's beautifully shot but it's soooo repetitive. A character puts on music, a character smokes. They argue. They make-up. They discuss filmmaking and "art". Characters talk while shoveling food down their mouths. Wash, rinse, repeat. It could have been a good short film. You get everything you really need in like 30 min. But alas its feature length film. So instead you're just hit with the same points again and again. It never adds anything new.

This is a fascinating one to read reviews for, including, if not especially, the ones with which I disagree. I think that's because "Malcolm & Marie" is explicitly about the creation and appreciation of cinematic art. The two-hander, one-house lockdown set (made as it was during the pandemic) talkfest takes place after the eponymous couple return home on the night of the premiere of Malcolm's debut film, which he wrote and directed. Their series of monologues--organized almost as if they were part of a formal debate, each talking at length largely uninterrupted and each taking time to formulate rebuttals--begin and end over his neglecting to thank Marie, herself a former actress turned "muse," in his public remarks at the premiere. Another focal point of the couple's arguments is an LA Times review of the unseen film-within-the-film. Indeed, the review makes some similar criticisms that have been leveled against "Malcolm & Marie," over authenticity, authorship, gender, race, stylistic choices. It's an argument about artistic values, within the film and continued in reviews of it.

I'm a sucker for this sort of reflexive construction. Initially, or instinctively, I had the urge to dismiss it, though, which some others seem to have, as an artsy and self-indulgent stagy exercise in overwrought overacting on black-and-white celluloid. A lot like in some ways two recent filmed plays, both of which I also liked, "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" and "One Night in Miami" (both 2020). All three are unrealistic and dialogue heavy in their own ways where actors are sometimes playing ideas or arguments more than they are characters, and they're all artistically reflexive debates about art. "Malcolm & Marie," however, is more cinematically designed than them, while in form highly reminiscent of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (adapted from the play in 1966), with so much attention given to composition and the highlighting of that by its unusual nature as a modern black-and-white film. It's also focused on film--down to the celluloid vs digital debate--whereas the other recent movies are more about music or other media.

Regardless of whether this is semi-autobiographical of writer-director Sam Levinson's marriage, as filtered through actors John David Washington and Zendaya, and all the gender and racial issues that brings up with a white man telling the story of black characters, one female, within the film the neat suggestion is that it's making itself: that it's the result of the writer-director character, Malcolm, and actress, Marie, having made it themselves--and that it, too, is about talking about a prior film that's also semi-biographical. It's a multi-layered narrative mise-en-abyme. On top of that, the gorgeous high-contrast black-and-white cinematography is often framed through the home's many windows, creating another framing within the already-existent frame of the film--a visual mise-en-abyme alluding to the fact that this is a film. I like, too, how most of the score is diegetic.

Of course, this review is a reflection of how I interpret the film and approach cinema in general, while others may be more interested in discussing character deficiencies, the supposed realism, or socio-political issues and especially race, if they don't dismiss it out of hand as artsy, self-indulgent, etc. All valid criticisms, more or less, and I even agree with them in part, but every time a diatribe verged on obnoxious or at least exhausting, it's turned around, just as Malcolm and Marie go tit-for-tat in their verbal abuse and, then, to shared joy, breaking for a cigarette now and again in between. I found a lot of it to be quite funny. A film where the two characters unnaturally speak in long-winded monologues, as photographed in black and white, but which also plays out largely in real time and is so realistic that the camera follows them to the bathroom. Some of Malcolm's anti-academic rants, also for instance, ironically become academic in their criticisms--bringing up race and politics or the male gaze to refute them, as if Levinson were defending against accusations made of "Malcolm & Marie" even before it was released. Malcolm's movie criticized for gratuitous nudity while we see Zendaya as Marie in various states of undress, only for Malcolm to point out that if this were a film that could be similarly rebuked. Marie, an actress who may sometimes be acting and as played by a real actress, has her moments, as well, especially at one point when it seems as though the lovers' quarrel has really gone off the rails. It's not whether it's right, or who wins the argument, or even that the picture is profound or pretentious, but it's a thoughtful engagement with film on film.

Nobody talks like this in the middle of a heated argument, especially with alcohol involved. The passion was there in the physical acting, but the verbose lines felt entirely too premeditated and rehearsed to be delivered organically as they would be in a spontaneous lover's spat. They just take turns spouting off eloquently composed diatribe. Cinematography is the one redeeming quality. Beyond that, I couldn't get past the toxicity of their psychological jabs to find the takeaway of this abusive character study with no resolution. In summation: TLDR; Relationships are messy and Sam Levinson's grudge for Katie Walsh runs deep.

It's a movie about two people who have no business being in a relationship starting an argument in every room they enter in a house they don't own. That's it. That's the entire movie.

Let me just sate the obvious first

BRILLIANT ACTING

I love Zendaya she's absolutely outstanding in this film and in general, but if you watch this film for Zendaya only and literally nothing else, you have absolutely no substance and no appreciation for ones art and are clearly ignoring an equally brilliant performance by John David Washington.

Anyone who has a problem with seeing the story of another couple or human emotion either has an unusually stable relationship or has never been in a relationship at all.

I'm seeing so many mixed reviews and the more negative reviews tend to say the same thing with absolutely NO originality. "it's pretentious" "not engaging" "it's just about a couple fighting". You don't have to like the film but at the very least be original in your criticism.

It's clear to me people are losing their sense of realism with being glued to the enormous trend of superhero sci-fi films and unnecessary sequels. Cinema is also about intriguing dialogue with realistic earthly circumstances. Sometimes you need to appreciate a more realistic emotional story.

This film is simple yet at the same time complex as what most relationships are. Human emotion and romance isn't sappy or cheesy one liners you see in sitcoms. It's deep, its raw, its cruel, and it crosses boundaries.

I give it a 7/10 overall it's a good film with excellent acting however the only critique I have with the film is that it remains the same with no unexpected twists or turns revealed.