This is a queer movie; it is peculiar. It is not a Queer movie; it does not portray Queer history, culture or life in any authentic version of reality.
Mr. Todd Haynes, writer and director of FFH, was born less than ten miles from me and six years after, in the San Fernando Valley. I can tell you right now: he knew little about the Civil Rights movement of the time; none of us did. It shows in this film. No mentally competent African American man, raising a daughter on his own, would jeopardize her safety by such reckless behavior. Period.
I also believe Mr. Todd Haynes has some work to do on his personal issues about being a Gay man. I'm sure he, like I, was saturated and inundated with anti Queer propaganda of the late fifties and early sixties, during his formative years.
Let me make this clear: Gay cannot be presumed to be alcoholic, woman hating wife beaters! THAT IS A STEREOTYPE.
Oh, it's a very artsy movie, for sure. A lot of attention was paid to the "smoke and mirrors" to mimic a '50s melodrama. He wasted a lot of time on those details. The halting dialogue was farcical, gee whiz, and completely undermined the viewer's ability to relate to the characters in any but the most superficial ways. Not for one second would he allow the viewer to be immersed in the story telling; we must always be reminded that he made a movie. This movie was about Todd Haynes' ego most of all.
This is a movie of stereotype piled upon stereotype. The effect is similar to some cheap imitation of Andy Warhol or that guy who makes the giant "inflatables" and lobsters.
There is no there there.
He learned a lot in film school; that's quite obvious. And he bamboozled a lot of Hollywood snobs who want a chance to assuage their liberal guilt with pretty revisionist history.
And one, very crucial, but unnoticed detail gives him and his pandering house of cards all away.
Ms. Moore's dresses "hiked up in the back," to quote a constant warning from my mother, as I was growing up. No middle class little girl like me -- and especially no upper middle class housewife from Connecticut -- would EVER be caught in public with her petticoats showing and her hems not straight!
From opening overture to spring buds on a branch, I laughed at the sheer gall of this movie, all the way through. It's an embarrassment to Black folks and Queers.
No comments:
Post a Comment