bechdel taser: mortality may loom, but forget the future, just see kevin

Walking down the cinema-separating corridor of the Nova last week I had a Yesva moment. All but two of the posters brightening the space featured women. One of those that didn’t was George Clooney star vehicle The Descendants, which may be my movie of the year. Not in the ‘I’ve seen it and it’s awesome’ sense, but the ‘I have never wanted to see a film less’ sense.

Middle-class white dude has to take care of daughters. OH, THE DRAMA. OH, THE ORIGINALITY. OH, THE OSCARS.

I didn’t waste time defacing anything – I needed to go to the bathroom, and I was late. The film at hand was The Future and my brain space was occupied with Miranda July. July is the ultimate sweetheart of indie folk who thought Zooey Deschanel sold out around the time of Elf. I enjoyed Me, You and Everyone We Know… but as my lav-saga played out, I couldn’t help but draw the parallel between the pile of crap I was creating in the toilet, and what I’d thought of her short story collection, No One Belongs Here More Than You.

It’s easy to cast shade on megastar monoliths like George Clooney. But Miranda July seems so much more human. And I wrestle with whether I can be as harsh when critiquing her output, because I can’t tell you that it’s retroactive and damaging, like that of Stephanie Meyer. In fact, she went to high school with Le Tigre’s Johanna Fateman and made videos for Sleater Kinney—it’s my natural instinct to support and praise any feminist who is getting movies funded. I don’t want to contribute to anything which could stop that. But her fixations do not align with my interests. If we were an Ikea bookshelf, we’d be cast into hard rubbish by the embarrassed purchaser who thought they could put us together while drunk and without their glasses.

The Future concerns a childless 30-something couple who adopt an injured stray and use its month in the animal hospital to re-evaluate their lives. Promising, until you realise it translates to being about unlikable hipsters. The kind who define themselves as somehow artistic, but never do anything, and seem to regard a cat as a cool, alternative dependent to a child.

See, I don’t like children, but I don’t really see the difference between having one of them and having an animal. Except that after 18 years with a child, you might have something other than a freshly dug pit in your back-yard. I keep away from both, so scenes in The Future in which the cat, Paw Paw, anthromorphises its inner turmoil with a babied voice, attacked me like a jackhammer on a blackboard jungle (that was me trying to create a more hardcore version of nails on a chalk-board … I don’t think it worked).

I didn’t love the film, and I could not understood July’s Sophie, whose affair with a sleazy middle-aged man made my stomach turn. But the Bechdel Test is passed easily –and unlike several of the other films I’ve critiqued, the ‘conversation’ phenomenon is repeated.

That just creates another problem. When she converses at work with two pregnant women, time starts moving forward to show them raising children who raise their own. This contrasts with July’s static character and seems to present the view that children are, in the end, what makes life meaningful. Maybe she’s trying to ‘keep it real.’ I present the view that plenty of childfree people live meaningful or at least happy lives; she counters that years fall away like risotto from chop-sticks. Mostly we end up undernourished, staring down at something cold and hardly appetising. Some people will relate, but I prefer to see folk—in films and in life—actually do things. Maybe that’s why I like July more than her characters.

If The Future gives doubt to anyone who has chosen not to have children, We Need to Talk About Kevin just gives them a big thumbs up. Though the film’s title makes the Bechdel Test seem paradoxical, it passes early in. But the only character you really care about is Tilda Swinton’s Eva. I hate to say ‘she deserves the Oscar’ before seeing the other nominees (indeed, the nominations aren’t even out yet), but her performance trumps all of the 2010 candidates. If pipped to that post, it’ll be the strange accumulated merit system the voters use. Swinton’s 2008 Best Supporting Actress award for Michael Clayton will work against her, and you know what? I can blame George Clooney for that.

Ah, the world makes sense again.

I actually can’t tase Kevin – it was incredible. I was afraid going in that it would be one of those movies where nothing happens for two hours, like Armapocolypse; Norwegian Wood; or my last meeting with Tilda, I Am Love. Au contraire, you would think there were Weeping Angels in the cinema for how often I blinked.

I’m holding off on listing my favourite films of the year. Serious business needs to be judged Oscars-Oscars, rather than January-December, and living in Australia means we still don’t have big-screen access to a lot of important flicks. Still, Kevin is one of the year’s best. I wouldn’t spoil the intrigue, but while Kevin is still at lots of cinemas, it’s screening in a double with another of my 2011 favourites, Kaboom, on Friday the 23^rd at the Astor. If you’re in Melbourne, get on down, as Araki’s latest merits more feet than your television can provide.

Find Sarina on Twitter @sarinaisshaft