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rinueI'm hanging in there and also doing way too much, and also, predictably, am finishing tasks that other people made unnecessarily difficult and then having those other people complain about it and ask me to redo it. Which I will not. I'm not an international movie producer for nothing.
I'm nice and friendly to a point.
The real story of the real Alamo is fairly complicated and preservation-of-slavery related, and I'm probably on the side of Santa Ana - but the legendary Alamo is me a Texan being extremely willing to die in order to make your life harder if that's what it's going to take, because I drew this line here. This dirt line. This dirt line I will knock your teeth into. Maybe you didn't notice it because it looked like me casually scraping my foot around in some dirt while I was still acting relatively friendly. (Texas means friendship.) But that's your own foolishness.
I'm so fuckin irritated.
Meanwhile, I've been rewatching Moulin Rouge for the first time in ages, and my takeaways are almost exactly the same as when I saw it in theatres 20 years ago. Namely, Jim Broadbent and John Leguizamo are each treasures of cinema, the soundtrack is super fun, and what in the fuck are they doing putting the only significant female character in those corsets.
It distracts me so much I am unable to suspend my disbelief most of the time. It is clear almost every second Nicole Kidman is on camera that rather than being able to act her part, she has to carefully hold extremely uncomfortable poses while trying to breathe. She does not move around like a bohemian expressing the values of freedom, truth, and love. She moves like Anthony Daniels in his C-3PO costume.
The corsets broke one of her ribs very early in filming, and they were still like: yes. This is the way. Definitely we should make you more like a prop than an expressive human. Like maybe we should recast you with a life-size Oscar statue.
There's not even any kind of excuse of "oh, it's period appropriate." It's not just that the whole movie is a modern mashup and you could get rid of something that didn't work. Oh no. It's that the actual Moulin Rouge dancers, as famously commemorated in famous posters and paintings by the real Toulouse-Lautrec, were considered scandalous and sexy and bohemian specifically because they didn't wear that corset shit. Their boobs were flopping all over the place. They were doing high-ass kicks in unstructured bloomers. That was their whole deal. Their clothes looked like they could just fall off which they sometimes did, debatably on purpose. Sure, they'd get corseted up when they were being proper and moving around in regular society, but it wasn't what was associated with the Moulin Rouge.
So it's just 100% that somebody contemporary wanted to do that to Nicole Kidman because they thought clavicle-to-hips tight corseting was hot. She can't take deep breaths. She can't bend at the waist. She can't make big aerobic gestures or move quickly. She can stand up real straight and raise an eyebrow. That's it. That's what you've given an actor to work with who is supposed to play a dramatic arc, supposed to fall in love and be transformed by it.
I've tried occasionally to argue with myself that it symbolizes the ways she's caged and confined but no it isn't. There are a few places where she appears not in a corset, briefly, and they don't correlate with that symbolism.
You could have done, without changing the script at all, a moving and convincing story about somebody who has gotten jaded but reconnects with her ideals through a romance, but the same problems that made her jaded in the first place haven't vanished - that's a good story. One that requires emoting and physicality. Instead, the choice was big corset.
It messes up my ability to have affection for Ewan McGregor's character, Christian, as well. Instead of him being (as written) a youthful idealist revolutionary tragic hero who ignores warnings from more experienced people because he believes (with some justification!) that they've sold out too much, he's a dude who wants to be praised for his brilliant rhetoric about freedom and truth and love while also having a hot submissive tradwife. And yeah, we've all known that dude. He does exist in these movements. But he's not somebody I'm going to root for. Yes, let's all applaud how clever your play is, Christian. You must deeply love this woman who you believe embodies freedom and an utopian future who you haven't noticed can't speak loudly or sit in a chair.
I'm nice and friendly to a point.
The real story of the real Alamo is fairly complicated and preservation-of-slavery related, and I'm probably on the side of Santa Ana - but the legendary Alamo is me a Texan being extremely willing to die in order to make your life harder if that's what it's going to take, because I drew this line here. This dirt line. This dirt line I will knock your teeth into. Maybe you didn't notice it because it looked like me casually scraping my foot around in some dirt while I was still acting relatively friendly. (Texas means friendship.) But that's your own foolishness.
I'm so fuckin irritated.
Meanwhile, I've been rewatching Moulin Rouge for the first time in ages, and my takeaways are almost exactly the same as when I saw it in theatres 20 years ago. Namely, Jim Broadbent and John Leguizamo are each treasures of cinema, the soundtrack is super fun, and what in the fuck are they doing putting the only significant female character in those corsets.
It distracts me so much I am unable to suspend my disbelief most of the time. It is clear almost every second Nicole Kidman is on camera that rather than being able to act her part, she has to carefully hold extremely uncomfortable poses while trying to breathe. She does not move around like a bohemian expressing the values of freedom, truth, and love. She moves like Anthony Daniels in his C-3PO costume.
The corsets broke one of her ribs very early in filming, and they were still like: yes. This is the way. Definitely we should make you more like a prop than an expressive human. Like maybe we should recast you with a life-size Oscar statue.
There's not even any kind of excuse of "oh, it's period appropriate." It's not just that the whole movie is a modern mashup and you could get rid of something that didn't work. Oh no. It's that the actual Moulin Rouge dancers, as famously commemorated in famous posters and paintings by the real Toulouse-Lautrec, were considered scandalous and sexy and bohemian specifically because they didn't wear that corset shit. Their boobs were flopping all over the place. They were doing high-ass kicks in unstructured bloomers. That was their whole deal. Their clothes looked like they could just fall off which they sometimes did, debatably on purpose. Sure, they'd get corseted up when they were being proper and moving around in regular society, but it wasn't what was associated with the Moulin Rouge.
So it's just 100% that somebody contemporary wanted to do that to Nicole Kidman because they thought clavicle-to-hips tight corseting was hot. She can't take deep breaths. She can't bend at the waist. She can't make big aerobic gestures or move quickly. She can stand up real straight and raise an eyebrow. That's it. That's what you've given an actor to work with who is supposed to play a dramatic arc, supposed to fall in love and be transformed by it.
I've tried occasionally to argue with myself that it symbolizes the ways she's caged and confined but no it isn't. There are a few places where she appears not in a corset, briefly, and they don't correlate with that symbolism.
You could have done, without changing the script at all, a moving and convincing story about somebody who has gotten jaded but reconnects with her ideals through a romance, but the same problems that made her jaded in the first place haven't vanished - that's a good story. One that requires emoting and physicality. Instead, the choice was big corset.
It messes up my ability to have affection for Ewan McGregor's character, Christian, as well. Instead of him being (as written) a youthful idealist revolutionary tragic hero who ignores warnings from more experienced people because he believes (with some justification!) that they've sold out too much, he's a dude who wants to be praised for his brilliant rhetoric about freedom and truth and love while also having a hot submissive tradwife. And yeah, we've all known that dude. He does exist in these movements. But he's not somebody I'm going to root for. Yes, let's all applaud how clever your play is, Christian. You must deeply love this woman who you believe embodies freedom and an utopian future who you haven't noticed can't speak loudly or sit in a chair.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-05-26 11:47 pm (UTC)I recognize what you are saying about the sketchy, sketchy choices that were made, but I also just like this manner of saying it. I am also reminded of threads I have encountered about historical corsets vs. corsets in film/TV. (I did not watch Bridgerton, but I gathered from just about all quarters that it rather blew this aspect of its costuming.)
(no subject)
Date: 2021-05-27 12:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-05-27 12:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-05-27 12:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-05-27 04:34 pm (UTC)I thought her doll-like rigidity was characterization---to convey her physical brittleness and fragility. But "yet another poor choice in Hollywood corsetry" to add to the long catalogue of such choices is a better explanation.