Attack 2010: A Year in Homosocial Complications and Awaited Moments
There have been many years when cinema reflected our culture’s preoccupations, deepest desires, and most relied-on ideologies. Last year, America’s guilt over her impoverished and too often ignored populations accumulated into two narrations of the same story. Precious (Lee Daniels), a tragedy of a woman who is overtaken by the social caste in which she was born, and The Blind Side (John Lee Hancock), a ridiculous happy-ending picture where the same poor, black, archetype is adopted (literally) into white wealth and makes good on this act of charity. The first film resonates as a cautionary tale of how rough a portion of our population have it and the latter, adapted from a true story, carries the moral that no matter how much the majority neglects poor, undereducated minorities, the world in which we live inevitably will save them in the end.
2010, a weaker year overall for film, didn’t offer as much suffer-pornography or obnoxious racist Oscar-bait as 2009. Overall the previous year in movies succeeded in shunning the “good enough” romance or comedy; Easy A (Will Gluck), The American (Anton Corbijn), Never Let Me Go (Mark Romanek), and Kites (Anurag Basu) were all pictures that made only a ripple in public opinion where I expected a splash. Instead, the hallmark of 2010 was a prudish, homo-socially accented performance that would determine the path of the lead character’s life forever. Most of 2010’s biggest pictures, both critically and commercially, build towards conclusions or showdowns the audience already knows the outcome of.
MacGuffins, false starts and red herrings were nowhere to be seen last year; characters instead worked under the pressure of a transparent countdown towards the rest of their lives. In Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky) Nina’s story is propelled forward by the specter of her debut as both leads in Swan Lake looming over her. In 127 Hours (Danny Boyle) Aron’s water trickles away like sand in an hour glass, as do the moments before his decision to sever his own arm and release him from a boulder—into the world where we’re told he’ll become a better man. Albert (The Kings Speech, Tom Hooper), like the title implies, is on a quest to address his people despite his speech impediment. Micky, (The Fighter, David O. Russell) boxes his way to the fight that will define him as a boxer. Mark Zuckerberg, in David Fincher’s The Social Network, wants Facebook to put him on a map we already know he’s on, and Rooster Cogburn’s (True Grit, The Coen Bros) task is to bring back Tom Chaney—dead or alive. Even this year’s documentaries followed a similar path—Catfish’s narrators (Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman) set out to find their online Moby Dick and Exit Through the Gift Shop (Bansky) builds to an over-the-top art exhibition telegraphed in the first act.
The success or failure of all these climaxes pivots on another trope for the year—the mastering of one’s dark double or, alternately, the earning of the approval of one’s better half. MTV might call the year a year of cinematic “frenemies” and they wouldn’t be too far off. But the outcome of all of these films hinges on whether or not our lead is able to pragmatically incorporate their darker cousin into themselves towards a predetermined goal.
The simplest version of this takes place in The Fighter, where Micky struggles both with his gratitude and his resentment towards his older brother, Dicky—once himself an up-and-coming boxer, but now a townie struggling with a crack habit. As Micky nears the fight that will define his career as a boxer and propel his life forward, Dicky is stuck reliving and reviewing the moment that has become the sum of his own life. Many films of the sort would settle only for the simple expulsion of the dark force (typically by death therefore excluding the hero from any culpability). The Fighter realizes Micky’s dependence on his deranged other half and invites him back into the fold after a period of quiet. The Fighter ends with Micky’s title win and the promise of even bigger fights, as opposed to his subsequent losses and retiring. O. Russell fades to black on a high note, because he believes his characters earned their happy ending for all the grief they endured, but more importantly, all the effort they expended throughout the story.
On opposite footing is the Mark Zukerberg of David Fincher’s The Social Network; here is a man whose story continues brightly past the credits (now the world’s youngest billionaire and Time’s person of the year) but Fincher’s story is one where the hero must be punished and seemingly alone by the film’s end. Zukerberg, a bright college student, eager for public approval, depends on and belittles his best friend, Eduardo, until his own ego has risen high enough to dispose of him. The Social Network wraps with Mark successfully sued by Eduardo with the help of a set of more conventional movie-villain twins. This is the heartbreak of the film; Mark, had he acted loyally, would have Eduardo on his side of the film’s climactic lawsuit. Winning or losing wouldn’t matter.
Albert of The King’s Speech nearly endures the same disheartening conclusion when he rejects Lionel, his speech coach, and their hard work. Albert has to both step aside for a man he considers his inferior and up to the throne he never prepared himself to mount. The narratives of both patient and doctor are interspersed and juxtaposed with the lives each man readied himself to live. Lionel wanted badly to act onstage but now is an unglamorous diction coach and Albert readied himself since boyhood to one day be the brother of a king, but not the king himself. Obviously the expertise of Lionel’s eloquence is somehow wrecking his desired career as an actor, similarly, Albert’s considerate nature and self-consciousness is destroying his ability to speak openly. Both men’s greatest qualities are also the greatest hindrance on their future/desired selves and Albert is only able to realize with ease of the victory of his life story by slipping into Lionel’s fantasy life.
In fact, most of the films of the year 2010 are memorable for their supporting actors because of the perspectival (dark self/good self) intertwining, Black Swan being the exception that stays faithful to its lead. True Grit is shared equally between Jeff Bridges’ Rooster Cogburn and Hailee Steinfeld’s Mattie Ross, though Matt Damon (as LaBoeuf) wrestles the film away from both actors.
It’s a cinematic climate of competition, all the leads of the year cope with not only with how to treat their homo-social equal but the fact that their own story could easily become someone else’s: Black Swan’s Nina is haunted by the fear of her rival, Lily, replacing her, Micky wants his chance at the spotlight and Dicky to abandon his fantasy of a comeback, Mark literally cannot share the wealth with a man who might be his moral superior, and Rooster realizes LaBoeuf has a few screws in tight where his own have wiggled loose. In a time where social media and reality television dictate not only how we as human beings really are, but also how we want to see ourselves, the notion of a personal narrative runs rampant. Meanwhile, the potential richness available in the expression and investigation of the contingencies of uncharted destinies is left by the wayside, as audiences grow more accustomed to the proposition of a single, inescapable future.
