After viewing “Malcolm and Marie” we could not help but remember “Without Witnesses”, a Soviet film from the eighties that we could see in that unforgettable Spanish Television Cinema Club, paying homage to the then important Russian director Nikita Mikhalkov, the best moment came after that production with “Black Eyes”, “Urga, the territory of love” and finishing with the Oscar for best foreign film with “Burned by the sun”. In “Without Witnesses”, we were told the story of a divorced couple who got back together years later to begin a long parliament to try to reconcile with her, while reproaching their old life together and their different characters. All filmed in a single location. “Malcolm and Marie” has a similar idea; A film director and his girlfriend arrive at a luxury villa, in the middle of nowhere, after the premiere of their new movie. While they await the criticism that must elevate him as the new Spike Lee, John Singleton or Barry Jenkins, a series of disputes and reconciliations begin, using cruelty in words as a throwing weapon.
The son of Barry Levinson, an important name, especially in the eighties, with titles such as “Good morning Vietnam”, “The best” or his Oscar for “Rain Man”, Sam Levinson, in turn responsible for the successful series “Euphoria ”Offers us a film shot in the middle of the pandemic, with only two actors, a single set and filmed in stylized black and white. In the positive chapter, Marcell Rev’s photography is impressive, an important point to display a staging that plays well with the shots and sequences, highlighting the opening speech where he wisely mixes the movement, following the director, with the fixed camera, focusing on the actress supported by a magnificent chiaroscuro, while smoking. Admittedly, Sam Levinson is talented and tries to give his work a compelling visual rhythm, supported by actors who comply, especially John David Washington, just as convincing as in his amusing discovery in Spike’s “Infiltrated the KKKlan” Lee and less hieratic than in Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet”. Zendaya, ends up being somewhat cold in her interpretation but it has happened with all her roles, even those of “Spiderman”. It is his way of dealing with roles and, at least, it is dignified.
The problem with “Malcolm and Marie” is that the narrative structure ends up being somewhat false, alternating sensational moments with others difficult to defend. An irregular script, where, on the one hand, multiple aspects of today’s society are criticized, starting with political correctness in the media (Washington’s soliloquy about the LA Times criticism is invaluable) where a work is judged by the race or sex of the author, mixed with others who come dangerously close to sentimental pornography, alternating the most disinterested love with creating the greatest possible damage in each reply, when they argue. Parliaments that, on more than one occasion, do not ring true. They seem as prepared as the staging and black and white. Something created to epate an audience close to that film critic that it is intended to reprove. Something similar to what happened with Sam Mendes’s “American Beauty”, whose objective was that bourgeois nucleus that lives in these private urbanizations but that recognizes its neighbors among the horrible characters but not them, cultured people who have paid their entrance . That attribution bias, which Heider told us about, where own mistakes are minimized, attributing them to external factors but examining and judging others harshly. The same thing that Malcolm and Marie do during the excessive hour and three quarters of the footage, since psychology has already taught us that we tend to forgive ourselves more easily than our peers, even if it is the person with whom we are in love. You already know the saying of “seeing the straw in someone else’s eye and not seeing the beam in your own”, which makes you not thank those who have been important in your great moment or spoil the day of glory of your loved one. It happens in “Malcolm and Marie” as it happened in “No witnesses.”
–
