Intercut Issue Thirteen

INTERCUT Issue Thirteen

ISSUE THIRTEEN

INTERCUT

Issue Thirteen

SPRING 2023

EDITOR-IN CHIEF

Hannah Carroll MANAGING EDITOR

Sloane Dzhitenov FINANCIAL MANAGER

Haden Embry CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Olivia Miller EDITORS

Cyrus Berger Sloane Dzhitenov Sophie Gilbert Casey Epstein-Gross Nicole Lee Cecilio Munoz Miller Ontiveros Kate Sherman Nora Sherman

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WRITERS

Casey Epstein-Gross Nicole Lee Kaden Miller Luka Mullen Isa Paley Natalia Ruszkowski Kate Sherman Nora Sherman Owen Wiley DESIGN & ILLUSTRATION

Olivia Miller ART & PHOTOGRAPHY

Chloe Green Ava Liberace THANK YOU TO

CFilm, SBC, & Qualprint

CONTENTS

ON THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD.... 8

Natalia Ruszkowski YOUNG ROYALS AND THE JOYS OF TEEN TELEVISON.... 14

Kate Sherman THE LONG MOVIE AND THE PURSUIT OF EFFICIENCY.... 18

Kaden Miller THE FEMALE PERSPECTIVE ON MARTIN SCORSESE.... 24

Nora Sherman HOW TO EAT THE RICH.... 30

Luka Mullen

ILLUSTRATED BY OLIVIA MILLER

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A NEW DREAM: NETFLIX’S THE SANDMAN AND THE ART OF ADAPTATION.... 36

Nicole Lee MARGARET: THE IMPENDING DOOM OF ACCEPTING OUR INSIGNIFICANCE.... 44

Isa Paley LOVE AND LONELINESS THROUGH THE EYES OF JOEL HAVER.... 50

Owen Wiley HOW BETTER CALL SAUL REFUSES TO BE DOOMED BY ITS OWN ‘DOOMED’ NARRATIVE.... 56

Casey Epstein-Gross

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

DEAR READERS

for taking the time to read Issue Thirteen of Intercut Magazine.

As I write my final letter as Editor-in-Chief, I am filled with pride and an appreciation for what the magazine has become over the last several years. Issue Thirteen, in particular, represents the culmination of countless hours of dedication and passion from our talented team of writers, editors, and artists. A testament to the myriad of interests and talents that exist within Wesleyan’s creative community, this issue’s articles run the gamut of the entertainment industry and capture a wide variety of perspectives on visual media, past and present.

I want to thank the entire Intercut masthead for their continued commitment to the magazine.

Each of you has played an important role in THANK YOU

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shaping the identity of this publication. I especially want to express my gratitude to Olivia, whose creative vision has shaped the overall trajectory of Intercut and has elevated the look-and-feel of the magazine in recent issues. As I prepare to sign off, I am filled with optimism for the future of Intercut under Sloane’s capable leadership. I have full confidence that the upcoming editions will continue to capture the enthusiastic, engaged spirit of the Wesleyan student body and look forward to reading them myself.

I hope you find as much joy in perusing Issue Thirteen as we found in bringing it to life.

Here’s to new adventures… ee

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Hannah Carroll

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On The Worst Person in the World

BY NATALIA RUSZKOWSKI

our own ‘worst person in the world.’ Julie is no different. She is aimless, flaky, and cowardly. She cannot decide on one vocation or lover. She cannot confront her father’s futility in being her father. She cannot decide on one life, nor can she deal with the one that was given to her.

The Worst Person in the World is a film about reconciliation. It is about what it means to reconcile with the fact that you are the worst person you know.

You cherish no faith but that which is

ing, finally, only to realize that no, that is not who you are or what you want after all. With that sudden realization, the cycle begins anew.

What makes the film so special is that it does not condemn this cycle of change. It is easy to lapse into self-hatred when trying to figure out who you are; you feel the weight of Aksel’s words, ‘In any case, you’ll have other relationships, and you’ll realize what we had was unique,’ when Julie breaks up with him. They attempt to sentence Ju-

WE ARE ALL

most elusive: contentment. In searching for this utopia, you abandon professions with little feeling, you abruptly end relationships and jump quickly into new ones, you adapt to a new life think-

lie to a life of regret, a life not of What if I did? but What if I didn’t? The film sees Julie grapple with feelings of the latter. She leaves Aksel for Eivind in search of a reprieve from the suffoca8

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Joachim Trier, The Worst Person in the World, 2022, Film Still

tion and inadequacy she feels with Aksel, who is more esteemed in his professional success and older, and therefore ready for more, for the life that comes with settling down. She crashes a party after leaving his book release event early; there, she meets Eivind, and they are together until dawn, intimate in the way you are with someone you know you will never see again. But by chance, they do see one another again, and neither of them is satisfied with the ‘almost’ of their shared night. Time stops

discovers she is pregnant.

Julie’s pregnancy is the crux of her development in the film; it is the summation of her worry. She fears the end of her independent life before she truly knows her independent self. She fears that she is a product of her father’s detachment, that she will endow her child with the same perpetual feeling of inadequacy that she has been subject to. She begins to wonder whether her decisions have been the right ones. This line of thinking returns her to Aksel, who she

— quite literally, Julie flicks a light switch, pausing the world — until they reunite. They are intensely happy until Eivind’s idiosyncrasies begin to become overbearing, by which time Julie also

visits in the hospital after hearing he is dying, having been diagnosed with cancer. Despite her worries, she tells Aksel that she plans on keeping the child. He helps soothe her worries about moth9

“ I wasted so much time worrying about what could go wrong. ” - Aksel erhood, insisting she will be a good mother. They share a poignant moment when he tells her that he alone harbors memories of her that she has forgotten, and that these memories will cease to exist when he dies. It is a moving reminder that to live is to be forgotten.

After a life of searching and choosing and then searching and choosing again, Julie comes to terms with the fact that contentment is not subject to the laws of an input/output system. To make a choice is not to guarantee an

had decided differently. Yet choice and change, in turn, are made volatile once deconstructed. Julie’s pregnancy is perhaps the perfect way to show this — it is one of the more extreme products of chance. It happening to Julie is a subtle reminder that choice, chance, and change interact and happen with each other. The burden of What if ’s lessens in light of these incalculable probabilities that deny careful analysis and planning.

Julie’s relationship to change is

outcome. To learn this is to try and fail to mold change into linearity – which Julie does, again and again. She bears the weight of this false linearity by wondering what could have been if she

transformed into something near surrender by the end of the film. Aksel voices this transformation in the hospital, reflecting, ‘I wasted so much time worrying about what could go wrong.

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Joachim Trier, The Worst Person in the World, 2022, Julie and Aksel

But what did go wrong, was never the things I was worried about.’ Not long after he speaks these words, Julie has a miscarriage.

The end of the film sees Julie as a still photographer. She is untethered for the first time after breaking up with Eivind. The scene has wrapped; the female actress reflects dejectedly on her performance, unable to fill the scene with the emotion of being left at the dinner table. Julie tells her to use that dejection and takes a few shots. The

walks towards him, and Eivind passes her the baby, a subtle inclination that the child is hers, too. This fact is confirmed when she kisses Eivind and the two begin to walk away.

Change comes to Julie unanticipated, despite her attempts to control it. Her self-blame and regret dissipate when she accepts that life is not delineated by the choices you make and the ones you don’t. Chance, in the form of miscarriages and small-world relationships, refuses this simple ‘choosing’ of

film then cuts to Julie as she puts her equipment away, quickly glancing out of the window. Below is Eivind, holding a baby, a stroller idle near him. The actress Julie had just taken portraits of

who you want to be. Julie comes to accept these impossible fluctuations, relinquishing her title of ‘worst person in the world’ and offering the viewer a similar reprieve from this condemnation. ee

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CHLOE GREEN

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13

Young Royals and the Joys of Teen Television

BY KATE SHERMAN

THIS IS MY THIRD (and final) article for

ries trace similar patterns: growing up, coming out, coming into yourself. Thematically, I find more overlap in these shows than I do difference, and perhaps this is why I’ve sort-of accidentally put

Intercut, and each has been, to some degree, focused on the lives and portrayals of young queer people on television.

Simply, I suppose, I am a young queer

person, and as such am generally drawn to stories about people like me. These characters take many forms, though: a group of misfit British high schoolers in Sex Education, the chaotic first year students in The Sex Lives of College Girls, and my most recent fascination – Sweden’s young prince and his boarding school beloved in Young Royals (with an honorable mention for the final paper I wrote about Derry Girls last year).

Despite their differences, geographical and otherwise, many of these sto-

myself into a box, viewing-wise. I like the box, though, and am content to stay here for the time being, regardless of my own age and resistant crawl toward adulthood.

Really, I think this is exactly why I am so drawn to these shows: my hesitance to embrace “adulthood” in all of its complexities manifests itself in many ways, one of which is my desire to melt into stories about teens. Somehow, I am graduating in a mere two months, and that terrifying ever-after takes up most

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Young Royals, 2021, Film still

of my brain space as it is. So I choose not to spend all my TV time watching (quote unquote) prestige, shows like Succession or Severance. I also tend to abstain from shows that cut a bit too

as well as a couple of others; I’ve recently started watching Skam, and I’ve seen Heartstopper more than once. But I want to focus on Young Royals, the 2021 Swedish Netflix drama that consumed

close to home: I don’t want to watch Girls, for example – for many reasons – but partly because I don’t want to be faced with my own lack of purpose when it’s already all I can think about.

Instead, I pivot entirely, deciding to focus on the trials and tribulations of Young Royals, a show that both fulfills my desire for distraction and yet remains relevant enough to be engaging.

This is what I’m calling my ‘Teens in Love’ renaissance. Some of the shows I’ve already listed fall into this category,

much of my winter break. Young Royals stars Edvin Ryding and Omar Rudberg as Wilhelm and Simon, respectively, and follows Wille’s journey as the newfound crown prince of Sweden. He juggles royal duties with typical boarding school drama, focusing especially on his journey toward understanding his sexuality. Enter Simon, the socialist day student whose family doesn’t fit the wealthy, aristocratic mold of the rest of Hillerska School. Of course, the two fall for each other, and many

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people deserve “Queer media about all kinds

of queer people, royal or otherwise, young or old.

of the usual tropes ensue: Simon must be kept a secret because Wille doesn’t want to come out, for one. Everything is turned up a notch under the royal spotlight, and familiar as many of these plot points feel, they remain dynamic and engaging; the highs feel high, the lows low.

I came to YR first through the internet and then through my friends.

I’d heard my housemates gushing over Ryding and Rudberg – Swedish actors I had never heard of – and when I finally had time to start a new show I convinced my sister to join me. Soon

”

we were peppering our sentences with random Swedish words we’d picked up, waiting all day until we could sink back into the couch and our Swedish drama.

We are 22 and 27, and yet found ourselves obsessed with the lives of these high schoolers. My sister (the 27-yearold, to be clear) went on to recommend Young Royals to many of her friends, all her age and older. The show reliably hooked them all.

Young Royals strikes a delicate balance between realism and melodrama, I think, because much of the show deals with heavy, relevant topics. There are

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themes of drug abuse, manipulation, death, and mental illness threaded through the show’s two seasons, lending a dark edge to the surface-level silliness of a prince and his boarding school antics. As a show that centers a queer couple, YR takes this darkness fairly seriously; many of Wille’s struggles surround his fear of being accepted.

At once, I find the show completely unrelatable and also familiar – both so far from my actual life that it’s almost voyeuristic to watch and yet still relevant to my own existence in the world. YR is good television: it’s dramatic, entertaining, sometimes ridiculous, and yet important nonetheless. Queer people deserve media about all kinds of queer people, royal or otherwise, young or old.

There are certainly critiques to be made, and I won’t pretend the show is perfect. A common criticism of queer TV and movies surrounds its focus on coming out, and this show doesn’t escape that. Much of Wille’s storyline revolves around his difficulty coming to terms with and sharing his sexuality, rather than portraying him as already comfortable with it. Simon, for his part, is the opposite, entirely at peace with his

sexuality and open with everyone about it. Some scenes certainly lean cheesy, but as soapy as YR can be it somehow still feels truthful. The characters are often confusing and complicated, their teenage desires interfering with their wonky moral compasses. They’re teens, after all, and royal or not, they’re messy.

Young Royals is at times silly and at others serious, reliant on its exaggerated portrayal of life’s ups and downs.

I like that YR balances tragedy with lightness, because it reminds me of my own resistance to reality. Again, I am thinking of my own viewing patterns and the box I’ve settled into. I find value in absorbing these stories, silly as they may seem to some. I enjoy rooting for Wille and Simon’s happiness, or for the growth of the characters in Sex Ed or Derry Girls. I don’t feel the need to immerse myself in prestige, because I think there’s worth in so many kinds of stories. I’ll have plenty of time to find myself in the adults of television; for now, I can pretend I liked high school more than I did, living life vicariously through a 16-year-old Swedish crown prince until I turn off the TV and am returned to my imminent adulthood. ee

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The Long Movie and the Pursuit of Efficiency

By Kaden Miller

CINEPHILES are notoriously hungry for

longer going to watch it. Historically, though, that hasn’t always been the case: Gone With the Wind is, of course,

lengthy films. You might’ve seen the countless memes about filmbros watch-

ing, say, a four-hour movie about a bird in an Asian war or thirsting for a threehour epic about the life and death of a crossing guard. While satirical, of course, many lengthy films are typically associated with being the film nerd’s territory – Seven Samurai is a darling of the budding film student, and War and Peace is famously adored by the same folks. Furthermore, long movies have the tendency to be derided by mainstream audiences – you’ve surely heard someone (perhaps yourself ) gripe about how long a movie is and why they’re no

one of the most cherished films of all time, especially amongst the older generations, and younger generations were equally enthralled by the three hour Avengers: Endgame. A common explanation for this is that audiences are “just different nowadays” and are too impatient for a lengthy spectacle. I find this to be a tired, nonsense explanation and I think you’ll agree – if you’re willing to sit through this article’s runtime.

For the purpose of this examination, I’m going to use the two-hour film as the standard length, and draw 18

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War and Peace, Film Poster, 1956

Seven Samurai, Film Poster, 1954

the lines for “long” and “short” as thirty minutes above or below that.

The age-old “lack of patience”

What’s so different about these four films? We’ll come back to this.

Think about movies that trend in

excuse was a bigger problem in the pre-streaming era, where watching a movie not only required viewers to surrender the runtime, but also the time it takes to make it to the theater and back again. In today’s streaming-dominated market, the mass availability of cinema makes it so much easier to simply select a shorter film if you have other things to do. Clearly, though, audiences don’t always spring for the shortest option when selecting a movie – four of the five highest grossing films of all time are over two hours and forty minutes.

the opposite direction: features that run ninety minutes or less. These films are immediately more accessible to the audience – they don’t require as much of a time commitment – but clearly we don’t see studios exclusively sticking to the ninety-minute mark for their films.

Four of the highest grossing films of 2022, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, The Batman, Elvis, and Avatar: The Way of Water, are quite lengthy. Why? Sure, long movies do have the tendency to scare away audiences because of the time they require, but there are still 19

plenty of folks who view movies as a special treat to be savored and don’t necessarily want a film that’s finished just over an hour after they started it.

Even in a market dominated by streaming, viewers consciously choose a movie instead of an episode of television when they’re looking for a lengthier experience to sink their teeth into.

This isn’t what I consider to be the ultimate explanation for why audiences seem to prefer short movies to long ones, though. For that, we need not consider simply the runtime of the film, but also how the creators use the time that they’re allotted. I don’t believe that audiences in the past or present have ever had a true vendetta against long movies, but they do hate ones that drag

The Shop Around the Corner, Film Poster, 1940

on without making meaningful progress or adding anything to the enjoyment of the film. This can be summed up as the efficiency of each film, which is what ultimately matters when discussing runtime.

I’m going to define the efficiency of a film as squeezing the most quality material into the tightest runtime it can. I’m being purposely vague by using the descriptor “quality material” because this can be anything enjoyable from a film – action, suspense, romance, good performances, an interesting plot,

Duel, Film Poster, 1971

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“ Four of the highest

grossing films of 2022 are quite lengthy. Why?

”

stunning composition or cinematography – anything that audiences (average or cinephile) would enjoy seeing. The distinction between an efficient film and a short one must be crystal clear: a short movie simply has a low runtime, but an efficient film makes use of whatever it has, regardless of length.

There are a multitude of examples you could pull to demonstrate cinematic efficiency, because I believe it to be a cornerstone of every, well, “good” movie ever made. Focus briefly on the work of Ernst Lubitsch, who seemed to have an obsession with making the most efficient film possible. None of his eight most popular films clear 112 minutes, and each one moves strikingly fast and fits so much into frame.

The Shop Around the Corner, one of his most well-known, moves so elegantly through its 99 minutes that they breeze by; even when there isn’t a major plot point occurring, there’s something to keep your mind occupied and engaged.

Speilberg’s Duel, a similarly efficient film, is set almost entirely on a desolate highway which chooses tension as its method of engagement and never lets the suspense decline.

Importantly, this does not only apply to short movies. I mentioned the four of the five highest grossing films were lengthy, but they all use their runtimes efficiently, and that’s what keeps viewers engaged. Both Avatar films, along with Titanic, use their runtimes effectively to prevent a lull in pace, 21

and Avengers: Endgame is chock-full of superhero drama and action that was monstrously popular. Gone With the Wind, despite how troubling many aspects of it are, is efficient at its colossal 221-minute runtime because of everything it packs into it – luscious visuals, multiple all-timer performances, and a plot of epic scale. To put it plainly, the amount of quality material must stay at a constant ratio to the length of the film, and when it doesn’t, the film becomes a redundant drag. Note how a movie being boring doesn’t usually relate to the runtime itself – there are 90-minute movies that are immensely boring, too – which proves that a more brief length does not correlate to the entertainment gained from a film. If a movie is boring, it is just as boring at three hours as it is in just over one.

So, if the length of a movie doesn’t matter in comparison to efficiency, why do many people still disparage longer films? I assume that audiences may think that longer films have a high-

er propensity to be boring; misusing a lengthy runtime has certainly plagued films in the past. Or, alternatively, the widespread availability of films on streaming platforms may just inspire shorter choices, because there are countless 90-minute films to choose from. Some platforms have attempted to combat this by breaking lengthy movies into a miniseries of equally long episodes, like Netflix’s extended version of The Hateful Eight, though I don’t think this will make an ultimate difference in the consumption of the medium, and neither will any other method of breaking a film into chunks. Nothing will change how the film was made, and therefore neither does it change its efficiency. None of what I’ve described, though, will kill the long movie. So, cinephile, don’t fret: there will always be long stories to be told and filmmakers willing to tell them. As long as we have short movies, we will have long ones.

Let’s just hope they’re efficient. ee

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The Female Perspective on Martin Scorsese

BY NORA SHERMAN

Martin Scorsese, Who’s That Knocking at My Door, 1967, Film still

AS EMBARRASSING as

it is to admit, I am a film bro. I’m not proud of this part of me, but I’d certainly be lying to myself if I didn’t admit it. The truth is, anyone can be a film bro regardless of gender (I use “film bro” in a gender neutral manner), as long as they worship those specific pretentious, male-centered movies (you know the ones). Some of my favorites include The Social Network, A Clockwork Orange,

Parasite, etc. But don’t worry, not Pulp Fiction. I’m not that much of a cliche.

But that’s not why I’m here. For years, I’ve put off watching so many highly worshiped films, such as a fat stack of Martin Scorsese films that I just never got around to seeing, including Goodfellas, Raging Bull and King of Comedy. And as much as I wanted to watch them in theory, I knew I would not be able to get my ass off of TikTok

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I am currently taking this class now.

From day one, I knew this class would suit my guilty pleasure, but the truth is, I didn’t know much about Scorsese prior to the course. I had only seen movies made later in his career, like The Departed, The Aviator, and The Wolf of Wall Street. I knew Marty was revered in the film world, but I didn’t know why. I couldn’t exactly pinpoint his distinct style as a director. What the fuck does The Departed, The Aviator, and The Wolf of Wall Street have in common besides Leonardo Dicaprio being the lead and the runtime being way too long?

In the beginning of the class, we watched the holy trinity of Scorsese films in this order: Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, then Raging Bull. Through these films, I began to figure out Marty’s style – gritty New York Italian-Americans, and a plethora of shitty male protagonists. During class, I realized that I wasn’t watching these movies as the film bro I thought I was… Instead, I was watching them through the lens of a young woman. It wasn’t funny to me when Travis Bickle took his date, Betsy, to a porno, or stalked her at her workplace while he screamed at her, “You’re going to hell!” I caught myself feeling scared for her while watching Taxi Driver.

“The Scorsese

psychopath is often created at the expense of innocent, kind women.

”

to do so. To my luck, Wesleyan’s renowned film department happened to offer a spring elective class dedicated to the work of the legend himself, Martin Scorsese, taught by Professor Marc Longenecker. This course would be the perfect solution to my problem: finally watching all the movies I’ve been putting off for years, while unapologetically embracing my inner film bro in a class filled with other closeted film bros.

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Martin Scorsese, Raging Bull, 1980, Film still

In Raging Bull, I wasn’t terribly in awe of Jake La Motta’s dedication and passion for boxing. Instead, my heart went out to his wife, Vicky, who was constantly, both physically and emotionally, abused by La Motta throughout the film, and the abuse only got worse as the film went on. Sure, Scorsese does not necessarily portray La Motta’s paranoia in a positive light, but nonetheless his actions lack any real acknowledgement. In one scene, La Motta is so jealous that he does not let Vicky so much as talk to any other men in a restaurant. Moments like these stand out to me because they make me think about what I would do in that scenario; if I married a man who

controlled my every move and limited my experiences and free will. I could feel her suffocation through the screen.

One moment in Scorsese’s filmography that I found particularly troubling was in his first-ever feature film, Who’s That Knocking at My Door. A precursor to Mean Streets, and a relatively unknown Scorsese film, it showcases many of the themes he later becomes known for. In the film, Harvey Keitel plays JR, a tough guy who roams the streets of Little Italy, but has a backwards view of sexuality due to repression and the Catholic church. In one scene, JR lashes out at his girlfriend when he discovers that she is not the virgin he assumed her to be, due to an

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aggressive and upsetting rape. However, this fact does not change anything for JR, and he continues to feel entitled to lashing out at her. I couldn’t help but cringe while watching this scene. It’s bad enough JR slut-shames his girlfriend for not being a virgin, but the fact that he is so stuck in his traditional values that he could not make an exception for her because she was raped made the scene even more upsetting.

The Scorsese psychopath is often created at the expense of innocent, kind women. It is moments like these that I found difficult to watch even if it is just fiction. Even if Scorsese himself isn’t outwardly condoning these behaviors, the actions his lead characters partake in deserve to be acknowledged for how cruel they are. If you identify as anything other than male, it’s hard not to notice how the women in his early films are treated by their male counterparts. Maybe as a man, you don’t think as hard about the sexism in these films, but as a woman, it’s a pretty hard thing to overlook because oftentimes you can’t help but imagine if this were to happen to you. And the truth is, it very well could, even fifty years later.

Now, Scorsese is totally aware that his characters are not, and should not be, viewed as role models. He knows

Martin Scorsese, Who’s That Knocking at My Door, 1967, Film still

Martin Scorsese, Taxi Driver, 1976, Film still

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they’re not great people. They are violent, morally corrupt misogynists, and

not advocating for censorship. I am not saying that people can only make

ity as a creative choice. I’ll never know for sure until I grab dinner with him.

Despite literally my entire essay, I want to make something clear: I’m

Fear and not get a twinge of discomfort for your fellow women in the audience would be just plain ignorant.

sometimes even full-on psychopaths.

Something about Marty is that he finds the smallest ounce of humanity in these shitty characters, allowing the audience to still feel sympathy for them. But even so, what is it that draws him to depict characters that beat their wives, control who they are allowed to talk to, and have unrealistic standards for their virgin status? What is it that makes him want to portray shitty characters over and over again? What is even more concerning to me is the objective viewpoint in which he presents these characters. For instance, Raging Bull acts like an ethnographic case study on boxer Jake La Motta. We follow the story of his life, objectively and somewhat detached; a life where he happens to emotionally and physically abuse his wife (as well as other people who are close to him such as his brother played

by Joe Pesci). But maybe it is much simpler than all that. Maybe he just thinks the psychology of these characters is intriguing, and he likes objectiv-

films if the protagonist isn’t flawed. In fact, I am all for depicting anti-heroes, especially those highlighting a range of complex human emotions. I just wanted to share the female perspective on these canonically important films.

The problem isn’t necessarily the films themselves, it’s the lack of conversation around and acknowledgement of their prominent themes of misogyny. Oh, and by the way, it’s not just Scorsese. My favorite movie, like ever, is The Social Network, and it has by far the worst portrayal of female characters I’ve ever seen. But I still love it. Why? Maybe it’s because I unironically love Aaron Sorkin, or maybe it’s my internalized misogyny. Or maybe it’s both.

My point is, we can have mixed feelings about our favorite movies, and we can still love them even if they are not perfect. I don’t even think there is such a thing as ‘the perfect movie’ (except for Dazed and Confused).

But to watch Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, or even Scorcese’s remake of Cape

ee

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Martin Scorsese, Raging Bull, 1980, Film still

29

How to Eat the Rich

By Luka Mullen

OLIVIA MILLER

2022 WAS A YEAR full of movies and TV

shows satirically portraying rich people, with their bizarre extravagance and warped worldview in focus. Season Two of The White Lotus was a big hit, and Knives Out: A Glass Onion Mystery was the larger, flashier, emptier, less meticulous sequel to the 2019 novelty whodunit. I didn’t care for either, never

making it past the first episode of The White Lotus largely because of the slow, awkward performances and Twittertalk.

There were two movies that epitomized this new era of eat-the-rich filmmaking, both noteworthy. One was good, and the other — bad. One question among many stands out: how do you blindly follow a trend — and how do

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you set yourself apart from it?

The Menu is a movie about a bunch of rich people who pay to travel to an island, where a master chef cooks them the multi-course meal of their lives.

Among these guests is Margot, who is not like the others — she is only there because the very slappable food snob Tyler invites her along on a date. The chef, played by Ralph Fiennes, has intensely schemed to teach all of these rich people (their final) lesson.

I couldn’t stand this movie. There was little to laugh about and even less to contemplate. I’ll tell you why, and spoil the movie in the process.

Take the characters. Were there any? No. There were the guests — the finance douches, who were really into finance and being douches; the food critic, who enjoyed saying nothing and sounding stupid, along with her devoted henchman; and Tyler, who seems like he really cares about the food itself and is above it all, but who also turns out to be another rich piece of dogshit.

I can’t remember the others. These were caricatures, not characters, and no one will disagree with me. Caricatures can be totally fine, given a few conditions: they are funny, or novel, or both, and they are offset by characters, or otherwise backed up by a strong, committed, holistic aesthetic.

“ I couldn’t

stand this movie. There was little to laugh about and even less to contemplate.

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”

Ruben Östlund, Triangle of Sadness, 2022, Film still

The humor thing is a matter of taste. If you enjoyed these characters, I can’t argue with you. I even enjoyed them to a certain extent. My problem is with the movie’s indulgence. It reinforces the same tropes about each character, over and over again — ones which were not too insightful to begin with. The film fully relies on the audience to revel in the glory of how annoying, stupid, and bad each of them are. The same joke is repeated. A good caricature still has dimension. That really is the problem with this film — its

each new dish, are perfectly logical and acceptable for the film’s aesthetic. But over the course of the film, they become wacky. They start placing jokes in them, bad ones, nudge-nudging the audience with a repellent self-satisfaction. The s’mores? Ridiculous and dumb. Maybe you take The Menu’s increasing absurdity as a commentary on the absurdity of it all, but I don’t see it so favorably.

I see it as the film, maybe the writer, really feeling itself and throwing any thought, meticulousness, and artistry out of the window in favor of fun in the

increasing indulgence in its own emptiness. This shows itself in many respects. The title cards, which present

writer’s room, the editing room, or on set — indulgence. Maybe that should be the subject of the movie. I mean, the 32

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Mark Mylod, The Menu, 2022, Film still

burger? Give me a goddamn break.

Let’s talk about this burger. That’s why Chef Slowik is not a character. Fiennes gives a strong performance, and it is easily the best facet of the movie.

The chef clearly possesses strength of character and commitment to his ideology. He wants to show these rich people what’s what? Go for it. Color me curious. I want to know what’s going on inside of that head.

Wait — he’s getting all sentimental on us over a burger order? Did he just deus ex machina Anya Taylor-Joy out

making a cheeky burger order? I mean how the hell did this crazy motherfucker wind up letting her off that island?

Anya Taylor-Joy was fine. She also did not possess a character in this movie. Margot was just a person who wasn’t rich and wasn’t bad like the rich people.

She got in a sticky situation because one of them fucked her over. Then she got out of it, not by being clever, but because the movie chose to let her do that. I couldn’t relay a single personal quality of hers.

So what is the takeaway? Rich peo-

of her imminent death? Okay, he’s lost me. And are we supposed to think Margot ( Joy) is supposed to be clever for

ple don’t appreciate their food enough.

And the chefs and servers are sick of it.

But maybe — maybe — if they started 33

Ruben Östlund, Triangle of Sadness, 2022, Film still

ordering burgers more often, it would revive their love for cooking and they wouldn’t be so pissed off all the time.

Ever thought of that? Of course you did! You, the viewer, are not the problem. It’s those finance douches and food critics. Doesn’t it feel amazing to watch them and their stupid faces in the marshmallow outfits burn?

Okay, I guess we can zoom out a bit. Rich people are too frivolous with all of their resources. And the people who work hard to serve them everyday are tired of it. And those people will soon ignite a potentially violent revolution against the rich. If you’re not

rich and bad, you may be caught in the crossfire, so be careful. Just… ask for a burger, or something, to show that you don’t care about expensive things like the rich people, and people will know that you are on their side, and they’ll actually enjoy accommodating your requests.

Even when I perform mental gymnastics to make something meaningful from this movie, it doesn’t work. And I understand that most people aren’t into this movie for its profundity. They think it’s fun, and will think I’m no fun for not being amused or impressed. To that I say, fine.

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Triangle of Sadness I can get down with. It does not have the same single-minded resoluteness in its concepts or plot trajectory. While this is not exactly a point in its favor, it does seem to go hand-in-hand with its relative subtlety and breadth. Here, there are characters — not just tropes — and it is because each of them are allowed to exist naturally and face a range of circumstances. The caricatures similarly represent archetypes, but they are ones with a tradeoff, or at least aren’t completely despicable, scratching the ironic itch while still conveying a critique in the process. The old British couple are cute and boring until they reveal that they’re rich from grenades, where they gain a hilarious, unwitting wickedness.

The Russian guy is greedy and a dick, but he’s also affable. The old blonde woman has decent intentions, but her intense ignorance makes her really miss the mark as she gets the entire crew to swim and they, confused and unenthusiastic, oblige.

The island balances the role of the characters as contributors to the film’s themes and as real individuals with agency. When they arrive at the island, a hierarchy is soon established, with Alice as the new boss. The commentary is clear — our instinctive ideas about hierarchy are arbitrary and can easily

change given new circumstances. What I want to focus on is how the movie, instead of perpetually reinforcing this hierarchy, settles it over time. The social order and relationships become more fluid and complicated, and characters are depicted having fun, existing independently or despite this social order – that’s realistic. What would The Menu do? Have each character act precisely in accordance with their new role, and every moment would serve to emphasize that dynamic, rather than coexist with it. It’s just simplistic and narrow.

Despite what I said about the single-mindedness of Triangle of Sadness, it is still maximalist (like The Menu).

Everyone on the ship throws up, while the Captain and the Russian argue about capitalism and communism and then the captain reads from Marx. At the beginning of the film Carl, the model, directly relays the film’s own commentary on the gender dynamics of bill-paying.

The film often wears its messages on its sleeve, but it is multi-directional and ambitiously broad, and these messages come through amid a grounded and chaotic universe. Characters are full people, plot points are occurrences, and meaning naturally comes out of reality rather than being serviced by it. ee

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A New Dream: Netflix’s The Sandman and the Art of Adaptation

BY NICOLE LEE

ILLUSTRATED BY AVA LIBERACE

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ADAPTATION is a tricky art. This isn’t a

look much farther than the omnipresent chokehold the MCU has on pop culture today. Whether or not we can

surprise, since taking anything from its original context is bound to create is-

sues, even before you begin to run up against issues with how loyal fans of the source material might take to the adaptation. We’ve seen any number of failed adaptations, from fiascos like the Percy Jackson movies to the CW ’s infamous Riverdale TV show, both of which distorted their source material to nigh-unrecognizable degrees – but for every Shadowhunters, there’s a Game of Thrones (so long as you ignore that last season…) or a Big Little Lies.

But good adaptations are still few and far between, and even rarer is the TV show that manages to adapt its source material correctly – especially when said source material is something like a comic. So why even adapt to begin with? Why do we take chances on stories that are, ostensibly, already perfect the way they are?

There are a couple of cases for adaptation, but to tell you the truth, they all tend to boil down to two main reasons. The cynical reason is, of course, money. Beloved franchises will always rake in cash, especially when you promise die-hard fans a newer, shinier version of the cast of characters they already know and love. You don’t need to

really call all of the MCU entries successful adaptations remains to be seen (Civil War, eat your heart out), but the box office numbers don’t lie; the MCU is an undeniable example of just how much money can be made from adapting pre-existing stories for the gold and silver screens. The other reason is passion: sometimes, when someone loves a story enough, the driving force for adapting it to the screen is to try and get said story out to a wider audience.

Certainly, the profit doesn’t hurt, but the best adaptations are, first and foremost, labors of love.

We have our reasons for adaptation (cynical and optimistic), but the question remains: what makes an adaptation good? How do we decide that? Some might default straight to accuracy – an adaptation can only be good if it’s a faithful one. In some ways, this isn’t incorrect. Accuracy is important for an adaptation, if only because an adaptation sets out to do just that – adapt.

Of course, there’s bound to be leeway with how strictly an adaptation adheres to its source material; film and TV have constraints, same as any other form. On the surface, it seems like films

37

have more time to work with: the average TV episode ranges anywhere from 22 to 45 minutes long, whereas movies

can range anywhere from an hour to close to three hours in length. However, this is a bit misleading – though we’ve since left the land of cable TV seasons (22-24 episode seasons) behind for the not-quite-greener pastures of streaming services, the truth is that even at their absolute shortest, TV series tend to have much more breathing room. A film has around an hour, maximum, to sell you on its characters, its plot, and its premise. Meanwhile, a TV show can take the time to introduce all three to you slowly. The truth is, TV offers us a lot more leeway when it comes to developing characters and stories with depth, especially so when it comes to adapting long-form pieces of media like a book series or a video game.

We find, a lot of the time, that the biggest issues with adaptations tend to be that they don’t give themselves enough time to introduce the work to the audience; instead, the work gets cherry-picked and truncated in order to fit itself into a set runtime. This is more often than not the biggest issue with movie adaptations – the Percy Jackson movies fall partially into this pitfall. So medium is important. But that’s obvi-

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ously not all. Plenty of adaptations we spoke about earlier that were god-awful were TV adaptations. So why does The

stantine and Doctor Fate are actually not Gaiman’s own characters, but rather various characters taken from other DC

Sandman work?

Let me backtrack a bit. For those of you who may have never heard of The Sandman before, here’s a super quick summary: The Sandman is a DC series created by beloved author Neil Gaiman, who you might know from his other works, like Good Omens, American Gods, or Coraline. Starting in January 1989, the series ran for a little over seven years, ending in March 1996, on its 75th issue. The Sandman follows Dream of the Endless, known also as Morpheus, Oneiros, or – pretty obviously – the Sandman. He’s one of seven siblings born from Night and Time who are anthropomorphic representations of universal concepts, known as the Endless. Dream – also pretty obviously – represents dreams, and governs over them. The series follows Dream after he is captured and held captive by a mortal magician for 70 years, as he rebuilds his fallen kingdom and begins to grapple with the concepts of change and mortality. The original comics had tieins to the DC universe we know now: the first issue actually features various villains and characters from across the DCU, and characters like John Con-

comics. While the series initially presented itself as something that might have been closer to a collection of connected stories, later volumes revealed a carefully planned plot progression that slowly unfurled into a tragic, beautiful tale. The Sandman was a series that was ripe for adaptation; it was considered one of the most influential comics of its time, had a dedicated fanbase that still held a deep and enduring love for it, and was a series that could be, in some way, connected to a cash-cow, superhero franchise. But we all know by now that none of these factors guarantee a good adaptation. So it begs the question: how did Netflix do it?

I could talk about a lot of things that went right with Netflix’s adaptation of The Sandman. Chief among them are two key decisions: the choice to separate the adaptation from DC entirely, as well as the DCU, and the choice to have Neil Gaiman as an executive producer, as well as a general creative overseer. In an interview with TUDUM, showrunner Allen Heisenberg said, “Every script, every prop, every costume, all the sets, everything gets Neil’s eyes and his feedback.” Having

39

Gaiman involved ensured that even if the adaptation didn’t follow the comics to the letter, every decision made would be in the spirit of the original comic.

The decision to separate The Sandman from the DCU would also prove to be a good choice: aside from the fact that the DCU remains a relatively unpopular cinematic universe in comparison to the MCU, allowing The Sandman to ex-

the requirement to “make sense” in the DCU today. This meant making some key changes in terms of the characters who would eventually make up the key cast of Season One, though – most notable among these changes are the characters John Dee and Johanna Constantine. In the original comics, John Dee is, in fact, Doctor Destiny, a long-running Justice League villain. Jo-

ist within its own onscreen space meant that the universe as a whole would be free of both DC-related baggage and

hanna Constantine is a female version of famous DC warlock, John Constantine – who is arguably one of the most

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famous DC characters outside of the “Big Three,” composed of Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman.

But how does this tie into the adaptation as a whole? What does all of this, when combined, mean for The Sandman as a piece of media? To tackle this, I think focusing on one episode of The Sandman (“24/7”) will help us bring it all together. For all intents and purposes, “24/7” should not work well as an episode. The Sandman has always been considered an “unadaptable” piece of media, and “24/7,” which is still known as one of the most graphic comics of all time, plays no small part in that. However, the production decision to focus more on the psychological impact of the plot, rather than John himself, is part of what makes the episode work so well. In choosing not to stay 100% faithful to the original comic, Netflix’s The Sandman is able to hone in on what, exactly, makes “24/7” horrifying, and in turn make it something that could actually be both filmed and aired. In striking a fine balance between faithfulness and adaptability, Netflix’s The Sandman manages to create an adaptation that feels familiar to new audiences, while also perfectly capturing what drew audiences to the comic all those years ago. ee

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CHLOE GREEN

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43

Margaret: The Impending Doom of Accepting Our Insignificance

BY ISA PALEY

WE ARE ALL going to die. Perhaps a sol-

little she matters in the wake of a bus crash and woman’s death that she inadvertently causes. Lisa’s eventual understanding and mourning of her own self-importance mirrors young Margaret’s mourning of her mortality. The shared humility in accepting our insignificance as humans is what drives Lonergan’s film, which functions as a meditation not only on Lisa’s attempts to find solace in a world that makes her unimportant, but also the meaning her – and our – lives gain in the conscious decision to love and to feel.

By naming the film Margaret, Lonergan implicitly communicates Lisa’s lack of importance. She, in relation to

emn acknowledgement of commonality, it is also the truth of the human experience that our mortality and, furthermore, our pain is inherently unremarkable. In Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem, “Spring and Fall,” a young child, Margaret, realizes that she, like her favorite tree, will one day die. The startling acceptance of this truth by a young girl is emulated in Kenneth Lonergan’s masterpiece, Margaret (which gets its title from the poem), an ode to the commonplace of loss and grief in a post-9/11 New York. Lisa Cohen, the film’s protagonist, is an angsty and disaffected teen forced to confront how

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Margaret, 2011, Kenneth Lonergan, Film Still

the poem, is one of many Margarets, people who deeply feel the weight of societal truths. Those who, in their discovery of their limits as humans, must overhaul the way they lead their lives.

Lisa begins as detestably self-involved and carelessly cruel, and she operates with an unwarranted air of superiority. In processing her involvement in the crash, she becomes exceedingly moralistic, attempting to understand this cosmic wrong by taking it out on those who love her. Her acts of cruelty, both before and after the crash, are rarely justified, and explanations for her egocentric grieving are never given. Instead, Lonergan uses his choices

in cinematography and sound design to constantly remind us of the larger world that Lisa inhabits. When we see her walk the streets of New York, we hear her conversations at the same volume as those around her. In doing so, he communicates that Lisa’s emotions are not singular, her manifestations of grief are not unique, and that she is one of billions of people that are everyday touched with pain. She is emblematic of the millions of others who suffer in New York City alone. Yet, while she represents them, she does not matter more than any of them. Her story may follow more cinematic narrative conventions in the sense that it has a clear

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Margaret, 2011, Kenneth Lonergan, Film Still

inciting incident, but what I think Lo-

minds, but I do believe that we often

nergan hopes to extract is the idea that anyone’s life can be cinematic. We’ve all had moments that feel like the start of a coming-of-age movie. That doesn’t make our lives more important than anyone else’s, instead it reinforces how connected we are as humans. It is in this assertion, and its dichotomy with Lisa’s behavior, that Lonergan holds a mirror to his audience. Perhaps we are not all as self-absorbed as Lisa, or at least not in the lives we live as depicted in our

disregard the beauty in acknowledging how similar all of our experiences are.

Lonergan elevates this assertion by suggesting that in the mourning of one’s own importance there is potential for universal connection. He unconventionally conveys this through the use of opera as the film’s main soundtrack.

Opera is almost never heard in one’s native language, yet it is still beloved and admired by many. It is the emotions that are conveyed through the

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sweeping music that has made opera such an effective medium for as long as it has been performed. The language of suffering, like opera, is never the same for any person, but it acts as a universal thread. No one struggle will ever matter more than another, but it is in this assertion of a shared experience that we can find communal solace.

This use of opera as a representation of shared human emotion is particularly fitting in regards to what I consider the film’s most pivotal scene.

After attempting to fill her emotional void by reveling in nihilism, Lisa shifts her focus to the litigation of the bus crash. She reaches out to the victim’s best friend and starts demanding that this should be a court case, that the bus driver is guilty, and that he should pay for his crimes. Her self-centered and overly intrusive attempt to right a cosmic wrong comes to a head when she argues with the victim’s best friend, Joan, who says, “This isn’t an opera! And we are not all supporting characters to the drama of your amazing life!” The reference to opera here is incredibly pointed, as Lonergan attempts to highlight how

the performance of inauthentic emotions (like the melodrama of an opera) undermines the shared connection that can be found in human suffering. Lisa could have reached out to Joan in an emotional sense, to grieve together over this tragedy, yet she chooses to overbearingly insert herself in a way that nearly overpowers the people who actually knew the victim. Not only does it detract from natural mourning, it causes Lisa to render those in her life that matter most into woeful side characters. This moralistic approach to grief rests in Lisa’s own guilt for her part in the accident, but also in her struggle to find logic behind why she was part of the crash. She believes that by involving herself in the case, other people will see her actions, and that they will then become important. If they happen to win the case, then her involvement in the crash will have meant something. She clings to the promise of external validation of her importance as a way to cope with the truth that things often happen without reason.

Yet what Lonergan most ardently attempts to assert is that a lack of logic

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and importance doesn’t mean that our actions don’t mean anything. He communicates that in a world of many, the only way to live a life that isn’t constantly hinged on the opinions and actions of others is to find meaning in what is already around you. In “Spring and Fall,” it is exactly this assertion that causes Maragret to mourn in the first place. She cares so much about what is around her that accepting its mortality has sent her into mourning. Lisa, in her self-centered grief, must embrace her unimportance to even realize that she was grieving in the first place. Human connection is the key to this, and as we see through Lisa’s futile attempts to connect in a moralistic way with those involved in the crash, it must come from a conscious decision to be vulnerable and to feel. Lisa spends the film looking for her life to mean something more than just being human, yet Lonergan conveys the inherent beauty in simply existing the same way that the rest of the world does. The bottomless pit of self-loathing that can come with the impending doom of embracing your own insignificance is hard to come back

from. But in doing so, and in using what we gain as a means for connection, our lives become meaningful.

As the film ends, Lisa and her mother go to the opera. Despite having won the case, Lisa hasn’t miraculously cured herself of her emptiness.

In a room of hundreds she feels just as inconsequential as she did before. But as the opera singer begins to vocalize, Lisa begins to cry. Shedding tears for her own self-importance, Lisa turns to her mother and shows her true affection for the first time in the film. Not only is this a manifestation of the types of human connection Lonergan asserts give life its meaning, it is also an acknowledgement of mutual suffering. As in “Spring and Fall,” neither Lisa nor her mother is grieving a physical loss – rather, the loss of their own significance. Yet as they cry, they are choosing to feel. We as humans could use the truth of our own unimportance to revel in cruelty, but instead we emote, and in doing so add meaning to our lives. As I struggle in my life to overcome the woes of social comparison and selfdoubt, I try to remember why I’m sit-

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Margaret, 2011, Kenneth Lonergan, Film Still

“ The film has

ting in the library typing words about just one of the millions of movies that exist. Margaret as a film isn’t important, and I’m sure Lonergan would agree. Yet in its perhaps insignificant existence, the film has brought me a unique sense of peace, and in choosing to love it and attempting to share the solace I find in it with others, the film (and my life) may garner meaning. ee

brought me a unique sense of peace.

”

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Love and Loneliness Through the Eyes of Joel Haver

BY OWEN WILEY

is a surprisingly hard feeling to describe: when you are feeling it, no words can accurately express the depth of your emotion – the almost unbearable desire for some sort of connection with another person. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, as I faced feelings of extreme loneliness, I found a film that depicted with incredible accuracy the exact feelings and desires that I had and made me feel that there was someone who understood me. With his 2020 film Pretend That You Love Me,

My first experience with Joel Haver was a video entitled “A rough approximation of how I react when a date is going well,” in which a slightly awkward Joel narrates his internal barrage of questions about whether or not he’s bad at peeing, smells like farts, or has pants that make it look like he has an erection. While it lightly touches on topics of social anxiety and desire for love, this video is purely comedic, and I got the impression that Haver was simply a funny YouTuber I should check

LONELINESS

Joel Haver told me the story of a character who seeks and achieves love as a solution to loneliness, providing me with a feeling of comfort and catharsis at a time when I truly needed it.

out. As I continued to watch his videos, though, I began to notice the aforementioned themes in multiple videos, culminating in my viewing of his feature film Pretend That You Love Me in late 50

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Joel Haver, Pretend That You Love Me, 2020, Film still

2020. In the brief YouTube description of Pretend That You Love Me, Haver describes this work as “A film about dating, love, art and pain,” and it is a far deeper exploration of the themes of loneliness and desire for love that are present in his short films. Through various storytelling and cinematography techniques, Haver represents the idealistic and difficult to express desires of a lonely person by conditioning the audience to the protagonist’s struggles with loneliness and his belief that the solution to those struggles is love.

Like many of Haver’s films, Pretend That You Love Me features Haver playing a character named Joel who is representative of Haver himself – a reading

supported by Joel’s pinned comment for this YouTube video, where he describes it as “a deeply personal film.” The film opens with an intercut montage of five different first dates, all set in Joel’s living room. For ten minutes, the audience watches each date go more or less the same, and despite the normal awkwardness of a first meeting, each date appears to go well with Joel seeming to form at least a basic connection with each woman. Despite this, the use of intercutting highlights the monotony of Joel’s dating life and the failure of his relationships to amount to anything meaningful.

As the film continues, it follows the evolution of the previously estab51

lished relationships in a similar, intercut style. As each relationship moves through its early stages, the first explicit indications of Joel’s loneliness are presented. For example, while participating in a vulnerability exercise with one of his partners, Joel admits that he is lonely, hoping to open himself up to a partner who could cure that loneliness.

There are multiple scenes in which Joel asks his partner if she would be interested in a romantic relationship with him, implying that it is something that he is pursuing. However, when he is asked the same question, he can’t give a straight answer. On multiple occasions, Joel is reticent or unable to say out loud what he wants, likely due to social anxiety and a fear of rejection. Joel’s slight awkwardness is developed throughout the first half of the film, in which the dialogue is mainly improvised in order to create realistic and mildly uncomfortable conversations. As each relationship reaches this conversation, it is revealed that this inability to express himself is probably the reason why none of his relationships worked out.

In the first half of the film, Haver’s unique cinematographic style distances Joel from both the viewer and the rest of the world in order to build the feeling of loneliness and lack of connec-

“ Joel admits that he is lonely, hoping to open himself up to a partner who could cure that lonliness.

”

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Joel Haver, Pretend That You Love Me, 2020, Film still

tion that is inherent to this story. Many of the shots are incredibly wide, with Joel a tiny figure in a vast frame, giving the impression that Joel is almost insignificant and only a small part of a large world. In shots that are closer, Joel’s face is often obscured, whether it be by physically facing him away from the camera or by using backlighting to wash out the foreground of shots.

Without clear views of Joel, a divide is created between him and the audience, much like it exists between him and his world. Furthermore, all of the shots are filmed with a static “hidden” camera, which, combined with incredibly realistic, improvised dialogue, creates the sensation that the audience is simply watching Joel’s story play out in front

of them rather than actively participating in it. Like everyone else in Joel’s life, the audience is kept out of Joel’s world, and he is left alone inside of it.

Only once is the audience allowed into Joel’s world, during a conversation about commitment issues about two-thirds of the way into the film. An obscured wide shot shows Joel and one of his partners in bed as she expresses disappointment with the lack of progression in their relationship and asks him what he really wants. Joel begins to speak: “I need hugs, I need kisses, a friend to catch my misses. Someone to lay by my side.” Speaking turns into singing and the harsh lighting dims as the camera is picked up and moves shakily towards Joel, the only instance 53

Joel Haver, Pretend That You Love Me, 2020, Film still

of camera movement in the whole film.

Wide shots turn to close-ups which physically bring the audience closer to Joel. He expresses his doubts (“I need you, maybe, I don’t know”), his pains (“it hurts so bad I could cry”), and his desires (“I need something that feels like love”) as cuts show him having the same conversation with each partner. Many of the things that Joel wants are contradictory (“I need happiness, I need sadness. A calm for this madness”), highlighting the confusion and complexity in his mind that makes love

the brief connection between himself and the outside world.

As Joel calls “cut,” it is revealed that everything the viewer has seen so far was a movie-within-a-movie that the “real” Joel was making in order to try to emulate the experience of love in his actual life (per the title, Pretend That You Love Me). Throughout the first part, the audience gets to know the more superficial version of Joel, while in the second part, Joel’s character is opened up and the audience is finally allowed to understand his feelings.

so difficult for him. Just as soon as it began, though, the song ends, the camera and lights return to their original positions, and Joel says “cut,” ending the first part of the film and severing

He is seen speaking at the funeral for his father, who was previously established to be one of Joel’s closest friends.

Reference is made to the COVID-19 pandemic, which increased feelings of 54

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isolation among millions of people. Joel rewatches clips from his film of him kissing the actresses, and he invites one of them to his home because he thinks there is a chance that they could fall in love. With these scenes, Joel’s lack of meaningful connections and his desire to solve that through love are all established in preparation for the climax of the film.

The final scene has Joel inviting Annalisa, one of the actresses, to his home under the guise of re-filming a scene for his movie. Quickly, though, Joel begins to break down, overwhelmed by his feelings and his perceived inability to connect with anyone. When Annalisa asks him what is wrong, he is unable to answer, embarrassed and ashamed for asking her over and feeling like he has absolutely no one. Annalisa asks him what he needs to feel good, and he looks at her, afraid to tell her that it is her, or anyone, that he needs.

Finally, Annalisa kisses Joel and the film concludes with the hope that Joel has finally found a cure for his loneli-

both Haver and the audience. Although when viewing the ending in retrospect it can feel very idealistic, it represents the feelings of people in the midst of loneliness: Haver seeks to create a feeling of catharsis rather than a realistic situation.

In a video on his Patreon, Haver said that “you like to think that love can make you stronger and can help you through the hard times,” and Pretend That You Love Me is an embodiment of that philosophy. Released in June of 2020, this film could not have been more topical. As I and many others stayed at home, isolated from everyone else, it became incredibly easy to get lost within myself and imagine a simple yet unattainable solution to my problems. In my case, as well as Joel’s, that imagined solution was love, which is why this film spoke to me so deeply when I watched it. Haver conditions the audience to Joel’s struggles and his belief that the solution to those struggles is love, but for me, that always felt like the solution. The film’s powerfully

ness. As the resolution for the strong feelings that Haver evokes throughout the film, Joel’s final kiss creates an intense rush of emotion and feeling that everything will be okay, comforting

hopeful, yet sadly idealistic ending gave me exactly what I needed at that point in my life: the brief feeling that everything may actually be alright. ee

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“Don’t Bother. What’s the Point?”

How Better Call Saul Refuses To Be Doomed By Its Own ‘Doomed’ Narrative

BY CASEY EPSTEIN-GROSS

should not have been good. When the Breaking Bad prequel was first announced in 2013, the reactions of fans and critics would most succinctly be summarized by the title of this article from Unreality Magazine: “For the Love of God, No More Prequels to Anything Ever.” No one wanted Better Call Saul. At best it’d be fine, at worst it would fall into the infamous “prequel trap” and ruin the magic of a series many were lauding as

tion of…whether it’ll move people as much as [Breaking Bad], and… the safest answer to that is: ‘Probably not to the same level.” How could it, when it centered around the making of a side character whose primary purpose was to play the comic relief sleazeball? “I worry it could be the ‘Joey’ to Breaking Bad ’s ‘Friends,’” wrote one reviewer, comparing the upcoming prequel to a spin-off that must have been so humiliatingly bad it was essentially wiped

BETTER CALL SAUL

one of the greatest of all time. No one expected anything special, even the creators and showrunners themselves – as Vince Gilligan himself said to Empire in 2013, “There’s the intangible ques-

from the face of the Earth, because I literally had no idea such a thing ever existed until this very minute, and I’ve seen most of Friends.

Better Call Saul should not have 56

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and moral ambiguity in modern media.

Through extensive care for and attention towards the nuances of the characters inhabiting the world of the show, Better Call Saul made a shallow, comically sleazy character into arguably one of the most sympathetic, nuanced characters in recent television history, all before turning him right back around again into the horrible person we all once loved to watch. The twist is that now, because of the history we’ve become aware of, we find it almost viscerally painful to see. Gilligan, Gould, and co. ingeniously turned the prequel trap into an impending tragedy, a car crash you knew was coming but couldn’t look away from, desperately hoping the driver would turn the steering wheel before it was too late, but knowing they would never, ever be able to.

One of the most important aspects of creating an actually decent prequel is setting it apart from the story’s initial iteration, or its “mother show,” if you will. And Better Call Saul, thankfully, wastes no time attempting to mimic its predecessor. Instead of trying desperately to shoehorn in classic action scenes, shocking plot twists, and other elements of the tried-and-true formula of Breaking Bad, the prequel, instead, focuses intensely on character dynam-

OLIVIA MILLER

been good – and yet it was.

Defying all expectations, the prequel turned out to be a phenomenal, groundbreaking show in its own right.

While there’s no universal consensus on which Albuquerque crime-drama ranks superior, the fact that this is even a debate is almost miraculous given the dread leading up to the prequel’s premiere. Not only did Better Call Saul avoid falling into the prequel trap that viewers and critics alike were initially so afraid of, it used its own status as a prequel to its advantage, turning the limited structure dictated by the demands of a prequel into one of the most powerful vehicles for exploring character depth

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Better Call Saul, 2015, Film still

ics and relationships, snappy dialogue, and quick humor. While Breaking Bad focused on showing the inhumanity in its characters, Better Call Saul emphasizes and exemplifies their humanity instead. Where the former spent shots lingering on the unforgiving heat of the New Mexico desert, the latter shows moments of domesticity – some shoes lined up by the door, a dumb joke and the ensuing laughter, the act of sharing a cigarette and watching the orange flame flicker. It’s hard to think of a show whose characters feel more human, even

the gratingly affable and patronizing top lawyer Howard who ends up one of the most sympathetic characters by the end of the show, the steely resolve of the reluctant drug dealer Nacho, and, most of all, there’s the extraordinarily subtle, multi-layered, and masterful portrayal of the female protagonist, Kim Wexler.

But while entire theses could be written about the nuances of each of these characters – entire dissertations when it comes to Kim in particular, who I would argue to be one of the best female characters in television history –

beyond Jimmy McGill – there’s the nuanced characterization of Jimmy’s unlikable but complicated brother Chuck,

it’s what Better Call Saul does with Jimmy that first captures your heart and, in the end, most effectively demonstrates 58

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“He’s emotional and deeply caring, earnest and deperate to please, charismatic and expressive and incredibly funny.

”

the show’s mastery of characterization via the prequel trap.

In an era of prestige media that has, frankly, been somewhat over-saturated with cool, grimacing male anti-heroes driven by crises of masculinity, intellect, and pride (for an example, look no further than Breaking Bad ’s own Walter White), Jimmy is a breath of fresh air. He’s emotional and deeply caring, earnest and desperate to please, charismatic and expressive and incredibly funny. He might bend the rules, but more often than not, he does so in order

that he never will, and even in his attempts to prove them wrong he ends up proving them right. This sends him spiraling into self-hatred and leads him to act out again, creating a tragic cycle in which he digs deeper and deeper holes for himself. And every time he does, you can see something in him breaking a little bit, a gradual process heartbreakingly captured by Bob Odenkirk in one of the most impressive, nuanced performances in recent television history.

Better Call Saul does not, in fact,

to help people. The tragedy of Jimmy McGill is that he wants so badly to be good, but everyone around him insists

feature the titular Saul for a long, long time, focusing instead to flesh out Jimmy and his world before moving into 59

expected territory. This was an unexpected and unwelcome development for the many Breaking Bad diehards, who tuned in primarily to see more of the sleazy criminal lawyer they had grown to love and hate, as well as the tension-filled action sequences the original show was known for. Early seasons spawned endless Reddit threads and thinkpieces complaining about the show’s ‘glacial pace,’ sounding not unlike restaurant-goers frustrated that they’d only been brought their appetizer with no main course in sight. Unfortunately, they’d have to wait a while longer, because Better Call Saul was not Breaking Bad (where, if one is to consider committing murder a sign of ‘breaking bad,’ Walter White’s transition was completed by the end of the first episode). Instead, Jimmy’s journey to become Saul is long, winding, and anything but linear; in other words, it’s realistic. It’s human. He spends multiple seasons working with elderly ladies to take down the nursing home that secretly stole money from them for years, and even when he does start taking on the persona of Saul Goodman, that trajectory is never linear. His “breaking

OLIVIA MILLER

then two steps back. Jimmy wobbles back and forth between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ so frequently that those rather simplistic categories begin to lose all meaning.

He is driven by his heart, by his compassion for the people in his life and his desperation for them to care for and respect him, by his sense of justice and what people do or do not deserve – and these things often take priority for him over what is legal or what might typically be perceived as “right.”

Jimmy’s attempts to navigate this set of conflicting motivations are simultaneously immensely compelling and deeply hard to watch, largely because you want so badly for him to

bad” is never clear nor is it irreversible; his path to becoming Saul often looks more like him taking one step forward, 60

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Breaking Bad, 2008, Walter White and Saul

choose ‘well,’ to be the good person you know he wants to be and can be. It’s funny; the original draw of the show was in seeing more of Saul Goodman, but at some point you begin to actively dread Jimmy’s transition into him. Suddenly, you realize you would do almost anything to see him stop, to see him remain where he is and not go down the “bad choice road” you know he’s headed down. The prequel structure, forcing you to confront inevitable tragedy, is precisely what makes the show so affecting, so effective. While a lot of the

for the character of Jimmy, it is also in part due to the show’s unique portrayal of the “anti” aspect of its titular “anti-hero.” Most media about morally gray male anti-heroes portray their “badness,” whenever it arises, as something “badass.” Heisenberg-Walt in Breaking Bad, for instance, was seductively fun to watch – he walked away from exploding buildings like a badass, he shaved his head and wore a (questionably?) badass fedora, and he gave cool, badass monologues about being “the one who knocks.” “Evil” Walt was cool. But

desire to see Jimmy stay Jimmy and not become the person he is doomed to become stems from our genuine affection

there is nothing cool about watching Jimmy turn into Saul. Instead, it’s sad, it’s painful, it’s embarrassing. Where 61

Walt-Heisenberg had famous badass monologues, Jimmy-Saul has humiliating public tantrums. The second-hand embarrassment is almost unbearable, and the takeaway is never that Jimmy is intimidating or cool or a badass – it’s that he is in pain.

The fact that we knew he would be in pain does not make watching it any easier – really, I’d argue it makes it worse, turning an uncomfortable scene into an absolutely tragic one. You’re not watching a narrative unfold so much as you are rubbernecking an inevitable, brutal car crash while trapped at a red light. As soon as you saw the swerve, you knew what would happen, but you watched it unfold anyways. But unlike the experience of sitting in your

“Could he be

allowed a happy ending, despite everything he had done?

”

car staring horrified at a crash, Better Call Saul doesn’t let you look away, not even once the smoke has cleared and the light has turned green. It forces you to keep looking long after you normally would, longer than any traffic light would ever allow. Because just as Better Call Saul subverts the trope of the prequel trap, it also subverts the very label of “prequel” – it shows you the aftermath too, the real aftermath, years and years down the line.

The show hints at what’s to come the whole time: at the start of every

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season, audiences are privy to a few minutes of black-and-white footage of Saul’s life after the events of not only the prequel itself but Breaking Bad, and see quick glimpses of his life under yet another name, this time Gene Takovic, a Cinnabon store manager in Omaha, Nebraska. The final stretch of episodes take place entirely in Gene’s world, every shot in grayscale and him sporting a nifty mustache – it officially becomes no longer a prequel, but a sequel. Except… not quite. That’s because it isn’t a sequel to Breaking Bad, even though chronologically, that’s where the Geneera immediately follows. Frankly, anyone who had only watched Breaking Bad wouldn’t understand or even be interested in it, because it wouldn’t

so. The show has been so effective in character and world-building that by Season Six, objectively boring shots of Gene staring at frosted cinnamon rolls with an unreadable expression feel nothing short of riveting. This outcome was almost unthinkable before the show began. After all, during the show’s early seasons, everyone watched the prequel solely to see the emergence of Saul, and complained after every episode that he hadn’t appeared yet. But then, by the sixth season, Saul was all gone. By the sixth season, everyone was watching solely for Jimmy – and everyone was watching. How could they not?

The story wasn’t done. Jimmy’s story wasn’t done.

The key question still remained:

make any sense. Saul Goodman’s story was over. Saul Goodman’s story is over, but the character of Jimmy McGill still has a ways to go, and that’s what the final episodes cover. By then, yes, the events of Breaking Bad have come and gone, and every atrocity Saul Goodman has committed has now been cemented into the timeline. But Better Call Saul couldn’t just end with that, not after everything we’ve learned and grown to care about regarding this world and its inhabitants – about Jimmy. Because we do care, immensely and bafflingly

as Peter Gould put it in a conversation with Entertainment Weekly, “‘What does this man deserve?’ Not just: ‘What’s going to happen to him?,’ but ‘What would be a deserving end to this?” Better Call Saul is a show that centers around the questions of inevitability, certainty, and absolutes, and the question of “what does this character deserve” wasn’t just a byproduct of writing an end to the show – it had been the series’ driving force this whole time.

Was Jimmy a “bad” person, like Chuck believed? Did he deserve to suffer for 63

Better Call Saul, 2015, Film still

the harm he caused? Was he a “good” person, like Kim believed he could be?

Could he be allowed a happy ending, despite everything he had done? What Gould eventually decides upon regarding Jimmy’s fate doubles as the show’s entire thesis: there’s no such thing as a “good” person or a “bad” person, there are just people, and most people are doing the best they can with what they’ve got. There is never going to be a cutand-dried answer to the question of what Jimmy “deserves,” because people can’t be analyzed like that, distilled

ing is ever that simple, that black and white.

But while Better Call Saul refuses to give answers, what it does give (and thankfully so) is a sense of hope and possibility, even when, realistically, it doesn’t feel like there should be any.

Because that is what happened with the show itself: the outcome of the prequel ( Jimmy’s evolution into Saul) was inevitable, but somehow, so much meaning, love, ethical complexity, human connection, and wonder was found in the interim, in the gap between point A and

into a few acts of good or bad. No one person will ever only be any one thing, destined to live out any one life – noth-

point B – so much that the show ended up taking on a second life even after it should have ended. The plot points, the 64

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timeline, the tangible facts of Saul’s life we’ve gleaned from the Better Call Saul prequel have remained entirely consistent with what was already known from Breaking Bad; nothing has changed, not tangibly. But somehow, everything has anyways. Not in plot, but in character; not in logic, but in emotion. And while logically, narratively, the prequel should have ended just at the point at

“ This is what

which Breaking Bad begins, that would have felt thematically and emotionally wrong for the characters as we know them now. So the show keeps going –

Better Call Saul is about: the falsehood of inevitability.

it’s different, yes, in black-and-white, yes, but it should have been over. It looks bleak, but the fact that the story is still going means there’s still promise

for a future, and for that future to be better. It comes as no surprise, then, that the end to Jimmy’s story is similar: even in the bleakness of inevitability, the black-and-white delineations of fate, there is always hope and color to be found, as small as it might be.

To me, this is what Better Call Saul is about: the falsehood of inevitability.

Everything in the show is supposed to be inevitable, predetermined, un changeable – the outcome is set by the very nature of its being a prequel, so what’s the point of watching it? View ers know Jimmy is doomed because we

”

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have already gotten to know Saul, so what’s the point of seeing it unfold? If, as Jimmy’s brother Chuck says to him, Jimmy’s “gonna keep hurting people… over and over and over,” why doesn’t

Bad – you have to “ask yourself, ‘Does that mean it’s not worth doing?’”

That’s the question Better Call Saul asks, and that’s the question it answers, with every fiber of its being – in content, in form, in character, in narrative, in practice. From the story inside the show to the story of the show’s success in the outside world, Better Call Saul shows us that there is a point, there always is. The mere fact that the show exists in the first place is answer enough, but then that question is answered again, again, and again, all the way from the first episode to the last.

Even if the outcome of something is inevitable, it’s worth doing, worth living anyways, even if it’s just for the chance of seeing some shoes lined up by the door, of hearing a dumb joke and the ensuing laughter, of sharing a cigarette and watching the orange flame flicker.

he “skip the whole exercise” of trying to change? If “in the end, you’re going to hurt everyone around you” and “you

can’t help it,” shouldn’t you just “accept it,” “embrace it?” Sometimes, we do. We accept it, embrace it. We become our own versions of Saul. Things are easier that way: it’s the path of least resistance. If everything is inevitable, if you’re doomed to become who you’re doomed to become, then you don’t have to keep trying to be anything else. If a narrative, a person, a prequel, a life, if anything is inevitably going to be “bad,” then – to quote Vince Gilligan talking about the likely inevitability of Better Call Saul being worse than Breaking

ee

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THE END

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

DEAR READERS

THANK YOU for taking the time to read Issue Twelve

of Intercut Magazine. Over the last several years, the magazine has welcomed many new writers, editors, and artists. Having worked on Intercut since my freshman year, I have been honored to guide our masthead through the many challenges of assembling a well-rounded entertainment journal amid a pandemic and the inevitable virtual-only environment we have found ourselves in for the past couple of issues.

Now that campus has returned to its vibrant pre-pandemic self, it is all the more thrilling to be a part of this era of Intercut. The many new (and old) faces on our staff bring fresh perspectives on the entertainment industry and continue to contribute inspired, insightful work. There is truly something for everyone to peruse, learn from, and enjoy in Issue Twelve. ee

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Hannah Carroll