May December is exactly the kind of movie that wins awards. In essence, it strives to be great so hard that it forgets to be good.
And why wouldn’t it be great? It’s got a great director and two incredibly talented leads. It’s inspired by a wildly scandalous story. It has all the trappings of greatness and yet … The movie is a dud. Yeah, sorry. I’m sure my opinion is in a minority. The movie scored off the charts with reviewers, and I know it will get oodles of awards or at least nominations. But watching it was a drag. The last thing I’ve seen from the director was Carol. Carol was sublime. This movie was too slow-paced, too overt, every emotion exaggerated and telegraphed for the faraway seats with a hideously jarring score that belonged in a giallo movie or something from the ‘70s * (which it was, actually. The director has inexplicably chosen to recycle a 1971 soundtrack.). The plot wasn’t original either, but you knew that going in. It changed just enough facts to avoid a lawsuit, but all the tabloid basics were there. The too-young boy and a much older woman who get together despite all odds and raise a family. The course of true love and all that … Except that the movie finds them 24 years later with the youngest of their kids about to flee the nest, and the man/boy character at 36 may finally begin to analyze his life or may just be in the mood for something strange. By far the most tragic character here, he’s also the most obvious in the way he is directed, from the stilted, reticent manner of moving to speaking. Not quite an old, not quite a boy, trapped in-between by a relationship that had been his entire life. Still waters but with a restless undercurrent beneath. Throw an actress in the mix, who is doing research before shooting a movie of their life, and things get …complicated. Everyone's been praising Charles Melton's performance, and it is objectively good. But make no mistake, the show absolutely belongs to Julianne Moore. The rest are second and third fiddles to her passive aggressive manipulations and devastating pathos. A lot of Melton's performance is physical, the way he folds up and flabs up his CW-stud (he of Riverdale fame) body into a lesser than and dials his chiseled face to aloof amicability. It's a good performance and will likely advance his career to the next level of serious acting, but it doesn't seem all that Oscar-worthy. Moore, though, she blisters. Portman's holding her own, but her job is mainly to observe and mimic. And everyone seems to have gotten the same directing memo of overdoing it. This could have, should have been compelling, so the final result is a real disappointment. No matter how terrific the acting is, the movie is just so freaking “look at me, I’m a serious drama vying for awards” pretentious. I love drama, I don’t mind slow movies, but this was overindulged on both accounts. I call it “The Netflix Effect.” Netflix who’s always been quantity over quality simply doesn’t seem to care that much about what they put on screen so much as it checks enough boxes. They were probably looking for a serious respectable movie to offset the copious amounts of garbage they put out and glad to grab this one. But this isn’t about that so much as it’s about good directors who do their worst work for Netflix. Just recently David Fincher who’s never done a less than great movie had his dud, Killer, on there. It will likely continue to occur, movie business is, after all, a business. And I’m sure there is an audience out there for May December who will ooh and aah over it, because it is the sort of movie discerning taste are supposed to ooh and ahh over, but if you take a step back and observe it with a critical eye, you’ll see that for all his royal bearing, this emperor has no clothes.
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