Let 👏 Movie 👏 Characters 👏 Be 👏 Terrible
No more Mr. Nice Guys. All movie protagonists should be deeply flawed.
The image above is from a new (and incredible) Park Chan-wook movie called Decision to Leave. The man slightly out of focus is our detective protagonist. He’s not a bad person per se, but he certainly has some major character flaws. He’s an unfaithful husband, stubborn to a fault—oh, and yeah, he’s potentially throwing a major investigation because he’s falling in love with a murder suspect.
Detective Hae-joon is one of many leads—as the best movies of the year roll out—that contains (shall we say?) some gray areas. The philanderer joins Lydia Tár in TÁR, Pádraic and Colm in The Banshees of Inisherin, Calum in Aftersun and Paul Graff in Armageddon Time as lead characters that either kind of suck, really suck or are the worst people you’ve ever met.
This is good. This is the way it should be. I’m not here to say that all vital cinematic characters need to be assholes, but I’d kind of prefer it that way.
In the simplest terms, there’s more there there. I don’t need to use movies as a moral arbiter of what’s right and what’s wrong. I’d rather just dive into a story that is up to the challenge of facing life’s more tricky areas.
I’ve read some pushback to Armageddon Time that Banks Repeta’s portrayal as director James Gray’s stand-in is almost too unlikable at times, and yes, that’s true. But that’s also the point. Some kids are shits. Some of us were those shits (or still are). It reminds me of perhaps my favorite tweet.
This is also kind of a loose spoiler for Armageddon Time, but I was kind of shocked by the conclusion, how we never see what Paul Graff actually learns. Or if he learns anything at all.
Even the conscience of the movie, Anthony Hopkins as the wisened grandfather, is less pious than one would seem.
Yes, he’s trying to help his grandson and teach him some valuable life lessons, but he’s also fine with using the system to his advantage. It’s a double-edged sword. He wants America to be better, but if he doesn’t use the step-up he was given, someone else will. It’s a conflict that seems to have stuck with Gray throughout his life as he comes back to it again and again throughout the movie.
Aftersun, like Armageddon Time, centers around a father figure that doesn’t understand how to be a father. Paul Mescal is unbelievable in this movie, as you can see him trying to connect to his daughter but also keep a bit of the youth that’s slipping away. This movie is essentially 101 minutes declaring that your parents are as clueless as you are about how the world works. That’s tough to swallow.
As someone that likes to be challenged and pushed by movies, these deeply flawed characters are more relatable than more one-note leads in recent films like The Whale and Don’t Worry Darling.
I’ve written about both of these misses already, but it definitely goes to show that both are anchored by performances that are more black-and-white than anything else. Brendan Fraser’s Charlie is sad. Florence Pugh’s Alice is stuck. Obviously, there’s a bit more to both than that, but honestly … not that much. These movie’s endings could be written by a bot. There’s no fuckedupness, which, in turn, means there’s no humanity and relatability.
TÁR is the MOST version of this example, as it doesn’t give you a good person trying to overcome their own shortcomings, but instead, we see a bad person attempting to survive their own mistakes. The thing is, a good villain doesn’t see themselves as the villain. It’s not Superman vs. Lex Luthor. That’s too easy. Throughout the movie, Lydia Tár tries to reconcile with her own deficiencies and also attempts to toss them aside as what she needed to do to succeed.
TÁR is a 21st-century version—in terms of story, not when the movie was released—of There Will Be Blood. It’s all about who’s drinking each other’s milkshakes. There is no explicitly good or explicitly bad person. We’re all just trying to figure it out. And yes, that sometimes means that someone’s head gets bashed in with a bowling pin.
We’ve all been there.
Oh, hi.
Vulture (my favorite website) is doing this Movies Fantasy League thing in which you pick eight movies and you gain points based on different things like box-office numbers and awards recognition. The movies all have different values and you’re only allowed to spend up to $100. In fake money of course. You should join. It seems fun. My team is called The SupersTARs, because of course, it is. Best of luck.