It's been awhile... quite possibly forever... since I've felt inspired to write about a movie immediately after watching it. Well, I just got out of The Devil Wears Prada, and I'm going to write about it. Now.
Extremely Pointless (But Not!) Aside: I might add that I saw the film tonight without the boyfriend, and I came home full of things to say about the movie - things which I would normally, seeing as how I see 99.44% of the movies I see with him, say these things to him and spare you all my instantaneous reflections as they tend to be circuitous and... non-sensical - but anyway (see?) I came home and he was asleep. At 10pm. I guess a night without me around just isn't worth being awake for. Or that's what I'm telling myself anyway.
Ahem. The Devil Wears Prada. By no means a perfect, or Great Important Film. But it captured something I haven't gotten from a film in I don't remember how long, a feeling the films I loved as a kid (that were often terrible but I still love anyway... Big Business anyone?) often gave me... it reminded me of everything I love about this goddamned place, New York City. Because this is an, make no mistake, NYC movie. It hit me right during the opening sequence as we watch the "career gals" of today get ready and go to work and took note of the slight differences between the "levels" of women and what that said about them. I wondered, watching it, how many people outside of NYC would notice in the quick barrage of images these things - say, what taking a car-service versus a taxi versus the subway - mean here.
Now, I want to try and not sound snooty about this sort of thing (as we NY'ers do love to do - we roll around in the pig-slop of our heavenly snooty city like animals, we do). I want to say I identified with the practical Andy, the subway girl, the ugly-skirt girl, the "smart, fat girl."
But poor delightful Anne Hathaway really never stood a chance.
I, god help me, spent the entire film rooting for Meryl. My friend I saw the movie with was positively aghast when I said this leaving the film, but... but... how could I help myself? Sure, Miranda Priestly is... harsh... but... she expects things done right. Perfect. She gets her shit done. Every time one of Anne Hathaway's friends told her she'd changed, she'd forgotten who she was... is it so horrible that I wanted to scream YES, she has, thank god?
I think this city maybe's brainwashed me.
But honestly, the playing field just wasn't level! I mean, Meryl was just so on the fuckin' money. I wanted to see Anne Hathaway please her, I wanted Anne Hathaway to like that world, I wanted her to dump her schlubby boyfriend Adrien Nobody and go out with the world-weary globe-trotting Writer (even if Simon Baker's highlighted eyebrows were terrifyingly distracting). I wanted her to go back into the fucking society-ball, forget the loser with his stupid schlubby birthday party, and live the fucking dream life cleaning up Meryl's spills until such a time Meryl deemed her suitably on the money herself, which might be never but Stanley Tucci was right, you hold out hope. And the woman's old, man, she's gonna be gone in ten, fifteen, forty years! Just hold on, learn, watch, listen!
Okay, so my friend with whom I saw the movie with thought I was insane. I realize it was going for the opposite reaction. That we're supposed to be happy that Anne Hathaway remembers "who she is" in the end and... what? If it's really whats-her-face's story then Anne Hathaway goes and stabs Meryl in the back with a stupid tell-all book, betrays her! The nerve!
Now, don't get me wrong here - I would never want to work for Miranda Priestly. I mean, it's not like I haven't in my daily real-world assistant job been told to "find me that sheet of paper I was holding yesterday," so it's not a stretch, by any means, but still, no. But the film reminded what I'm here for, why I keep at it, and what it takes.
Extremely Pointless (But Not!) Aside: I might add that I saw the film tonight without the boyfriend, and I came home full of things to say about the movie - things which I would normally, seeing as how I see 99.44% of the movies I see with him, say these things to him and spare you all my instantaneous reflections as they tend to be circuitous and... non-sensical - but anyway (see?) I came home and he was asleep. At 10pm. I guess a night without me around just isn't worth being awake for. Or that's what I'm telling myself anyway.
Ahem. The Devil Wears Prada. By no means a perfect, or Great Important Film. But it captured something I haven't gotten from a film in I don't remember how long, a feeling the films I loved as a kid (that were often terrible but I still love anyway... Big Business anyone?) often gave me... it reminded me of everything I love about this goddamned place, New York City. Because this is an, make no mistake, NYC movie. It hit me right during the opening sequence as we watch the "career gals" of today get ready and go to work and took note of the slight differences between the "levels" of women and what that said about them. I wondered, watching it, how many people outside of NYC would notice in the quick barrage of images these things - say, what taking a car-service versus a taxi versus the subway - mean here.
Now, I want to try and not sound snooty about this sort of thing (as we NY'ers do love to do - we roll around in the pig-slop of our heavenly snooty city like animals, we do). I want to say I identified with the practical Andy, the subway girl, the ugly-skirt girl, the "smart, fat girl."
But poor delightful Anne Hathaway really never stood a chance.
I, god help me, spent the entire film rooting for Meryl. My friend I saw the movie with was positively aghast when I said this leaving the film, but... but... how could I help myself? Sure, Miranda Priestly is... harsh... but... she expects things done right. Perfect. She gets her shit done. Every time one of Anne Hathaway's friends told her she'd changed, she'd forgotten who she was... is it so horrible that I wanted to scream YES, she has, thank god?
I think this city maybe's brainwashed me.
But honestly, the playing field just wasn't level! I mean, Meryl was just so on the fuckin' money. I wanted to see Anne Hathaway please her, I wanted Anne Hathaway to like that world, I wanted her to dump her schlubby boyfriend Adrien Nobody and go out with the world-weary globe-trotting Writer (even if Simon Baker's highlighted eyebrows were terrifyingly distracting). I wanted her to go back into the fucking society-ball, forget the loser with his stupid schlubby birthday party, and live the fucking dream life cleaning up Meryl's spills until such a time Meryl deemed her suitably on the money herself, which might be never but Stanley Tucci was right, you hold out hope. And the woman's old, man, she's gonna be gone in ten, fifteen, forty years! Just hold on, learn, watch, listen!
Okay, so my friend with whom I saw the movie with thought I was insane. I realize it was going for the opposite reaction. That we're supposed to be happy that Anne Hathaway remembers "who she is" in the end and... what? If it's really whats-her-face's story then Anne Hathaway goes and stabs Meryl in the back with a stupid tell-all book, betrays her! The nerve!
Now, don't get me wrong here - I would never want to work for Miranda Priestly. I mean, it's not like I haven't in my daily real-world assistant job been told to "find me that sheet of paper I was holding yesterday," so it's not a stretch, by any means, but still, no. But the film reminded what I'm here for, why I keep at it, and what it takes.
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2 comments:
Regarding whether or not non-New Yorkers will understand things like taking a subway v. having a car service I have to say of course we do.
There are cities in the rest of the country which have public transportation. It's the same everywhere. The only people who take the bus are people who have no choice. Most people I know own our own vehicles. That is considered the best mode of transportation where I'm from.
I always think it's funny that New Yorkers think they are so hard to understand. Probably 75% of everything we see is based around New York: movies, tv shows, magazine articles, even most of the blogs I read. After years of Seinfeld, Friends, Sex and the City, etc. I know more about NYC than I do about the town I was born in, Houston, and I've never been to NYC!
Hey, I hear ya, I didn't want to say something like "fly-over land" wouldn't "get" what it's like in The Big City, I'm from "fly-over land" myself and I "got" what it things like this watching a movie like Big Business when I was 8 years old; but I often think of my mother as a stand-in for people who don't get these things and she never would've noticed it. In her defense it was a rapi-succession of cuts during the crdits that I was specifically talking about that half the audience probably wasn't even paying attention to, but I liked it.
And even if everyone gets "it", "it" is about NYC.
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