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Rachel Weisz

The Favourite – Machiavellian Comedy

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“I’m on my side. Always.”

It isn’t news that politics can be a cutthroat sport. But in the hands of Yorgos Lanthimos, all that palace intrigue can become the basis of humor. The Favourite is a Machiavellian comedy set 400 years ago that reflects the way power often happens in secret, but with important consequences.

Olivia Colman in the film THE FAVOURITE. Photo by Atsushi Nishijima. © 2018 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation All Rights Reserved

Set in the reign of Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) the story takes place almost entirely within the royal household. Anne is frail, crippled by gout, and retiring. She lacks the confidence and, it seems, the intelligence to handle matters of state. Lady Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz) is Anne’s longtime friend, confidant, lover, and controller. Even though Anne holds the power, Sarah knows how to manipulate her. Sarah is the éminence grise who, while working with the Whigs in the Parliament, actually runs the country.

When Sarah’s cousin Abigail (Emma Stone) shows up at the palace looking for a position, Sarah is not all that impressed. Abigail was born a part of the aristocracy, but her family’s bankruptcy took away the life she had expected. Sarah sends her to the kitchen to work as a scullery maid. But when Abigail makes an herbal remedy that helps the Queen’s gout, Sarah appoints her to be her own maid, perhaps grooming her to assist her in her political mechanizations. But Abigail sees it as a chance to make her own way. The Tory leader sees in Abigail a backchannel to the Queen. When Abigail discovers how Sarah is running things, and the power she has over Anne, Abigail begins to undermine her cousin and put herself forward. Eventually, their rivalry will take on much larger significance as each pushes the agenda of their political allies.

Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz in the film THE FAVOURITE. Photo by Yorgos Lanthimos. © 2018 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation All Rights Reserved

This is a dark comedy, with a good deal of scatological and bedroom humor. There is also a satirical quality to it as it looks at the political system as buffoonery. The Queen is unintelligent. The leader of the Whigs carries his prized racing duck around with him. The leader of the Tories is a consummate dandy. None of those tabularly in power is in any way worthy of respect. Or course, we could look at our own political system and wonder if anything has changed.

The story is based on historical people, however the events are fictional. Even so, it shows how important matters, even war and peace, may be determined not so much by reason as by personalities and how they manipulate situations. And because it is nearly all dealing with the aristocracy, we also understand that those who really pay the price for all this are people with no voice.

Rachel Weisz and Olivia Colman in the film THE FAVOURITE. Photo by Yorgos Lanthimos. © 2018 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation All Rights Reserved

It makes for an interesting twist that the world of politics in this story is based on these three women. The men in the story really have no control; they are used by the women to further their own goals. Each of the women is seeking something for herself. The Queen is looking for love. Sarah desires power. Abigail begins by seeking status and prestige, but soon that is not enough, she wants autonomy and freedom to do as she wants. It is a matter of everyone wanting their own good, even if it is at the expense of others.

Photos courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox

Disobedience – Community or Individual?

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Religious communities can be nurturing and fulfilling, providing people with spiritual meaning and a sense of belonging. But those same communities may also be stifling and destructive of individual freedom and self-esteem. Disobedience, set within an Orthodox Jewish community, is a tale of the search for love and freedom, but it carries the risk of losing one’s place in the world.

Ronit (Rachel Weisz) is a New York based photographer. When she gets word that her father has died, she returns to the London suburb where he was the prominent rabbi of the Jewish community. She is not warmly welcomed home. She fled the community and its strict lifestyle many years before. Even her family and closest friends keep her at arm’s length. She is now an outsider, even though this was home. Her father’s obituary says he had no children. Ronit has effectively been erased from the community. But she is determined to pay her respects to her father’s memory.

She is reunited with Dovid (Alessandro Nivola), her father’s younger protégé and heir apparent, with whom she spent time when they were young. She also reconnects with Esti (Rachel McAdams), who is now Dovid’s wife. The three were inseparable as young people but the years of separation make things a bit awkward—especially when her return kindles a romantic spark between Esti and Ronit. As the week of mourning progresses, the tensions of the community and within the three-person relationship grew to the point of breaking.

On one level, this film seems to speak to the repressive nature of religion. Certainly, that is what Ronit left behind her when she set out to live a different life and her return opens the possibility of another kind of life for Esti, who has suppressed her desires through the years. But the film also plays various tensions that exist in a more universal sense. Community and individual, desire and duty, morality and fulfillment, tradition and modernity. Many of these tensions are made evident in a pair of scenes: Esti and Dovid’s weekly time of having sex in contrast with the sensual explosion of Ronit and Esti’s encounter.

All three of these characters must struggle to come to grips with the changes represented by Ronit’s return to the community—even for a short time. Each must determine what there is of value that they can hold on to, and what they might have to give up to truly find happiness in which ever world they will live in.

 

The Light Between Oceans – Hard Choices, Consequences

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The Light Between Oceans is set on Janus, a small island far off the coast of Western Australia. The Roman god it is named after has two faces and is often thought to be looking to both the past and future (hence the year starts in January, also named after Janus.) Janus Island we discover in the story is placed between two oceans, but it is also a place that lies between hope and despair, joy and sorrow, injury and pardon, and love and . . . love?

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Tom Sherbourne (Michael Fassbender), a veteran of the Great War, signs on as the lighthouse keeper on Janus. He is looking to get away from everything after the war. He will be about one hundred miles from another living person. And he likes the idea. But just before he goes, he meets Isabel Graysmark (Alicia Vikander), a lovely young woman who is grieving the loss of two brothers in the war. After a bit of a long-distance romance, they marry and head to their own little Eden on Janus. Their happiness seems complete—until two miscarriages brings darkness into their lives.

Two days after the second miscarriage, a rowboat drifts toward Janus. Inside Tom and Isabel discover an infant and a dead man. At Isabel’s insistence, they do not notify anyone and begin to raise the child as their own. And so now they are a family of three—Tom, Isabel, and Lucy. But when they take Lucy into port to be baptized, Tom notices a grieving woman, Hannah (Rachel Weisz), in the church graveyard. He sees that she has been at a memorial to a man and child lost at sea the day before they found Lucy. His guilt at her deep grief sets the story for the various dilemmas that Tom and Isabel will face—emotional, moral, and eventually legal. It also means that everyone will have to face sorrow in unexpected ways. There are no possibilities for everything to work out nicely. In fact we may wonder if there will be any happiness for anyone.

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This is a story that deals with consequences. Each action creates consequences not just for the person involved but for others as well. Even when characters try to do what seems the right thing, there are severe, unforeseen costs involved. In such a situation, how can we hope to make choices that will lead to what is right? And we often have to balance what is right for whom, because what helps one person injures another.

The film also touches briefly on forgiveness. In a flashback we meet Hannah’s husband, a German who must live with the resentment of most of the community because of the past war. Yet he lives a life that does not repay those who treat him badly. He notes that you only have to forgive once, but resentments have to be brought up over and over and that is just too much work. This comes up again in the film, but could have been explored a bit more fully than it is.

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I think we often find ourselves on Janus Island—that place that looks in two directions (or even multiple directions) at once. We are always on the cusp not just of past and future, but of the many possibilities of where our lives can lead. The choices we make may open some doors and close others. How we live in the aftermath of our choices often determines whether we will find happiness or not.

Photos courtesy of DreamWorks Pictures

Editor’s note: Special features include “Bringing the Light to Life,” a look at how Cape Campbell, New Zealand, became the background for the film via the cast and crew as Cianfrance’s work made the film what it is; and see the history of the lighthouse at Cape Campbell played out. 

Denial – Does Truth Matter?

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Does truth even matter anymore? I receive frequent emails from FactCheck.org that looks at the statements made by political candidates and rates their accuracy. It may not come as a surprise that some statements are blatantly false. Is the truth just an annoyance that gets in the way of what we’d like to say and believe? Standing for the truth is the core of Denial, a true story courtroom drama about a professor who is sued by a Holocaust denier for libel.

Deborah Lipstadt (Rachel Weisz), a professor of history at Emory University, has made a name as one who has studied Holocaust denial. In a book she mentions David Irving (Timothy Spall), a British self-taught historian of World War II, as a Holocaust denier and Hitler apologist. He sues her for libel leading to a sensationalized trial in London. Her defense team, led by solicitor Anthony Julius (Andrew Scott) and barrister Richard Rampton (Tom Wilkinson), sets a strategy that troubles Lipstadt—to not put her or any Holocaust survivors on the stand. Rather, they planned to focus on Irving and his racist, anti-Semitic views that had led him to distort history.

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While much of the film is the courtroom drama (and all of the courtroom dialogue is taken verbatim from the trial transcripts), it is also the personal story of Dr. Lipstadt through this persecution. (The film is based on her book, Denial: Holocaust History on Trial.) Often we sense her solitude in the midst of all the media frenzy. Even when with her legal team, she is often alone. They have their legal experience and strategy. For them, her defense is all important, but for Lipstadt the truth is what really matters and that is why she is not willing to settle. She wants to make it clear that fact of the Holocaust is not subject the whim of whoever may not want to acknowledge it. She wants the pain of the Holocaust victims to have voice. For the others involved, the truth does matter, but it seems to be secondary to winning.

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Irving, on the other hand, is portrayed as a self-aggrandizing egotist. For him, the truth is what he wants it to be. He relishes the acceptance this trial seems to give to him and his ideas. It is exactly that approach which is the target of the legal defense. Rampton, in his cross examination treats him as totally unimportant. He refuses to even look at him. It is not so much that he is worthy of contempt. They want to portray that he is not even worthy of notice because he cares nothing about truth.

The film does, of course, speak to the veracity of the historical truth of the Holocaust. That, however, is only a minor part of why the film is important. It is not so much about whether the Holocaust actually happened. (We are expected to already know the fact about that.) Rather this is about what credence we should give the various lies that people speak in order to gain acceptance. Which brings us back to the current electoral process. Sites such as Factcheck.org and Politifact.com (which will rate some things as “Pants on Fire) try to help us get a handle on the truth, half-truths, and sometimes outright lies that candidates and their proxies tell us. But often, even in debates and interviews, those half-truths, errors, and lies go unchallenged. Denial reminds us that the truth matters and that sometimes we have to stand up and demand that lies and those who tell them must be called what they are.

Photos courtesy of Bleeker Street