Pain makes you beautiful

reviewed Sun, 06 Oct 2002

I'm going to open this review with an audience rant, but not for this movie.  I  went to the Bruce Springsteen concert in Philadelphia last Sunday, courtesy of my father and his wife (thank you again!), and although the show was great (even if I didn't recognize half the songs), the people around me were rather unpleasant.  Like the very large man in front of me who completely blocked the middle of the stage when he stood up, although fortunately he was out of shape enough that, halfway through the concert, he sat down in exhaustion and rarely stood up again.  Then there was the even larger and much stinkier guy sitting beside me (and partially on me) and his Harley honey.  He was actually quite nice; we chatted before the show.  He asked how many Springsteen concerts I'd been to, and when I told him this was my first, he said, "Oh man, your world is gonna be rocked!  Tonight is gonna change your life!"  I blurted out, "Oh god, I hope so!"  Then he warned me, "I'm gonna get wild.  You ain't never seen anything like it."  I said, "Well, I've been to concerts when I've gotten kinda wild."  "I'm gonna get so crazy it'll scare you," he replied, ominously.  So I'm cringing inside, expecting... well, god knows what, but I had a general anxiety about nudity and jumping and screaming -- at the least.  Okay, this is how "wild" he gets:  He spends most of the concert standing up but not moving to the music at all, not even bopping his head.  Instead, he has binoculars glued to his eyes and shouts at no one in particular, "I can't believe he's doing that!"  Occasionally he bellowed "Bruuuuuuuuce!" -- you know, like the other 19,999 people in the audience.  Crazy!  (I was glad he didn't yell more often, because man, his breath -- some unholy blend of hot dogs and beer that almost made me vomit -- put the stink on me and there weren't nothin' I could do about it.  Still, it was almost better than when he got up to get more beer and his wife lit up a cigarette.  She conscientiously avoided blowing smoke on the person in front of her -- by blowing it toward me.  And what almost sent me running for the bathroom was when she dropped the cigarette, picked it up, and put it back in her mouth.  On the other hand, whatever's on the floor could hardly be nastier than what she's inhaling... I guess.)  Anyway, I couldn't help thinking, "Damn, brother, if that's your idea of wild, you'd have a fuckin' heart attack if you ever saw me at a Duke game... or even a Lyle Lovett concert, for that matter."

Oh, and Bruce made a "public service announcement" about how civil liberties are under attack in this country, and no matter how you feel about war with Iraq you have to agree we should be having a public debate about it.  At the end of his speech, I literally sprang out of my seat yelling, "YEAH!" and pumping my fist in the air.  (Beat that, wild and crazy guy!)  Even cooler, he used the speech to lead into "Born in the U.S.A.," which has been so often misinterpreted as a jingoistic patriotic song -- I remember when Reagan tried to appropriate it as his campaign song, and Springsteen not only refused to let him use it but also suggested Mr. Reagan might want to listen to the words sometime.
 

Well, just before the Springsteen concert, we went to Secretary, which was supposed to be a very black comedy about S&M.  Maybe I'm just being overly sensitive or empathetic, but I thought most of it was achingly sad and painful.  Not that I'm saying it's not a good movie -- it's excellent, and I recommend it if you're into adventurous cinema.  But I was expecting outrageous comedy, and I got desolation and loneliness.

While this visceral empathy probably sprang partly from my own inner... let's say... turmoil, most of it is conveyed by Maggie Gyllenhaal's exceptional performance as mousy, depressed Lee.  At the beginning of the movie, she's released from a psychiatric institution but still feels the urge to cut herself to distract her attention from emotional to physical pain.  To kick herself out of her sad groove, she gets her first job ever, as a secretary to E. Edward Grey (James Spader), a vaguely creepy lawyer with no other staff in his lush office.

At first, despite knowing what was to come, I found myself swelling with hope as Grey seems to take a genuine, protective interest in Lee.  Then, of course, the movie's hook came into play -- Grey spanks her, puts a saddle on her, etc., and she delights in it.  Again, it may just be my personal issues and my time at an all-women's college whose unofficial motto was "Death to the Patriarchy!" (no, I am not kidding -- Sue can back me up), but I found it even sadder that Lee exchanges one kind of pain for another, and that it appears to liberate her, make her come out of her shell and dress more attractively, lose the clumping, hunched walk of the habitually ignored and unhappy, and develop a confident, graceful carriage (the Judybats' song "Pain (Makes You Beautiful)" kept running through my head).  But that she has to get that from a man and through debasing herself and seeking out pain -- that's so sad and despairing.

Yes, I laughed a lot, too -- many scenes are so ridiculously over the top that I temporarily set aside my righteous, feminist pique.  And, certainly, it's not a movie to be taken too seriously -- no one is going to see this and think, "Hey, maybe masochism will make me feel happier and more confident!"  It's clever and sharp and dark, well written, with terrific performances from Spader and Gyllenhaal.  Yet I walked out of the movie feeling melancholy -- perhaps Gyllenhaal and the director (Steven Shainberg) and writer (Erin Cressida Wilson) did too good a job depicting the depths from which Lee rises.  Even the ending, which normal people would probably call happy, left me feeling sorry for Lee; it seemed so unrealistic to me.  I was sure she was either imagining it or would someday lose what she had.  (Trying not to give anything away here.)
 

I must be something of a masochist myself, because I found myself watching Fair Game the other night for no particular reason other than nothing else was on, I wanted to see how bad it could be, and... I guess... I felt the need to inflict pain upon myself (perhaps I did leave the movie subconsciously thinking, "Masochism will make me happier and more confident!"  Well, it doesn't).  But I did turn it off after about 20 minutes... and then periodically checked in with it whenever there was a commercial break in the baseball game.  Two observations:  it has the dumbest stunts I've ever seen, and Cindy Crawford is actually a better actor than Billy Baldwin -- but keep in mind that that's like saying Spam tastes better than other canned meat food products.  If you, too, are the kind of person who does these things to yourself, you must see it on TV -- the dubbing of profanities has never been so obvious -- or so inane (and this is the point of my mentioning this embarrassing revelation here).  Swear to god, the line, "You have me confused with someone who gives a rat's ass" becomes "...someone who gives a brat's gas."  Whaaaaa...?  Not only does it make absolutely no sense, it seems somehow even more offensive than "rat's ass."

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