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Kate Beckinsale stars in Whit Stillman’s Love and Friendship

Whit Stillman makes literary movies, specifically Jane Austenesque movies, so no one is surprised that his new movie Love and Friendship is an adaptation of a Jane Austen novella, Lady Susan. If there is anything Whit Stillman fans are used to, it is waiting. Since his first movie Metropolitan came in 1990, he’s made a total of five (and one TV pilot, The Cosmopolitans on Amazon–are they doing a full season?), for a five-year wait between productions. This is why we have memorized his movies.

On the other hand his last movie Damsels in Distress came out in 2012, so maybe he’s picking up the pace. In Unserious Austen, Adam Thirlwell nails what we love about Whit Stillman movies:

Sure, the surface may be all frivolity and flippancy, a high bourgeois/aristocratic setting. Such archness and such a setting can make it easy to see these films as exercises in the unserious unserious. But Stillman’s gravity comes from the way he both understands the terrors of social relations—the pursuit of love and friendship—and also admires all strategies in artifice that might soften these terrors, subvert the tyranny of misinterpretation, and restore a version of utopia. Against the malice of the social, he places a range of tactics: optimism, elegance, tradition, invented selves and accents, the desperate maintenance of outmoded or contradictory ideals. So what if an ideal is absurd! And his highest ideal is eloquence.

While waiting to see Love and Friendship, I read Lady Susan, which Auntie Jane wrote when she was 18 (but wasn’t published till after her death). It’s a 64-page novella in the form of letters between the widowed Lady Susan Vernon, her friend Alicia Johnson, her disapproving sister-in-law, the mother of the sister-in-law, the brother of the sister-in-law who becomes smitten with Lady Susan, and other characters whom we could consider Lady Susan’s patsies. There are wonderful moments of bitchiness and hilarity in Auntie Jane’s novels; in this shorter work the bitchery is more concentrated and less subtle. You end up rooting for Lady Susan—”the most accomplished coquette in England”—despite her conniving, manipulative ways because she’s leveraging her limited power in a society where she’s supposed to shut up until her husband lets her speak.

I wanted to write out all the letters, but I have work to do. Maybe table it for a future project.

What else can you do with the superhero movie? The Russo Brothers made a 1970s-style conspiracy thriller (Captain America: Winter Soldier), then an excellent fight movie that was really about friendship (Captain America: Civil War). (And friendship is worth fighting for, even more than money or power.) Bryan Singer has made a movie that recalls the German expressionist classic, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. With mutants. An excellent stylistic choice, because how else are you going to portray telepathy? Voice-overs get tiresome after a while.

Cerebro looks like this image from Metropolitan

Major roles in the X-Men series have been recast, bringing the movies closer to the comics—hushed chorus of “It’s the Phoenix” from the next row. (They’re going to have to recast Wolverine soon, even if Logan is very old, if only to minimize the ick factor when the love triangle comes around.) Granted, any heavy in armor could’ve played Apocalypse, but Oscar Isaac continues his attempt to be in every movie ever made. The regulars—James McAvoy as Xavier, Michael Fassbender as Magneto, Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, Nicholas Hoult as Beast—reunite to battle the world’s first mutant, who is disappointed with the state of humanity in the 1980s and plans to destroy everything and start over. I guess he saw the hairstyles. Evan Peters as Quicksilver gets another amusing music video, and a reverse Luke-and-Vader scenario.

Since the first X-Men adaptation, also directed by Singer, the history of the mutants has been conflated with the Shoah. The resonances are very loud in Apocalypse, where Magneto returns to Auschwitz. Erik, what makes you think you can pass for normal? Darling, we’re freaks.

Thom, get a haircut.

Their new album A Moon-Shaped Pool dropped yesterday. Critics call it A Haunting, Stunning Triumph.

Tony Stark.

His name is Iñigo and he’s five.

Can Robert Downey, Jr. pull off the outfit with those sandals?

Captain America: Civil War is set in a time very much like ours, when friends and family are torn apart by opposing views, when everyone thinks she’s doing what’s best for her country and everyone is prepared to fight for his beliefs.

These are scary times. We are fearful because are uncertain. We are fed up and dispirited. We disagree about the right course of action to take, so we fight. We are angry. We act not as a nation but as a collection of tribes with separate interests. What are we to do?

This is what literature and art are for. There is no evolutionary basis for literature and art. Our species can survive without them, but what kind of existence would it be? Unexamined, unmoored, floundering in the primordial soup. Books and art are our solace and defence against the only sure thing in life, which is that we are going to die.

So we turn to them in our hour of need. In this instance the classics are divisive because they remind us of the abyss between us. Not that the classics can ever be irrelevant—everything we read springs from them. There have been superheroes since the Epic of Gilgamesh. There have been ferocious battles since the Iliad. There has been mass destruction since the Book of Genesis. These stories are still with us, but now they are comic book movies.

Those who mock popular culture as commercial silliness disregard two truths. One, as Clive James pointed out there is no successful entertainment fueled by pure cynicism. Its creators are in business for the money, as we all are, but on some level they have to believe in their product. Two, these entertainments reach millions more people than profound intellectual ruminations ever will.

Captain America: Civil War is the latest reminder that Marvel has achieved world domination. It’s awesome: not just a terrific superhero movie, but a terrific movie. My only complaint is that there are so many characters in it so it is impossible to give everyone the screen time they deserve. They all get their moments: Paul Rudd may be Ant-Man, but his real power is the ability to charm our socks off. Anthony Mackie’s Falcon is the best friend you want to have. Of the new additions, Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther has ferocity and grace, and Tom Holland’s Spider-Man is the funny, klutzy, hyperverbal kid of Stan Lee’s comics. One could argue that this movie exists in order to introduce him to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. (Note: There are two stingers, the first in the middle of the credits, the second at the end.)

Everyone has been given a specific hand-to-hand combat style, from the feline Black Panther (I’m going to nerd out and remind you that in the comics he was married to Storm of the X-Men) to Scarlet Witch’s (Elizabeth Olsen) hand gestures to Black Widow’s (Scarlett Johanssen) whirling kicks. Chris Evans has been growing in stature since the underrated first Captain America movie, and now he’s actually a match for Robert Downey, Jr.

Coming off Captain America: Winter Soldier, basically a retelling of the 1970s conspiracy thriller Three Days of the Condor (complete with Robert Redford), directors Anthony and Joe Russo have made a movie that draws its emotional wallop from real-world issues. To wit:

The world is a scary place.

There is danger everywhere.

Who will protect the people?

Do we look to our leaders as the saviors who will decide when and how to act? Can we count on them to defend us from threats within and without? Don’t they all have agendas? What happens if their agenda dictates that some groups can be sacrificed in the name of order?

Do we take responsibility for ourselves and for our fellow humans? Is this not vigilantism? Do we risk incurring collateral damage? Do we arrogate to ourselves the decision to act?

Captain America: Civil War is a comic book adaptation that acknowledges how difficult it is to do the right thing and to act for the greater good. Friendships are destroyed. Affection turns to distrust. All our assumptions about the people we know fly out the window. But respect must remain. Reason must rule. We must not be motivated by despair.

In one scene, Iron-Man/Tony Stark knocks Captain America/Steve Rogers to the floor and tells him to stay down. Steve Rogers, bruised and bloody, gets to his feet, puts up his fists and says, “I can do this all day.” It takes us back to the first movie, when Steve was a frail and wimpy kid standing up to bullies, and it reminds us that it’s not his enhanced abilities or fighting skills that make him a hero. It’s his spirit. He never quits. He never gives in to hopelessness.

We’re going to need that thought in the coming days.

Read my column at InterAksyon.com.

The White Panther

When Steve Rogers, bruised and bloody from fighting with a fully-armoured Tony Stark, puts up his fists and says, “I can do this all day,” it takes us back to the first Captain America movie and the frail little guy he used to be, and it reminds us that what makes Cap a hero isn’t his enhanced abilities or his fighting skills. It’s his spirit. He won’t quit.

We’re going to need that thought in the coming days.

Watch the movie. Reserve your tickets. Yay, Ant-Man!