Murder By Contract (1958)
Directed By Irving Learner
Written by Ben Simcoe
A movie you meet where the impact comes with the relationship you build with it rather than taking it all in at once. I first saw Murder by Contract at the end of last year in a theatre right after seeing The Colour of Money for the first time. A double bill Friday I miss the feeling of where you could take your time with the day and one of those outings at the movies where you realize what exactly you like instinctually rather than being trained to endure. Colour of Money being the one Scorsese movie where there is an endorsement because being Paul Newman is probably really cool and pool hustling has that sports manga gravitational pull to it where the work to be better comes out magical.
But watching Murder By Contract again popping up on a Sunday morning on television made me fall in love with it even more. A film of text that doesn’t find power in being an abstraction but a total procedure. Where snappiness in dialogue actually has the sensation of being chiselled or has the rhythm of bricklaying. One of those noirs that almost takes place completely within afternoons and finds shape in Los Angeles errands making it perfect for peak day viewing (I’d imagine it works wonders on a sick day). A kind of plainness in landscape and how the sun shines on it encapsulating a timeless suburban off-highway boredom that doesn’t change and doesn’t form in style but has a unmarred beauty.
Like a Wally Wood comic you can’t find but remember reading, the scope of the entire career of a blue collar hit man (Vince Edwards) moves through the punches of the occupation. A furniture-based work out routine at the apartment—a reference made in Taxi Driver that works as an image Scorsese and Bickle could emulate and actualize as a memory— where chairs prompt up push-ups and pull-up bars rest under doorframes. The first hits flowing out as illustrations of festering intent and the after-thought of carnage. Slamming a last panel punch line as the hit man kills the guy who hired him. The rest of the film forming around blackout gags and failed operations—somewhere between Wile E. Coyote and genuine CIA productions you read about but can’t believe—as the hit man tries to kill a woman who is about to testify in a high profile mob case and under constant police surveillance in a house at the centre of a valley.
The tone of the picture (I know I can’t get away with saying that) having that stern and plain Kafka formality to it. Like how bank notes and foreclosure letters dictate a reality or how that formality flattens the performance of life events out of comedic and tragic octaves and have to represent capitalism as a fact rather than a put-upon barrier. Foregoing ennui in the static non-static sense as a means to display plainly a world run through economical reasoning solely. Instead of a reduction of humanity and how a person becomes procedure through the act of murdering professionally like Melville after this where the contract killer exists in isolation because they can’t afford the risk of being human (which in and of itself is it’s own economical nightmare ), Murder by Contract maintains a connection that any and all jobs represent the system and country that gives reason for it. Every character exists through the economics and say plainly how they operate under their paycheque and the guy ordered to kill someone isn’t any less or more of a “citizen” than the guy at the malt shop or gun shop or the city planning archives.
It’s only in the last minutes where the viewer is given a portrait of someone who—controlled through other and more physical reasons—finds some sense of comfort in going towards a piano. Finding joy in the routine and mechanisms that are divorced from any agreed upon value that is represented in a dollar sign and a number, but also being the woman with a bounty on her head for going against a structure of business. The poster image of a man about to choke this woman while she plays a song representing a lot more than just the plain maneuverer. Seemingly direct in what it is showing but resembling the only ambiguity the film offers sans censoring violence. Lingering on the promise of a gruesome act but watching the hit man break apart as fingers slam on keys to produce a commodity out of thin air. Much like the camusian “why” that arises that either leads to a simple recognition of the proceedings of the absurd world or leads to the better ending for the movie.
Normal People (2020)
Directed By Lenny Abrahamson and Hettie MacDonald
Written by Sally Rooney, Alice Birch, and Mark O’Rowe
Five episodes watched for review(?)
The rare “prestigious” television show I’m watching in preparation for a conversation I’m probably never going to have where instead of answering “Beastars” or “The second season of Mob Psycho 100” or “Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai” or I Want to Eat Your Pancreas to the question of what shows I’m watching I can say “Uh I thought uh Normal People was…pretty good.” Following up with a “What’s that about?” where I’ll say something worse than “well it’s about two people who meet in high school who have a secret affair over the years as they become more miserable towards their—” and they’ll say “HEY!” as they see and wave to someone who isn’t there behind me and run towards them. Either forgetting the hot dog they had in their hands as it falls onto the grass or knowing what the sacrifice entails.
Also known as His and Her Circumstances, Normal People starts out as a more sophisticated teen drama that mutes the noises of trashier impulses to the point where you wonder if teenagers even like music now. Ignoring zanier ideas of having a secret relationship in high school—two dates at the same restaurant at the same time, rigged homecoming elections with crying and a Dido song, or a day at the beach that’s anything but sunny as the Corkshire Strangler (Mary-Ann’s Dad) strikes again—to become a threatening piece of television replicating the viewer’s own failings in university while taunting their memories with more alluring liberties. Seeing yourself in both of these people and at first struck with the notion of having that kind of relationship. How that would’ve been nice even as a format for a conversation when that last year of high school was a combination of unsolicited yelling and finding out that loneliness was always the state rather than just an off-day condition. Having a focus but lacking a lot without realizing it. Encouragement coming from people who wish well but also don’t see that side of you and think you’re dumber when you’re quiet. Not seeing the knife as a hand behind a back hugs the handle and seeing it stab when the “oh English major gonna be a teacher are ya?” question answers with a “Well we’ll see don’t want to jump ahead now.” In that moment realizing you’re watching a show by strangers who know you and have spent millions of dollars to not only adapt a popular book (that I’ll probably read) but to also call you out for being a massive loser.
Under the guise of universality, maybe “being Joycean”, and specifically Irish but also knowing full well I know all of these tricks, it’s a very deliberate takedown in recreation. Giving a lot of an episode’s runtime to the procedure of commuting to university, living off campus, having a part time job closer to home and having another one closer to the school. Sitting in libraries or laying in bed reading. Saying a very general “it was good…I agree with what he said” answer to a group discussion the tutorial instructor calmly drags out of you. Typing in one of those cubicles on a higher library floor where the view looks down to the pit of the thing or typing at one of those plank tables on the lowest floor as you sit in the bottom of the pit and the architecture folds above the curve of your back. Cutting being bored at various social science lectures for time (that I didn’t have to take!). Walking through and down underground hallways and lecture halls that embrace darkness and the acoustics of hollow structures. Studying the CCTV footage of a sadder kid who didn’t realize what he could do with his hair yet and having a beard he didn’t earn but buttering up the aesthetics of those movements to make the loser more attractive, sympathetic, and acceptable to take in on a TV screen or laptop with finger prints all over it than the Aqualung Jr. that was the actual article.
Going on the track of treating school as school and feeling the misery of it generally but realizing the crater erodes further as you see a person you know from high school who didn’t “get pretty” but realized she could be cool and swear in conversations now and drink wine*. Now feeling that distance between each other and realizing how hard you’ve actually blew it and will continue to blow it as time goes on. She’ll ask you “are you still writing” and you’ll mumble out a longer “no” or a “yeah” with gaps without giving examples for finished ideas.
It’s egotistical but volunteering to see it at first innocently and then as a habit, it’s hard not to take it in as this reflection of your own failures (how else would it work?). The show’s main fault—mid-way through at least—taking these little awkward moments of weakness as just one time attacks when they are repetitious and as you go on mean less as you dull. It’s hard to be in a happy place in general right now but it’s a lot harder to find a kind of joy when so much of the escapes and detours I’ve taken to feel better have evaporated. Where so much of these escapes promised something I could be other than what I’ve been reduced to and dissolving myself knowing I’m actually firmly in a place of losing. Accepting that I’m a kind of machinery now—not really a thing with dreams maybe—and then having to see people from high school look at me with disappointment when they walk into my work. Seeing me in a moment that represents a longer anxiety. A fucking terrible feeling.
Maybe not totally watching for the imaginary conversation about it, but at a time when it resembles part of a cog in thinking there has to be something in subjecting myself to the routine of going down and watching this show as something more than content. With this act and idea of consuming media, there is a discussion but it never goes beyond a week and it never feels as personable as people pass it by for the next object. But with Normal People there is some kind of recognition in fixing my attention to it. Especially since the show almost gets away with calling me a dink and would’ve if I wasn’t here confirming the uglier situations and denoting the sexier aspects as pure fantasy.
The OA (2016)
Directed by Zal Batmanglij
Written by Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling
Sometimes for work I’ll wake up at 6am on a Saturday realizing I’m always going to be tired. Hearing fireworks go off at 1 and a single car street race burr at 2. Closing my eyes but not falling asleep because I’m calculating the exact five minutes before I’ll have to wake up constantly. “Waking” up and taking in quieted streets I’ve walked too many times to not feel that pinch in my shoulders that I messed up somehow. Going passed the sidewalk block with my little footmark in the cement. The day then becoming an unraveling of an attitude you didn’t know you still had to put up with. Thinking in little seconds and struggling to give a proper reason to how you’re still managing when so much gravity has been put upon you constantly throughout all of this and there really hasn’t been a true pause on how it’s doing damage when you know it has been incredibly devastating. As things have gotten slower the anxiety that breathes in and out has only gotten faster. In a time when consideration has become a survival tactic, you’ve never felt more pushed on cosmically.
Skipping ahead to the season one finale of a show you’ve been trying to get through for almost four years becomes a rational maneuverer when you’re tired. Taking in all the build up you were too impatient to focus on or forgetting what this show was and looking towards it more bewildered and lovingly than you ever could if you took it seriously. Hearing about how dancing was involved but not knowing to what extent and still wanting it to go further as these synchronized interpretative routines stop the effects of ALS and distract a school shooter rather than blowing his head either cleanly off or like a Gallagher Two watermelon. The OA always having that very specific barista mixture of ok politics made deranged through odder metaphors or covering the intimate scope of overhearing conversations at coffee shops that range from how CBD oil makes you calm down even more now to how you talked to Mark the other day to your father still being lost in the everglades. But without giving it a real analysis and foiling the magic of it, you take it completely as it is and let barefaced associations guide you. The Dad from Junebug is still sad and can’t express it. Riz Ahmed apparently was on this show and his arc involved having to hug a sad kid. Paz Vega was also here apparently and no one told you and it would probably be ok if Jason Isaacs killed you because he would explain why he had to and you couldn’t help but agree because he either makes a really good case or you forget he is the bad guy in most things he’s in just as the poison is setting in. He whispers to you “You’re going to be alright” and in the moment you believe him.
You’re going to be alright.
-Sasha Makarewicz
Summer 2020
*One thing I’ll slam Normal People on for real here is Mary-Ann’s burns in high school would’ve have made her cool. I’ll say it. Imagine a student telling a teacher off like that? That would be the coolest thing. And she’s the only one there getting detentions? Ireland is weird, brah.