Snowflake Challenge: Day 3
Jan. 3rd, 2019 06:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wrecksahliaIn your own space, share a favorite piece of original canon (a TV episode, a song, a favorite interview, a book, a scene from a movie, etc) and explain why you love it so much. (For ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
snowflake_challenge.)
I thought I might try to be more specific, and choose a favorite scene, but then I remembered 85% of the entire movie is my favorite scene, so I decided against it. Point is: Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017) changed my life.
For personal context: as soon as I found out this movie’s release date, I was counting down the days. I’d learned some of the history behind the creation/creator of Wonder Woman not long before the film was announced, and I was checking the indirects about it on Twitter for weeks prior to its release.
In this way, I think I read every single review that was published about it before it came out. As it turns out, that’s also how I discovered there would be a preview night for it not far from me — by obsessively checking the indirects. So the first time I saw it was with my friend in a packed theater, which was incredible for a first viewing. I laughed out loud more times than I could remember doing at a movie; a few times I made varying high-pitched noises out of sheer delight. The room was JOYOUS. People were there to laugh right along with me. It was an unspeakably delightful experience, and I walked away wanting to see it a million more times.
I only had to wait another week or so for its proper release, but it felt like lifetimes — I was in agony, waiting to see a movie I had ALREADY SEEN. Anyway, it was only out in theaters for two weeks, and I couldn’t see it during the week, so I saw it once every day of both weekends — five times in total. Alas, the audiences were much, much smaller here, which was unfortunate in terms of the film’s success but also worked well as a balance to my initial experience — I got to enjoy it both ways.
Let me just say this: I feel like what Angela Robinson created with this movie was meant for an AU world. A better world. And somehow instead she snuck it into this one, and though it went wildly underappreciated and underrated, I will truly be grateful to it as long as I live.
People can — and will, undoubtedly — debate for a million years the Real Story of the Marston-Holloway-Byrne family, and which parts of this were accurate and which were not. That is not the conversation I’m here to have: what Angela created was a movie that centered these three people falling in love and that, despite the movie’s title, followed more than anything Elizabeth’s arc. Her arc drives the story’s narrative, her fears create conflict and climax, and the final scene is about Elizabeth: learning what she wants, learning that the cost of her truth may not measure against the cost of keeping it tucked away.
The women are given space to be complex, dynamic figures; Bill creating Wonder Woman is a fun backdrop, a regular wink to the audience, but it is not the story. There’s a reason that the New York Times called it a “Trojan horse” — it really is a love story. It’s a movie that even makes Elizabeth/Olive its crux, in a way that literally no one else creating this movie would have done but Angela. (FROM AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE, I’M TELLING YOU.)
Besides how well the movie captures its romantic core, one of its most profound triumphs is its depiction of Elizabeth: ferocious, fearless, ashamed, brilliant, hilarious, condescending, charismatic someone who thinks “I’m just asking you the courtesy of please not fucking my husband” is something you should include in the first conversation you have with someone. She is profoundly nuanced, and complex, and allowed to be all of these things all at once. And Rebecca Hall is an honest-to-god genius: her performance is a fucking tour de force the likes of which I have witnessed only very rarely, and never half so joyfully.
It is really, really worth the time. There is nothing like this movie, and I have never loved a movie the way I love this movie. Maybe I never will. And honestly? I could live with that.
snowflake_challenge.)
I thought I might try to be more specific, and choose a favorite scene, but then I remembered 85% of the entire movie is my favorite scene, so I decided against it. Point is: Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017) changed my life.
For personal context: as soon as I found out this movie’s release date, I was counting down the days. I’d learned some of the history behind the creation/creator of Wonder Woman not long before the film was announced, and I was checking the indirects about it on Twitter for weeks prior to its release.
In this way, I think I read every single review that was published about it before it came out. As it turns out, that’s also how I discovered there would be a preview night for it not far from me — by obsessively checking the indirects. So the first time I saw it was with my friend in a packed theater, which was incredible for a first viewing. I laughed out loud more times than I could remember doing at a movie; a few times I made varying high-pitched noises out of sheer delight. The room was JOYOUS. People were there to laugh right along with me. It was an unspeakably delightful experience, and I walked away wanting to see it a million more times.
I only had to wait another week or so for its proper release, but it felt like lifetimes — I was in agony, waiting to see a movie I had ALREADY SEEN. Anyway, it was only out in theaters for two weeks, and I couldn’t see it during the week, so I saw it once every day of both weekends — five times in total. Alas, the audiences were much, much smaller here, which was unfortunate in terms of the film’s success but also worked well as a balance to my initial experience — I got to enjoy it both ways.
Let me just say this: I feel like what Angela Robinson created with this movie was meant for an AU world. A better world. And somehow instead she snuck it into this one, and though it went wildly underappreciated and underrated, I will truly be grateful to it as long as I live.
People can — and will, undoubtedly — debate for a million years the Real Story of the Marston-Holloway-Byrne family, and which parts of this were accurate and which were not. That is not the conversation I’m here to have: what Angela created was a movie that centered these three people falling in love and that, despite the movie’s title, followed more than anything Elizabeth’s arc. Her arc drives the story’s narrative, her fears create conflict and climax, and the final scene is about Elizabeth: learning what she wants, learning that the cost of her truth may not measure against the cost of keeping it tucked away.
The women are given space to be complex, dynamic figures; Bill creating Wonder Woman is a fun backdrop, a regular wink to the audience, but it is not the story. There’s a reason that the New York Times called it a “Trojan horse” — it really is a love story. It’s a movie that even makes Elizabeth/Olive its crux, in a way that literally no one else creating this movie would have done but Angela. (FROM AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE, I’M TELLING YOU.)
Besides how well the movie captures its romantic core, one of its most profound triumphs is its depiction of Elizabeth: ferocious, fearless, ashamed, brilliant, hilarious, condescending, charismatic someone who thinks “I’m just asking you the courtesy of please not fucking my husband” is something you should include in the first conversation you have with someone. She is profoundly nuanced, and complex, and allowed to be all of these things all at once. And Rebecca Hall is an honest-to-god genius: her performance is a fucking tour de force the likes of which I have witnessed only very rarely, and never half so joyfully.
It is really, really worth the time. There is nothing like this movie, and I have never loved a movie the way I love this movie. Maybe I never will. And honestly? I could live with that.
