The continuous flow of Netflix films roars on with a new release that had garnered a large amount of intrigue due to the two big names starring in this film. Zendaya and John David Washington, were the only two people in the film giving an intense performance in a black and white film. The artistic element of filming in black and white would have gone over better if it had been viewed on a movie screen, but watching it on the tv was not terrible. The movie gave a raw look into one night of Malcom and Marie’s relationship while also trying to comment on movie critics and their inability to interpret directors’ true messages.
The movie was a 100 minute delve into an argument between Malcom and Marie. Malcom was a movie director who had just had a feature film released, and they were returning from the premier, and while they were at the premier Malcom forget to thank Marie in any way when he was giving his speech. This seemed to trigger the argument, but as the film goes on, there was much more beneath the surface than just this one aspect. One of the other aspects was that Marie was an aspiring actress and felt that since the film was largely based on her life, she would have performed in the role exceptionally well. They went back and forth throwing emotional jab after emotional jab at each other, which seemed like it could end their relationship, but in the end, they seemed to end up fine, at least temporarily.
The black and white aspect to the film added to it in a positive way. The film was based in experiencing the emotions flowing between Malcom and Marie, and the lack of color enabled the viewer to have a greater feel for the emotion. It took out other distractions from the surroundings. The raw emotion was felt even more with the shots that were close ups on their faces, especially when it came to Zendaya. There was the monologue at the end of the film where she goes into all the tasks she does for him that deserve thanks, and it was incredibly well done. There was also the time when Malcom was verbally assaulting her while she was in the tub, and it had a close up on her face as she was being berated. The emotion was palpable throughout the film due to the close filming and the black and white. John David Washington does an incredible job of going back and forth between being angry and being jovial about his excellent premier.
Oddly enough one of the recurring themes in the movie involved Malcom and Marie discussing how misinterpreted his and other films were viewed. So it seems like Sam Levinson had a movie or show in the past where critics were having takeaways from the film that he did not intend to have taken away at all. That makes it feel even stranger to try and have that takeaway from this movie because maybe I am interpreting it wrong, and maybe it was just a movie about a couple fighting, and he just decided this would be the best vessel to do it. The idea of white critics walking on eggshells around films that black people directed and trying to draw similar themes out of all the works black directors make seemed too poignant to just be a coincidence though. It is also interesting that Sam Levinson is a white director, but he had such strong comments about how black directors are viewed. In an interview I heard with him on The Big Picture, Levinson said that he ran many of these racial ideas past Washington to make it accurately reflect how someone black would feel.
This film like Locked Down was filmed during the pandemic, and it had that feel to it. Although the story took place in a more normal world where people could go to movie premiers, the whole movie there were only two people shown. Thus like Locked Down and One Night in Miami, the film had to rely heavily on the merits of the actors and the dialogue created for them. Of these three films, this one was by far the most compelling of the three. Zendaya and John David Washington were stellar together, and their chemistry was amazing. In Locked Down Hathaway and Ejiofor were good, but the story undermined their performance, and One Night in Miami, the acting undermined the telling of a powerful story which made it fall flat. It is hard to make a movie that stays in one location that revolves only on the emotions and dialogue of it characters to come out as strongly as this one achieved. Whereas these two acted well and made a normal relationship fight be incredibly compelling.
One of the weird aspects of the movie comes from Zendaya, because the main role that comes to mind when thinking of Zendaya is as the love interest for Spiderman in the newest movies. As MJ she is just a quiet high schooler, but in this movie, she was playing a full-fledged adult who had come through some very traumatic experiences. Oddly enough she plays a similar character in the tv show Euphoria, which was also made by Sam Levinson. In Euphoria, she was also a high schooler, so she still comes off as noticeably young, but she was asked to carry an exceptionally large load in this film as a full-fledged adult. She held her own, and she did a fantastic job.
Also I would be remiss to not mention the mac and cheese scene. Personally that kind of box craft mac and cheese is by far my favorite, which I know is sad because it is made from powder, but even I did not know how good mac and cheese could look being made it black and white. It was so oddly artistic for such a mundane and unartistic food that it stood out. Then after Zendaya made him the mac and cheese, he continued to fight with her while eating the mac and cheese she just made for him. It was an odd comedic point in a largely serious movie, and it made me crave some mac and cheese. It also seemed to normalize the couple because he was a big time movie director, but he wanted to have some good old boxed mac and cheese.
Overall this was a very good movie, it had a small set, a minimal cast, and did it in black and white, and what came out was a gem of a movie. For 2021, it ranks as the top movie so far, but I only have three movies ranked so far, but it was already better than most if not all the 2020 movies, which is not saying much due to the delayed releases of a copious number of films that had extremely high potential. For a Netflix release, this was in their top tier of movies. It had some Marriage Story vibes, which was a Netflix film about divorce, it did not quite reach those heights, but it was close. I gave it a 90, and I would highly recommend watching it. It was an artistic romance that tells a great story in only 100 minutes, that is hard to beat.
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