Tag: sexual harassment

BOMBSHELL (2019) – Review

Wishing that your feature films inspired by true events were of a very recent nature? More so than last week’s RICHARD JEWELL (23 years), or those docudramas from last month, DARK WATERS and THE REPORT, both from the early part of this decade. Here’s one that reaches back about three years, and it’s still happening, although not dominating the media as it did. Last year a terrific documentary, DIVIDE AND CONQUER: THE STORY OF ROGER AILES from director Alexis Bloom, pulled back the curtains on the cable TV goliath Fox News, giving us an unflinching look at the history of it and its founder, Ailes. A big part of that film concerned his on-air talent with stories of the lawsuits leveled against him and his staff which added fuel to the “Me Too” and “Time’s Up” movements. Now comes the big-screen treatment, from a celebrated director and an Oscar-winning screenwriter and starring a cast lead by two other Oscar-winners (and a third one for support). All these ingredients combine to create an explosive BOMBSHELL.

In the heat of the presidential campaign of 2016, Fox News is changing course in order to ride the tide of its viewers’ increasing support for unlikely contender Donald J. Trump. Surprised Fox News head Roger Ailes (John Lithgow) assigns the network’s shining star, prime time queen Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) to moderate the next televised debate. But she pulls no punches and soon earns the Twitter wrath of Trump (along with his Fox News watching followers). As Megyn takes some time off to plot her next move, another female anchor is feeling a different kind of heat. Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) is tired of the sexist jabs and comments as the only woman co-host of the network’s morning show “Fox & friends”. In order to diffuse the situation, she is given her own daily show, though with a smaller budget and not in a great time slot. As Carlson begins to chafe at the intense editorial interference, she opts to consult her lawyer before the ax falls on her program (and career at the channel). Back in the editorial cubicles, AKA “the trenches”, an ambitious new hire, Kayla (Margot Robbie) begins her “dream job”. After briefly “learning the robes” from veteran staffer Jess (Kate McKinnon). Kayla begins the climb up the corporate ladder to go from behind the camera to anchor. But can she pass the private “audition” for Ailes? And what happens when Carlson’s legal team begins to “chip away” at the network? When Kelly hears of this, will she speaks out or will she remain “loyal”? As the newsroom turns into a war zone, how long will it take the owner, global media titan Rupert Murdoch (Malcolm McDowell) to step in?

The talented trio sinks their teeth in this script as though it were the finest gourmet dish. First and foremost, since the character is the network’s “queen” is Theron who brings a calculating cool to the often conflicted Kelly. She’s riding high until the quickly changing political tide begins to buffet her journalistic ideals (yes, she works there and has some left). Through her eyes, Theron shows us a person who is suddenly “woke”, knowing that her viewers and some in management are pushing against her. It all works toward a terrific character “arc finale” as she (in more ways than one) “testifies”. The other anchor that helps hasten her turnabout is Carlson played with controlled calm by Kidman. Her pleasant smile is a mask, hiding her mounting frustrations first as the “gal in the middle” than as the banished “reader” given little support from the “higher-ups”. These two vets make a great contrast to the “next-gen talent” represented by Robbie in the composite character Kayla. In her early scenes, she beams as though it was her eighth birthday, her bouncy walk sending her from one “magic” spot to the next. She’s ecstatic and so very ambitious, leading her straight to her dream job’s seedy side. This gives her a tragic air as she sees her dreams shatter. That destroyer is played by the superb Lithgow who makes Ailes a sinister but easily offended tyrant, a mix of Mr. Potter from that Yuletide classic and the alien overlord he hears people call him behind his back. This leads to his howling rants as the events of the film’s last act push this “wounded snake’ into a corner. The rest of the ensemble is filled to the brim with wonderful stars popping in for a quick moment, from Allison Janney as Ailes’ Long Island lawyer to Connie Britton as his stoic wife to McKinnon’s tragic secretive staffer to a wonderful comic actor, and inspired choice as Rudy G (yes, that one).

Director Jay Roach has made a name for himself for starting up several comedy franchises (MEET THE PARENTS and Austin Powers) while helming award-winning HBO topical political flicks (“Recount” and “Game Changer”). Here he combines those skills mixing the laughs with scathing social commentary, though never quite diving into whimsical satire like last year’s VICE, though the stakes here aren’t quite as high (the Fox offices are a war zone, but lawsuits rather than bullets whiz past). It helps that the smart script by Oscar-winner Charles Randolph (THE BIG SHORT) delicately balances the farce and tragedy. For instance, we get a peek at the ladies wardrobe room at Fox with anchorwomen straining to squeeze into all manner of high heels, girdles, corsets, push-ups bras, and too tiny skirts. It feels like an odd mash-up of backstage burlesque and soldiers donning armor before heading out to battle. We find some truth in the latter in the film’s dramatic centerpiece when Kayla has a “private’ audition/interview with Ailes. As he leers and barks to raise that dress “Higher! C’mon higher!”, Robbie conveys the degradation and humiliation that, as the “Me Too” has stated, is so very common. But we see the strength of these women as they fight back and even confront each other over ethics and integrity (the story’s main hero is taken to task for not sounding the alarm sooner). And special kudos must go to the makeup artists for evoking the real subjects without burying the actor is mounds of latex and masks, from the bloated Nero of Ailes to the remarkable nose and lips of Kelly. Another huzzah to the editing and effects techs who drop the actors into several scenes with real (still on air) reporters and political figures. They all give power to a BOMBSHELL, its explosion making a very loud “wake up call” to action.

3.5 Out of 4

SUBMISSION – Review

Stanley Tucci and Addison Timlin, in SUBMISSION. Photo courtesy of Great Point Media/Paladin (c)

Writer/director Richard Levine’s film SUBMISSION is being promoted as a modern updating of the novel “The Blue Angel.” The book was famously adapted into a 1930 film THE BLUE ANGEL by director Josef von Sternberg, a film which made Marlene Dietrich an international star.

In the Dietrich film, a straight-laced, aging professor becomes enamored with a beautiful young singer (Dietrich) in a local nightclub called the Blue Angel. The professor’s obsession with the singer has disastrous results, particularly for  him. This forbidden passion is particularly risky for a man expected to set a moral example for his pupils, so he tries to keep it hidden lest he lose his livelihood and reputation, but he is under a compulsion he can’t resist.

In this updated version, the man is still a professor but instead of falling for a nightclub singer, his forbidden sexual obsession is for a student. In both cases, what the professor is doing driven by sexual obsession and is unethical and forbidden by the standards of his times. However,  the premise sounds more like an update of “Lolita” than “Blue Angel” but actually, SUBMISSION has only tenuous ties to either and instead is a more timely tale of temptation and sexual harassment.

Stanley Tucci plays the professor, Ted Swenson, a well-respected author teaching at a small college in Vermont. He is a happily married man, whose wife Sherrie (Kyra Sedgwick) is a doctor and they live in a lovely, large house. It is just that Ted is frustrated with his new novel, which is not coming together, and he is kind of bored with quiet academic life too. When the middle-aged professor is approached by  one of the students in his creative writing classes, Angela (Addison Timlin), who professes to be a great fan of the professor’s one published novel, he is flattered. She asks him to read and critique the first chapter of a novel she is writing. Swenson is surprised to find the student’s writing is strikingly good although it is also racy, sexual, bordering on pornographic. There is clearly a little envy, as he remains stuck with his own novel, but he soon becomes enamored of both the writing and the writer. Angela suddenly seems to turn up everywhere he goes on campus, proffering compliments or confiding personal tragedies, and also offering more pages to read. The professor starts to lose his professional perspective.

Tucci gives a fine performance as Swenson. The same can be said of the rest of the strong cast, which includes Janeane Garofalo as a friend and co-worker in the English department of the college. The problem with this film is not the actors or the direction but the idea behind the script.

There are plenty of warning signs that Swenson should heed, with scenes where his fellow professors talk about avoiding even the appearance of sexual harassment but Swenson plays little attention. The audience senses early on there is something not entirely honest about this student, but the professor does not see it until he is well mired in the situation. Every time he steps too far over a line, one can sense he knows he knows he is on thin ice. Yet he proceeds anyway.

To be honest, I have not read the novel “The Blue Angel” but I have seen the Dietrich film, and I suspect far more readers are familiar with THE BLUE ANGEL movie than the book. The von Sternberg’s film revolved around sexual obsession but also the social divides and restraints of that era, in which the professor belonged to “respectable society” that was supposed to keep apart from the “morally questionable” underclass world to which the nightclub singer belonged. The divide one should not cross was social as much as anything, in that tale of an inappropriate relationship. In THE BLUE ANGEL, the professor and the singer exist in different worlds. SUBMISSION poses a different morality tale, one of uneven power. The professor in THE BLUE ANGEL may have a respectable position in society, but he does not have the same kind of power over the singer that this professor potentially has over a young student at his college.

This tale of seduction, stupidity and self-destruction purports to be based on THE BLUE ANGEL but viewers are more likely to think of Harvey Weinstein and other recent news stories of sexual harassment and abuse. But instead of “believe women,” the message is this film is the opposite, with the young woman as plotting temptress, the one with an agenda. Making the student in this film such a plotting deceiver gives one a creepy feeling about this film, since it is the common claim of offender that they were enticed. True, the young woman in this story is not innocent but hiding Swensen’s guilt behind THE BLUE ANGEL and its old morality tale about “bad women” does not change that fact that this middle-aged professor, unlike the sheltered soul in the book, should have been worldly and aware enough not to cross that ethical line. When power is uneven, claiming it was consensual does not matter.

SUBMISSION does have one thing in common with THE BLUE ANGEL, in that both are cautionary tales for their time. In the case of SUBMISSION, that message may be that no matter how tempting, men in positions of power should not cross that ethical line with those they have power over – lest they lose all. Unlike that earlier story’s sense of tragedy, this character deserves what he gets.

RATING: 3 out of 5 stars