Malcolm and Marie: Sugar, Spice, and Everything Vice
To celebrate me finishing my mid term exam (hurrah), I decided to watch the long-overdue Malcolm and Marie. I had high expectations for this movie, not gonna lie. I thought this will be a tearful roller coaster of emotion. But NOPE. 180 degrees. (DISCLAIMER this post is meant to criticize the overall storyline of this movie, not to berate on the actually technicalities ‘cus stunning is an understatement to describe the aesthetics of this movie).
What started as a story of a woman seeking for self respect from her filmmaker-boyfriend after his premiere turned into an attempt to sabotage their entire relationship. To put it bluntly, the whole movie can be summarized as a murder attempt by brutal mindfuckeries and multiple unjustifiable blue balls.
This movie fiddles with the popular stereotypes of women, especially on how they often times like to jump to conclusions when arguing. The words “overreacting”, “provoking” and “overthinker” were popping constantly in my head throughout this entire movie. But, I disagree with this whole notion. This movie is not trying to paint women as antagonists, cus otherwise it would further degrade women in the process (all hail feminism!). Rather, it paints the reality of mental instability within the enclosure of a relationship. Throughout the movie, it is mentioned explicitly (and numerously) that Marie was once a drug addict who is still dealing with depression. She was always in search of validation coupled with self deprecation which resulted to relentlessly trying to tear Malcolm down to his pulp. A case of self hatred so strong it destroys not only herself but also her surroundings. A suicide bomb, I would say.
I think that behaviour is still justifiable, considering that it is a legitimate thing that people with mental illness go through everyday (don’t want to say ’trust me’ but, hey, trust me). HOWEVER the real problem begins when she started looking for justification for literally pulverizing Malcolm in his supposed biggest night of his life. Always coming back to an otherwise concluded argument to start a new one about another little thing she magically remembered in the midst of their making out session. A song Malcolm played about forgetting his lover, the speech he made during the premiere, the cigarette he smoked while trying to deal with her whiny psychopathic ass, the white LA Times reporter in the crowd, whatever it is could be manipulated and twisted in a god-awful way by Marie in exchange for a small trophy called “acknowledgement”. It’s pathetic and downright upsetting. Even more upsetting, she proceeded to do this 2 more times throughout the length of the movie. It was unbearable with a little hint of pretentiousness. Made me want to throw a tantrum myself.
But worst of all, I hate the idea of people thinking this exact behaviour is okay. I hate coming up to the fact that a lack of self control and overall logical thinking can be vindicated by having a dark past. You can’t (and shouldn’t) justify Joker killing a talkshow host just because he was oppressed by the society, so why should you justify Marie? It will be in no time that people would start adopting this exact behaviour into their personal lives, bringing literal hell onto their own lives and burning everything to the ground *shudders*.
I don’t actually know what the director intended this movie to be about, but mental illness should be one of them. It’s not so much of a rocky love story where at the end people would say “oh, so thats what REAL relationship is like,” ‘cus that would mislead a lot of people into toxicity. In fact, that’s exactly what the Netflix’s synopsis say as it stared back everytime I paused to level my breath (otherwise I would’ve punched a whole out of my laptop for being so goddamn frustrated). That is what also misled me into thinking that this movie is going to be a heartfelt one.
At the end of the movie, I honestly can’t tell whether Malcolm was being the bigger person for catering to Marie’s temper tantrum or he was a blatant simp. For all I know, he should thank the booze in his bar for keeping his sanity intact.
This movie is thought provoking and a good attempt to reflect back on your own behaviour. Not gonna lie, I was terrified when I realize that there was a point in my life where I would’ve agreed with EVERYTHING Marie had said and done, and that served me as a slap to the face with a steel rod that has the word “cringe” embossed on its surface.
This has been an essay on the movie Malcolm and Marie.