All My Stars (13)

By: Joanne McNeil
March 31, 2016

One in a weekly series in which Joanne McNeil recommends books, films, exhibitions, and more. You can also subscribe to the All My Stars newsletter here.

A few times this week, I started my day with Jacques Tati’s Playtime streaming as background images and sound. I haven’t even seen the film in full, let alone sequentially (might just wait until a revival house screens it in 70mm), and I don’t speak French so a few scenes are lost to me, but it’s bringing me so much joy just to look up at the screen every few moments between getting dressed, eating breakfast, brushing my hair, etc. I still have yet to see maybe 85% of the film because of this unconventional (and probably straight up disrespectful, sorry Tati) way of screening it, but in a week that I need to be calm and focused, this is a massive improvement over my typical Democracy Now/NPR/etc am routine. It seems like every time I glance up, it is that scene with the American woman pausing to marvel at the Eiffel tower reflected in the glass door. I could watch those five seconds all day.

Sometimes I work with movies playing in the background. What’s strange is so many of the best films ever made — Blade Runner, 2001, Zulawski’s Possession — hold up this way. Something about how sound and architecture create a mood — it’s the films I feel like I am living inside that are atmospheric enough to motivate me rather than distract me when I’m writing.

This being a crazy week of meetings and many things to worry about, I was eager to find something escapist and the opposite of demanding to watch. Then I happily came across UnReal — that Lifetime show about the producers of The Bachelor — the most perfect chocolate truffle of a TV program. It is smarter than it appears, much like how Gossip Girl proudly touted Edith Wharton’s influence. I was a bit skeptical in the first couple episodes, but quickly completely hooked. As Emily Nussbaum put it, “It’s a denunciation of capitalism’s corrosion of human intimacy, just like Mr. Robot. Except backward, in heels.”

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