"Fifty Shades of Grey" is a shallow mess
Before I went on to see "Fifty Shades of Grey" (USA, 2015), the latest in a string of YA (Young Adult) viewing fare being shown in our theaters in the recent past, I was kind of hoping that it would join the ranks of such films that pushed the boundaries of depicting sexual aberrations (sadomasochism, fetishism, exhibitionism, obsessiveness, sex addiction, incest, etc) in cinema in such a way that they gave us a genuinely unsettling and provocative view of the darkest impulses of human nature, like Nagisa Oshima's "In the Realm of the Senses", Bernardo Bertolucci's "Last Tango in Paris", Adrian Lyne's "9 1/2 Weeks", Catherine Breillat's "Romance", Michael Haneke's "The Piano Teacher" and Lars Von Trier's "Nymphomaniac". "Fifty Shades of Grey" could have had such a distinct opportunity working in its favor, especially that not a few were eagerly anticipating since last year the big-screen adaptation of E.L. James' best-selling novel (the first of a trilogy). Sadly, that opportunity has been immensely wasted. As it turns out, the movie is simply an awful mess. Everything in it - direction, screenplay, acting, soundtrack, etc - has conspired to make it a lamentable fiasco.
"Fifty Shades of Grey" has further fueled my resolve to most probably not see any more YA film adaptations in the future, after having already been terribly disappointed with a number of such works before ("Twilight", "The Hunger Games", "The Fault in Our Stars", "The Maze Runner"). YA publications must really be one of the bad things that we wish had never made their way to cinema.
Firstly, "Fifty Shades of Grey" is neither compelling nor provocative. Far from it. Its main selling point is the growing sadomasochistic relationship between a young business magnate, Christian Grey (played by Jamie Dornan) and a college student, Anastasia Steele (played by Dakota Johnson). Yet, the depiction of their relationship is at best uninspired and uninteresting. The way Christian's and Anastasia's characters are written just doesn't draw us into the supposedly disturbed nature of their personalities and behaviors. It simply lacks that sense of dangerous charm and delicate pathology. Johnson as Anastasia, beautiful as she is, doesn't really come across as a vulnerable heroine, a woman who's being helplessly drawn into the vortex of a supposedly unhealthy relationship. Too bad because we see that the young actress is more than ready to embrace the daringness of her character. But here, she's nothing more than a confused girl falling for a dud. Which brings us to Dornan as the titular Grey. He may be dashing and well-built, but the guy utterly lacks the brooding menace and intensity that should've accompanied his psychosis. The actor keeps on mouthing his lines and doing his acts with nary a hint of gravity and insight. If anything else, he amounts to being just a self-centered vanity fair. The makers of the film must be thinking that doing modelling stint and fashion show onscreen already count as an incisive psychoanalysis - or it could be that the latter was really far from their minds.
With a potentially hot-button premise, the least that the makers of "Fifty Shades of Grey" could've done was to show two delicate souls trapped in a self-destructive relationship being gradually pushed to the edge of their sanity. Yet, nothing in Christian's and Anastasia's relationship actually does matter that could shake the core of our being in the same way that the master and the geisha in "In the Realm of the Senses" or the nameless man and woman in "Last Tango in Paris" or the teacher and the student in "The Piano Teacher" did to us. At most, the two are merely bored babblers of some cool-sounding excess baggage. The director (Sam Taylor-Johnson) and the writer (Kelly Marcel) would be better off doing some real mumblecore stuff.
In that sense, the R-18 (For Adults Only) hullabaloo over the film here in the country is really misplaced. It's like much ado for nothing. Because seriously, that's already S&M stuff for them? What were the distributors and the folks at MTRCB thinking? I didn't realize until now that S&M can be awfully boring. The sex scenes are completely short of being intense and provocative. More often than not, it consists of nothing more than a few gentle slaps on the butt, some restrained whippings, a bit of lackluster tie-me-ups and a verbal reading of a "contract" that never materialized. The producer-initiated "blurs" and "blocks" and the tasteless accompanying music (there's even a cover version of the Beyonce single "Crazy in Love") only exacerbate the unimaginative experience. In Von Trier's "Nymphomaniac", the pleasure-in-pain sex rituals serve to probe deeper into the psycho-emotional dynamics of the titular character. In "Fifty Shades of Grey", they don't really do much to advance the characters. If the film's main selling point puts it in stagnation, then "Fifty Shades of Grey" has a real big problem.
In a supposed-to-be revealing moment, Christian goes to blurt out that he's fifty shades of a fucked-up character. Is this guy for real? He could've said that as well of the film that he's in: fifty shades of a fucked-up mess.
"Fifty Shades of Grey" has further fueled my resolve to most probably not see any more YA film adaptations in the future, after having already been terribly disappointed with a number of such works before ("Twilight", "The Hunger Games", "The Fault in Our Stars", "The Maze Runner"). YA publications must really be one of the bad things that we wish had never made their way to cinema.
Firstly, "Fifty Shades of Grey" is neither compelling nor provocative. Far from it. Its main selling point is the growing sadomasochistic relationship between a young business magnate, Christian Grey (played by Jamie Dornan) and a college student, Anastasia Steele (played by Dakota Johnson). Yet, the depiction of their relationship is at best uninspired and uninteresting. The way Christian's and Anastasia's characters are written just doesn't draw us into the supposedly disturbed nature of their personalities and behaviors. It simply lacks that sense of dangerous charm and delicate pathology. Johnson as Anastasia, beautiful as she is, doesn't really come across as a vulnerable heroine, a woman who's being helplessly drawn into the vortex of a supposedly unhealthy relationship. Too bad because we see that the young actress is more than ready to embrace the daringness of her character. But here, she's nothing more than a confused girl falling for a dud. Which brings us to Dornan as the titular Grey. He may be dashing and well-built, but the guy utterly lacks the brooding menace and intensity that should've accompanied his psychosis. The actor keeps on mouthing his lines and doing his acts with nary a hint of gravity and insight. If anything else, he amounts to being just a self-centered vanity fair. The makers of the film must be thinking that doing modelling stint and fashion show onscreen already count as an incisive psychoanalysis - or it could be that the latter was really far from their minds.
With a potentially hot-button premise, the least that the makers of "Fifty Shades of Grey" could've done was to show two delicate souls trapped in a self-destructive relationship being gradually pushed to the edge of their sanity. Yet, nothing in Christian's and Anastasia's relationship actually does matter that could shake the core of our being in the same way that the master and the geisha in "In the Realm of the Senses" or the nameless man and woman in "Last Tango in Paris" or the teacher and the student in "The Piano Teacher" did to us. At most, the two are merely bored babblers of some cool-sounding excess baggage. The director (Sam Taylor-Johnson) and the writer (Kelly Marcel) would be better off doing some real mumblecore stuff.
In that sense, the R-18 (For Adults Only) hullabaloo over the film here in the country is really misplaced. It's like much ado for nothing. Because seriously, that's already S&M stuff for them? What were the distributors and the folks at MTRCB thinking? I didn't realize until now that S&M can be awfully boring. The sex scenes are completely short of being intense and provocative. More often than not, it consists of nothing more than a few gentle slaps on the butt, some restrained whippings, a bit of lackluster tie-me-ups and a verbal reading of a "contract" that never materialized. The producer-initiated "blurs" and "blocks" and the tasteless accompanying music (there's even a cover version of the Beyonce single "Crazy in Love") only exacerbate the unimaginative experience. In Von Trier's "Nymphomaniac", the pleasure-in-pain sex rituals serve to probe deeper into the psycho-emotional dynamics of the titular character. In "Fifty Shades of Grey", they don't really do much to advance the characters. If the film's main selling point puts it in stagnation, then "Fifty Shades of Grey" has a real big problem.
In a supposed-to-be revealing moment, Christian goes to blurt out that he's fifty shades of a fucked-up character. Is this guy for real? He could've said that as well of the film that he's in: fifty shades of a fucked-up mess.
- Film verdict: Poor
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| The aftermath of bondage in Sam Taylor-Johnson's "Fifty Shades of Grey". |
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