thoroughbreds
Mar. 19th, 2018 02:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishCory Finley (dir.), Thoroughbreds
The trailer, which I saw sometime last fall and which successfully enticed me to see the movie. This trailer is pretty remarkable for how little it spoils: it gives an excellent sense of the movie's atmosphere, and some hints of characterization, while avoiding much in the way of details. My favourite kind of trailer.
Based on that I expected Thoroughbreds to be another Brick. Which it was, more or less, but more than that I got a fantastic character study and a couple of jumping-off points for some potentially interesting discussion. I don't know that I liked it but I haven't been able to stop thinking about it.
Spoilers follow. The movie revolves around two upper-class teenagers. Amanda has just killed her horse in a fairly gruesome way, and is going through a juvenile trial for animal cruelty. Amanda's mother pays Lily, who used to be friends with Amanda in elementary school, $200 to hang out with Amanda for a couple of hours. Despite this rocky start they become ... friends? Let's say friends. Amanda develops something like genuine affection for Lily, and Lily is at least intrigued by Amanda.
Amanda, you see, doesn't feel anything. Her lack of emotional affect showcases Lily's intensity, and vice versa. Early on Lily is calm, cool, collected, unflappable, a perfect mirror to Amanda. In Lily's case it's all a facade, of course: she's been expelled from boarding school for plagiarism, lied to Amanda about having an internship, and is seething with resentment at her stepfather.
Based on that, and on the other trailers online (which I liked less than the first one), you'd be forgiven for thinking that this was a movie about Amanda suggesting that they kill Lily's stepfather and Lily going along with it, and them hiring/blackmailing a small-time drug dealer named Tim to carry out the actual murder. And you wouldn't be wrong, as such, since that is the first two-thirds of the movie. Then it goes off the rails when Tim wimps out and doesn't actually kill Lily's stepfather, and turns into what it really wanted to be: a meditation on character.
It's no coincidence that most of what I've been thinking about comes in that third act. The movie reveals Lily's stepfather to be unpleasant, but not really worthy of being killed, no matter what Lily might think. Lily herself is deeply narcissistic, caring only about herself. And Amanda... The movie's ultimately "about" Lily and how she changes, what lessons she takes away from associating with Amanda. If that were all it was, it'd be another well-scripted contemporary noir, but nothing particularly special.
It's the way the movie treats Amanda that makes it interesting to me. She may be a classic sociopath, but she's trying to find a moral compass. As she says to Lily, "The only thing worse than being incompetent, or being unkind, or being evil, is being indecisive." And she lives up to that. That makes her, to me, a deeply fascinating character, and not one I've seen often.
The trailer, which I saw sometime last fall and which successfully enticed me to see the movie. This trailer is pretty remarkable for how little it spoils: it gives an excellent sense of the movie's atmosphere, and some hints of characterization, while avoiding much in the way of details. My favourite kind of trailer.
Based on that I expected Thoroughbreds to be another Brick. Which it was, more or less, but more than that I got a fantastic character study and a couple of jumping-off points for some potentially interesting discussion. I don't know that I liked it but I haven't been able to stop thinking about it.
Spoilers follow. The movie revolves around two upper-class teenagers. Amanda has just killed her horse in a fairly gruesome way, and is going through a juvenile trial for animal cruelty. Amanda's mother pays Lily, who used to be friends with Amanda in elementary school, $200 to hang out with Amanda for a couple of hours. Despite this rocky start they become ... friends? Let's say friends. Amanda develops something like genuine affection for Lily, and Lily is at least intrigued by Amanda.
Amanda, you see, doesn't feel anything. Her lack of emotional affect showcases Lily's intensity, and vice versa. Early on Lily is calm, cool, collected, unflappable, a perfect mirror to Amanda. In Lily's case it's all a facade, of course: she's been expelled from boarding school for plagiarism, lied to Amanda about having an internship, and is seething with resentment at her stepfather.
Based on that, and on the other trailers online (which I liked less than the first one), you'd be forgiven for thinking that this was a movie about Amanda suggesting that they kill Lily's stepfather and Lily going along with it, and them hiring/blackmailing a small-time drug dealer named Tim to carry out the actual murder. And you wouldn't be wrong, as such, since that is the first two-thirds of the movie. Then it goes off the rails when Tim wimps out and doesn't actually kill Lily's stepfather, and turns into what it really wanted to be: a meditation on character.
It's no coincidence that most of what I've been thinking about comes in that third act. The movie reveals Lily's stepfather to be unpleasant, but not really worthy of being killed, no matter what Lily might think. Lily herself is deeply narcissistic, caring only about herself. And Amanda... The movie's ultimately "about" Lily and how she changes, what lessons she takes away from associating with Amanda. If that were all it was, it'd be another well-scripted contemporary noir, but nothing particularly special.
It's the way the movie treats Amanda that makes it interesting to me. She may be a classic sociopath, but she's trying to find a moral compass. As she says to Lily, "The only thing worse than being incompetent, or being unkind, or being evil, is being indecisive." And she lives up to that. That makes her, to me, a deeply fascinating character, and not one I've seen often.