Item: Concept Films Sometimes Good

One measure of an excellent narrative film is the complexity of its story world - how it outlines a community so the audience can grasp its traditions and modes of survival/rejuvenation, indeed, how it pauses the forward pull of the narrative in order for us to bask in that world's rich textures. A recent screening of The Searchers (John Ford, 1956) confirmed it as just such a film. In fact, Ford thematizes the tension between vertical world making and horizontal narrative pull which grafts onto the western's fundamental civilization vs. wilderness dichotomy. Ethan Edwards' (John Wayne) bloodthirsty drive to find Debbie (Natalie Wood) would seem to brook no obstacles. And yet Ford's characteristic narrative trills try to impede his search. Edwards has no time for such civilizing traditions as funerals even for his recently slaughtered brother and his family. "Put an amen on it!" he barks to the preacher, itching to start his search.

Another measure of an excellent narrative film is the novelty and brilliance of its conceptual thrust. These films subjugate texture and world making to the concept, an idée fixe that structures the entire experience, often a mystery that the viewer must decode in order to make sense of various narrative lacunae or inconsistencies. One of the benefits of a concept-heavy film is that it ignores the rote methods of creating a lived-in story world - the formation of the heterosexual couple, another heterosexual couple to shadow and uphold the primary one (often providing comedic relief), the formation of the nuclear family on the heels of the formation of the primary heterosexual couple, etc. 

M. Night Shyamalan is the current master of the concept film. So it's no surprise to learn that he produced Caddo Lake and like most of his films, the concept so dominates the narrative that a critic must ruin the twists in order to discuss it at all. So in the interest of avoiding spoilers, I'll just note that Caddo Lake involves time jumping with two stories separated by decades running concurrently. It results in a materialist narrative à la Celine and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette, 1974) with characters looking in on events that they have already experienced and the concept is handled with pop-art (not Pop Art) deft and grace.

Tuesday is even better. A terminally ill 15 year old, Tuesday (Lola Petticrew), encounters Death in the form of a shape-shifting macaw. Tuesday's mother Zora (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is understandably alarmed by the bird's presence and takes some drastic measures to prevent it from taking away Tuesday with some world-historic consequences. The concept perspires glucose and the reduced narrative/cast of characters has a drawback in its failure to lend any complexity to Tuesday's Black nurse (Leah Harvey). But the simplicity and force and sheer weirdness of the Grim Parrot steamrolls over most of the saccharine moments and helps us organize our own inchoate thoughts about death.

Best of all is The Substance, a repulsive body-horror film I was certain I would loathe. Demi Moore stars in a career performance as Elisabeth Sparkle, a 50-year-old actress fired from her aerobics show for the crime of aging. She encounters a serum called The Substance which will allow her to appear as a younger version of herself. Problem is tight-bodied, twenty-something Sue (Margaret Qualley) emerges from her back all Manitou-like and leaves a ripped-apart Elisabeth writhing on the bathroom floor. As per the concept, the two must switch back and forth every seven days for injections of stabilizer fluid. But as Sue starts to self-actualize (and take over Elisabeth's aerobics show to great fame), she ignores these instructions with grotesque results for both of them.

Any professor working on next semester's Feminist Film Theory 101 syllabus couldn't find a starker, more course-ready text. It explains Luce Irigaray's This Sex Which Is Not One for the slasher-film set and the purity of the concept makes few concessions to a complexly textured story world. Feminist rage powers the film forward with a punky anger-energy augmented by Raffertie's howling techno score. It's about misogyny rather than being misogynistic although that's very much open for debate (as with The Searchers' racism*). And it's getting under audiences' skins, the rare non-franchise film to clean up at the box office. Howl along today!

Caddo Lake (Celine Held and Logan George, 2024) - A-minus

Tuesday (Daina O. Pusic, 2024) - A-minus

The Substance (Coralie Fargeat, 2024) - A-minus

The Searchers - A+ (just in case you needed to be told) 

*Lehman, Peter. “Looking at Look’s Missing Reverse Shot: Psychoanalysis and Style in John Ford’s The Searchers.” In The Western Reader. Jim Kitses and Gregg Rickman, eds. New York: Limelight Editions, 1998, 259-268. [taken from Wide Angle 4.4, pp. 65-70, 1981].