With you about The Secret Agent, though frankly I was surprised it was even nominated (I don't quite understand the mechanics behind the amount of international content in the awards this year, but it was impressive). As for The Sinners performance - I liked it a lot better than the movie version! It felt much more organic without the CGI element that I felt made it too cartoonish. Maybe the whole film's ultimate realization should be as a stage musical? (I suspect that wouldn't work for different reasons.)
The Perfidia issue continues to perplex me, because that movie is too self-conscious (and PTA too smart) for it to be as much of a Blaxploitation throwback as it came off. I wish he would talk about what his intentions were but he's cagey about all these things. Wesley Morris made some interesting remarks in his podcast this week (talking with Daphne Brooks!) about Perfidia as a character who refuses to be known, because she knows no one will accept her complexity, and her disappearance as a refusal of the narrative choices that she has been given. In any case the rest of the film, in which she's a missing cipher, holds together better I think.
I hadn't thought about the post-partum theme running across films (partly because I haven't seen Weapons, as I'm a reluctant horror-movie watcher) and that's fascinating, thank you!
Love this! I too adore The Secret Agent and am sad it didn’t get an a Oscar bump. It IS the film of our time and also uses music SO well. As for TT, has anyone written about how OBAA’s Perfidia differs from and intersects and diverges from the character in Vineland (whose name is Frenesi)? For one huge thing, that character is white; for another, she is unwillingly in love with Brock (Lockjaw). I think PTA’s problem with the character actually stemmed from his inability to figure out how much continuity he wanted with Pynchon’s characterizations, resulting in characters who just weren’t that well thought out.
What did you find complex about Taylor's role? She felt, to many of us, and probably to just about all Black female revolutionaries in the Angela Davis/Assata Shakur realm of intellectual revoutionaries aspiring to real, systemic changes to an oppressive system, to be an anti-Angela Davis revolutionary. It would be like making a fictionalized account of Assata Shakur and having her f*ck--and live with--Stephen Miller, all while wearing crop tops to show off her revolutionary-tho-corporate abs, courtesy of Gold's Gym. Post-partum depression is definitely complex, but all of her actions in the film up until that point? And does it last the rest of the woman's life? She'd never return even to say hello to her child? Genuinely curious.
With you about The Secret Agent, though frankly I was surprised it was even nominated (I don't quite understand the mechanics behind the amount of international content in the awards this year, but it was impressive). As for The Sinners performance - I liked it a lot better than the movie version! It felt much more organic without the CGI element that I felt made it too cartoonish. Maybe the whole film's ultimate realization should be as a stage musical? (I suspect that wouldn't work for different reasons.)
The Perfidia issue continues to perplex me, because that movie is too self-conscious (and PTA too smart) for it to be as much of a Blaxploitation throwback as it came off. I wish he would talk about what his intentions were but he's cagey about all these things. Wesley Morris made some interesting remarks in his podcast this week (talking with Daphne Brooks!) about Perfidia as a character who refuses to be known, because she knows no one will accept her complexity, and her disappearance as a refusal of the narrative choices that she has been given. In any case the rest of the film, in which she's a missing cipher, holds together better I think.
I hadn't thought about the post-partum theme running across films (partly because I haven't seen Weapons, as I'm a reluctant horror-movie watcher) and that's fascinating, thank you!
Love this! I too adore The Secret Agent and am sad it didn’t get an a Oscar bump. It IS the film of our time and also uses music SO well. As for TT, has anyone written about how OBAA’s Perfidia differs from and intersects and diverges from the character in Vineland (whose name is Frenesi)? For one huge thing, that character is white; for another, she is unwillingly in love with Brock (Lockjaw). I think PTA’s problem with the character actually stemmed from his inability to figure out how much continuity he wanted with Pynchon’s characterizations, resulting in characters who just weren’t that well thought out.
I think a couple of people have written about the Frenesi/Perfidia question - the only one I can remember right now Is Jonathan Lethem in his NYRB piece about the film's politics, some of which I disagree with, but has a lot of good points. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2025/11/20/frantic-realism-one-battle-after-another-anderson/
Thanks!
What did you find complex about Taylor's role? She felt, to many of us, and probably to just about all Black female revolutionaries in the Angela Davis/Assata Shakur realm of intellectual revoutionaries aspiring to real, systemic changes to an oppressive system, to be an anti-Angela Davis revolutionary. It would be like making a fictionalized account of Assata Shakur and having her f*ck--and live with--Stephen Miller, all while wearing crop tops to show off her revolutionary-tho-corporate abs, courtesy of Gold's Gym. Post-partum depression is definitely complex, but all of her actions in the film up until that point? And does it last the rest of the woman's life? She'd never return even to say hello to her child? Genuinely curious.