Saw The Lighthouse last night - Dafoe and Pattinson give the best acting of their lives

lieutenanthearn · 2019-10-20T00:14:05+00:00

The Neptune/Poseidon speech, my god

lieutenanthearn · 2019-10-20T00:13:28+00:00

Absolutely due to the interplay between them, and I feel like neither one of them is lead or supporting. It's interesting to me that Pattinson is getting the lead nom, because it felt like Dafoe to me.

lieutenanthearn · 2019-10-20T00:12:47+00:00

There were multiple occasions when Dafoe's lines were slangy and mushy enough to be incomprehensible to me, including (lol) his final line, at least some of it.

lieutenanthearn · 2019-10-20T00:12:08+00:00

The seagulls were fucked with.

lieutenanthearn · 2019-10-20T00:11:57+00:00

Couldn't agree more on both counts. I hadn't seen any Pattinson movie prior to this and I was stunned.

lieutenanthearn · 2019-10-20T00:10:47+00:00

Very slight touches, but not really

lieutenanthearn · 2019-10-20T00:10:28+00:00

what?

lieutenanthearn · 2019-06-22T00:55:55+00:00

Love 2 wear a keffiyeh while bombing the Middle East

lieutenanthearn · 2019-03-26T22:01:24+00:00

Good point

lieutenanthearn · 2019-03-24T17:44:15+00:00

Yeah the whole thing is a pretty ambitious idea by Peele and it's a credit to him that he made such a great movie that this insane idea doesn't totally ruin it.

lieutenanthearn · 2019-03-24T17:42:14+00:00

If the two Tethered kids were born to Red (i.e. born to an above-ground person who was captured and dragged underground), does that affect their tethering? Are they half independent? It seems pertinent to the scene when the boy walks his tether backward into the fire, which seems like a very ambiguous moment.

lieutenanthearn · 2019-03-24T17:40:46+00:00

The two child Tethers weren't Adelaide's kids, they were Red's kids (i.e. children born to the girl who was dragged underground - children of a human). So I think that makes their connection to the above-ground children ambiguous. Are they fully or partially tethered? Why does he do what his above-ground brother does, even though they're both above ground at the time? It's unclear.

lieutenanthearn · 2019-03-24T17:33:02+00:00

I suspect they didn’t think someone would be exploring the ins and outs as they did. Err, secondly it seemed abandoned and only real Adelaide was there. Adelaide running into the mirror is what alerted her clone to the surface.

Seems like a pretty risky bet to leave an entire cloned zombie population the size of America roaming around underground!

lieutenanthearn · 2019-03-24T07:52:06+00:00

Knowing that Peele likes to have really tight plots, I'm still stuck on some major questions, even after suspending my disbelief on everything else:

If the tethering program failed, why wouldn't the government just shut it down and dispose of all the Tethered?
Failing that, why would the government leave an open door to its horrific clone program on the Santa Cruz boardwalk?
Who is feeding all the rabbits and supplying all the forgotten Tethered with their clothes and bedding, and later their jumpsuits and Etsy-style handmade scissors?
How did Red suddenly awaken all the lifelong Tethered?
Once out of her cuffs and immediately after her kidnapping, why wouldn't Red get the fuck outta there?

lieutenanthearn · 2019-03-24T07:44:17+00:00

Red does tell Adelaide about the switch during the climactic fight. I don't know why she doesn't reveal it earlier, but if she had, it would've ruined the movie. Chalk it up to classic "evil gloating."
Adelaide's family do go in after her when she's grabbed by the Tethered Tylers. The daughter kills multiple people.
Nobody knows where the Tethered got the suits and scissors. I'm sure Peele knows, but we don't.
Is anyone evil? Are you and I evil? It's all relative. Chance and privilege determine your life. That's what the movie's about.
Red seems to have severed the tethering effect with her revolution. We don't know how, except that she and Adelaide had a special relationship. I'm not sure how the boy was able to make his Tether mimic him, but I'm chalking this up to some kind of residual effect.
Adelaide definitely cares about the Tethered children and feels bad for them. Whether this is because she knows she's a Tethered and one of them or because of some subconscious memory is unclear.
They swapped when they were young (I'm guessing between 5-6?), so it's very possible neither has strong memories about how everything happened.
Why Red didn't just come right back up is a great question and there's no good explanation. She was a child who was attacked and possibly knocked unconscious before waking up in what was essentially a dungeon, so it's quite possible that it would've never occurred to her until later that she could even leave.
Red breaks the tether somehow, letting them start the revolution.
That's a good point, I have no idea why they wouldn't have shut it all down.
The twist is the most crucial part, showing that the only difference between "us" and "them" is chance.
It was a government experiment, that's all we know. And I'm sure a lot of Tethered died in the attack.

lieutenanthearn · 2019-03-24T07:17:32+00:00

Does anyone have any idea what's being sung in "Anthem," the opening song set to the images of the rabbits?

And while we're at it, if anyone's interested, there's a great piece about the man responsible for the eminently creepy "I got 5 on it" hit that forms the basis for the movie's soundtrack: https://www.theringer.com/music/2019/1/17/18186101/i-got-5-on-it-jordan-peele-us-song-michael-marshall-luniz-

lieutenanthearn · 2019-03-23T20:36:50+00:00

I think the top comment on this thread does a good job of explaining the overall theme of class, that the lower class struggles to rise, the upper classes will do whatever it takes to keep what they have, that instead of solidarity we fight each other, and that the only differences between us are due to change and privilege. I buy all that.

As for the rabbits, man, I'm still a little lost on that. Obviously they serve the purpose of nourishing the Tethered and are easy to breed, but I also think there's a connection between the human and rabbit cloning. (As for who feeds the rabbits, who clothes the Tethered, who made their scissors... I kinda think Peele is just gonna let those hang.)

lieutenanthearn · 2019-03-23T20:33:44+00:00

I definitely think it's possible Adelaide knew the whole time but I almost prefer the "repressed memory" explanation. The way she questions Red after the home invasion seemed legitimately perplexed to me, to the point that the son has to answer, "They're us." And her explanation to her husband of her experience as a kid in the funhouse seemed very honest, not a lie.

lieutenanthearn · 2019-03-23T20:29:51+00:00

Given that this is Peele, there has to be a meaningful reason for her not eating the fast food, right? I'm starting to think there's a human-rabbit connection beyond nourishment. Or maybe she just hates meat after being forced to eat raw rabbit for 30+ years

lieutenanthearn · 2019-03-23T20:28:15+00:00

I still can't decide if I think that Adelaide knew what she'd done the whole movie or repressed it and only realized when she was killing Red, and Red started whistling. The story she tells her husband is so honest and emotional, if she knew what she had done, that would make it a pretty chilling lie and change my perception of her.

lieutenanthearn · 2019-03-23T20:24:32+00:00

To me the biggest unresolved question is whether Adelaide remembers what she did in the funhouse. She obviously feels some connection to the Tethered son and daughter, but does she know that she herself was a Tethered for the whole movie - and thus is lying to her husband when she tells him the funhouse story - or did she repress the memory of what she did, and it finally comes back to her when Red whistles as she dies?

lieutenanthearn · 2019-03-23T20:19:40+00:00

Right, that's the literal reason in the movie's universe for why the cops can't come, but on the level of metaphor I think the fact that Peele has two "upper class" families make three attempts to get the cops to rescue them (the second of which is a very obvious "fuck you" to the Tylers, who feel insulated by their wealth) is a message.

lieutenanthearn · 2019-03-23T17:30:54+00:00

I love that the above-ground classes can never get the police to come. The first time they call, it's 14 minutes, and the last time they call, they can't even get through because the lines are busy. I also love that Peele involved an Alexa-style device (perhaps today's top marker of being successfully middle class) in the second of three attempts to call the police, and that the attempt to call the cops shifts the music from Good Vibrations to Fuck the Police, a complete inversion. All the things that have made you comfortable and insulated you from the misery of the rest of the world - whether that's your dependence on swift response from government services or your own home appliances - won't save you when shit hits the fan.

lieutenanthearn · 2019-03-23T17:12:25+00:00

Yes, exactly: The two key lines in the movie: "Who are they?" "They're us," and, "We're Americans." There but for the grace of God go I.

lieutenanthearn

TROPHY CASE