Movie Time
I'm home now after a enjoyable evening with a bunch of friends. I'm still a bit tired after my busy three day week end at work. I have alot of things that I need to do in the next few days, plus I have a few promised LJ posts to finished up and then I want to continue with my musings about what I loved about QAF and B/J. Just not going to do that tonight. Instead this is going to be one weird ass post I'm afraid.
Earlier tonight I was at a combo dinner/movie night with a bunch of my co workers. About once a month, some of us try to get together outside of work. Maybe we'll go out to lunch or dinner, or a play. Tonight Lisa opened her home to about twenty of us, her hubby was away on a business trip, sooooooo. Food was excellent and so was the booze. We had had a vote earlier in the week on what movie we were going to watch which I thought it was going to be Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Last I heard that was the movie that was getting the most votes, but instead it was an older movie that I had never seen before. Certainly heard about it, but never seen it before. It was called Secretary. It was an okay movie I guess. Definitely a unconventional love story which I seem to have a fondness for if my obsession for B/J is anything to go by. This film resolved to show a different kind of road that two people took to travel before feeling completed by each other. For me, the near tragedy of this story comes from two people who are so connected but unable to admit their needs or desires to the other. The moral comes when we see both find peace through their acceptance of those desires and in the end both characters are healed and empowered by their relationship and by finding a form of dominance and submission that works for both of them.
This film is one of those movies where hours later after seeing it, I'm still pondering it. Ten minutes into this film, it was easy to recognized that "Lee" was a doomed character unless something or someone saved her. She started off as a sympathetic but very weak character, chronically uncertain of herself, unable to truly connect with anyone and more disturbing, unable to express her emotions in any way except through deliberately harming herself. With "Mr. Grey", it took me longer to see that he was equally doomed. Although it appeared that he was the stronger, and certainly he was the more experienced of the two, he actually in many ways was just as weak, vulnerable, confused, and as fucked up as Lee. While he was aware of his dominant nature, he didn't really understand it and in actuality, he feared it and thus was unable to use it to form any kind of satisfying emotional relationship. His tragedy was due to his shame and internal conflict which created his remoteness. He was tortured by his desires and fighting them all the way. He was unable to accept himself at all until Lee helps him to do so. To tell you the truth, at times this movie was uncomfortable to watch, it was icky at times and scary. Icky because I had to watch this young girl go through humiliating tests of submission such as going through a large industrial bin looking for a pointless document, the saw-horse contrapition she was forced to wear and far from being calm, gentlemanly, and strong, Mr. Grey seemed disrespectful and short-tempered. Scary because of the depth of the character's flaws almost kept them from each other and had they not gotten together, the romantic ideal would have been a failure. But ultimately I think this film works because the main message this film is trying to convey is about redemption. Redemption because Mr. Grey is in fact the first person ever to really see and understand Lee. He gives her visibility, and it is he who releases her from her compulsion to mutilate herself, it is he who prompts her to become independent of her parents. It is this that then enables Lee in turn to help Mr. Grey to accept himself and then ultimately to accept them not just as a couple, but a healthy couple. His relationship with her brings out the best in him, and he in turn gives her the emotional strength to bring him back to her when it becomes too intense and too intimate for him. Because only through her act at the end of the movie does he finally accept that this is truly what she wants rather than her submitting through fear or weakness. So each redeems the other.
There are movies that deal with sexuality for its own sake, and there are movies who use sexuality to bring us back to simple feelings and what it means to be human and scared and flawed and passionate. In my mind, this movie is the latter because there are so many messages. That Mr. Grey and Lee's happiness wasn't pulled out of a hat, it wasn't easy and often it wasn't pretty, rather it was the result of what they themselves wanted and the actions they took to achieve their happy ever after and............... they are happy. The ending reaffirms this. It is Lee after all who is creates a situation ( dropping the bug on the bed for Mr. Grey to find ) for which she will be punished. The relationship that Lee and Mr. Grey end up with is warm, tender, loving, nurturing and appears to the outside world quite conventional. I GET that and applaud that, but still I'm not sure why I didn't like this film more. I think it might have to do with Maggie Gyllenhall performance (Jake's older sister) because I liked James Spader as Mr. Grey. Considering the subject matter, I expected that this film was going to be more erotic than it was. There was some real sweet moments but in the end, it was rather tame, safe, and whitewashed. Cripes, I've read hotter fiction on BJfic and come to that, I've seen hotter scenes on QAF.
It's late and I'm signing off now on this really really strange post.