Unnatural & Accidental Meta (essay)
Timelines, Rita, and who the hell is Aunt Shadie? Making sense of Unnatural & Accidental.
Also known as: a big mess of my thoughts jumbled up on the page, adding up to 2800 words.
Spoilery, of course.
( In which I go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. )
Also known as: a big mess of my thoughts jumbled up on the page, adding up to 2800 words.
Spoilery, of course.
( In which I go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on. )
Comments 9
What did bother me was the ending, like you said: It does seem like it could be read as a very stereotypical, reductionist 'First Nations is First Nations through violence and nature' message. Or, more helpfully and less insulting (♥), an embrace of an active First Nations-ness that pushes back against oppression [...] Yay powerful First Nationsness! But, they're all dead, while the world of the living is shown as a blood-drenched Rebecca and whatever transformation she's undergone since we first met her, an aerial city shot, and Norman's murder and memory getting the press and presumably police attention denied his victims.Because, honest. What the hell? I wasn't looking for a happy ending here (and, okay, even if I was, I gave up on that after the first ten minutes of film), but this is... ( ... )
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I'm pretty darn literal and have a terribly hard time with how the movie makes gestures at the formula (this is the scene where she discovers a murder scene and figures out what happened), but fails to fulfill the conventions. A horrifying flashback and Carmen Moore making guppy face does not a revelatory scene make!
And yes about the ending. I know it's maybe just a little bit unfair to go looking for some big answer to The State of First Nations-ness in Canada Now and Future in the end of this one film, but it does seem to set up the characters as more then just themselves, and the victims ( ... )
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How interesting! I'm torn about deliberately using CKR's appeal. Because I am not unbiased here and maybe most people wouldn't have been as complicit-through-Callum-crushing? Though, huh. Yeah, I think you're right. I'm trying to think of other examples of when attractive people played really bad people (not just fun shiny movie bad whee! and then they get shot people). And I think it does work in other examples, even if you aren't maybe just a little bit obsessed with the actor. Because we're lookist and we do treat attractive people as a little more human and more worthy somehow. It would be a very different experience if (sorry, man) Maury Chaykin was playing Norman.
he's relentlessly ordinary, is norman: he's ordinary-looking, he has a reasonable profession, he is a definite and stable-seeming part of the status quo, the system. that same system is one that we all take part in. and within our system, some populations are systematically dis-enfranchised and dis-empowered. we contribute to that just by being ( ... )
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Terrific post and terrific essay. Pointed out things I hadn't noticed and/or hadn't thought about. Very informative with the articles and the background and links. Thank you!
My two cents:
I think I am in the extreme (nonexistent?) minority here when I say, I totally loved CKR as Norman. Not even ironically. I loved him. Completely. And here's why:
Despite the fact that CKR is forever playing 'bad guys', his roles always seem to me to be not quite convincing. He comes off as a) somewhat silly slapstick (e.g. Ben Cutler in "Gunless") or b) evil, yeah, but kind of watered down (Daniel Holt in "H2O"). Those roles are fine within the framework of the movies they take place in, but I like to see CKR (or any actor) show off his limits, be the virtuoso, once in a while. Now, Leoben from Battlestar Galactica, I love. He's creepy, unpredictable, unstable, and weirdly charming. I can see Leoben. Even as I'm waiting for Kara to freakin' stab him in ( ... )
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Re: the ending
After watching a lot of cop shows, I just kind of thunked my head against the table when the newspaper reported 'no evidence found'. Seriously? She's walking out of there drenched in blood, her prints and fibers all over the car and the garage and the bottle, and the police find no evidence? I suppose that could be her mother covering her tracks for her, but even so that sure doesn't help with the whole hunter metaphor, making Rebecca out to be still the incompetent, mostly useless 'heroine' I thought she was. So I completely missed the message about how Norman is reported as a victim and the women merely as deaths. I thought Norman's death was on par with the women's, buried and unsolved. I'm unsure whether my reaction was what was intended... probably not ( ... )
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