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A Trip to the Movies

"Richard Jewell" is a movie about passivity and misplaced deference.

The hero is wrongly implicated in a bombing. But the hero really loves The System. He wants to help the (nefarious) FBI. He continuously calls people "Sir." He signs on for things he shouldn't sign on for: recording fake terrorist messages, participating in a shady interrogation, being verbally bullied over and over.

Jewell's lawyer tries to help him. "Speak up!" "Summon your righteousness!" Jewell finds his voice in the eleventh hour, delivers a well-placed FUCK YOU to a fictional government troll (in the form of Jon Hamm), and reclaims at least some portions of his (thoroughly-wrecked) life. This is a movie that left me in tears.

A note about Clint Eastwood and women: No one would make the mistake of anticipating gender-themed thoughtfulness from Mr. Eastwood. The guy is sort of a doofus, and he is 9,000 years old. When paired with American legend Amy Adams in "Trouble with the Curve," Eastwood wandered around openly murmuring, "Who's The Girl? The Girl is pretty good...." A few years ago, Laura Linney participated in an Amy Schumer spoof about accomplished women cast by Hollywood as The Concerned Voice on the Phone. While the men do brave things, the women whisper into their phones, "Don't go do that brave thing...." Oblivious Clint Eastwood then ACTUALLY USED LAURA LINNEY AS A VOICE ON THE PHONE--in "Sully."

There's no evidence to suggest that Olivia Wilde's character really did trade sex for information, and it's reductive and lazy and harmful for Eastwood to make this assertion in his new movie. That said, and I'm not sure others are observing this: Eastwood actually seems to admire the Wilde character. This reporter is a badass. She does what she must to complete her tasks. She finds hideout spots in cars; she uses smart, Machiavellian language, "Let me help you tell your story...." There's no excuse for what Eastwood did AND it's worth noting that Eastwood seems to have a strong sense of "fellow feeling" with the Wilde character (who does a 180 and corrects her own reporting by the end of the story). The actual movie is more complicated than what I had imagined, given news analyses.

I will pay good money for any movie that lets Kathy Bates unleash--and she unleashes here. What a refreshing choice.

And I'll remember the tiny, weird details--"don't watch a loud war movie when your house is bugged and people think you're a terrorist," "don't overlook what your boss throws in his trash," "don't be a jackass when you talk to a campus cop." Like Hitchcock, Clint Eastwood just seems fascinated by the way people act, in small moments, on a daily basis. In movie after movie, he shows us ourselves (even as he seems to focus on extraordinary, potentially "un-relatable" characters). I love this guy's work--and I'm so inspired by him. "Jewell" is worth the ticket price. Buy, buy, buy.
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