Call Me an Idiot, But —
Months ago, as I watched the broadcasting of the latest Oscar ceremony, I was suddenly met with a feeling that could only be described as vicarious embarrassment. In a commercial break, one could see Oprah dressed up in a ridiculous costume, exaggerated makeup, and an unbelievably corny wig, with even more laughable production design taking over the background (truthfully, also the foreground). It was a TV spot for the new film adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time, and it pretty much dominated the broadcast. Even when Jimmy Kimmel and a bunch of illustrious attendees of the ceremony “broke into” a theater to surprise the unsuspecting audience inside, that was a test screening of the same film.
I laughed at first, and so did the people in my living room, taken aback by the seemingly proud exposure of such blatant disfiguration and exaggeration of every known aspect of filmmaking, in the worst possible sense of these words. It was clear for us that that movie was going to be ridiculously bad, from the get go. Someone may have even googled the poster, and we rightfully made fun of it in the spot. Eventually, some of us even watched it, driven by some sort of childhood nostalgia (the original book is a classic, like it or not).
But at some point, we did realize the amount of attention that the film was receiving. Not only was it extensively marketed during the commercial breaks of one of the most important TV specials in the country, it also had promotional materials decorating every billboard, bus, and bench in town.
Few weeks after that, I flew to Brazil to visit my family and friends. Promotional material for A Wrinkle in Time was all around, this time written in Portuguese. And I am sure that if I had visited my relatives in Portugal, somewhere in the streets of Lisbon Oprah’s face would be there to haunt me.
It made sense that such an expensive approach was favored by Disney’s marketing team. The budget for such a film is something that most of us will not make in a lifetime, and Mickey Mouse does not maintain Cinderella’s castle shiny and pretty as it is just by waving his arms to a Dukas symphonic poem while dressed up in red curtains recut as a night gown. And that is not only the trouble with Disney. If someone pulled off The Fast and the Furious 63 the marketing would probably be equally as invasive.
No, what bothered me was what happened after the film was released. Critically, it was a flop. Audiences equally disliked it. It was a known fact that the film was a stain in the history of cinema.
But.
Weeks later, The Hollywood Reporter, one of the most respected trade publications in the entertainment industry, wrote an article trying to explain what had happened. It read basically like this: “it is a film with such a great cast, such a great source of inspiration, such a great director (it’s Ava DuVernay for heaven’s sake!), and that was so damn concerned with the importance of inclusion and diversity in the industry (a very valid point); yet how do we act now that something that was supposed to be a milestone in the history of racial representation in entertainment failed so miserably?”.
Frankly, I don’t know how to answer. I haven’t seen it, nor do I intend to. But it is a fact that it sucks. Magnificently. And it is ok for a film to suck. Many do. Yet the article seemed apologetic; disgustingly so. It tried to excuse the fact that all of the hype was unjustified, and that the courageous and noble intentions behind the making of the film did not match its results. In doing so, it almost completely ignored the fact that the movie was the prime example of what not to do when you’re hired to make a film, no matter who you are.
And there lies an interesting question, which I plan to address in future posts. One can appreciate what films such as A Wrinkle in Time is trying to do in order to promote diversity and inclusion, not only in entertainment. But once that fails (quite notoriously, might I add), should we still make up excuses for it, from our perspective as film lovers?
Should we think highly of a film just for what it tries to represent, and completely disregard what a mess, or just how dumb and empty it might be? Similarly, should we disregard great cinema just because a certain work may not be worried about certain relevant contemporary issues which one might argue are more important than the entertainment or the art (or both)? Is there a line between those things, and if so, where is it, and how blurred can it be?
Stay tuned.
