REVISITING THE WACHOWSKIS
PART I: ‘BOUND’
In the days leading up to the release of the new Netflix show Sense8, I’m going to be revisiting the Wachowski oeuvre, one day at a time. I’ll be looking at the movies themselves, as well as the critical reception of each film, and thinking about how this all relates to questions of film criticism at large. You can read my introduction to this little writing experiment here, where I rambled a bit about when I started to have a personal stake in how Wachowski films were being received. Warning: Some spoilers follow.
‘BOUND’ (1996)
Directed by: The Wachowski Siblings, then credited as the Wachowski Brothers
Starring:
Jennifer Tilly as “Violet”
Gina Gershon as “Corky”
Joe Pantoliano as “Caesar”
Christopher Meloni as “Johnnie”
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 92%
The Plot
Corky (Gina Gershon) is an ex-con who did time for stealing. (Or, as her former partner always said, she did time for gettin’ caught). Corky has now taken a job as a fix-it-all handywoman for an apartment complex with connections to the mob, which is run locally by Caesar (Joe Pantoliano). One day in the apartment elevator, she catches the eye of Caesar’s moll Violet (Jennifer Tilly), and before long the two fall head-over-high-heels in love.
When Caesar unexpectedly comes into possession of nearly $2million, Violet decides she wants out and enlists Corky’s help in plotting to steal the money so they can make a life for themselves somewhere. Of course, things go wrong, and the film hurtles toward a violently satisfying third act that quickly racks up a body count.
What’d the Critics Think?
Bound currently holds a 92% Fresh rating on RottenTomatoes. At that rate, it’s the Wachowskis’ best-rated film, meaning (according to RT) a higher percentage of critics liked Bound than liked The Matrix. That’s pretty impressive.
Bound was, however, their first film as directors. It’s great, but is it better than The Matrix? Better than Cloud Atlas? Not in my book.
Personally, I think most of their later films were poorly received because that was the self-fulfilling narrative of a decline the media had determined for their careers, so I wonder how Bound would have fared critically if it had been released later on... say, if it had been their second film.
I think the answer is pretty clear. If the directors of The Matrix had followed it up with Bound, the reaction would likely have been almost universal condemnation. What does this have to do with sci-fi? Why aren’t they using their talents to create something more visionary? Why focus on this little lesbian crime drama instead of giving us another amazing world like in The Matrix? I can imagine all kinds of scathing reviews from people who kept waiting for the Agents to show up, for this tight little film noir to reveal itself to have been a precursor to some amazing sci-fi spectacle, and so they hated the movie because they didn’t get what they were promised when they saw the Wachowskis’ names on the poster.
So if Bound is only good, only a worthwhile and acceptable endeavor for the Wachowskis because it came first, what does that mean about the movie, and about criticism itself? Well...
What Did I Think?
I enjoy Bound more every time I see it. It’s an interesting deconstruction of a couple of film noir tropes — usually the gangster’s moll doesn’t have much to do, while here she becomes the heroine (and she’s a lesbian!!)— and I’m always a fan of films that quite clearly are aware of their genre and intentionally do some new things with it. (This will become especially important in later Wachowski films).
It’s a stylish film, borrowing lots of its lighting cues from the film noir genre while still throwing in a bit of what would soon become the trademark Wachowski eye for interesting camera placement.
Even though this film is by no means science fiction, they also make heavy use of a familiar shade of green that, with their next film, would become quite iconic…
They also learn in Bound just how badass it looks for a woman with short black hair to dress in black leather and wear sunglasses.
And while it’s no bullet-time, the centerpiece shootout in Bound is very interested in stylized, slo-mo violence.
After this scene, the film toes the line between farce and drama as Caesar rushes to cover up the remains of the shooting before the cops arrive. It’s hilarious, but also incredibly tense; there’s a masterful juggling of tone here, never too much of one or the other. You get the sense that the Wachowskis know exactly what kind of movie they’re making, and they’re having a blast with it. Personally, I think that same tone-juggling is completely intentional in their later movies. Other people seem to think they have no idea how to control their movies…
There are a number of themes in this film that the Wachowskis would pick up and run with throughout the rest of their filmography. One of the most prominent, especially in their later films, is a free, open, non-judgmental attitude toward identity and sexuality. Corky and Violet’s chemistry is electric; from the moment they lock eyes in the elevator, it’s clear that they’re going to have a passionate affair.
Their first tryst has a lot of fun subverting porn clichés and re-staging them as high camp. Violet drops her earring down the kitchen sink and calls Corky over to retrieve it, claiming it was an accident. Corky shows up in a tight-fitting muscle shirt and bends down under the sink, while Violet, in all her long-legged, short-skirted beauty, stands behind her. Corky is the more “butch” lesbian of the two, while Violet is more “femme,” but here Violet holds all the power, both visually and literally, upending traditional norms of sexual power relations. Usually the porn handyman would be the guy, taking advantage of the poor helpless sexually frustrated woman home alone while her husband is away at work, but here, Corky exists for Violet’s amusement, for Violet to look at and order around and touch. It’s quite fun.
After Caesar interrupts them before things can get any hotter or heavier, Violet meets Corky in her truck downstairs to apologize. “Don’t apologize,” Corky scoffs. “If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s women who apologize for wanting sex.”
“I’m not apologizing for what I did,” Violet replies. “I’m apologizing for what I didn’t do.” They kiss.
Coming just a few short years after the advent of New Queer Cinema in the early ‘90s, Bound has a still-radical approach to feminine lesbians owning their sexuality. However, the film does get mired down in the third act by Caesar punishing Violet and Corky quite violently. When he discovers that they’ve plotted to steal his money, he binds them (!) and tosses them in a closet, but not before punching them both several times until they’re bruised and bloody. They ultimately triumph, yes, so it’s not like the film is “correcting” their sexuality through violence, as is often the case with sympathetic gay characters, but I feel like we don’t need to see them so brutally brought down before they rise up and strike back.
One other major theme of the film that becomes a Wachowski staple, one that’s far more understated than the embrace of alternative sexuality, is wealth disparity. This is perhaps the most common thread running through all of their films; it’s the only thing I can think of off the top of my head that’s most definitely a part of all of them.
Except for two short scenes outside, Bound takes place entirely within one apartment building. You’d expect that the apartments inside would be of similar quality, but they’re not. Not even close. Even though Corky and Violet live just down the hall from each other, sharing a bedroom wall, check out the difference in their digs:
Violet and Caesar’s apartment is well-lit and spotless, full of antiques and furniture and immaculately-designed wallpaper. Corky, on the other hand, has practically no furniture, peeling and faded wallpaper, and one single, solitary lamp.
Caesar and Violet, of course, came by their apartment through ill-gotten means… namely, a life of crime. Corky, too, has had a life of crime, but things haven’t turned out quite so well for her. She, like they, made her living through theft… but she got caught. And it’s lead to quite the class difference between her and her neighbors.
The Wachowskis are conveying the difference in wealth through set dressing. The plot directly comments on it, too, with Corky deciding to steal Caesar’s money so she can make a better life for herself. But the initial disparity in their situations reveals how arbitrary so much distribution of wealth really is. They’re both criminals, certainly. But Corky is without question the better criminal than Caesar, who’s a glorified lapdog. So why is it that Caesar should live such a more comfortable life than Corky? Everyone knows Caesar’s part of the mob… why hasn’t he been caught?
At the end of the film, when Violet and Corky triumph and end up with the money, they’re making a better life because they decided to change their circumstances. Again, yes, they did so by stealing Caesar’s already-stolen money, but hey, that’s film noir. The arbitrary nature of circumstance put them in the position to steal the money, but as Violet says, “We make our own choices; we pay our own prices.” Although this theme would become much more pronounced in their later work, the Wachowskis here are already grappling with the potential for human beings to change their circumstances, to control their own fate.
And from their very first film, they already seem to believe that, yes, we can realize that potential. We can decide our own fate.
