The Neon Demon (2016)
Nicolas Winding Refn
(and Natasha Braier)
"I can't sing, I can't dance, I can't write...no real talent. But I'm pretty, and I can make money off pretty."
Quick note: this review is going to assume you've seen The Neon Demon. If you haven't, I strongly recommend seeing it first before reading on. I also recommend buying the BluRay for the super clear visuals and great sound, but it's also on Amazon Prime.Watching The Neon Demon has become a yearly treat, like my annual viewing of The Shining or Raiders of the Lost Ark. I suppose that means it's one of my favorite movies, or I guess I notice something new or different each time I watch it. Maybe that's true of any movie this visually sumptuous, and that's why I included the name of the cinematographer along with the director for today's review. She has as much to do with the success of this film as the writer/director did.
The sheer talent for composition and camerawork by Braier and Winding Refn exhibited in The Neon Demon makes me a bit weak in the knees. There are whole scenes (like the performance at the model party, or Jesse's turn down the runway at the big fashion show) that I rewind to watch again and again, to make sure I fill all of my rods and cones with as much filthy goodness as possible before it goes back in my Blu Ray closet for another year.
This is the kind of film that makes you want to own the best television and sound system possible. It forces you to take part in a ritual to get ready for it. This is not a Sunday afternoon hangover movie. You kill the lights, you turn up the amp way beyond where you'd normally stop, you make sure there's nobody else around, and you get sucked into it.
And I'll admit, not everyone will have such powerful feelings about a bloody post-modern horror movie about models, but god dammit they should. A lot of the criticism of this film comes from those who just don't get it™, and this applies to critics and audiences alike. Most of the criticism references how the film is dense with style, but hollow on message, or how it just uses extreme gross-out as the film goes on to paper over it's lack of substance. I think they're just plain wrong.
What's it about: A young girl leaves her small town to make it big in the LA modeling scene. She's like a gentle fawn stepping into a wolf den. She enters this predatory world full of dangers untouched by cynicism or the cruelty of reality. Luckily for her she's also the modeling world's messiah; the alpha and omega of beauty and some intangible quality that can't be purchased from a plastic surgeon. But like so many others, this world will chew her up and spit her out.
What's interesting: There's an art to this film that maybe just doesn't speak to a certain type of person, but that doesn't mean it's not there. The best analysis I've seen of the film comes from Gretchen Felker-Martin (naturally), who points out the self-dehumanization that the characters in the film routinely take part in: "They see only collections of things they aren't, and of things they're better than."
The criticism of fashion and our beauty obsessed culture is there. The first shot of the film is Jesse lying on a couch, covered in blood, while flashbulbs go off. For several seconds you're unclear whether this is some avant-garde photoshoot or the police taking pictures of a grisly crime scene, and that's exactly the point. At every turn in this film, Jesse is being preyed upon for something. It's her look, but it's also her attitude; it's her sexual appeal, but it's also her virginity; it's the desire to be her, but it's also the desire to destroy and devour her.
In one of my favorite scenes in the film, as Jesse returns to her dingy Pasadena motel, she enters her room to discover a mountain lion has decided to hole up for a while. She is forced to seek aid from the lecherous motel owner who has been leering at her since she arrived in LA. There's nowhere Jesse can go without being hunted for something.
Over and over throughout the film, Braier and Winding Refn focus on character's eyes to show just how focused the entire world is on Jesse. During the crazy dance performance at the party, while a dancer in bondage is being suspended from the ceiling, Jesse's three...friends(?) seemingly ignore the performer, because can't take their eyes off of Jesse. When the big-shot fashion photographer clears the set to work with Jesse alone, he never bothers to look back at anyone else. When Jesse tries out for the fashion designer, she's the only one that he actively stares at.
Nobody can take their eyes off of her, and it begins to nourish Jesse on a quasi-religious level. When one of the other models asks her how it feels to be looked at like the sun in the middle of winter, she doesn't even blink. "It's everything."
A sign of a great film is how it can make you think of something new each time you see it, and this year's viewing was no different. The first few times I watched The Neon Demon, I assumed Jesse was being corrupted by the toxic culture she plunged into, but this time I'm not so sure. She's confident, yes, but I didn't read it as narcissism. There's something about the way that Elle Fanning plays the character of Jesse that sets her apart from every other actor in the film. I know nothing about fashion or how runway models should look while modeling, but there's an almost imperceptible difference between the walk that another model does and the walk that Jesse does. But it's there, and it makes a world of difference. Not just to the characters evaluating her, but to the audience as well.
Jesse is unique because she's confident. She's sure of herself, and is the only model in the film to actually describe herself as pretty. As Felker-Martin points out in her review, the other characters only see themselves as the things they have and the things they don't. They're constantly striving to be beautiful in an ever-shifting and subjective world dominated by shallow, predatory, and lecherous men. But this is not narcissism from Jesse. I'll admit, she gets a bit weird and preachy by the end, but if you were the kiwsatz haderach of your profession, wouldn't you act that way too?
When Jesse fully gives herself over to that mindset, that's when things finally break for the others. They could tolerate her natural beauty, her naivete, her effortless and meteoric rise through the world they've tortured themselves to climb into, but once she outwardly verbalizes the self-confidence the rest of the characters have long since given up on, there's nothing left to do but kill her and try to capture that intangible essence for themselves.
I don't want to give the impression that this makes Jesse the tragic hero of the story. This is all completely unimportant to the world at large, and even to their cynical industry, despite what they may have thought of her. In the film's denouement, the two models who murdered and ate Jesse are at a photo shoot, and it doesn't seem like the world of beauty and fashion has missed a beat. There's no black bunting, nobody appears too terribly upset (even the photographer who was so enthralled by Jesse earlier appears nonplussed), and everyone seems more than willing to move on. The world of professional beauty is so broken and cynical that even the horrific death of the One True Model is met with bored indifference. Winding Refn is clearly not glamorizing that world at all.
Other films I thought of: I've only seen one other Winding Refn film, Drive. I like The Neon Demon more, but the visual style is there. Honestly, this film gives me strong Shining vibes, and you can tell how much of Braier's cinematography is influenced by Kubrick.
Miscellany: Two other quick thoughts: 1) this is the film LA LA Land should have been, and they tell basically the same story, only without a boring know-it-all who insists everyone else love jazz as much as he does.
And 2) even though this was my fourth or fifth time seeing it, I somehow forgot about the necrophilia scene. It goes on and on, and gets distressingly spitty and drooly. I love how it makes me feel ill and how my mind tried to purge it from my memory, but it's a hard scene to sit still through. It's also a big reason why you should maybe not watch this one with mom.
Recommendation: Saying it's not for everyone is a cop out, so I'm going to recommend this on the following grounds: if there's a piece of art that is challenging, thought provoking, and forces you to have complicated emotions, it's a piece of art worth experiencing.
Remarkably Good and definitely one of my favorite films of the past 10 years.
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