COMMUNITY BOARD
In the fall of 2022, I told myself that in the upcoming year (2023) I would make a commitment to rewatch and reread, in the effort to engage with things I had consumed in a deeper way. More specifically, I wanted to go back to things that I’d had a negative reaction to, whether it was full out anger or forgot-I-even-did-that ambivalence. I didn’t really end up doing that last year the way I wanted to (with so much to read and watch, it can be hard to convince yourself to spend time with something I’ve already passed judgement on) though last year was not without its replays and revisions. This is all a preamble to my “announcement” that I’m starting a new “segment” on Consumption Report, “Replay,” that is solely focused on things I’m revisiting. It will mostly be movies and TV, because those are easier to do more frequently but there will be the occasional book or album in there depending on what I have going on. Like I mentioned, my criteria for replays is stuff that I disliked or felt mid about when I first watched. It’ll usually be stuff that I’ve only seen or read once, though I have an impulse to watch Marriage Story a third time just to see if it will finally make me FEEL SOMETHING. Upcoming segments will be on Tenet (which I will be seeing in theaters during its one week rerelease) and Hustlers. To get started:
Relisten: Rihanna’s Good Girl Gone Bad (2007)
The other day while brushing my teeth, I had a strung impulse to listen to Rihanna’s “Take a Bow,” one of the most satisfying songs to sing to yourself in the mirror. Listening to it made me want to listen to old Rihanna albums, especially because I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually listened to any of her albums in full, and definitely nothing before Rated R. So I downloaded Good Girl Gone Bad and hit play. And baby? She’s gone BAD. She’s gone so bad she’s spoiled milk. The hits—“Umbrella,” “Disturbia,” “Shut Up and Drive”—still hit, but a good half of the album is very much Selling Sunset stock music. They’re very much the kind of pop songs that a rising pop star, played Bella Thorne, sings in an AwesomenessTV movie nobody knows about until it shows up on Netflix three years after its release date. The worst of these songs might be “Lemme Get That,” the primary lyric of which is “I got a house, but I need new furniture.” I know Riri’s music has gotten better since then (thank GAWD) but listening to this made me think it’s not so bad that she’s not putting out new music—there’s too much of a risk that we might get a GGGB redux.
Rewatch: The Favourite, dir. Yorgos Lanthimos (2018)
The Plot
“England, early 18th century. The close relationship between Queen Anne and Sarah Churchill is threatened by the arrival of Sarah’s cousin, Abigail Hill, resulting in a bitter rivalry between the two cousins to be the Queen’s favourite.” (Letterboxd)
Starring Rachel Weisz as Sarah, Emma Stone as Abigail, and Olivia Colman as Queen Anne.
Initial viewing
I saw this in theaters, probably in early 2019, with RAFTMs1 Joel and Kyle Curry. I remember that they loved it and I was less impressed. I remember feeling like I did not GET IT and I didn’t think it was funny. I’ve rated this 3-stars on Letterboxd but that’s a rating I gave it two or three years after I saw it so I’m not sure if that says anything. I remember really liking Olivia Colman.
Why I’m rewatching it now
My friends suggested we watch this because some of them hadn’t seen it before! I was eager because I watched Poor Things (2023) over the holidays and felt pretty meh about it until Christopher Abbott showed up. I’ve also become a fan of The Great since I first saw The Favourite—if you don’t know (because I didn’t!), Tony McNamara, the creator of The Great, co-wrote The Favourite2—so I figured there was a high chance I would feel differently about TF now.
The Buzz
Most of my friends like this movie and several of them have given it 4.5 stars. It also has a 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Reaction Prediction
Because I changed my mind about The Great, I think there’s a chance that I’ll find The Favorite a lot more funny this time around. I’d be surprised if I became obsessed with it but open to the possibility.
Rewatch Review *spoilers ahead*
My rewatch experience was pretty much the same as my initial experience. This time around, I appreciated the formal and stylistic choices, the way in which the occasional fish eye shots contributed to the sense of dizziness and delirium that was life in Queen Anne’s court. Still, I didn’t experience the delight or disgust that I think this movie demands (and seems to evoke in everyone else). While Emma Stone’s Abigail Hill is meant to be the main act, it’s Olivia Colman as Queen Anne who really does it for me. (Olivia Colman forever, tbqh.) What’s so incredible about her performance is that she gives depth to a character that could easily be played as kooky and tyrannical, as someone who is impulsive and doesn’t think about much more than how to please herself. And that’s who her unfaithful subjects think Queen Anne is. She is imagined to be empty and indulgent, her interest in others dependent on how they can serve her. Does she love? Is she loved?
Anthony Lane in his review for The New Yorker, noting that historical marriage between Queen Anne and Prince George of Denmark is missing from Lanthimos’s film, writes that “For the mordant purposes of ‘The Favourite,’ love does not exist.” I disagree. If anything this movie is all about love, though its interest is not in love as amicable-if-sometimes-tense romantic relation but love as it gets distorted and burrowed in the excess and decay of living. At the same time, it also suggests that the excess and decay of living might be a result of loving and having loved, the grief that naturally comes with that. A moment in the movie that I hadn’t remembered at all is when Queen Anne reveals to Abigail that her coterie of rabbits isn’t just a peculiar indulgence: they each represent the seventeen children she’s lost, either by miscarriage or soon after birth. It’s a moment of humanity in the Queen, though it could easily be a manipulation of Abigail, and likely it’s both, that gives some explanation to her defeatedness, her lack of interest in anything other than eating cake and getting fucked. But it doesn’t let her off the hook or excuse her nasty behavior. Maybe that’s what is compelling about this movie (and Lanthimos’s work in general): its desire not to separate love and nastiness, meanness and care, and instead indulge in the mess that it makes.
Final word
Between this and Poor Things3, I feel like Lanthimos’s films are inside jokes that I don’t have the reference for. I can laugh along for a while but eventually my outsider status makes me drift away.
Thanks for reading. Future “Replay” dispatches will be behind the paywall, so consider becoming a paid subscriber today. Now, back to My Life With the Walter Boys.
RAFTM = Reader and Friend to Me. Credits to Rachel Tashjian.
He also wrote Poor Things.
The only other one I’ve seen is The Lobster, which is a different type of Lanthimos film but I didn’t like that one either.
I believe it was just you and I! Why do I feel like your sister was with us? I remember you coming into the movie just as it was starting. You know I get anxious when everything isn’t settled and perfect before a movie starts, and yet you persisted….