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I just saw it tonight and it was good except for that twist. I can see why the twist was there, and suspected it on the "I just want my daughter back!" line, but when nothing else supported that read I thought I was being dumb. And then whoops, that's the movie.
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May 26, 2019 05:22
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 11:55 |
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The tethered were creepy and cool, but I didn't really understand what exactly about living in the underground complex made them psychotic monsters. Red's first monologue about the conditions sounded pretty miserable! But finding out that they can just walk out seemed to severely undercut that. It's a lovely lie that you can "just pull your bootstraps" to escape poverty... but two flights of stairs? As a barrier-to-class-mobility metaphor, that's bad. It was definitely a fun movie, and parts worked better than others, but I think it was a mistake to ever show us the complex.
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May 26, 2019 18:47
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The character who gave us that information wasn't a tethered, though. The souls speech is their speculation, and we know from their revolt / uprising that they did have independent agency. The first tethered we see in present day is that bloody-handed man on the beach, and the one in 1986 acted independently as well.
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May 26, 2019 21:02
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Poor individuals aren't mystically tethered to a specific, equivalent rich person. It works better as a metaphor for people's dual nature or their potential for both good and evil maybe?
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May 27, 2019 02:45
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Groovelord Neato posted:white people can't put their brains in black people's bodies either. White people can (and historically have and do) exploit the everlasting gently caress out of black people, though. Get Out took that existing precedent to its next scifi step to make good commentary. Us... didn't do that. You have literal upper and lower classes that are 1:1 mirrors of each other, except that the lower class is psychologically monstrous, engages in weird improv of their mystically bonded originals, and are incapable of autonomy (except when they aren't.) The real life poor aren't feral killers. Probably something like Hostel did a better job of class commentary, if you want to read it that way. There seems to be a lot to unpack in Us, but I came away feeling like it was disconnected window-dressing. It had powerful images and symbolism, but no consistent underlying message to contextualize them. And if there was, it was too confused by the metaphor.
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May 27, 2019 14:11
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The "system" was a weird bunker without oversight. Nobody was directing the psychotic behavior, since whoever was running the experiment* had abandoned it. They were influenced by a magical "tether," but only in as much as they pantomimed the surface world. The movie's message then becomes that when left to their own devices, the poor will become feral monsters? Driven only by class envy, they'll murder forever? That seems like a stretch. *assuming it even was an experiment. None of the bunker tethered were capable of speech, so how would that have been communicated? I think it was meant as a large-scale Frankenstein story. Reading class into it presents more problems than it addresses. Plus it encapsulates the narrative of the novel better than any Frankenstein movie to date.
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May 27, 2019 20:30
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It's been decades since I read it, but I feel like the alienation and rage Frankenstein's creation felt had infinitely more to do with his "father's" treatment of him than any particular class issue. But he was also shown to be capable of sophistication under ideal circumstances, like the tethered. I feel like Us makes much more sense as a similar commentary on human nature and nuture than a "the poor are monsters (but it's not their fault)" read. You have identical people exposed to different conditions, which basically translates to a control group and an experimental group. Plus the film went out of it's way to show us tethered existing across all social classes - it's kind of short-sighted to write it off as "obviously" a rich / poor analogy when there's clearly a lot more going on. E: Us also leans extremely hard on folklore about fairy-folk leaving changeling children, I'm surprised that hasn't come up in anything I've read. moths fucked around with this message at 23:14 on May 28, 2019 |
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May 28, 2019 23:04
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 11:55 |
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Pirate Jet posted:That being said, for those who believe Us isn’t about class, Peele pretty clearly disagrees. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-jordan-peele-us-ending-spoilers-20190325-story.html Thanks for that link. Yeah it looks like he put a lot of issues into the tethered, haves vs have-nots being one but also: “The realization that our villains in this are a cult, are fanatics, and violent fanatics who are on a day to day level engaged in sort of unimaginably crazy-seeming behavior was about the realization that you could say the same about the other world — about us,” said Peele. “That we as Americans, as the United States, we are fanatics as well, and we are violent.” He also referred to it as a monster movie with relatable monsters, so hopefully the Tethered went a direct stand-in for the American poor or sweatshop laborers. They make thematic sense when representing a broad spectrum of common, unexamined American ills - both standing in as the perpetrators and victims of them. Class, sure, but also xenophobia, entitlement, fanaticism, bigotry, and violence. The "We're Americans" line makes sense in this context. If you single out class as the Tethered's defining characteristic, the movie becomes a cautionary tale, warning the relatable bourgeoisie about the dangerously psychotic proletariat - and I don't think that was remotely Peele's intention.
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May 30, 2019 12:34
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