106: yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
THIS WEEK: Challengers and Kathleen Collins
COMMUNITY BOARD
Goodreads / Letterboxd / Instagram / Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG)
If you’re in New York, the Anthology Film Archives are hosting a series of Palestinian and Palestine-related cinema, “Cinema of Palestinian Return” from May 3-18.
Here’s the thing, I loved Challengers so much that at some point this week, despite being DESPERATE to see it for a third time, I got anxious about going again because I was afraid to spoil it for myself, to exhaust something so good. I love Challengers so much that I can’t stand for anyone to be wrong about it so I’ve avoided any official reviews and have read newsletters and Letterboxd reviews and tweets about it with my shoulders hunched, ready to protest at any negative takes. I have become PATHOLOGICAL about this movie. Fran Hoepfner diagnosed this pathology in a recent issue of
as that of the One Direction fangirl, the 2011 Tumblr obsessee. Guilty and guilty. Apart from being the most ELECTRIC movie I’ve seen in awhile, Challengers provokes these feelings because it gives you just enough to latch on to while leaving room for you to project, to fantasize, to build your own version of its world into it. It’s a movie that demands you use your imagination, which these days feels rare.Of course I went to see it a third time,1 which was the only time I was able to watch it normally i.e. without losing my breath. The third time around, I could key into the quieter textures of the film that I had loved the first time but that got swept up in the drama—Dev Hynes on the radio during the now infamous hotel scene, the chatter of people in the bleachers, etc. I’ve seen a couple of comments that the movie is all vibes and hot looks but these moments, paired with the “normie” moments—the USTA official who shares her Dunkin bagel with Josh O’Connor’s Patrick,2 the older gay couple at the hotel, Hailey Gates’ small town lawyer and her poorly cut bangs, the Applebees employee throwing out the trash—tell a different story. In a way, it is these undramatic, mundane moments that tell us the most about the melodrama and fantasy that drives this film. Because at its heart, Challengers is a movie about overreacting, about feeling too much and acting rashly because of it. It’s about the ways in which the smallest, most normal thing (not getting a date with a girl you’ve interacted with a total of two times, ahem, Art)3 can consume you so much and make you monstrous. This is a feeling I more than understand because it’s the only way I live my life.
There’s a million things I want to say about this movie and I can’t seem to find the words. I’m really not trying to be dramatic but I’m genuinely finding it hard to TYPE because I’m so OVERWHELMED. You’ll have to catch me in person to get a better take.
Although Challengers has been consuming much of my brain space (I’ve never watched this much press for a movie4) I did find time this week (partially because I have not been doing my schoolwork) to get lost in Kathleen Collins’ Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? 5 The collection has been on my radar for a few years, ever since I recommended it to a co-worker who had just entered into a interracial relationship and wanted to read about the stakes of that, I guess. Now that I’ve actually read the collection, it was definitely the wrong recommendation but I don’t think she ever read it… The stories in Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? are evocative and heartbreaking, filled with yearning. Throughout, there’s an emphasis on beauty and finding beauty, especially in the midst of grief and racial tension. For Collins, beauty is not just healing but necessary for life. In the titular story, there’s a suggestion that a character’s depression and anxiety might be solved if she lived in a room with a window, where sunlight would pour in. In this collection, which deals with the psychic weight of living in a moment of revolution (several of the stories are set in and around the civil rights movement) and the demand that one’s life mean something for “the race” rather than for one’s own sake, Collins seems to suggest that sunlight might be the one thing that could save us.
I’m sure some of you are wondering, girl didn’t you say you have finals due? You’re right and SO WHAT?
Incredible performances from everyone in this movie but Josh is really the star.
Art said, I have extra meal points and I’m going to use them to ruin your life.
Clearly I’m biased but Josh O’Connor saying that he loved The O.C. and wanted to be Seth is truly the best thing ever.
If you’re in New York, I bought my copy at P&T Knitwear Bookstore
Love your reading of the film and especially footnotes 3 and 4…. 😂👀