{"id":87176,"date":"2019-05-11T14:25:27","date_gmt":"2019-05-11T18:25:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gayfriendschat.com\/socialblog\/weekend-movie-review-charlie-says\/"},"modified":"2019-05-11T14:25:27","modified_gmt":"2019-05-11T18:25:27","slug":"weekend-movie-review-charlie-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gayfriendschat.com\/socialblog\/weekend-movie-review-charlie-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Movie Review: \u2018Charlie Says\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Weekend Movie Review: \u2018Charlie Says\u2019<\/b><\/p>\n

Matt Smith as failed musician\/embodiment of evil Charles Manson in \u201cCharlie Says\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Quentin Tarantino\u2019s Once Upon a Time In Hollywood<\/em>, arriving in July, isn\u2019t the first Manson Family murders \/ Sharon Tate-related movie hitting theaters during the 50th anniversary year of those abominable crimes. <\/p>\n

The first out was The Haunting of Sharon Tate<\/em>\u00a0starring Hillary Duff, which was largely dismissed as exploitative. The second, newly arrived in theaters, is\u00a0Charlie Says\u00a0<\/em>(Sharon Tate, played by Grace van Dien, is a very minor character in the film). Tarantino\u2019s film will feature Margot Robbie as the doomed actress. And still a fourth picture is coming, a biographical drama called Tate<\/em>\u00a0starring Kate Bosworth, though its focus will not be on the actress\u2019s murder.\u00a0 This true crime story is quite obviously all the rage in Hollywood at the moment. <\/p>\n

Whether or not these films are appropriate in their timing and conception will be up to individual viewers to determine. As ever, how creepy or opportunistic true crime stories feel is largely dependent on artistic ambition and execution. But if you\u2019re going to make a picture like this at all, director Mary Harron and Guinevere Turner, the women<\/a> behind\u00a0Charlie Says<\/em>, are the filmmakers to choose\u2026<\/p>\n

from left to right: Marianne Rend\u00f3n (reclined), Hannah Murray, and Sosie Bacon as Manson family members <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

TheHarron (I Shot Andy Warho<\/em>l) and screenwriter Turner (who came to fame via the New Queer Cinema of the 90s in Go Fish <\/em>and The Watermelon Woman<\/em>), are best known these days for the enduring classic American Psycho <\/em>(2000) a masterful subversion of a dubious misogynist novel. They\u2019re also no stranger to biographical takes on infamous complex women<\/a> having made The Notorious Bettie Page <\/em>together as well. <\/p>\n

This unique skillset comes in handy with this drama, which begins at a somewhat clinical remove while it considers three loyal Manson followers: Leslie Van Houten (Hannah Murray), Susan Atkins (Marianne Rend\u00f3n) and Patricia Krenwinkle (Sosie Bacon \u2014 trivia alert: the daughter of Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick). The trio are serving life sentences in prison in side-by-side cels for carrying out some of the murders. An empathetic if not quite sympathetic feminist grad student named Karlene Faith (the ever-watchable Merritt Wever of Godless<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Nurse Jackie<\/em>\u00a0fame) enters their lives as a prison-appointed teacher and counsellor of sorts and the three young women<\/a> begin to come to grips (or not) with their complicity in the heinous crimes.<\/p>\n

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We meet Charles Manson and his cult in flashbacks. In prison the women<\/a> are always beginning sentences with \u201cCharlie says\u2026,\u201d hence the film\u2019s title, and Karlene soon sees how deep their brainwashing runs. Unfortunately, given the sordid subject matter and the film\u2019s point of view, the scenes at the Manson ranch are more compelling than the prison material. Matt Smith harnesses his amoral screen charisma to play up the seductive confidence of this particular demon but he also underlines his relentless manipulative pettiness. He avoids playing<\/em> the deep insanity which is for the better since that\u2019s more than apparent once the violence begins. <\/p>\n

In one of the movie\u2019s most memorable and most pathetic sequences, we see his weak attempts to become a rock star. He blames his failure on others of course, and the women<\/a> are the first target. Though Manson humiliatingly instructs one of his second hand men<\/a> (Chace Crawford) on how to pleasure a woman<\/a> in front of the whole \u201cfamily\u201d, female<\/a> pleasure and empowerment are never the goal despite all the group sex<\/a> and the instructions to love your own body. The women<\/a> are consistently claimed as sexual property or used as sexual props (in Manson\u2019s embarrassing \u201cconcert\u201d) or bargaining chips, and thinking for yourself risks ridicule and humiliation or gets you banished from \u2018the family\u2019.<\/p>\n

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Harron and Turner wisely don\u2019t absolve these young women<\/a> of their violent crimes with either their careful framing of the crimes or the dialogue \u2014 nor do they judge them for their childish views (they seem baffled, in particular, when wondering if Karlene is a lesbian<\/a> or meeting a black man<\/a> who doesn\u2019t match their racist assumptions). But the filmmakers do draw damning lines directly to the ease of male<\/a> privilege (even in communities like this one ostensibly off the grid and outside the mainstream patriarchal society) and learned female<\/a> subservience in the face of unmistakable misogyny. <\/p>\n

Hannah Murray\u2019s performance, in particular, works hard to thread the needle. We initially see Manson\u2019s family through her eyes, as the newest recruit, and she\u2019s one of only two women<\/a> in the flashbacks who seem to have their own minds. That she willingly tosses hers away anyway, even after seeing right through him, is the paradox and the tragedy of her own descent into hell.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s a tough needle to thread. <\/p>\n

Tasked with the supremely difficult work of portraying naive women<\/a> who fell for Manson\u2019s self-serving and contradictory preaching enough to lose themselves completely, the actresses struggle on occassion to make sense of their characters. But then, so too, does the film\u2019s audience proxy, Karlene Faith, who is seeking to understand them and wrestling with whether or not she should even continue trying.<\/p>\n

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In the end the film sadly can\u2019t reach its rather lofty psychological goals. Perhaps you\u2019d need to write a whole book \u2014 Karlene Faith did with \u201cThe Long Prison Journey of Leslie Van Houten\u201d on which the film is partially based \u2014 to even begin to make sense of these willfully brainwashed lost souls.\u00a0 While Charlie Says<\/em>\u00a0doesn\u2019t measure up to Harron\u2019s best work (American Psycho, I Shot Andy Warhol<\/em>, and The Notorious Bettie Page<\/em>), it\u2019s nevertheless an intermittently absorbing and unexpected angle from which to try (in vain) to comprehend this incomprehensibly tragic chapter in American history.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The post Weekend Movie Review: \u2018Charlie Says\u2019<\/a> appeared first on Towleroad Gay News<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Weekend Movie Review: ‘Charlie Says’<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n