I am actually pretty convinced of this.
You can call this a conspiracy theory if you want, but I think it's the explanation that makes the most sense. It's a send-up of a movie about a pop star, just like, say, "Talladega Nights" is a send-up of a movie about an auto racer. The stuff that's over the top, or weird, or flat, or badly written - it's all that way deliberately.
If I'm write, it's a pretty impressive feat. It's the first (? OR IS IT?) "gnostic comedy" - a comedy whose comedic nature is understood only by writer-director Corbet and a few others of the "initiated". But was that the plan from the beginning? Is Corbet laughing now because of how well his private prank has fooled everyone? Or is he bitterly frustrated because what he hoped would be a successful comedy has been misunderstood by everyone as a controversial or quirky or just unsuccessful drama?
Well, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, so excuse me while I go through some of the parts that (after a couple hours' mulling) gave me some confidence in my theory.
(1.) First and foremost, there is the weird narration voiced by Willem Dafoe which starts at the beginning of the movie and continues through the end. It is so badly written, so pretentious and so determined to use the wrong words, and so consistently off-key, that it literally must have been written that way on purpose. It's like an Onion editorial. Early on I thought that "okay, this movie is about the price of fame, so part of the price of fame is having this kind of laughably rubbish narration used in your biopic." But eventually I concluded that this is the real magic key to the movie. Corbet is giving us narration that can't possibly be taken seriously, and this is his way of telling us how to watch the rest of the movie.
(2) The school shooting and its aftermath just have too many over-the-top elements, some of which are clearly "samples" from notable real-world horrors. The shooter is named "Cullen Active". Who the hell is named that? I just this second realized that this is because he's an ACTIVE SHOOTER. I mean, case closed right there!!
(3) The song which Celeste writes for the memorial service is just a weird song, addressed to .. God? ... and full of bondage fantasy. Nevertheless, Dafoe assures us that this became the "anthem for a nation."
(4) The Twin Towers make an early appearance in the film, clearly because this is the kind of pretentious thing that a bad writer-director of a bad millennial biopic would do, accompanied by a lot of images of Manhattan buildings and dark chords. Later on, the new One World Trade Center shows up the same way.
(5) Cutting ahead 20 years, we see that present-day Celeste is just horrible. We are made to see that she is horrible in every way; she's a big drug user now, she stashes her kid Albertine with her sister Ellie all the time, then viciously berates Ellie, repeatedly using the R-word ("ret**d"). It's so bad that it's a parody.
(6) In the course of a press conference, she frustrates her team by throwing out remarks about how these other random terrorists should become atheists and worship her instead. This is also a "sample", this time of remarks by John Lennon.
(7) The climactic performance is not good. The music isn't good, and the dancing basically consists of the same dance step Celeste learned at the beginning of the movie. Nevertheless, the crowd cheers uproariously, it is a great triumph, and Ellie and Albertine, in the audience, are transported. It has all been worth it!! Meanwhile, Dafoe tells us some bizarre anecdote about how the Devil let her return from death so that she could make history or some such. This only makes sense in my parody theory.
So, just to be clear, I am not giving this movie bad marks and sarcastically saying that only a parody could be this bad. I am literally saying that Corbet deliberately wrote, directed, and presented this movie to us as a parody. The funny thing is that the word "parody" appears in a lot of reviews - the movie descends almost to parody here, her accent is a parody there - but I haven't yet seen anyone who went all in on the concept that it really IS a parody, but I think it's really true. I mean, he's an ACTIVE SHOOTER.
I am curious to know how many people are going "Well, you are late to the party, my dude, everyone in the world knows this."
So, given this perspective, how successful is it? My opinion of this movie has gone up a couple of stars just while writing this. If I had seen this movie described as a parody before watching it, I probably would have enjoyed it more. Certainly the acting can't be faulted, and the production values that seem spotty when you think it's a drama become much better when you know it's a parody. Not everyone will like it that a parody treats massacres ironically, but it's not the first. Anyway, that's my take.
You can call this a conspiracy theory if you want, but I think it's the explanation that makes the most sense. It's a send-up of a movie about a pop star, just like, say, "Talladega Nights" is a send-up of a movie about an auto racer. The stuff that's over the top, or weird, or flat, or badly written - it's all that way deliberately.
If I'm write, it's a pretty impressive feat. It's the first (? OR IS IT?) "gnostic comedy" - a comedy whose comedic nature is understood only by writer-director Corbet and a few others of the "initiated". But was that the plan from the beginning? Is Corbet laughing now because of how well his private prank has fooled everyone? Or is he bitterly frustrated because what he hoped would be a successful comedy has been misunderstood by everyone as a controversial or quirky or just unsuccessful drama?
Well, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, so excuse me while I go through some of the parts that (after a couple hours' mulling) gave me some confidence in my theory.
(1.) First and foremost, there is the weird narration voiced by Willem Dafoe which starts at the beginning of the movie and continues through the end. It is so badly written, so pretentious and so determined to use the wrong words, and so consistently off-key, that it literally must have been written that way on purpose. It's like an Onion editorial. Early on I thought that "okay, this movie is about the price of fame, so part of the price of fame is having this kind of laughably rubbish narration used in your biopic." But eventually I concluded that this is the real magic key to the movie. Corbet is giving us narration that can't possibly be taken seriously, and this is his way of telling us how to watch the rest of the movie.
(2) The school shooting and its aftermath just have too many over-the-top elements, some of which are clearly "samples" from notable real-world horrors. The shooter is named "Cullen Active". Who the hell is named that? I just this second realized that this is because he's an ACTIVE SHOOTER. I mean, case closed right there!!
(3) The song which Celeste writes for the memorial service is just a weird song, addressed to .. God? ... and full of bondage fantasy. Nevertheless, Dafoe assures us that this became the "anthem for a nation."
(4) The Twin Towers make an early appearance in the film, clearly because this is the kind of pretentious thing that a bad writer-director of a bad millennial biopic would do, accompanied by a lot of images of Manhattan buildings and dark chords. Later on, the new One World Trade Center shows up the same way.
(5) Cutting ahead 20 years, we see that present-day Celeste is just horrible. We are made to see that she is horrible in every way; she's a big drug user now, she stashes her kid Albertine with her sister Ellie all the time, then viciously berates Ellie, repeatedly using the R-word ("ret**d"). It's so bad that it's a parody.
(6) In the course of a press conference, she frustrates her team by throwing out remarks about how these other random terrorists should become atheists and worship her instead. This is also a "sample", this time of remarks by John Lennon.
(7) The climactic performance is not good. The music isn't good, and the dancing basically consists of the same dance step Celeste learned at the beginning of the movie. Nevertheless, the crowd cheers uproariously, it is a great triumph, and Ellie and Albertine, in the audience, are transported. It has all been worth it!! Meanwhile, Dafoe tells us some bizarre anecdote about how the Devil let her return from death so that she could make history or some such. This only makes sense in my parody theory.
So, just to be clear, I am not giving this movie bad marks and sarcastically saying that only a parody could be this bad. I am literally saying that Corbet deliberately wrote, directed, and presented this movie to us as a parody. The funny thing is that the word "parody" appears in a lot of reviews - the movie descends almost to parody here, her accent is a parody there - but I haven't yet seen anyone who went all in on the concept that it really IS a parody, but I think it's really true. I mean, he's an ACTIVE SHOOTER.
I am curious to know how many people are going "Well, you are late to the party, my dude, everyone in the world knows this."
So, given this perspective, how successful is it? My opinion of this movie has gone up a couple of stars just while writing this. If I had seen this movie described as a parody before watching it, I probably would have enjoyed it more. Certainly the acting can't be faulted, and the production values that seem spotty when you think it's a drama become much better when you know it's a parody. Not everyone will like it that a parody treats massacres ironically, but it's not the first. Anyway, that's my take.