Mr. and Mrs. Smith!!

[permetaform]

Oh god, I LOVED that!

Granted it was semi-predictable because I adore action films, and to an extent you can predict their narrative formula in the same way that I can mostly predict all fic except for the brief moments that string the story together. But ohhh! The execution was marvelous! It's very much a character study by way of actions and reactions and me and lierdumoa were discussing what an absolute joy this would be to vid because the expressions were so perfectly placed, with *just* the right amount of over-expression to get the idea across to enough of the audience so that they'd be able to cue in people who were lost.

I remember reading that one of the greatest gifts that Hitchcock ever gave the spy genre was by replacing the narrative position of the Hero with a couple; where it might be the Hero Against the World with an Angsty Internal Struggle became a dialogue between two people and their dynamics of trust and love and duty. This was very much in play in this movie and refreshing to see it reaching a sort of balance between two rough equals.

Even though I could see feminists arguing that there still are, yet, troubling undertones in some of how females are represented, I think that if one tries to arrange the movie in any other way, there would definately be even *worse* undertones. (ie. Jolie being the weepy female instead of Pitt being the sensitive guy, etctera. Also some the Jolie-as-domestic-wife / Pitt-as-toolshed-husband dynamic is part of the the unspoken jokes of them being perfect uppermiddleclass WASPs, and even though that plays into the whole patriarchal sterotype...that's kinda, like, the point)

In any case, I thought the movie a perfectly delightful romp, that was in turns beautiful visually and hot and funny and cute and explody. It was subtle in a way that most of the audience *gets* it; in which the great plodding difficulty about subtlety is that by definition some people aren't going to get it, so that a movie that manages to be simultaneously non-explict and yet perfectly obvious and YET non-campy is something very rarely seen and very much appreciated by me. The only way it might have been better was if, say, Angelina Jolie was replaced by Johnny Depp.

But one can't have everything.

Poop.

Comments

[guede-mazaka.livejournal.com]

The only way it might have been better was if, say, Angelina Jolie was replaced by Johnny Depp.

But one can't have everything.

Poop.

I love you.

Right then, after physics is out of my life, go see this.

[permetaform]

YAY!!!!