Movie Notes: To Leslie

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Clarissa

February 19, 2023

I heard about this movie because the lead actress is apparently getting cancelled for being too white or something. I can’t be bothered to unravel the Byzantine complexities of this particular offense to the inflamed sensibilities of the martyrs to social justice but I went ahead and watched the movie.

To Leslie could have been great. The female star portrays a degraded, miserable alcoholic very well. The first half of the movie is exactly the kind of film I like. We see a messy, often sad, sometimes heartbreaking, occasionally ridiculous life. Everything is real, everything is just like it is. I started feeling hopeful it would actually be a good movie.

But then, of course, the ridiculous Hollywood obsession with massaging everything into an implausible happy ending swept in and turned the movie into a joke. To accommodate the silly contortion of the plot, the actors turn into plastic figurines, and everything falls apart.

The concept of an obligatory happy ending is one of the many gifts given to us by Christianity. I often hope, however, that this would be the gift we sometimes denied. This way we could enjoy something beyond the exact same saccharine story where everything always ends well in the exact same soporific manner.

The movie is a waste of time, in short.

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3 responses to “Movie Notes: To Leslie”

cliff arroyo

February 19, 2023

“for being too white or something”

roughly yes… as i understand it she was nominated for an oscar for the performance (biggest surpise nomination) and a bunch wokeistas thought that a non-white actress should have been nominated instead….

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Avi

February 19, 2023

Even though she comes from a working class background: Woke identities trump class.

Wokism is indeed as American as apple pie and is in fact the pinnacle of the American dream: people can l i t e r a l l y be who they want to be, including a self-entitled, self-declared oppressed person even when both their parents are Ivy-league academics, hiding class privilege while claiming to be a victim because of the colour of their skin.

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el

February 19, 2023

Apropos of rewtiting of Roald Dahl, cancellation of authors is likely to continue because of monetary considerations, which sometimes reach sums of millions of dollars. Here is a good post (in Russian) showing how it works in JKR’s case:

https://sapojnik.livejournal.com/4210404.html

In short, are you a company which wants to invent sequels, prequels and what not w/o any limitations put by the pesky author? Gather a mob and apply pressure till he/she/they will be glad to get away with selling author’s rights for a pittance.

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