Watched: Don Jon
This was entertaining, but it could have achieved a little more by creating more nuance. The Jon at the start of this film is an utterly loathsome character - aggressively chauvinistic, burdened with a violent temper, and utterly reductive when it comes to women. I don’t think this film would have suffered if it had made him a little more likeable. I feel like there’s more to learn in a story about a good guy figuring out his flaws than this, its more played-out cousin, a bad-boy-made-good parable.
All that said, there was a lot to like here. Every actor in this is stellar (yes, even Tony Danza), and they deliver their performances perfectly. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is playing against type here remarkably well. Julianne Moore ends up playing a different, more complex part than I initially expected. A lot of this film focuses on recognising the complexities in human beings, and while it sometimes misses the mark (the one character who swings awkwardly between two perceived stereotypes is Scarlett Johannson, who has to fade away in order for the film’s message to unravel; I feel like this could have been handled better), by and large it has some fairly complex lessons to impart.
What it does shine a light on is pornification - the sort of word that I used to think only radical feminists used, usually with “of womyn” appended to it - and how it’s starting to get a little insidious. There’s a moment during the film where a TV in the background starts playing an absurd advert for the burger chain Carl’s Jr, and it instantly diverts the attention of every character in the room. Because nothing says sexy like chomping into a dead animal. It’s not even anti-porn, per se - it’s more an examination of how the familiar beats of porn (which Jon deconstructs in a manner that’s almost pathetic) can be jarring when paired up to sex itself.
There’s maybe something wider in this, too, though. This whole film seems to be getting at the idea of performativity - as time goes by, the way the film itself is presented gets progressively less stylised, and (figuratively speaking) more naked; the characters have to shine through the screen, rather than being presented on a silver platter. Jon goes from a swaggering hyper-real chauvinist to someone altogether more complex.
It’s still all a little neat and tidy, as you might expect a film like this to be, but it’s a thousand miles away from (500) Days of Summer. Arguably, this - a film in which the condescending male lead refers to his ex-girlfriend as a bitch half a dozen times in a row, and whines like a baby about the idea of cunnilingus - is more of a feminist manifesto than its thematic counterpart could ever aspire to be. This has a message to impart that still feels fresh after you think about it, rather than fooling you into taking the same tired message as something new.