You got me Sam Levinson! Your gorgeous trailer for Malcolm & Marie promised an exquisite experience from all angles, and I was ready to be sucked in. And then Zendaya and John David Washington started fighting….and fighting….and fighting some more. Maybe Netflix decided it needed a movie to drain its audience emotionally to the point where they just wanted to go to bed, because after watching M&M, that’s all I wanted to do. Then in that case, mission accomplished?
Malcolm’s (John David Washington) big movie premiere just ended. He’s riding high from his big night, excited to be home and celebrate with his long standing girlfriend Marie (Zendaya). Marie, however, is simply being quiet while Malcolm screams on high. Eventually he notices, and presses her on why she seems mad. As you’d expect, when you poke holes in a dam, the floodgates eventually burst open.
Malcolm & Marie should have been a Broadway Play first, but 2020 shut down live theatre. Ergo, Netflix picked up the slack. Levinson’s script means well, and is lyrically written as well as any script or verse I’ve heard. But here’s the thing: it’s really hard to make a couple’s fight entertaining. By going for honesty and realism in his tete a tete, Levinson’s scripted fights hit a point that all real fights do: they become circular and repetitive in their logic, they resort to inflicting as much emotional pain as possible, and carry a meanness that becomes exhausting if it goes on for long periods of time. By minute 30, it becomes clear that Marie and Malcolm have said what they wanted to say, so the rest of this fight is about who “wins.” But like in all deep cutting conversations, no one’s a winner, especially the audience. The beats of the fight remain the same, and just repeat, over and over. No matter how well written something is, inherently discomforting material never ceases to make you uncomfortable, which Malcolm & Marie will do to you.
So why isn’t the movie’s rating lower? Well, because once the repetition started, I started tuning out the words and quickly realized I should have just watched the movie on mute. Everything onscreen is gorgeous to look at. The in between fight montages showcase the modern wonder of Marie and Malcolm’s house, finding angles that show their imprisonment one moment and openness the next. The music selection exudes that ultra hipness the movie wants you to feel. Plus, in the end, Zendaya and JDW are two of the prettiest people on the planet; you can’t help but fixate on them as they give their all to this story and try to will it into something watchable.
If you want to see the best possible version of a movie fight, watch Before Midnight. That movie understands what Malcolm & Marie doesn’t: that movie fights are better if they start shallow and end deep, and mix up the emotional scale in about 30 minutes or so at most. However, none of what I say matters for Malcolm & Marie; Levinson has a critic eviscerating diatribe that uses the demagogue logic to perfection: “don’t listen to them on their lofty judgy perch, listen to me!” Smart move sir, you just keep fighting, while I put your movie on mute and enjoy the eye candy…