Wendy and Lucy (Review)

You might think a movie that honestly portrays the life of a destitute person would cause me to cheer. Think again (or maybe in this case I should say, "try thinking").


Imagine this scene: A helicopter hovers above a Katrina victim dying of thirst on a rooftop. Two reporters are watching from above and one instinctively grabs a bottle of water to drop below, but is stopped by his colleague. "Dude, don't give him that water! It's a much better story if he dies!" (Kirk Douglass actually did a great film on this subject). Wendy and Lucy is the fictional equivalent of that .

Nothing like laughing at the homeless for entertainment. Don't give me all this garbage about sympathetic portrayals and realism and sobbing in the theater. It's for yourself for whom you cry. The evidence for that is in the horrific headlines every day. If you're not going to question why something happens then you condemn your fellow man to the fate of the Light Brigade. Showing torment without questioning is cheap sensationalism.

I can hear the director's thinking now, speaking in earnest and Oscar-worthy tones: "I don't want to attach her doom to any particular cause because that could detract from the direness of her position as people then deconstruct her situation and possibly try to lay blame. What I want - what I need as a director, nay as a human - is to show the injustice of any suffering. That it should never exist for any reason!"

That's so Miss America of you.

"I don't believe anyone
should suffer either."
But there is a reason why she's suffering, you chickenshit fuck. Show me the reason! Say that if you believe money should be valued over people (as 99% of people do), that this is what happens (or at least pick some starting point). Nothing ensures doom more than failing to question. I live in a country that believes just the opposite of that. No one asks if things really do have to be this way. Aw, you poor dumb bastard world, the times they are a-changin'! You just don't get it yet.

All the lefties will stand up and applaud this film for making it seem like they care while sparing them the pain of asking why. Trust me, I understand we crucify people for placing life above all. I understand it undermines the value system of our society and places the blame of economic murder on our own hands instead of God's (or whatever you blame). Yes, the woman suffers - but she suffers for a manmade reason.

Some will argue that showing such suffering will cause people to ask why and that will make them care. If you think this will make people care, well, that's really funny. I mean, that actually makes me chuckle. ("Did you hear about this film that came out in 2009? People care now!") Go ahead and ramp up the propaganda machine, it bothers me not. For it is this I believe in all measures: "By their fruits ye shall know them." And that's all I have to say to a dying planet wrecked by its own inhabitants.

If the director uses this speech to accept his Oscar, though, then all is forgiven: "Thanks for dying out there, you gave me a really great film!"