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I Care A Lot 一句话影评： The storytelling is so good, acting so good, until you realize the story is so … 三观不正 😤
If you are intrigued by Rosamond Pike’s unfeeling, first-rate psychopathic smart bitch in Gone Girl, then you will watch I Care a Lot as soon as you have the chance. Well, that’s what I did. And it was the first movie I watched in 2023 — by Jove, how it angered me.
Two minutes into the movie, it is living up to the poster’s promise of badass-ness. Pike plays Marla Grayson, who does the voice-over in the opening monologue synopsizing her worldview: this is a world of either winners or losers, predators or prey, lions or lambs. Black or white, no middle ground. An all too familiar worldview to the point of hackneyed, but Pike’s delivery, her cadence, is top-notch. In this strictly dichotomous world, Marla declares:
“I am not a lamb. I am a fucking lioness.”
Suspense is a foundational trick to hold the audience’s attention. The opening scene does this by the discord between what you see on the screen and what you hear. You hear Marla briefing you on her Ayn Randian philosophy (which has a lot of avid supporters in the far right, something to keep in mind when thinking about why the movie is terrible), but you see images of an orderly care facility where the staff seem attentive to the elderly, and then a disheveled, chubby man trying to break into the facility, only to be quickly seized by some brawny guards.
If you are minimally familiar with the science of storytelling, you know that suspense helps to release dopamine, the so-called happiness hormone. When you anticipate a reward, in the case of storytelling, when you expect that everything will be accounted for by the end of the movie, your brain produces dopamine. This opening scene is your first shot of dopamine.
The next scene quickly explains what is going on. We are now in a courtroom. Turns out, the mother of the disheveled man, Feldstrom, is in the care facility, to which he is denied access. The court appoints Marla as his mother’s guardian, giving her license to deny Feldstrom visits to his own mother. Marla is also entitled to sell the mother’s house, car, valuable belongings and then use the money to pay herself for her service as the court-appointed guardian.
If this sounds crooked, it is. Feldstrom adds that Marla is a total stranger both to him and his mother, and his mother has explicitly said that she doesn’t want to be put in a care facility.
Just when you think Marla is the bad guy in the story, here comes the twist.
Marla defends herself, first by portraying the son as irresponsible: “Your mother couldn’t cope on her own. A doctor diagnosed her with dementia, Mr Feldstrom, and wrote an affidavit recommending immediate action be take for her safety. You have amply opportunity to move your mother into a care facility or into your home. You did neither.” When parents abuse or for whatever reason can’t take proper care of their children, we think it reasonable for the government and the judicial system to step in. The same goes to elderly who aren’t properly cared for. So far so good, Marla seems reasonable.
When Feldstrom objects to Marla’s accusation by saying that her mother begged not to be taken to a care facility, Marla makes a clever distinction: “You can’t care for her by doing what she wants. You have to do what she needs. And that is why I can care better than a family member because I have no skin in the game. … yes, I oversaw the sale of some of her assets to finance [her bills in the care facility], and yes, I pay myself, too, because caring, sir, is my job. … All-day, every day, I care.”
You have to admire the concision in her speech, her dazzling use of differentiation, addressing counterargument, and appealing to ethos. And it makes sense. Kids surely want all the sugar they can get and more. But that’s not what they need. The same logic applies to those with dementia. Marla becomes less the greedy predator preying on the vulnerable, and more the strong-willed businesswoman who does what might seem ruthless but necessary.
She continues: “I care for those who are in need of protection. Protection from apathy, protection from their own pride, and quite often, protection from their own children. … offspring, who are willing to let their parents starve in squalor and struggle with pain rather than dip into what they see as their inheritance to pay for the necessary care.” By this point, we begin to suspect that Feldstrom is actually the greedy one.
At the same time, Marla’s argumentation is so tactical, the intonation so calculated, that it just lacks authenticity. You can’t be entirely sure: is Marla a good guy, or a bad guy? There, uncertainty over the main character — you have your second shot of dopamine. With questions like this, we keep watching.
Mind you, this is only less than seven minutes into the movie, and Feldstrom has gone from being the bad guy to the not so bad guy and then again the bad (in the sense of incompetent) guy, and the ruthless Marla with her problematic worldview becomes a respectable professional.
这么紧凑的人物翻转制造了「爽剧」的效果。不得不佩服好莱坞故事产业的成熟。
The next scene, we see Marla Grayson walking down the stairs outside the courthouse, with full-on badassery. Feldstrom comes after her. He is wearing a red cap again. Looks like he can be a Trump supporter. And he’s calling her “bitch.” He’s in a rage. Words are flushing out of his mouth: “I hope you get raped, and I hope you get murdered, and I hope you get killed!” And he spits on her face. His vulgarity is complete. But his anger also makes you think that he’s truly the victim. Feldstrom is surely an uncivilized, undereducated person for losing his cool like that, but … it could be you — you may have said something similar on social media, in response to some monster doing something flagrantly dehumanizing… Again, you are not sure whether Marla is the good guy or bad guy, and therefore you are not sure if Feldstrom’s outburst is justified.
And here comes the problematic part. Marla takes off her sunglasses and looks ferociously into Feldstrom’s eyes: “Does it sting more because I’m a woman? That you got so soundly beaten in there by someone with a vagina? Having a penis doesn’t automatically make you more scary to me, just the opposite. You may be a man, but if you ever threaten, touch or spit on me again… I will grab your dick and balls and I will rip them clean off, you understand? I’ll tell your mom you send your best.”
This is a calculated move to make the female audience feel so good, no? You had been belittled at least once, so indelibly, just because you are a girl/woman, and this is exactly what you wanted to say to the offender had you had the guts (which you didn’t). So hearing Marla say that so collectedly just makes you feel wonderful. If you feel that way, that’s due to something called mirror neurons, “brain cells that fire not only when we perform an action but when we observe someone else perform the same action.” 看节目主持人在享受美食的时候，自己也馋了，即使你的理性告诉你那不是真正的食物，而是像素构成的幻影。
But how are men reacting to the scene? Could be something totally different. It could frighten the male audience. When you feel threatened and stressed out, you also become more focused. Scientists have long discovered that even when we don’t face a direct physical threat, as long as we begin to imagine those threats, we get stressed out, and thus more focused. You can identify with Feldstrom and feel intimidated by Marla. Or you can feel frightened for Marla in anticipation of Feldstrom’s fightback.
Or, it can be that the masculine part of you feels threatened, and the feminine part of you feels elated. If you can simultaneously feel these two things, oh boy, you are getting the optimal experience. Cortisol is the attention hormone, and oxytocin the bonding hormone. Cortisol combined with oxytocin can give you the experience of transportation (“transport” in the sense of being overwhelmed “with a strong emotion, especially joy”).
The second time watching this scene, though, I just rolled my eyes at Marla, because in the next eighteen minutes, the good-guy-bad-guy suspense is completely resolved. The next eighteen minutes show you how Marla capitalizes on the loopholes in the medical and legal system, how she takes advantage of the human weakness of automatically following orders and trusting authority figures, how she preys on those with insufficient legal resources, and what she claims as “care” is actually just grift.
As in Gone Girl, Pike once again plays the female villain character in I Care A Lot. Only this time, her character Marla is a lesbian, which frees her from the obligation of playing along with the modern, enlightened men’s fantasy about modern, enlightened women. Marla can express her contempt for men explicitly, whereas in Gone Girl the Cool Girl Amy has to convey her contempt through elaborate schemes.
It is really worth the while to revisit the famed Cool Girl passage in Gone Girl, for those too young to have watched or heard of the film:
That night at the Brooklyn party, I was playing the girl who was in style, the girl a man like Nick wants: the Cool Girl. Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl. Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl...Oh, and if you’re not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesn’t want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version—maybe he’s vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe he’s a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics. There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every f***ing thing he likes and doesn’t ever complain. (How do you know you’re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like “I like strong women.” If he says that to you, he will at some point f*** someone else. Because “I like strong women” is code for “I hate strong women.”
Gone Girl is invested in the plight of contemporary women, while I Care A Lot is not — the pseudo-feminist things Marla says only bring cheap gratification. Cool Girl Amy’s transgression consists of framing men for stalking, rape, and murder, of putting men to social death and behind bars. But Marla’s seeming transgression of heteronormative sexuality is only a masquerade for her real transgression: her subscription to a macho capitalist logic.
Let me quickly sum up the rest of I Care A Lot. Marla collides with a doctor to induce signs of dementia in a rich old lady. Then Marla becomes the legal guardian of that rich old lady, Jennifer Peterson. But Jennifer turns out to be the mother of a super rich and powerful Russian man, Roman, whose business includes human trafficking. Roman kills the doctor and makes it look like suicide, in an attempt to frighten Marla into forfeiting her guardianship on his mother. Marla remains undaunted. So Roman tries to kill Marla, and fails; he tries to kill Marla’s girlfriend Fran, and also fails. The two failed attempts are irritating, I know, because they just make the story implausible. And it gets more irritating. Set on go big or go home, Marla gets back at Roman, and succeeds: she miraculously becomes Roman’s legal guardian, and puts a $10 million price tag on Roman’s freedom.
Here comes another twist. Roman proposes an alternative to the $10 million: “Instead of me giving you $10 million… we become partners, go into business together. … I hate you… but, oh, the money we could make. You’re a rare person, Marla. Your determination is… Frankly, it’s scary. But this guardianship grift, it’s ripe, but right now it’s small potatoes. I propose we create a monster… a countrywide guardianship corporation, with you as CEO and co-owner. Use my money, use your… skills. Destroy the competition. Take control of the entire market.”
Yes, the two persons that for the most part of the movie try to kill each other become business partners at the end! Two absolutely depraved capitalists joining forces! 没有永远的敌人，不要跟钱过不去 — 这是整部电影的底层逻辑。The director/scriptwriter must have this twist, which veers the theme of the movie toward the triumph of capitalism, to sustain audience engagement and achieve its own capitalist, commercial success. Obscene!
And brace yourself for the most f**ked-up part of the movie. Marla accepts the partnership and achieves CEO of a publicly traded company level of success at the age of 39. She just finishes a TV interview and she’s walking to her car. Feldstrom walks up to her and fires gunshot at her heart. Feldstrom never gets to see his mom and his mom just died alone in the care facility. So he shoots Marla in the heart. This time, Marla completely fails to fire back with words. It is implied that she is killed on the spot.
I was screaming (in my head) at this point. A f**king greedy, immoral capitalist, empowered by another wealthy, immoral capitalist, unstopped by the court and the government, or rather, aided by the incompetent people in the legal system and corrupted doctors, only to be killed by an incel kind of guy? The only effective solution to ending injustice and capitalist avarice is pure gun violence in the most American style? As the closing credits music begins, I was yelling in my head: NO! That CAN’T be how the story ends! Movies are supposed to satisfy viewers’ deepest fantasies, and this one does not satisfy my fantasy that justice can be restored through nonviolent, rational means, through legal measures, and through investigative journalism. After all that shit that happened in 2022, after all those people that disappeared, this is the last movie I needed. I wanted movies to represent messy reality, not this kind of bullshit fairytale. I was so angry that I even began to suspect the director/scriptwriter is some sort of closeted Republican incel funded by far-right groups. I realized I needed Spotlight kind of movies.
After watching the movie, I spent an hour watching videos about Elizabeth Holmes.
