Bill Murray deserves perfect happiness, and an Academy Award
Here’s a list of things I thought whilst wolfing down every last delicious minute of On the Rocks, the feature film Sofia Coppola has ever so kindly put together for Apple +:
I wonder what Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez thinks of all this old money.
Do people mostly call Marlon and Damon Wayans (Jr.) up to play unfeasibly smooth, understanding black boyfriends, and do I have a problem with that, per se?
Will people still shoot good old-fashioned New York movies post-pandemic? If so, will they pretend the pandemic never happened in order to focus on the capers and societal mishaps at hand? Are my Sofia Coppola chops kinda weak?
Has the Academy already awarded Bill Murray one of those lifetime achievement Oscars? If not, does it bother him as much as it does me?
And now, a review of sorts.
On Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Old Money, & (Specifically) ‘On the Rocks’.
If Bernie Sanders gave birth to the modern socialist (the less dirty word is ‘progressive’) movement in the world’s most powerful democracy, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez super-charged it. The lady was a professional bartender in the Bronx, then she knocked like hell on a bunch of doors and displaced a better-funded incumbent to represent her district in the House of Congress. Even if, like me, you don’t happen to live or vote in the United States, AOC has made it perfectly natural - even fashionable - to at least reconsider your stance on capitalism.
In On the Rocks, Laura (Rashida Jones) suspects her high-flying husband is cheating on her with a superstar co-worker at his shiny new advertising business. Laura seems exhausted — by her marriage, by motherhood, by having to write and edit books for a living, and by the antics of her eccentric father (Bill, of course, Murray). Felix strolls into view with the ease of a man who’s only ever discussed income inequality at cocktail parties. He has the time, money and power to put tracers on Dean (Marlon Wayans), whose business is so ascendant he seems to reside in meetings, on aeroplanes.
Laura accepts Felix’s help reluctantly. It isn’t just that the spectre of her dad’s own infidelity looms over things. You can’t help but figure she hates to spend his money, despite half-heartedly sleuthing round street corners, past red lights, and all the way into neighbouring countries. Maybe this is why Laura’s in publishing, because that’s where a certain kind of rich kid goes to reject — or at least postpone — the gift of inherited wealth.
Do I bristle uncomfortably when Jack chats up literally every woman in his path, or charms his way out of a police stop-over, or generally just wins at life, because he happens to be an old white man? I’m afraid no. Murray swaggers too damn well, and Coppola raises such clouds for him to walk across.
On the Younger Wayans Bros & Typecasting.
I hate to be unfair to Ms. Coppola, who has at least (also) cast Ms. Jones (who is mixed race) in the lead role here. I just don’t know what to make of the cinematic stereotype that sometimes positions young black men, and specifically these young black men, as the reasonably successful partners of distressed white women. They’re either unbearably hunky and clueless (see Marlon, again, beside Sandra Bullock in The Heat), or just unbearably hunky (see Damon Wayans Jr., soon, in Netflix’s rather icky Love Guaranteed).
It’s not that young black men can’t be reasonably successful, unbearably hunky, or clueless, or even date distressed white women; it’s that they don’t get to react to the world around them, to the plot, and thus escape this unfortunate cardboard.
I love to see a Wayans brother, any Wayans brother, getting work. But I’d have particularly loved to see this one do just a little bit more than slip in and out of meetings.
On Sofia Coppola, & Simple New York Movies.
I don’t know about you, but I tend to pick my movies based on who’s directing. I usually have a reference point or something, just so I can make my own way round the party, help myself if I need a refill or whatever. How serendipitous, then, that one of the most gratifying Bill Murray experiences on camera, 2003’s Lost in Translation, was shot by Ms. Coppola herself.
On the Rocks moves exactly as if it’s the product of Hollywood royalty. Coppola’s touch is so delicate I spent half the time hitting rewind just to experience anew the softness, deftness, with which she captures a room, lights up a street, punctuates a sentence. This movie — and dare I say a Sofia Coppola movie — is shot so that you have no excuse. You’re supposed to absorb every last detail, and every detail is sliced like chocolate cake: Jones walking the streets alone, in a state of writer’s and also wife’s block; Murray’s jacket selections; the way all of Coppola’s characters, actually, use words to navigate dinner tables, awkward elevator rides, New York itself.
Coppola has taken it upon herself to shoot a picture with a simple, old-fashioned premise — that’s technology-free — and the results are absolutely sumptuous. Does it bother me that this is a world she’s intimately familiar with, because of who she happens to be? Not one bit, I’m afraid.
On Bill Murray Being Due Another Oscar Nom.
Bill Murray must be my favourite person in movies, and if he’s not yours that probably explains why we don’t know each other personally. In Wes Anderson flicks (and particularly The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou), he cuts a wry, wistful figure that constantly and perfectly personifies that director’s whimsy.
When Murray feels like, he can walk that energy onto other people’s film sets without breaking a sweat or having to compromise any core values. He couldn’t give two shits about a zombie apocalypse when he’s killing it in the Zombieland franchise, or even whether it’s high art or not. You want him to play a cad with money, that’ll carelessly and unwittingly sabotage his daughter’s marriage in order to (beg your pardon) spend time with her, you say? Murray brings it home and then some, and he deserves an Academy Award, the first dose of a vaccine certainly, for doing so.
By the time you get round to watching On the Rocks, I’ll probably have seen it three more times.
‘On the Rocks’ is available to stream on Apple +
