a look back at 'coven' by justin lockwood

Following the finale of "Coven," the latest season of Ryan Murphy’s anthology American Horror Story, I went back and watched parts of the earlier episodes.  There were some terrific scenes, notably those between Jessica Lange’s devious, self-absorbed Supreme witch Fiona and the other female leads, Angela Bassett’s fact-based voodoo queen Marie Laveau and Kathy Bates’ cruel Madame Delphine LaLaurie, also a historical figure.  Their scenes together crackle with intensity and pathos, fueled by terrific performances from the women involved and sharp writing.  They imply the season’s primary themes: the complicated, fraught relationships between women as their roles have evolved over time, and an unsubtle, powerful dramatization of race relations writ large.  These themes were further developed by stunning set pieces like a torch wielding black mob, led by Marie, lynching LaLaurie’s family and entombing her below the ground and, later, a 1960s youth hung by white men, his death avenged by resurrected Confederate soldiers.

Unfortunately, "Coven" cast its net too widely beyond these potent conflicts, encompassing so many characters and mini-arcs that the central dramas got a bit lost in the shuffle.  Even the season long McGuffin—who would be the next Supreme?—took a back seat at times to diversions like “FrankenKyle,” a good-hearted frat boy turned monster involved in a love triangle with young witches Zoe (Taissa Farmiga) and Madison (a perfectly bitchy Emma Roberts).  Perhaps the best illustration of "Coven's" misguided attempt to do too damn much is its failure to produce an iconic monster in the style of the first two seasons.  While season 1 had Rubber Man and season 2 gave us Bloodyface, "Coven" stumbled by offering us three candidates: the Minotaur LaLaurie created out of Marie’s lover, the reality-based Ax Man of New Orleans (Danny Huston), and the demonic Papa Legba.  The Minotaur was dispatched early on—perhaps a twist meant to keep us guessing, but one which just felt anticlimactic.  Huston’s seductive, powerful work as the Ax Man made him memorable, but the series didn’t seem to know quite what to do with him.  Was he the love of Fiona’s life?  A mere pawn in the war between witches and their hunters, and Fiona and the witches themselves?  His ending with Fiona—apparently for her, Hell is domesticity with one dude—didn’t really make sense.  Both Fiona, who wreaked endless havoc in her life, and the Ax Man, who was all too happy to be stuck with Fiona for all time, seemingly deserved far worse than their fates.  Meanwhile, Legba was certainly striking, smoothly portrayed by Lance Reddick in creepy makeup and costume, but he should have been more prominent in the final episodes.  Instead, he, too, was shouldered aside by the wrapping up of countless loose threads like that FrankenKyle triangle.  (Spoiler alert: the doomed end of Farmiga and Peters’ relationship in season one was infinitely more satisfying than this season’s ho-hum happy ending.)

By the end, "Coven" was apparently intended as the story of two women: Fiona and her daughter Cordelia (Sarah Paulson).  LaLaurie and Marie met their fates in the second to last episode, fittingly trapped in an eternity of vengeance against each other in a Legba designed Hell.  The last episode focuses on the reality-TV like “Seven Wonders” challenge for the Supremacy.  Queenie (Gabourey Sidibe), after navigating a minefield of racial and sexual (dig that Minotaur seduction scene!) politics, ends up second in command to a white lady.  Zoe meets the same fate, after escaping an Emo sounding Hell of endless breakups with her undead boy toy. (Really, guys?  That’s her Hell?  Snooze.)  Then there’s Misty, the awesome Stevie Nicks loving Swamp Witch who seemed like an early favorite for Supreme.  She gets… condemned to a Hell in which she’s a tormented freak endlessly killing and resurrecting a frog in science class.  This one was a real head scratcher.  Misty was the least deserving of such an awful fate, having killed no one and resurrected half the cast with her benevolent magic. Apparently it was meant to be tragic irony, but to quote every college Fiction Writing class ever, It Didn’t Feel Earned.  By the end, Fiona re-emerges, ravaged by cancer and confronting the daughter she never knew how to love, who’s been named Supreme and encourages her mom to at long last accept her own mortality.  It’s a fitting end for both women—and a nice counterpoint to the Asylum finale, in which Paulson was the mom putting her insane son out of his personal misery—but it should have been supported by a season’s worth of narrower focus on both story arcs.  Paulson had her bad ass moments— mainly both times she was blind—and Lange had her share of juicy scenes, but this was more testament to the talent of the actresses than to the material itself.  As Lana and Sister Jude, respectively, Paulson and Lange emerged as the dark, transformed hearts of the sensational Asylum, evolving in ways that felt organic and well thought out.  To trace their character arcs in "Coven," one has to gleam on to bits and pieces scattered amidst mountains of speed plotting, crazy characters, and shock value. (Regarding Patti Lupone’s fundamentalist mom, Mare Winningham’s incestuous one, and about a dozen other odds and ends—um, what the heck was that all about?) For next season, which has a 1950s setting that sounds quite promising, I encourage Murphy to focus less on an endless supply of nuttiness and more on just a few killer characters and themes.  Your repertory company of kick ass women (and men) will make it more than worth our while without so many bells and whistles.


-Justin Lockwood

precious discovery

For those who haven't seen Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, you're in for a rare treat. Just how many films come out with a predominantly black female cast? There are many breakthrough performances in Precious but the real discovery is Gabourey Sidibe.

My friend Chantelle sent me this video from CBS Evening News. It's amazing to see some footage from Gabourey's audition and the way she transformed her personality and her voice to be Claireece 'Precious' Jones.

precious

Precious is the girl some may laugh or gawk at or turn their eyes away from. Overweight, abused, illiterate, 16 and on her second baby (her father's), Sapphire gave her an utterly convincing and arresting voice in the 1995 novel Push. In the captivating and ambitious new film adaptation by Lee Daniels, we are invited visually into Precious's harrowing story. Set in 1987, at the peak of the Reagan/Bush era and the AIDS crisis, it's a distinctly grim American tale of the marginalized but also a hopeful look at the strength of the human spirit. Shut out from learning at an overburdened and out-of-touch public school system, Precious is stuck in junior high, unable to rise above the second grade reading level. At home, she is sexually abused by her father (whose face is absent throughout the picture) and her mother (played with ferocity by Mo'Nique). When Precious is given the chance to attend a small vocational school for other female outcasts of the system, a teacher (an angelic but steely Paula Patton) named Blu Rain guides her out of illiteracy and into the world of self-expression through writing.

It's a stunning film and a difficult one to write about. There are few films like it. Melodramatic, raw and at times, funny, Precious has a sort of European, lives-by-its own-rules flair. Daniels moves out of the horror of Precious's predicament into sequences of fantasy. These are skillfully but not smoothly done. In one scene, Precious looks at herself as a white girl in a mirror adorned with Cyndi Lauper cutouts. In another, Daniels puts Precious and her mother in Two Women (the Italian Sophia Loren film about a mother and daughter who are raped). Some critics have seemed to have missed the meaning of this reference, assuming a poor black woman wouldn't be watching a subtitled film on television. All at once, Daniels suggests why not, maybe not, and who cares? The scene is funny and moving. These touches of the surreal made me think of other directors like Gus Van Sant, Truffaut and Bergman. And yet, why compare Lee Daniels to other white directors in order to "validate" his work? Here he proves that he is uniquely and bravely his own filmmaker.

Anyone who can pull such an unfussy, solid performance out of Mariah Carey certainly has a gift. Stripped of cosmetics and ditz, she is completely convincing in a small but pivotal role as a hardened social worker. Newcomer Gabourey Sidibe as Precious is a natural. She delivers poignant voice-overs, movements and expressions. But the standout really is Mo'Nique. The comedienne's devastating turn is worth the hype. Not only through her broad, operatic anger and emotional breakdowns but in more subtle ways as well. In a stunning scene, where she dons a wig and switches personalities to appease a social worker, we watch her character's desperation and cunning manipulation. Besides the principals, the whole cast is brilliant.

I wonder if my strong views of the film could be shaded by my film-going experience. A sold out showing Friday night at Lincoln Square, the crowd was thoroughly engaged and the response afterward, rapturous. This is rare nowadays for such a potent drama. I remember a gentleman once telling me about his experience watching Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in the theater in 1966 ("it was electric"). After the film, Lee Daniels graciously took to the mic to take questions. This will obviously be a huge hit (it already broke records for per-theater-weekend average) and so far, 2009's likely Best Picture winner. I hope this film will be groundbreaking in inspiring studios to finance black filmmakers. It may spurn much debate over race, social issues and character depictions (for this, please read insightful thoughts on Jezebel and Racialicious). But for now, I'm just happy to have witnessed such a great new American film. ****

-Jeffery Berg

precious

Lee Daniels's new film Precious looks so good. Especially the performances by newcomer Gabourey 'Gabby' Sidibe, Mo'Nique, and Mariah Carey. My friend Rio was lucky enough to see it at Sundance where it swept the awards (winning the Audience and the Grand Jury Prize and the Dramatic Jury Prize for Mo'Nique's performance). She has high praise for the film as well. I'm reading the book Push by Sapphire now. It's very vivid and blunt. It's eerie how the sets in the trailer look similar to the ones in my mind while I was reading.