Substantial

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Body horror isn’t my favorite, but The Substance was so widely acclaimed that I figured I needed to see it.  It’s easy to see why it was so well received—it is not only well done, it also packs a lot of social commentary into the story.  I hadn’t read about the plot before seeing it, and it occurred to me that the theme wasn’t dissimilar from Edgar Allan Poe’s “William Wilson,” but from the point of view of a woman who’s been celebrated for her good looks and finds herself aging out.  Elisabeth Sparkle has had a successful television personal fitness series for years.  When she turns fifty, however, studio executives decide she has to be replaced with someone younger.  The men in the movie are portrayed in an unflattering light, unable to curb their appetites, while Elisabeth has to stay in shape, remain “beautiful,” to find any work at all.

Then a doctor furtively informs her about “the substance.”  It comes with few instructions, but it causes a person to create a new version of themselves—younger, more attractive—but they must swap out their existence every week.  One week the younger body is active while the older body is comatose and then they keep on switching weekly.  The younger Elisabeth, named Sue, takes Sparkle’s job and becomes a hit.  Her fitness show, highly sexualized, quickly gains ratings.  Sue has boyfriends and glamour.  Elisabeth awakes to find the apartment a mess and starts to regret the doubling.  The advertising for the substance repeats the message, the two of you are one.  Then Sue starts to “stay out late,” taking a few extra hours before switching.  This causes Elisabeth to age, in pieces, very rapidly.  She takes her revenge on Sue by overeating and leaving the apartment a mess.

Of course this is building to a big finish, which I won’t describe here.  There are a number of themes the film asks us to ponder.  Women are expected to stay young to be valued by the men who control the money.  The divided self comes to hate itself.  And there is little recourse for those whose careers reward them richly for being young but who will live well beyond that with only the memories and regrets of what they no longer have.  Although the movie is deliberately comic in many respects, it is also a sad story.  Expectations are unreasonable and unrealistic, and women have to play by the rules set by men.   The Substance has depth and pathos.  And pointed social commentary.

Double the Magic

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Since The Prestige came out over a decade ago I’m not going to worry too much about spoilers below.  This post also comes with another caveat: if you watch this film you’ll be left scratching your head and finding yourself strongly tempted to punch the replay button immediately.  Like most Christopher Nolan films, the movie is complex and intelligent.  It also plays on an age-old horror theme of the doppelgänger.  There be spoilers here!  

Following the rivalry of two stage magicians seeking the ultimate illusion, there’s a great deal of sleight of hand in the way this movie manipulates its viewers.  You are in the audience of a magic show and you’ve volunteered to go up on stage.  I watched this film on the recommendation of a friend without even checking the genre.  That can be a disorienting experience in itself.  One of the first questions we bring to movies as well as to texts is “what kind is it?”  I had the assurance that it was “the good kind” and that was about all.  That assessment was right.  While the credits rolled—it was already late at night, for me—I was strongly tempted to start it all over.  Sometimes people ask me why I watch horror films (and no, this is not horror) and I think the answer is related to what I find here.  Like most people I want the advice of others on what to do should things go wrong.  And in The Prestige they do go wrong.  Spoilers follow.

The crux of the film involves actual doppelgängers that result from Nikola Tesla’s experiments.  Tesla was a mysterious person in real life, and without knowing the genre you can watch this film and find it believable.  There’s a kind of faith involved in movie-going, after all.  One of the early exploiters of the doppelgänger was Edgar Allan Poe.  In “William Wilson” he narrates a tale of a double that might indeed be the real William Wilson.  The Prestige plays the same card.  Most of us live knowing that daily our senses can be fooled.  We actually enjoy it once in a while.  Stage magicians stake their livelihoods on it.  Nolan is a master of bringing complex twists to the silver screen.  In Holy Horror I briefly discuss his Memento.  I have a suspicion that I might’ve had more to say about it had I watched this film earlier, with a copy of Poe in hand.