Part 2: REVIEWS OF EVERY MOVIE in MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATION
I have never seen any of these movies.
Welcome back to “Reviews of All the Movies Mentioned in My Year of Rest and Relaxation, the novel.”
As I wrote the book, I noticed that the protagonist was mentioning movies that I, Ottessa Moshfegh, had never actually seen. Did I feel I needed to watch these films in order to know how to handle the narrator’s sense of them?
No. What mattered in these instances was the essence of a film, not the actual film. And maybe that’s the sign of a great film—when it can hover around and carry with it its distinct spirit such that, even to people who don’t watch it, it has profound meaning.
So here is what I think about the following movies, which I still haven’t seen.
Please weigh in at the bottom, comments are open to paid subscribers.
Let’s start off simple and look at page 10:
“I wanted to be an artist, but I had no talent,” I told her.
“Do you really need talent?”
That might have been the smartest thing Reva ever said to me.
“Yes,” I replied.
She got up and tick-tocked across the floor in her heels and shut the door softly behind her. I took a few Xanax and ate a few animal crackers and stared at the wrinkled seat of the empty armchair. I got up and put in “Tin Cup,” and watched it half-heartedly as I dozed on the sofa….
Tin Cup (1996)
(To be fair, the description of this movie is incomplete because the narrator didn’t finish watching it.)
Here’s a magic trick. Put on a backwards baseball cap, a white undershirt, get a really good tan, and then dig a hole in your backyard. Dig as deep as you can dig. You can cheat and hire a guy with an excavator (or DIY). Whatever. Just dig.
You’ll know when to stop digging when you find something buried way deep down: a tin cup. It’s a magic tin cup!
This is the story of a golf pro who is forced into early retirement due to sex addiction. But he knows about the tin cup secret, so he goes for it.
One night he fills his tin cup with his own tears, and Rene Russo pops out. She’s like: “You can either have sex with me, or I’ll grant you three wishes.”
No spoilers…
Next, let’s look at this passage on page 72:
On my visits to Rite-Aid to pick up my pills, I’d buy a pre-owned VHS tape, maybe a box of microwave popcorn, sometimes a two-liter bottle of Diet Sprite if I felt I had the strength to carry it home. Those cheap movies were usually terrible—“Showgirls,” “Enemy of the State,” “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” starring Jonathan Taylor Thomas, whose face unnerved me— but I didn’t mind watching them once or twice. The stupider the movie, the less my mind had to work.
“Showgirls” (1995)
Jessie Spano from “Saved By the Bell” moves to Las Vegas and gets sucked into the cutthroat world of competitive stripping. There’s a million bucks on the line and Jessie Spano needs it…
Every member of Jessie’s family is dying of a disease that kills off parts of your body until you’re just a head-width column of flesh with one leg. They all need expensive surgery, and they don’t have health insurance.
But they’re patriots. They’re not Communists. Paying for healthcare is just an extension of “survival of the fittest,” which is how humans became the best most superior best number one species. Like good Americans, they say to Jessie, “Look, if we’re going to die, we’re going to die.”
To complicate matters, Jessie Spano is a Communist. She hates money. And she thinks stripping is degrading. She’s also fiercely Christian. A woman of many contradictions already, her core values are further challenged by her love for her family. It’s all so fucked up. Eventually, she’s like, “Screw Darwin. We all deserve a chance. Even the head-width column-shaped people.”
If you lack the courage to imagine the abolition of private property and you like sexy dancing, this one’s for you.
10/10
Enemy of the State (1998)
After his Aunt Viv kicks him out of her mansion in Bel Air, our favorite Oscar winner finds himself in some very deep doo-doo…