“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but
chains and whips excite me.” –“S&M” Rihanna
It is like Inception of the Hollywood production machine. A screen adaptation
of a book culled from sexually-explicit fan fiction of a movie adaptation of a
popular teen romance novel, which itself is essentially one more gussied up
version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and
Juliet. The Bard’s play itself goes through periods of popularity and
backlash. The baby-boomer generation, who were privileged to witness Franco
Zeffirelli’s landmark film adaptation Romeo
and Juliet (1968), consider the work a great masterpiece. The millennials
however almost universally seem to hate it, having been torturously subjected
to it in high school English classes. It is a testament to the timelessness of
the star-crossed lovers’ story that all it takes to make it popular again is a
simple spit-and-polish job, and so we get Twilight.
The young adult romance novel
has caught on to an almost disturbing degree. And with it we have been
inundated with a cavalcade of big screen versions. They range from half-way
decent (The Hunger Games [2012]) to
downright terrible (Twilight: New Moon
[2009]). As is the rule with any such runaway success, there comes the
devoted fan base. One particular fan base for Twilight and others writes internet fiction that places their
favorite characters in sexually explicit situations. From here sprang the first
real adult novel of the genre, Fifty
Shades of Grey.
The book follows Anastasia
Steele and Christian Grey, who are similar, but
legally distinct (as I’m sure the publishing contract says) from Bella Swan
and Edward Cullen of Stephanie Meyers’ Twilight
series. Grey is an enigmatic billionaire with a taste for (obviously poorly researched)
S&M. Ana is a paper-thin shadow of a character whose only distinct
qualities are that she is a college English major and has a habit of biting her
lip (which many therapists I believe would consider a nervous tic). From there,
our less-than dynamic duo engage in a sexual game of cat and mouse that has
very little to do with catting or mousing and everything to do with indistinct
boundaries between abuse and foreplay.
Let’s get one thing out of the
way: as a novel, Fifty Shades of Grey by
E.L. James is a literary disaster. It’s a nightmare of bad grammar, misspelled
words, cheesy clichés, and some of the most poorly written, un-erotic sex
scenes ever put to paper. It seems to be the ultimate proof that sex is not the
only ingredient required for a sexy story. To titillate an audience, sex needs
to be the icing on a cake made from character, setting, fantasy, and most
importantly atmosphere. Without these things, sex often ends up committing that
most grievous of entertainment sins: it becomes boring.
In spite of all this, E.L. James’
book has become a runaway best seller and spawned two subsequent installments, Fifty Shades Darker, and Fifty Shades Freed. Critically panned
and categorically despised by anyone not in the ‘females aged 35 to 50’
demographic, the so-called ‘mommy porn’ saga has nevertheless gained a
dedicated following, selling millions of copies worldwide.
Perhaps the chief reason why the
phenomenon has grown is because of the characterization of the protagonist
Anastasia Steele. Rather, the distinct lack
of characterization. There really is no specific personality to Ana at all.
Sure, she loves books. But so do most people picking up this… page-turner… But
that seems to be the essence of this story’s success. Because Ms. Steele is
pretty much an empty shell, readers are free to insert themselves into the role of Christian Grey’s muse. This sort of
vicarious sexual adventure certainly has appealed to women everywhere who
fantasize about what they cannot have: a super-rich, sexy, mysterious, powerful
Adonis who can have any woman he could possibly desire, yet he chooses… you. As a result, the Grey popularity surge has become a
multi-million dollar enterprise.
Numbers of this kind always
pique the interest of Hollywood, so this year on Valentine’s Day Weekend,
movie-goers gained the opportunity to see Anastasia and Christian get down on the
big screen. With such problematic source material, it’s amazing that Fifty Shades of Grey (2015) is as good
as it is.
Sam Taylor-Johnson, who
previously directed the excellent John Lennon origin flick Nowhere Boy (2009), brings an imprecise but refreshing energy to
her direction of the material. Jamie Dornan is a bit wooden as Christian Grey,
but the space is more than filled by relative newcomer Dakota Johnson, who
brings far more life to Ana than she ever had on the page.
There are a number of tiny
details present in the film that allow Johnson to expand the character and make
the role her own. When we first meet her, she has a woefully droll haircut, an
obvious distaste for makeup, and a wardrobe that looks like it came from a
Goodwill in Portland, Oregon. As the story progresses, and Ana enters her
sexual awakening, her ensemble changes in step, gradually becoming at first
more presentable, to fashionable, to finally by the films end an array of
elegant dresses and outfits that highlight the womanhood she has emerged into.
Additionally, though the
obligatory segments from the novel where Ana and Christian fight are just as
shoe-horned in and sudden as they are in the book, Johnson manages to inject an
authentic earnest into her struggle to understand Christian’s predilections. The
final shot of the theatrical cut, which mirrors the couple’s dramatic
separation with their first meeting, is the kind of cinematic motif that doesn’t
usually make an appearance in rapidly produced blockbuster cash-ins. This
audacious flare typifies the look and feel of Fifty Shades of Grey, with visual flourishes that owe much to the
Italian giallo, with glossy surfaces,
bright primary colors, and expertly crafted set pieces. Even the nudity is much
more like the French classic Emmanuelle
(1974) than Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls
(1995). It’s classy as opposed to carnal.
About the sexuality in Fifty Shades of Grey… In spite of the stigma
and trailers showcasing Christian’s ‘Red Room of Pain’, the naughty bits of the
film only add up to about fifteen minutes out of the two hour run time. Not
only that, but the tastefulness of the scenes in question far surpasses the
rest of the film’s efforts. The novel is beyond graphic, describing every
moment between our couple in sadistic, pornographic, grammatically incorrect
detail. The movie chooses seduction over sadism, panning the camera over curves
and brief glimpses of skin, without ever really getting graphic or going beyond
the safe boundaries of the R-rating.
With that said, the content is
definitely not for children. Though gratuitous nudity and sexuality were
commonplace in the cinema during the 1970’s and 1980’s, it was largely paired
down for an extended period since the mid-1990’s. Aside from a number of
foreign films and a few steamy romances such as Original Sin (2001) (a remake of Francois Truffaut’s Mississippi Mermaid (1969), starring the
porcelain beauty Catherine Deneuve), nudity in film as of late has been mostly
brief. It can hardly be described as graphic.
Only in the past few years has
there been a resurgence; a presence of sexual romance in films aimed squarely at
adults. It is a refreshing change for an upcoming generation of movie-goers who
have entered adulthood after teenage years backed to the gills with Disney and
Pixar. A quick peek reveals that the recent flood of popular book adaptations
are mostly to blame. The Girl with the
Dragon Tattoo (2011) and Gone Girl
(2014) are just two of the dark and erotically graphic tales to grace
multiplexes in recent years. Though it may seem cynical, the sure-thing
financial nature of the book-to-pic flick allows the studios to get away with a
bit more than the likes of American Pie
(1999). The Girl with the Dragon
Tattoo is up to its eyeballs in sex, nudity, rape, and revenge. Nevertheless,
adult content that would have earned the picture an NC-17 otherwise was passed
uncut for the sake of an accurate depiction of the source (read: to please the book’s fan base). The success
of these films may reflect the popularity of books on the New York Best-sellers
list, but it also proves the desire of an adult audience to experience adult
content free of the restraints of groups of teenagers and families lined up to
see the next superhero extravaganza.
The greatest difference between
the film and the source is the emphasis on sex positive behavior, safety, and
consent. The lack of safe words in the novel creates an ethical minefield of
near abuse that belies an underlying attitude of nihilism. Ana is beaten and
restrained with no real promise of freedom. While that may be E.L. James’
personal fantasy world, she seems to have failed to do any amount of research
at all into the lifestyle she attempts to depict. This oversight may be the
single greatest weight that brings her novel crashing down.
The film makes considerably more
effort in this area, giving Ana not only her choice of safe words (‘Yellow’ for
slow down, ‘Red’ for stop), but making a considerable to-do about the farthest
reaches of consent she could possibly need. Beyond that however, the truth of
the matter is that Fifty Shades of Grey
the movie goes to great lengths to present a view of sex and relationships that
is founded upon mutual respect and understanding, no matter how difficult that
understanding can be to reach.
Sex is as diverse as the human
race, and so has been portrayed in film in a thousand different ways from a
thousand different perspectives. In Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter (1974), sex is used as a bridge between the guilt
and shame of the past, and the self-destructive nihilism of the present. Pier
Paolo Pasolini uses sex to celebrate life in his adaptation of The Decameron (1971) and to highlight
economic and political class struggles in his infamous masterpiece Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975).
In Fifty Shades of Grey, a movie supposedly all about sex, the place
of sexuality in the lives of the characters is as much politics as it is
relationship. Ana and Christian bond over sexual exploration. He loves her simplicity,
she loves his mystery. Sex lets them become part of each others’ lives, yet
they seem incapable of interacting over coffee. They use it as a way to broker
give and take, push and pull. As a result it becomes the crux of their
interactions. Unlike most films of this nature, the emphasis on a purely sexual
relationship is what leads to the eventual breakdown of the couple’s central
romance. Rare in mainstream Hollywood is the production that promotes both
healthy sexuality and committed relationship.
Finally, the soundtrack to the
film is most directly representative of the alternate direction taken by Sam
Taylor-Johnson in presenting the subject matter. Seduction versus sadism is
made all the more distinct in the choice of accompanying music. Ellie Goulding
singing “Love Me like You Do” and Beyonce slowing down her sultry “Crazy in
Love” creates a heavy atmosphere that certainly contradicts any notion of
floggings and canings. One might expect an industrial backdrop underlined by
Alice in Chains or Marilyn Manson when seeing someone tied to the bed. But that
is exactly why Fifty Shades of Grey
succeeds as a film. It serves the needs of fans while expanding its influence
to the storied history of cinema and regaling us with a breezy tale of
forbidden romance and self-discovery.
It’s well worth a look, as long
as you don’t read the book! Happy viewing!
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