Taking It Lying Down
by J.D. Connor
It’s awards season, the time of year when critics unearth big themes and render their verdicts on the culture at large, with diagnoses veering between compelling and hallucinatory. In the glare of competition and the intensity of an unrelenting screening schedule, no one is immune to the temptation to render judgement. Thus we learn that the movies of the moment, like the critics, are Taking Stands. Because the baseline genre of serious Hollywood cinema is some form of melodrama, the big themes often end up involving family issues. This year, mothers are ambivalent (or worse!), kids are threatened (or worse!)—but what of the dads? I’m here to tell you what the Awards-Season Dads are up to.
You can learn a lot about dads in films by the way they spend their time in the bathroom, and this year the Dads are not jerking it like Kevin Spacey in American Beauty or Jacob Elordi in Saltburn, nor starving in Cubist turmoil like Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer. No. And while I can’t speak to them all, I can say that today’s Awards-Season Dads are often to be found both bathing and ruminating.
Keep us breathing fire!
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