This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
kate!🍒🕊⚡️’s review published on Letterboxd:
This review may contain spoilers.
There’s a split second, towards the end of the film, where one of the news anchors takes off her stiletto heel to reveal a red-hot blister. My guess is that Charles Randolph saw this as the perfect metaphor for the surface and reality of Fox News. The truth? It’s more of an analogy for what this movie tried to hide about this situation, and the realer, more complicated truth behind it.
This is a film that didn’t know what it wanted to be. Theron breaks the fourth wall in the opening credits “The Big Short” style, and so the viewer is lulled into the role of present-ee – a viewer who faces none of the criticism of the film – they are as separate as Democrat and Republican are portrayed by Fox. I questioned the intention of this film the entire time – was the lens on the side of these women as victims, or as bystanders?
Megyn Kelly stands by and stays silent for the protection of her career, and yet seems to be heralded as the heroine when she speaks out, taking none of the threats as seriously as she seems to say she does. The final scene is of Gretchen Carlson muzzling herself like a dog for the sake of sixty million dollars, with Ailes telling his team he doesn’t care about the money. And yet the closing credits criticize the men being paid more in settlements - does the money matter or not to this film?
It frustrates me the way they portray these women as heroes; as phoenix rising from the ashes of a business that never supported them and instead tried to burn them alive. God, how differently I would have written about this film if a more neutral lens had been cast onto the decisions made by these people.
This is not to say that this film did not get a rise out of me. Two scenes in particular blew the air clean from my lungs – I was left fixated, uncomfortably unable to concentrate on anything other than the silver screen, while the weight of its consequences sat hard on my chest.
When Kayla (Margot Robbie) is forced to confront aged hotshot Roger Ailes, the explicitness and pure power dynamic felt so close, I could feel its breath lukewarm and sticky on my neck. The look in her eye – so exposed and yet so childlike – made me feel so afraid for young women in that position and yet so powerless to do anything about it. Robbie gave a stellar performance, and the shoddy camera work and editing couldn’t do a damn thing to stop her from stealing the show.
Similarly, the teaser scene of the three women entering the lift left me with the suffocating feeling of being stuck in an elevator long after they had exited. I understood the sheer pain these women walked through from their careers from this scene alone – all brought together through a job in a “man’s world”, all exiting at different points based on which rung of the ladder they’ve been allowed to work at.
The motifs in this film were lazy, and frankly wouldn’t have made it off a badly sketched mind map were more women in the office when this film was being created. The anchors that once rooted for Ailes in skirts so short they’d make devils blush wear trousers the minute he’s gone. Do the writers believe that freedom is in the option, or that the default for aspirational women is inherently masculine?
Kayla starts wearing more exaggerated makeup when she becomes stuck under Ailes’ thumb – she becomes herself, a part of the ‘machine’ – she is Conglomerate Barbie, incarnate. The part that makes her character feel so plastic is when she stops wearing makeup altogether when the ordeal is over: is wearing less makeup than she did before some sign of empowerment? Did I, with my two inches of black eyeliner, not get the memo?
Ultimately, this film wanted the star power of The Wolf of Wall Street, the heroism of Battle of the Sexes, all paired with the dynamism of American Psycho. Unfortunately, the finished product left me with a sour taste in my mouth – feminism is not women taking millions when a man reaches deep into his pocket in order to stay quiet. This film is not empowering, no matter how hard the advertising team will try to convince you otherwise, and I found it ironic that they attempted to sell us “girl power” with silence.
There is nothing rebellious about letting money talk. Stop telling girls that that’s what left in the world for them.