The Menu (2022)
A well cooked burger meets an underbaked idea.
Searchlight Pictures
A well cooked burger meets an underbaked idea—
With Glass Onion receiving a disproportionate amount of hate for being a perfectly fine popcorn flick, I’d like to draw attention to one that’s managed to garner a confusing amount of praise.
The Menu is a movie that goes out of its way to let you know that it isn’t striving for artistry or critical praise. The plot is obvious, the message is shallow, and the characters are vaguely drawn archetypes standing in for what’s wrong with…the world? Foodies? The elite?
We have the critic and her simpering publicist, a powerful old guy who’s cheating on his wife, a celebrity and his unhappy assistant, a table of “Do you know who we are?” business bros, a dangerously obsessive foodie and his date (an escort that he’s brought along to die), and—uh—the chef’s alcoholic mom.
The penultimate character is our protagonist, played by Ana Taylor-Joy. Despite being the lead, there’s not much for Taylor-Joy to do with this role, and those familiar with her previous projects will likely be let down by the shallowness of it. Though, she’s not alone in being poorly drawn and having little to do—the script is such that no one is outrageous enough to be campy (Nicholas Holt skirts the line; he’s certainly punchable) or grounded enough to provoke reflection.
This includes the actual chef, portrayed by Ralph Fiennes as the run of the mill artiste turned psycho. Together, he and his obedient kitchen subordinates enact a plan to punish their patrons and turn them all into human s’mores. Along the way, there’s suicide, tortilla blackmail, and overpriced foam.
The movie was mis-marketed as a horror/thriller, when in reality it’s more of a satirical comedy. Just not a particularly funny one. And while there’s plenty of violence, even the most squirm-inducing scenes are dulled by the film’s lack of commitment. In eschewing much attempt at meaning or a clear, tonal direction, The Menu misses an opportunity to go all in on satire, instead falling flat and forgettable. Like its characters, the movie simply isn’t exaggerated—violent, funny, or absurd—enough to stand on entertainment alone nor is it smart enough to leave the audience with any clever takeaway.
I know plenty will disagree and say I’m being too critical of a fun movie. To those, I say—
perhaps if The Menu wasn’t so bland, I wouldn’t need to be this salty.
Pig (2021)
“We don’t get a lot of things to really care about.”
Michael Sarnoski’s Pig is an unusual and unexpectedly affecting film that appeals to your emotions as much as to your senses. In some ways (bear with the douchery) it felt like a Byron-esque challenge between friends. “Who can take a movie about a pig and make it an emotional drama? Who can turn the man’s best friend formula on its head?” There’s a real tenderness that Cage and Wolff exhibit as they explore the ways in which grief can isolate us from both ourselves and each other. While Cage’s Robin—a renowned chef turned recluse—renounces any attachment to the world that once praised him, Wolff’s Amir numbs his own pain by pining for paternal approval and social status. You enter into the film expecting a revenge thriller—“Taken but with a pig,” as a viewer behind me put it—but wind up on a melancholic, gentle journey about loss, what we choose to care about, and how those choices define our lives.
This shared thread of loss is grappled with throughout the movie in gutting, tactile moments—the screams of Robin’s pig as its taken from their home, the silent cries and contortion as he later discovers its tragic death. And while the film’s moments of levity are scarce, the exploration of Portland’s restaurant scene deftly balances an affectionate, consuming love of food and a high-stakes obsession with notoriety that’s in stark contrast to the glamorized perspective we’re accustomed to watching on the travel channel. When food is prepared onscreen, it’s done so with quiet deference. This is what sets Robin apart from the unhinged, clamoring, and sadistic characters who’ve continued competing with one another after he’s abdicated his position in their world. Alarmingly, we find that their competition extends even beyond what critics see as we follow Robin inside an underground fighting ring for Portland’s restaurant workers and culinary masters.
Even with these cutthroat practices in mind, it’s tempting to question why a chef at the top of the food chain would leave his reputation behind to become a truffle hunter. “We don’t get a lot of things to really care about,” Robin tells Amir, and it’s this care—for his late wife and his animal companion —that pushes him to leave and, momentarily, reenter the restaurant world. Cage’s increasingly blood-covered face and stoic delivery of each line hint at a simmering, inevitable act of violence. We expect that Robin’s drive to rescue his pig will result in a rampage. Instead, he appeals to the sensory memories of Amir’s father—a perfect foil, the former consumed by the industry that the latter eschewed. Rather than pursue revenge, Robin teaches Amir how to make the meal which once brought his parents so much joy and, in doing so, helps both father and son confront their grief.
Much will be said about Cage’s performance, but Wolff shines bright in the aftermath of Hereditary as an actor who can embody the full scope of familial pain while making the audience feel the terrifying smallness of being someone’s child, regardless of age. Amir quite literally sticks along for the story’s ride and, in learning about Robin and witnessing both his grief and determination, allows his own hurt to surface. In Wolff’s final moment on screen, you see him turn off the radio and lie down in his car, vulnerable and overcome with the grief he’d so clearly tried to avoid, before cutting to Robin, who finally hits play on a recording left behind by his wife. This final contrast of silence and sound—the voices we use to drown out pain and the ones we avoid for fear of unearthing it—brings the film to a thoughtful close and lingers as the credits roll.
I Hate You, Harry
When Harry Met Sally is the greatest romantic comedy ever committed to screen.
“Movies’ magic can take many forms. Their words can become part of you, as can their flaws.”
As a person who has spent her life watching an ungodly amount of romantic comedies, trust me when I say I’ve done due cinematic diligence to unequivocally declare: When Harry Met Sally is the greatest romantic comedy ever committed to screen.
I know you’ve heard this before. It’s a frequent flier on the top-100 lists. You might even agree! Or not—I’ll admit that there are plenty of other fantastic choices. Anything involving Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Richard Curtis, or Kumail Nanjiani, for starters, are worthy contenders; but we’re not here to talk about them. We’re here to talk about When Harry Met Sally, and—more specifically—we’re here to talk about Harry.
The titular characters are, almost entirely, what makes this film so universally lovable. (No disrespect to the late Carrie Fisher, who delivers a perfect, supporting performance). Harry and Sally are both people you’d want to be around. People you can identify with. Who hasn’t been Sally, snot-crying on a friend’s shoulder about being too difficult to love? Or Harry, completely unaware of how much someone meant to you until you realize you’ve fucked everything up?
I won’t flatter myself that I am as clever, articulate, or perfectly sweater-clad as either of them, but if I had to pick? I’d say I’m relationally more of a Sally (incredulous that Harry could sleep with someone on the first date after not even liking them, fluctuating unexpectedly between composure and waterworks, neurotic to the point of self-sabotage, painfully good at remembering conversational details) and personality-wise, more of a Harry (from New Jersey—yes, this does constitute an unfortunate part of my personality, more caustic and hesitant to trust, neurotic to the point of self-sabotage with the added flavor of depression, prone to sweeping cynical statements as it relates to life and love, big fan of snacking between meals).
All that to say, while I root for Sally and track with the emotional trajectory of her story, I still relate a lot to Harry. I really love Harry. And I fucking hate Harry.
Let’s start with what I love.
Columbia Pictures
Harry is a relatively kind pessimist (he would say realist) who thinks if you say things glibly and with a bit of humor that, well, life will go on being life, but at least you can laugh about it. Harry moans to relieve his anxiety (this fucking works, by the way). Harry is someone who “kvetchs” or “gives out”—the Yiddish and Irish for a type of complaining that is, in itself, a cultural staple and art form. It’s a distant but necessary grandparent of observational humor and it is the only type of consistent whining that’s bearable. Harry is a know-it-all, but mostly “in a good way.” He takes a generally cynical approach to life, but it doesn’t stop him from being a great friend and enjoying the things he’s figured out are worthwhile to enjoy (Casablanca! Mallomars! Long phone calls!) Harry also knows how to fight and how to apologize—neither skill should be overlooked. I am suspicious of people who never bother to get angry and, even more so, of people who never apologize. He is exceedingly charming. As irritating as his character is during his and Sally’s first two encounters, by the time they meet in the Personal Growth section of Shakespeare & Co. he seems to be a product of the literature around him. The hard bits have been sanded off by the humbling forces of time, divorce, and—well—adult life, and he’s far more open to Sally’s input.
Above all else, Harry is a talker. In fact, he is an impeccable talker. From his hard-won observations to his character bits (Billy Crystal has no equal) to his unsolicited honesty, he’s exactly the sort of person you want on the other side of that split-screen telephone exchange. He and Sally’s shared proclivity for seemingly endless exchanges is the cord pulling them back together over the film’s twelve-year span.
This inevitably biases my opinion of Harry and the rest of this movie, but I’ll come clean anyway: while I have no idea what my “love language” is (when asked this by someone recently I replied, “All,” which they insisted was not an appropriate answer; I call bullshit), I do know that if I had to make one up of my own, it would be hyper-verbality.
I, like Harry and Sally, love talking.
One of my dear friends once told me she knew our friendship was getting more comfortable because we could sit in silence. I didn’t have the heart to tell her the silence was because I was trying to come up with something interesting to say.
If I’m with someone I enjoy—romantically or otherwise—I can talk at oxygen-depleting levels. If I’m interested in someone, they are the single most fascinating person alive. Long phone calls? Ideal. I want to know what they think about anything and everything. All the things I normally enjoy—quietly reading, watching movies, or, you know, breathing at a reasonable pace—are eclipsed by me wanting to talk to that person. I’ve repeatedly found myself torn between wanting to be present and quietly aware in the moment (can you tell I’m in therapy?) and craving Harry-Burns-style running commentary. (It’s also part of the reason I ask that the guests on this podcast watch their chosen movie separately from me. And then, of course, come on to talk about it).
My love of talking is why my favorite kind of early dating involves nothing at all—no dinner where I’m navigating what to order that won’t be a nightmare to eat in front of another human being, no bar where I need to calculate exactly how much alcohol makes me comfortable and how much makes me clumsy (one whiskey sour), no mini-golf where I will be unsure of who should pay because it’s 2021 and I feel like we should split it but, wait, is it a bad sign if they also want to split it? Does this mean they’re not going to call me?—just talking while walking around aimlessly. If When Harry Met Sally didn’t do it first, I’d call it the “Richard Linklater Date.”
Which brings me to my second, massive bias in favor of this film—the most ideal iteration of this date happens while walking around New York City. I’ve missed so much during the pandemic, but walking in Manhattan with my friends as we talk at a rate that could fuel the city’s entire electrical grid? I’m dizzy thinking about how much I want that back. If I wasn’t chronically bad with time, I would walk everywhere. Something about New York just says, “Ah, keep going!” in a way that no other place does. So, a movie about people walking and talking in the city? With the added autumn of it all? Look up my address on Google maps and you’ll see the pin smack in the center of this film’s target audience.
(Isn’t this meant to be about Harry Burns? Stick with me, I’m not finished talking.)
Even if I didn’t worship at the altar of all things verbose, New York, and autumnal, this movie would still remain the best romantic comedy because, more than anything else, it is about two people who know each other and then fall in love. Two people who choose each other with eyes wide open, not despite their neuroses, but, in part, because of them. Who know themselves and each other enough to make an informed decision that still requires a devastatingly romantic leap of faith. This is the beating heart of this film that sets it apart from the rest. So many other romantic narratives rely on the opposite formula—meet, breezy and immediate love, minor conflict, return to breezy love without really getting to know each other any better, and credits! It is fun and fanciful and yes, who doesn’t want Leonardo DiCaprio to see you through a fish tank and decide, “I would die for her?” (Granted, Romeo+Juliet doesn’t end all that breezily). But, to paraphrase Sally, love isn’t the same as loving the idea of someone.
Not that we haven’t all tried that. Fanciful projection is easy to fall into, and being on the receiving end of it is not a pleasant feeling. I’ve developed a decent detector for when this is happening in my own life—I can practically pinpoint the moment a guy is projecting his idea of me onto me and beginning to like that idea better than the actual me. It’s infuriating. It’s patronizing. It makes me want to shout, “You don’t fucking know me, asshole!” in a way that’s socially frowned upon. I once had a guy genuinely ask me if I was a “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” like it was a compliment. I’ve also had men call me “frustratingly endearing.” Men. Plural. More than one! Is this flattering, or am I taking part in a movie in your head that I didn’t have any hand in writing? I’m not alone in this. One of my oldest friends recently lamented that guys find her “quirky” and “whimsical” and then suddenly lose interest when they find out she’s a real person with needs and thoughts and facets inconsistent with the role they’ve cast her in. Even knowing this, I worry that the fantasy I’m subject to is one of my own making—did I watch Elizabethtown one too many times as a child and internalize Kirsten Dunst’s ice cream cone and mixtape philosophy? Am I somehow complicit in making guys think that I’m more carefree than I really feel? Am I performing the role of “girl who does not give a fuck” (or girl who gives just the right amount to Florence Nightingale them while relinquishing any advocacy for myself?) lest they think, god forbid, I care “too much?” I want “too much?” Maybe.
But maybe Harry Burns is part of the problem. In Megan Garber’s fantastic essay The Quiet Cruelty of When Harry Met Sally—which inspired this post—she discusses how Harry’s labeling of Ingrid Bergman as “low-maintenance” set up a paradigm for what women are meant to be. You’re either high-maintenance or low-maintenance. Or, worse, you’re Sally—high-maintenance while thinking you’re low-maintenance. Harry is part of a long line of movie characters who have taught men what to expect from women. His low-maintenance characterization of a desirable woman is an older, perhaps less insidious version of Garden State’s “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” and Gone Girl’s “Cool Girl;” the iterations of these expectations might change with time and trends, but the end point is the same—be interesting, be hot, appear effortless, and above all? Don’t ask for too much.
And who gets to define the ever moving mark of what “too much” is? Well, the leading men, of course. Harry’s “How long do I have to lie here and hold her before I can get up and go home?” speech is, in my opinion, the darkest shit he says in the entire film. Some of the darkest shit said on film, period. The still of him, panic-stricken, being held by a blissfully-unaware Sally? Haunts me to this day. It’s part of my catalogue of intrusive thoughts, and I’m not alone in this. More than 30 seconds? Well, that’s just too much.
Columbia Pictures
“An hour-ish later, this line pops into the audience’s mind again when Harry and Sally sleep together, and we see his face of panic when he’s caught in the trap of his own thoughts: It’s at the 31st second that he seems to go white and want to run out of Sally’s apartment, down her street, all the way home.”
Once, when I was traveling, a guy told me about how his ex really was the ideal–the girl who woke up and would go camping and not have a care in the world about how her hair looked. That she was exactly the sort of girl every guy wants to be with because she wasn’t at all concerned with anything superficial. I told him that’s bullshit—practically every woman I know wants her hair to look great (“Hair is everything, Anthony!”). Do we let these things stop us from living? Well, no, hopefully not. I can muster up a “well fuck it!” attitude on my good days, too, but these are immovable truths—we are socially programmed since childhood to want to look pretty AND to publicly deny that we want to look pretty. It’s why “no-makeup-makeup” looks exist. It’s why Instagram’s Paris filter exists. It’s why when female celebrities lose weight they vaguely say “oh, just a little exercise.” It’s partially why I wanted to commit a felony when a different man once pointed to a photoshop and plastic-surgery riddled photo of Kim K. as an example of the “natural” look he preferred. I tried to explain all this to travel boy, but we wound up agreeing to disagree. I then found myself fostering a tiny grudge against this girl I’d never even met who apparently is so content with herself she could be the paradigm subject of male longing. (If she is real? Good for her! But until we cross paths and I get to ask her about her workout routine or if she ever wakes up in the morning and thinks, “I know I’m going to be late, but as it currently stands I am not fit for human observation,” I’ll equate her to the monster in Loch Ness—I can’t tell you with absolute certainty that they don’t exist, but I have my well-earned doubts).
To be clear, it’s not that I think every woman wants to have perfect hair, specifically, it’s that I know every person wants to be perceived well and that perception requires some form of maintenance. And—as Garber points out—for women in our society, that visual expectation of maintenance is often disproportionately demanded and criticized. The balance between being seen as enough while not being too much can be vertigo inducing. If you wear makeup, you must not be confident, and who wants to be with someone who’s insecure? If you post selfies, you’re conceited. You should be pretty without knowing that you're pretty. Don’t believe me? Just ask any casting director, male author, or boyband. If you have standards about how you’re treated or what you expect in life, then you’re difficult. Why cant you be more easy-going? If you show interest in a guy, well then you’re desperate or too available or too easy-going and should’ve played harder to get; men like a challenge! The list goes on. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten a text from a friend asking, “Is it ok if I say this to him or is it too much?” Like those friends, and Garber herself, I also can’t tell you how many times I’ve debated this thought myself. Even as I’m typing this, I’m aware that there will be people in my life who read it and think, “Well, yeah, of course she thinks that–Jess’s feminism/skin-care routine/penchant for over-analysis is too much.” To those folks, I’ll quote my grandfather in saying: feel free to take a long walk off a short pier.
On screen, part of not being “too much,” of earning that low-maintenance badge (whether it’s taking three seconds to get ready or not placing any expectations on a relationship) is so that these women can be in service of the male character’s transformation. You can’t be the dream girl if your dreams get in the way of his. What you need can’t trump what he wants. With any of these archetypal fantasies, the male journey has to be at the center. It’s why, as Garber points out, it’s When Harry Met Sally and not the other way around. Why Harry has to be the one to choose Sally. And sure, Sally chooses him back, and Harry makes a compelling fucking case for her to do so, but really—Garber broke my heart with this—the movie is a lot of Sally waiting for Harry to get his shit together enough to wake up and love her back. To realize that she’s not too much, after all.
“...The term today does precisely what it did 30 years ago, as backlash brewed against the women’s movement: It serves as an indictment of women who want. It neatly captures the absurdity of a culture that in one breath demands women do everything they can to “maintain” themselves and, in the next, mocks them for making the effort. She wears makeup? High-maintenance. She shops? High-maintenance. She’d prefer the turkey burger? High-maintenance.”
And then there’s the prescriptivist aspect—Harry’s role is the original, more self-aware version of Justin Long’s character in He’s Just Not That Into You: the template for every let-him-fix-the-neurotic-leading-lady-through-blunt-but-misguided-advice-only-to-eventually-realize-that-the-things-he-wanted-to-change-about-her-were-what-makes-her-special-all-along love interest. Harry takes so long to realize she’s there, and we love the pay-off and root for the Big Realization Moment that gets him running downtown, but for fuck’s sake, could you not have figured it out before making a mess of things, Harry? (I realize the irrationality of being angry at a fictional character, and especially one that was written by Nora Ephron. But Ephron and Reiner were abundantly clear that while the characters might be pretend, they were each creating out of firsthand experience. There’s an intentionality and autobiography to the characters’ realism. So much so, that Reiner famously didn’t plan on ending the movie with the leads winding up together until his own love story started to come together offscreen).
Of course, since it’s a romantic comedy and there’s a very simple formula to these things, the redemptive arc isn’t Sally choosing herself, but Harry choosing her. The film climaxes not at Katz's Delicatessen (hate myself for that joke), but during Billy Crystal’s big You’re Crazy but I’m Crazy For You Anyway Speech! Don’t get me wrong. I love this speech. Of the all-time greatest speeches ever put on film, this is very clearly one of them. I love it so much I try to watch this scene as close to New Year’s Eve as possible. Last year, without my usual plans in place due to the pandemic, I timed it perfectly so I could sync up the onscreen countdown with my own clock and mouth the lines like a psychopath. Nora Ephron and Billy Crystal hit every bit of this speech out of the goddamn park, and while the form it helped pioneer has become a well-worn trope in the three decades that followed, it is still a masterful addition to the universe’s declarations of love. Great speech aside, it’s hard not to feel a little sad that Sally is happy and validated only when Harry finally values all the weird things about her that the other guys didn’t.
Being truly seen by someone is such a powerful thing and it’s another reason why I love Harry. Because he does see Sally. Because he is a genuine friend to her. Because he spends years really taking the time to learn about her, to love her details, even if he doesn’t quite notice the full picture. And of course that’s the whole point, right? Another trope–not noticing what was there all along until, wham, it hits you! It’s always been her! It’s why he breaks the steady pace of the film and foregoes the casualness of walking to run to the party—he isn’t aimless anymore, he’s making up for an awful lot of lost time, and he wants the rest of his life to begin as soon as possible.
But poor Sally, stuck waiting to be seen! Waiting to feel lovable. Waiting for Harry to stop sleeping with other people like he’s out for revenge. Waiting for him to catch on. To that I say, fuck you, Harry.
“Sally may have gotten a happy ending; she waited so long for it, though. And waiting is not as romantic as her movie believes it to be. Maybe there were times along the way when she almost said something to Harry but didn’t, understanding how easily her preferences could be dismissed as inconvenient. Maybe she questioned herself. Maybe she knew that, despite it all, women who just want it the way they want it are still assumed to be wanting too much.”
Here’s an exercise—write your own Sweeping Declaration of Love speech. Fill it with all the weird things you secretly love about yourself. Seriously, try it. Don’t post it—that would be intolerable and, well, tacky. But you know, write down all the shit you love about yourself that you wish someone would notice and run to tell you at a New Year’s Eve Party in NOLITA, and then say it quietly to yourself in the mirror or loudly in your car. And remember—it’s all fucking true whether someone else says it or not. (I can feel you rolling your eyes. In case you think that I’m one of those self-love obsessives, let me quote my therapist* in saying, “Jessica, self-love isn’t even an option we’re working towards right now, we’re just focusing on getting you to like yourself”).
*For the record—if I were to take my own advice here—I’d put, “can make my therapist laugh” in my speech.
You finished? Congratulations! No, seriously, I mean that. I’m sure you’ve written something wonderful and true, and its truth is something independent of anyone else noticing it. If there is one thing I’d change about When Harry Met Sally—a movie, need I remind you, that I consider to be essentially perfect—it’s this: I’d give a bit more screen time to Sally after she and Harry have their falling out. I’d give her some time to love herself for a while. To figure out that, yes, it sucks dragging Christmas trees home by yourself and missing someone so much you feel the physical pain of it, but it sucks more having someone take you for granted. Having them love the idea of something more than the actuality of you. I’d let her appreciate the actuality of herself a bit longer. Apart from Harry.
Columbia Pictures
And then, because I am still—in spite of all sound reason, life experience, and functioning brain cells—a romantic and huge sucker for a well-timed, grand gesture of love, I’d want her to take him back. Unlike the male characters who helped give rise to the Manic Pixie Dream Girl and the Cool Girl, Harry ultimately chooses someone who is, decidedly, not low-maintenance. He tries. He figures it out. He realizes what’s at stake. And he wakes up to everything Sally already is. So we’ll forgive him, more or less, for popularizing that unfortunate paradigm.
I guess what I’m trying to say, with about as much conviction as Sally could muster in that unforgettable, New Year’s Eve scene, is—
I hate you, Harry. I really hate you.