MY MOVIE SHELF: Working Girl

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 132 Days to go: 92

Movie #308:  Working Girl

Has anyone ever thought about the title of this film? If there had been the Internet and Twitter in 1988, I’m sure there would’ve been a dozen clickbait thinkpieces on it, but I’ve no idea if it had ever really been discussed in the traditional formats of the day. Working girl is a term for a prostitute, as we all know, and while the movie Working Girl is not about a prostitute but about a woman trying to make it in corporate America, it is a clever little play on words about how difficult that actually is. Women (even today, not just way back in 1988) aren’t always taken seriously, are sometimes objectified, and are almost always required to play by men’s rules in order to get ahead. This particular working girl, in fact, (Tess McGill, played to perfection by Melanie Griffith) is quite literally prostituted out by  her boss (Oliver Platt) over to some cokehead in Arbitrage (Kevin Spacey), the assumption being she could maybe sleep her way into a better position. It’s gross, but not really all that surprising, and I find the double meaning of the film’s title to be an intriguing detail, an added layer to the richness and depth of the story.

Working Girl is not just about the struggles of women in the business world, though. It’s also about the Haves versus the Have-Nots. After the unfortunate moment with the cokehead from Arbitrage and his porn limo, Tess gets a job working for Katharine Parker (Sigourney Weaver). It’s her first time working for a woman, so she thinks things will finally be different. Katharine, however, is not of the same ilk as Tess. She comes from money, has been afforded every advantage, and has never really had to work or hustle for anything. She thinks Tess is beneath her, and she takes advantage by trying to pass off Tess’s idea for a business deal as her own. Like everything else, Katharine considers it her due.

Thanks to Katharine being laid up with a broken leg in Europe, though, when Tess finds out about the subterfuge, she goes to work correcting it. She contacts the man Katharine was going to reach out to, Jack Trainer (Harrison Ford), and fakes and stumbles her way through this new world, passing herself off as Katharine’s colleague instead of her secretary. It’s crazy, and yet you can’t help rooting for her — because she’s been wronged, because she’s smarter and works harder than almost anyone else around, and because the deck has always been and will always be stacked against her.

There are close calls and shenanigans in all sorts of settings: tropical themed weddings, “lust and tequila,” changing shirts at the office, failing to check the dosage on the Valium, and Tess’s boyfriend Nick (Alec Baldwin) screwing some skinny chick while Tess is supposed to be at class and then still having the cajones to get pissed when she answers “Maybe” to his marriage proposal. It’s a rollercoaster.

Harrison Ford is at maximum charming in this film, shorting circuits for miles in every direction with his serious sexiness overload. Whether he’s making up stories about where he got his chin scar or discarding the idea that Tess might not like him or admitting that he MIGHT have peeked when he got her undressed for bed, he is the most desirable man on the planet or any other planet in this movie. Han Solo IS a scruffy-looking nerf herder next to Jack Trainer. He’s sharp, witty, quick on his feet, and never once patronizing or condescending to Tess the way literally almost every other person she’s met up to that point has been. “The Earth moved. The angels wept. The Polaroids are … are … uh … are in my other coat.” More’s the pity.

This particular tale also benefits tremendously from the presence of Tess’s best friend Cynthia (Joan Cusack), who is loving and supportive but who also doesn’t want to see her friend get hurt by all this social-climbing and who frequently tells it like it is. “Sometimes I sing and dance around the house in my underwear. Doesn’t make me Madonna. Never will.”

Some people might dub Working Girl a Cinderella story, but it’s not. Tess works and strives for every single thing she has. She knows her stuff, she’s aware of the stakes, and she plays their game. And she wins. “You can bend the rules plenty once you get to the top, but not while you’re trying to get there. And if you’re someone like me, you can’t get there without bending the rules.” It’s a gamble, but it pays off in spades. She gets the better of Katharine’s “bony ass,” she gets the guy who is WAY BETTER BY LIKE A MILLION TIMES than the disconcertingly hairy guy she was with before, and she even gets a much better position than she thought when Oren Trask (Philip Bosco) offers her a job at his office. And she never once had to prostitute herself.

It kind of makes you want to sing a soaring Carly Simon song, doesn’t it?

MY MOVIE SHELF: A Time to Kill

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 154  Days to go: 109

Movie #284:  A Time to Kill

There are a lot of things I like about A Time to Kill — things I liked when it came out, and things I like still. The affinity levels may have changed a little bit over the years, one way or another, as I’ve grown and changed as a person, but not drastically. It’s a good film, and I get a lot out of it. One aspect of it that has always made me a little uncomfortable, though, is the closing argument defense attorney Jake Brigance (Matthew McConaughey) gives at the end of the film.

Jake’s client Carl Lee Hailey (Samuel L. Jackson) is on trial for killing the two men who brutally raped and almost murdered his ten-year-old daughter. The entire trial, Jake has been trying to get details of the rape on the record, and his closing statement is a perfect opportunity to do that unencumbered and uninterrupted. It’s also his opportunity to, as Carl Lee has made clear, say the thing to the jury that will help them relate to this crime. Jake, like the jury, is “one of the bad guys,” as far as Carl Lee’s concerned, and that’s why he picked him. He sees black people and white people on different sides of a wall — “However you see me, you see me as different.” — and he enlisted the enemy to make the rest of the enemies see it his way. It’s a cold outlook, whether you believe it has merit or not, and although Jake is taken aback by this admission (He’s always looking for someone to be on his team in this film, yet he finds himself repeatedly alone.), he uses his closing to giving a detailed and emotional accounting of the brutality Carl Lee’s daughter endured, while the jury, with their eyes closed, are meant to imagine it and picture this girl. “Now imagine she’s white,” he says, and suddenly everything clicks. Even the judge and District Attorney Buckley (Kevin Spacey) and Carl Lee himself know what an impact that statement makes. But does it? Or should it?

Essentially, what that statement boils down to — and what the entire movie is getting at, really — is that we’re all people, and yet we rarely see each other as such. I find that incredibly depressing, even more so because as much as I hate to admit it, it’s probably true. If there’s one thing being on Facebook makes clear, it’s that a lot of people have no capacity to look at life through the eyes of another person. The things we post, the things we share, the things we argue about and debate at length, all lead me to believe that more often than not we’re all so clouded by the lens of our own experience, we have a hard time accepting that other people, other races, other cultures, other income levels experience things differently than we do. I’m guilty of it myself. There have been many times I’ve struggled to understand how anyone could see something differently than I’ve seen it, or how anyone could hold onto anger over an issue that wasn’t that big a deal, or could prioritize something I found inessential. And yet it happens, all the time. How did compassion and commiseration become such specialized skills? How do we fix that? Certainly not by an impassioned monologue that promises if we can only see a black rape victim as a white rape victim, all will be well in the world. It feels simplistic and kind of insulting to me, and yet I appreciate the idealism of the thought.

I’ve never felt the way Carl Lee does here, that there’s a my side and a his side, but it’s entirely possible, too, that I live in a state of blissful ignorance on the matter. Being a woman, I know full well many of the prejudices women face as I’ve experienced them first hand. As a white woman, however, I don’t have that same connection to the prejudices African-Americans face, even though I know they exist. The best I can do, therefore, is to take their accounts at face value and work to correct them, work to dispel them. And that comes from following their lead on how they feel and what they want to accomplish, just as Jake eventually follows Carl Lee’s lead on how to approach this trial. So maybe it’s not perfect and maybe it’s a little too pat and a little too idealistic, but maybe it’s the best we can do, metaphorically: Strive to be better. I can get behind that, absolutely. Does it make the ending more palatable? I still haven’t decided.

There’s a lot more to this movie than that, though. There’s Kiefer Sutherland leading the KKK, and his father Donald as a broken old drunk of a lawyer. There’s Oliver Platt as the morally compromised Harry Rex, and Ashley Judd as Jake’s ever-sweaty wife Carla (I swear, they rubbed her in baby oil before every take). There’s the awesome Charles S. Dutton as the tough Sheriff Walls and Chris Cooper as the (accidentally) one-legged deputy. And then there’s Sandra Bullock as law student and sexy assistant Ellen Roark. When I was younger, I was really irritated that Jake and Ellen didn’t take advantage of that insane sexual chemistry they had. As I’ve gotten older, I really appreciate the restraint given their relationship. It’s super easy for two sexy actors to have sexy sex in a movie; infidelity is like a go-to plot twist in films of every genre. But for two characters to be attracted to each other and to want to have sex but to not because it would be wrong? That is a rarity, and I find it all the more commendable for that reason.

Of course, this being a John Grisham story, I once again can’t really speak to the plausibility of the legal things that occur. It seems to me a lawyer can’t throw an elbow to a guy’s face even if that guy tried to blow up his house. And if I was the one guy on the jury ready to vote not-guilty when the foreman took an informal poll at the restaurant, I’d probably go to the judge about him using the n-word, which at the very least should get that guy kicked off and might lead to a complete mistrial. And of course, don’t shoot anyone for raping your daughter. I cannot guarantee you’ll get the same outcome as Carl Lee Hailey.

I actually volunteered as a rape crisis advocate several years ago, which amounted to me going to emergency rooms whenever a rape victim came in while I was on call. I would hold their hands and sit with them and listen to them and just be there for them when all the other people (cops, social workers, hospital staff, etc.) had specific jobs to do and couldn’t just be support. I was called in once for two fifteen-year-old girls, one of which asked me to phone her father because she was too embarrassed and humiliated to. I called him up and told him what happened and had to talk him down from killing the boys who did this. I understand the impulse, but trust me: Your daughter will need her father with her, not in jail. If a girl’s dad ends up imprisoned for murdering her rapist, it’ll just be one more thing for her to blame herself for. I know the justice system isn’t perfect, and a lot of times these d-bags go free, but vigilantism is not the answer. Sorry, Carl Lee.

“There ain’t nothin’ more dangerous in this world than a fool with a cause.”