I was really put off by the Strickland character in the trailer, and I also had the impression of having seen the whole film from seeing the trailer.
Strickland is offputting. He wound up working for me for two reasons, one script-based and one idiosyncratic. The script-based reason is that however repulsive, however destructive, however just plain awful a person he may be, within the film's parameters of reality he is always a real person. He's shaped by the same forces that govern Elisa's world; they deform him differently and, crucially, he allows them to. There is an instructive moment right before everything goes off the rails where, in a bad way emotionally and physically as well as professionally, he reaches out to his five-star superior, his former commanding officer, really needing to hear the reassurance that one fuck-up does not wipe out a lifetime's loyalty, and the answer he receives is not just negative, it is a vicious little oratorio of contempt for even showing the weakness of asking in the first place—and Strickland accepts it. He internalizes it and doubles down on it and he almost certainly wasn't redeemable before, but now he's broken in some deep, irreversible way and nothing he does from here on can end well. It makes him scarier: he chose it. The idiosyncratic reason is that after being vaguely aware of Shannon as an actor for years, I noticed him first as the desperately loving, frightened, protective father in Midnight Special (2016), struggling to keep his not entirely or not at all human child safe from a cult, the government, the ordinary world of sunlight and electronics, and my associations with him were therefore so positive and so vulnerable that I was fascinated to see him play an all-American nightmare in a grey flannel suit. I think he is exactly what the film asks him to be. I understand if you don't need to see it demonstrated for yourself, though.
The detail about Elisa's possible aquatic origins is nice, though--that adds a level of interest.
I loved the film's handling of Elisa's affinity for water; it could be a simile or a fact or there's no reason it couldn't be both. Her apartment is tucked up into the attics of the theater, so one wall is partly a huge curving window and it gives the room an aquarium look; its dominant colors are browns and greens and blues, an evocative but naturalistic combination of the building's furnishings and Elisa's own tastes. The Asset just matches the decor when he takes up residence in her bathtub, his huge golden eyes blinking above the salt-thickened, pondweed-flecked water. Rain doesn't bother her even when it runs through the roof. (I have no idea how she feels about snow. Maybe that's not a big question in 1960's Baltimore.) Separately, but also importantly, I love that she's not a girl. The character looks about Hawkins' own fortyish. There are lines in her face; her wrists are bony. She's not a maiden. And the film sees her as wild and beautiful and deserving of love, passionate, sexual love as well as sympathy and romance, of being treasured, in Giles' opening words, as a princess. That is so quietly unusual that it passes almost unnoticed among the film's more obvious stands, but I still really enjoyed it.
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Strickland is offputting. He wound up working for me for two reasons, one script-based and one idiosyncratic. The script-based reason is that however repulsive, however destructive, however just plain awful a person he may be, within the film's parameters of reality he is always a real person. He's shaped by the same forces that govern Elisa's world; they deform him differently and, crucially, he allows them to. There is an instructive moment right before everything goes off the rails where, in a bad way emotionally and physically as well as professionally, he reaches out to his five-star superior, his former commanding officer, really needing to hear the reassurance that one fuck-up does not wipe out a lifetime's loyalty, and the answer he receives is not just negative, it is a vicious little oratorio of contempt for even showing the weakness of asking in the first place—and Strickland accepts it. He internalizes it and doubles down on it and he almost certainly wasn't redeemable before, but now he's broken in some deep, irreversible way and nothing he does from here on can end well. It makes him scarier: he chose it. The idiosyncratic reason is that after being vaguely aware of Shannon as an actor for years, I noticed him first as the desperately loving, frightened, protective father in Midnight Special (2016), struggling to keep his not entirely or not at all human child safe from a cult, the government, the ordinary world of sunlight and electronics, and my associations with him were therefore so positive and so vulnerable that I was fascinated to see him play an all-American nightmare in a grey flannel suit. I think he is exactly what the film asks him to be. I understand if you don't need to see it demonstrated for yourself, though.
The detail about Elisa's possible aquatic origins is nice, though--that adds a level of interest.
I loved the film's handling of Elisa's affinity for water; it could be a simile or a fact or there's no reason it couldn't be both. Her apartment is tucked up into the attics of the theater, so one wall is partly a huge curving window and it gives the room an aquarium look; its dominant colors are browns and greens and blues, an evocative but naturalistic combination of the building's furnishings and Elisa's own tastes. The Asset just matches the decor when he takes up residence in her bathtub, his huge golden eyes blinking above the salt-thickened, pondweed-flecked water. Rain doesn't bother her even when it runs through the roof. (I have no idea how she feels about snow. Maybe that's not a big question in 1960's Baltimore.) Separately, but also importantly, I love that she's not a girl. The character looks about Hawkins' own fortyish. There are lines in her face; her wrists are bony. She's not a maiden. And the film sees her as wild and beautiful and deserving of love, passionate, sexual love as well as sympathy and romance, of being treasured, in Giles' opening words, as a princess. That is so quietly unusual that it passes almost unnoticed among the film's more obvious stands, but I still really enjoyed it.