Have ever watched a movie that was so good you couldn’t wait to tell other people about it? I certainly have, but this post is kind of the opposite. I just watched a movie that I found so disappointing that I have to warn people about it.
The movie is Don’t Worry Darling.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s at least possible to watch this movie and enjoy it for the many good things it does. But at the end, if you’re like me, you’ll come away feeling like you’ve spent two hours nibbling at hamburger helper dressed up to look like beef bourguignon.
This movie had so much promise and, in fact, there is much to love about it. To start with, it’s directed by Olivia Wilde, who also appears in the movie and is one of the producers. Her performance is stellar, as always. Indeed, all the performances are solid, which speaks to her direction as well. The movie has stunning mid-century sets that perfectly capture the tone of the era. It even features the famous Kauffman Desert Home designed by Richard Neutra, a classic of mid-century modern design. The costumes and makeup follow the same pattern, perfectly setting the tone. Likewise, the pacing and tension are tightly wound, and the camera work and cutting accentuate this.
The score perfectly pairs period music with the action and would be worth an essay all by itself. A few examples will suffice. Early in the movie, Peggy Lee sings “Where or When” accompanied by the Benny Goodman Quartet. The lyrics by Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin chillingly foreshadow future events in the story. Later, Harry Styles channels Fred Astaire to the relentless beat of “Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing)” performed by James Horner. This scene—which felt a bit overlong, although I enjoyed the music and the dancing–shows the men of movie equally under the thrall of the controlling evil mastermind, ably played by Chris Pine. Toward the end of the movie, Ella Fitzgerald sings the Gershwin classic “Someone to Watch Over Me.” It’s not precisely of the era, but the nostalgic yearning of the piece stands in ironic contrast with events on the screen.
The premise of the movie is promising, too. The idea apparently was to do a modern-day take on the The Stepford Wives” that combines ideas from The Matrix or The Thirteenth Floor. Great idea, especially in our post-Roe-v-Wade world, where book-banning and minority scape-goating are again ascendant. The movie reflects both the current and past when the sole African-American cast member is murdered for speaking out.
So, with so much good going for it, what went wrong? Things were going pretty well, if a bit predictably, until about two-thirds of the way through the movie, when the narrative thread untangles and never recovers.
The movie is set in a 50’s-style development that’s isolated in the desert. Somewhat like Pleasantville, everyone lives in isolation in this re-creation of 50’s bliss, with no escape. However, every morning the men all depart to work on “The Project” at a place hidden away on a remote mountaintop. At the start of act three—about three-quarters of the way through the movie—one of the wives, played brilliantly by Florence Pugh, goes to the mountain top and beats on the door. The camera fades, and we know that we’ll finally learn The Secret of the town.
If you want to watch the movie, I’m about to give away The Secret. It’s not much of a Secret, though, so you won’t lose much if you read on. I mean, it’s been obvious for ninety minutes or so that this is going to be a variation on “The Stepford Wives,” so how surprising can it be?
Anyway, the camera fades back in on that same wife, except she’s now working as a surgeon in an operating room. She’s at the end of an eighteen-hour shift. She’s tired. She trudges home through a thoroughly modern-day and dismal city to her rundown apartment. Once there, she meets her loser husband who plays video games all day and whines about her never being home. That’s the same husband, played by Harry Styles, that we’ve been seeing for the first ninety minutes of the movie, busily going off every morning to work.
Wait. The last time we saw her, she was in the desert pounding on the door to the The Project, where all the men go to work. How did she get to today, to a hospital, and to a crappy apartment?
The scene continues, and we see the loser husband drug her, put patches on her eyes—think Clockwork Orange. He then he climbs into bed next her and puts patches on his eyes. Fade out.
Fade back in, and she’s back in her mid-century housing addition, this time gushing over children that were only hoped-for earlier in the movie.
So, what just happened? Logically, we’ve seen what happened when she pounded on the door to The Project. But in the present, as a surgeon, she clearly has no memory of the desert community. So, the stuff in the present day that we just watched, where she’s a surgeon, must have been a flash-back, revealing that she’s been vegging out with her husband in a forced, drugged stupor, mutually hallucinating the first ninety minutes of the movie. This explains what’s really been going on. That’s The Secret.
Now, I don’t mind flashbacks, but the key is the transition from the here-and-now of the story to the past and back again. If that’s not clear, you lose your audience. The problem is that everything on the screen suggests that the events in the present-day happened between her pounding on the door and waking up back in the subdivision. That makes zero sense in terms of the narrative, so it must have been a flashback. But that’s exactly where the narrative thread unravels, because you have to stop and think about it. You’re still thinking about it as events unfold, trying to fit what just happened with what’s happening on the screen right now. It’s an enormous distraction.
For contrast, consider Mulholland Drive. The first half of this movie is all a dream, and we transition to Betty’s here-and-now after the “LLorando” song in the middle of the movie. But it’s not quite the entire first half of the movie that’s a dream. There’s a brief segment at the very beginning, that shows a haggard Betty, surrounded by drug paraphernalia, on a sofa in a sleazy apartment. That short scene fades to a perky Betty arriving in LA and her rosy dream about what she wished her life had been. Two hours later, the movie ends back in that sleazy apartment with Betty’s overdose, closing the loop. That’s brilliant storytelling, without the puzzling transitions that disrupt the visual experience.
Instead, in Don’t Worry Darling, we have this out-of-order sequence that’s in the present-day that the movie fits sequentially between her pounding on the door and waking up later in the subdivision. However, it only makes sense as a flashback, despite what the action on the screen suggests. That one scene essentially breaks the narrative and the willing suspension of disbelief that’s necessary to experience the movie.
Another problem with this is that it dissipates a good deal of the later suspense in the movie. There’s a harrowing car chase sequence, for example. Ordinarily this would be breath-taking, except if everything is a simulation it doesn’t matter if there’s a car crash. After all, they’re just all hallucinations or in a drugged stupor in some apartment someplace. Then there’s heroine’s struggle to get back to the “The Project” and escape. But apparently nothing happened the first time she got there, so who cares? If something did happen, it landed her trapped back in the project, so the whole escape sequence makes zero sense.
To be sure, they try to “fix” this with some snippets of dialogue, but even if those offer a credible explanation—they don’t–that just makes it worse and further degrades the fictional dream that should be running the viewer’s head while watching the movie. If you have to use dialogue to explain what’s happening on the screen, you’ve missed the point of a visual medium.
If the movie had been recut along the lines of Mullholland Drive, it might have worked—who knows? But at least it would have had a coherent narrative, which this one does not.
That raises the question how could this have gone so wrong with so much talent on display? It’s tempting to blame the editor, except that he’s got a distinguished record with many nominations and several awards for editing. Olivia Wilde’s direction is awesome. Likewise, the screenwriters have credible records. I think the answer might be in the “Produced by” credits, which lists eleven producers, including no fewer than six executive producers. I wonder if all those executives couldn’t agree on where to put this essential framing sequence and compromise led to the worst possible placement.
I enjoyed many things in this movie. I enjoyed them so much that the failure in story-telling was more disappointing that might have been the case in a lesser movie. Maybe they’ll recut it someday. One can hope.
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