The Devil Wears Prada (2006)

Director: David Frankel

Finally sat down with the wife to watch this oft-referred-to film. Not bad, and I can see why it generates a lot of discussion and debate, even nearly 15 years after its release.

The movie follows Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), an aspiring young journalist struggling to land work as a writer in New York City. Looking for any way to get her foot in some kind of door, Andy applies to become an assistant to Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep), the brutally exacting and vicious editor-in-chief of an immensely popular and prestigious fashion magazine. Despite knowing and caring very little about fashion, Andy lands the job, agreeing to be Miranda's assistant for a year, in the hopes of getting a bulletproof recommendation for a job in journalism. After many rough growing pains and adjustment, Andy embraces the world of high fashion, along with the incessant and often boundless demands of her boss, eventually alienating her closest friends. By the end of the tale, Andy has learned Miranda's one great lesson to her: reaching the top of the world of fashion requires a ruthlessness and focus that Andy simply does not have. Still, Miranda helps her land a good job at a New York City newspaper, thus kickstarting her career as a journalist. 

It's not hard to see why this movie is basically like mainlining heroin for anyone remotely concerned with fashion. You have a ton of great actors and beautiful people putting on great performances, nearly all dressed in flawlessly chic outfits, turning in great performances. Even more, these dynamic characters are all about the world of looking striking and powerful through your clothing. In short, if you dig really nice clothes, you'll dig looking at this movie. Of course, the film goes beyond this, digging into the essence of fashion (to an extent) and its greater place in society. This is what makes Andy's character essential. Like many of us, she's a fashion neophyte, so her entry into the world is our entry to the world, and it's handled well enough that even someone like me can find it interesting. 

The greater reason that this movie was and still is so often discussed is the Miranda Priestly character and, to a lesser extent, her relationship with Andy. I see three aspects to Miranda that inspire debate: representing a successful woman in a cutthroat business, her management style, and her estimation of fashion's place in the world. Based on the Lauren Weisberger novel of the same name, The Devil Wears Prada is based on the author's time as an assistant to Vogue magazine editor Anna Wintour, so Weisberger had a first-hand look at a woman who makes it to the top of this very industry. The movie certainly suggests that a woman must be at least as ruthless as a man to reach such heights, even though it doesn't completely dig into this theme. 

The more obvious (and entertaining for many people) element to the movie is how Miranda is a Hall of Fame-level "horrible boss," in that she's brutally demanding of Andy and everyone else around her. Because of her success in the fashion world, all of her employees are constantly on pins and needles, continuously attuned to her every word, movement, and gesture. With very few exceptions (such as Stanley Tucci's character), this all creates a palpable "terrified of Mom" vibe around the entire magazine. Many viewers find this comedic, but I almost always grow irritated when seeing or reading about such characters. My feeling is that anything that forces a person to become such an obsessive, exacting tyrant is unhealthy, and I have a hard time watching it happen, even in fiction. 

Apparently, countless fans have weighed in on
whether Andy's friends are good or horrible. 
Arguments can be made for both sides, but this
actually speaks to a slight lack of depth in the film.

Then there's the entire backdrop of the world of high fashion. To put it bluntly, I don't really care about it. Yes, I know that it's a multi-billion dollar industry that employs plenty of people. And yes, I do have enough of an eye to know a nice outfit from an unflattering, "casual" outfit. I can also appreciate the amount of talent, skill, and effort that can go into designing and creating clothing. But ultimately, it's mostly superficial luxury to me, and I can only care so much about it. Miranda Priestly's instantly famous "Cerulean" speech seems to be meant as a definitive defense of fashion as some all-encompassing necessity to human life. To me, it's a well-delivered, scathing speech about something that is, in the grand scheme, not all that important. Just because an extremely poised, focused, and intelligent person has made it their entire world doesn't mean that it's essential for the world. This is yet another major theme, like women in highly profitable and competitive businesses, that felt like it could have been explored more deeply and critically but wasn't.

I did enjoy that Andy ultimately turns her back on the fashion world. It does go some way towards suggesting that one's humanity is more important than pure success, especially conspicuous success. True to its nature, fashion is all about being seen a certain way, regardless of how true it is to the actual person putting it on display. This seems to be the moral of the story, if there is one, and I can get on board with that. 

I'm glad that I finally got around to seeing this one, as it's so often referred to and is one that my wife has seen multiple times and enjoyed. I found it to be a well-made movie that raises some interesting themes. And while it doesn't dig into some of the more difficult questions as much as I might like, I appreciated the messy, grey areas that it included. Good movie, though not one that I'll feel the need to see again any time soon. 

New Release! The Post (2017)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Chalk up another one in Steven Spielberg's "feel good historical drama" category. Like his others, The Post is a fairly predictable (not just factually) story, told by a whole army of supermely reliable veterans who rarely take chances any more.

The movie takes a look at a major moment in modern U.S. history - the release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 by whistleblower David Ellsberg, who worked very closely with U.S. intelligence agencies. While the story is fairly well known for those who were alive at the time, this film looks at it from the perspective of one of the newspapers who was among the first to publish some of the highly sensitive papers which Ellsberg had illegally spirited out of his offices at the Rand Corporation. The D.C. newspaper The Washington Post was at a major crossroads just as a small sampe of the Pentagon Papers were published by The New York Times. The owner of the paper, socialite Kay Graham, who had inherited it from her dead husband, is deciding what direction to take the paper in. As she positions the paper to become a publicly-traded commodity, she is confronted with the legally thorny issue of the Pentagon Papers, boxes of which have turned up in the hands of the Post's writers and editors. Her dilemma is two-fold: (1) Publish at the risk of bringing the wrath of a vengeful Richard Nixon or take the safe route so as not to scare off investors; and (2) Publish in the name of journalistic integrity or sit on the story so that Graham's many powerful government friends can keep their reputations a bit cleaner.

For my part, the most interesting aspects of the movie were the historical data that I hadn't already known. I already knew a bit about the Pentagon Papers story from the great 2009 documentary The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. Seeing the story told again, with several added elements, was enlightening to a degree. And the general theme of the fourth estate, a free press, having the freedom to print anything truthful that might be in the public interest, is always a relevant topic, especially these days. And as one would imagine, the movie does everything with top-notch technical proficiency. Spielberg, Hanks, Streep, and the many other great actors in this film are simply too skilled and too professional to drop the ball anywhere. The pacing is brisk, the dialogue hums along, and narrative balls are juggled deftly.

Tom Hanks as Post Editor-in-Chief Ben Bradlee. Like the
characters he plays, Hanks never drops the ball. Knowing this
tends to suck most of the suspense out of movies in which
he stars these days.

All that said, I didn't feel that the movie was a standout in any particular way. Much of this has to do with the fact that, being a historical drama, anyone who knows a bit about the story knows what the outcome will be. This alone takes a fair bit of the air of suspense out of the balloon. When you add to that the mere casting of Tom Hanks, then you have a pretty good idea of exactly where this story is headed, right from the jump. My wife explained it well after we watched the movie when she described how when Hanks is in a movie, everything is going to be fine. That's his ultimate place in the cinema landscape. You need a damaged plane landed? Hanks will be your Sully. You need Somali pirates dealt with? Hanks is your Captain Phillips. You need a communist defector rescued from the clutches of the East Germans? Hanks will walk him right across that "bridge of spies" for you. His essential character in The Post is not really so different, being the man who serves as the defender of the free press and as the guiding light of morality and integrity through the movie. He's excellent at it, to be sure, but it's hardly a stretch for him at this point.

Anyone who's enjoyed Spielberg's recent historical dramas, Bridge of Spies, Lincoln, or Warhorse, is certain to enjoy this one, especially if they don't know much about the Pentagon Papers episode in U.S. history. But anyone looking to see the legendary director and the phenomenal cast stretch or challenge themselves in any way, you'll have to look elsewhere.