The Duke of Burgundy (2015) is the British film director Peter Strickland's third feature, after Katalin Varga (2009), which did not have a very wide release, and Berberian Sound Studio (2012), his breakout, which did. Berberian Sound Studio was one of the most enjoyable films I saw in the year it came out, and I was lucky enough shortly after that to visit ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jinian when she still lived in Seattle, so that we were able to rent Katalin Varga in European-region-only DVD release from the invaluable Scarecrow Video.
Having seen all three of his feature films to date, then, there is a description which I have never seen applied to Strickland in a review or an essay or an article, but which I find readily visible in his work, delightful, and heartwarming:
Peter Strickland is one of the finest feminist filmmakers working at the moment.
Katalin Varga is a bitter little Hungarian murder ballad which has a wrinkle I had not seen on the classical rape-and-revenge plot-- and that is difficult-- a wrinkle based on the woman at the center of it having more agency than everyone else expects of her. Even the audience. Berberian Sound Studio, a complex and multivalent movie, contains among its many subjects a scathing critique of the way female characters are treated in horror movies and a scathing critique of the way female actors are all too often treated by male horror movie directors. I therefore expected the women in The Duke of Burgundy to be three-dimensional people, to be well-rounded characters who are subjects as well as objects, to have their own motivations and minds and methodologies. I got more than I expected, in multiple directions.
I got more than I expected in just about every direction, actually, because I do not go around expecting movies to be as good as The Duke of Burgundy is. Quite simply, they usually aren't.
A thing that has come up in every review of it I have read thus far is that The Duke of Burgundy is probably set in a world in which there are only women.* If this is the case, it's the only film I've seen where that is true. Certainly, every character we see is a woman, every extra, every passerby. This was incontrovertibly necessary, because, and this is one of the points Strickland is making, the story he is telling would change extremely for the audience if anyone performing gender in a currently culturally common male way so much as wandered through the background of one set, for five seconds, once. It would be like an event horizon. The entire film would be pulled after it like a black hole.
And this is because the story Strickland has chosen to tell is about power exchange. This is the best movie I have ever seen about kink. In order for this particular story to work, the characters must have what the audience sees as a basically even level of intrinsic personal power and dominance. They are women because either performing or specifically opting out of some amount of dominant behavior on various occasions is built into current popular conceptions of masculinity. If there were men around in the movie, the audience would be waiting for them to either demonstrate dominance or show that they weren't going to, and, as I said, event horizon, because that is a complete distraction from what is actually going on here.
What is actually going on here is one of the most complicated, beautiful, believable love stories I have encountered since I don't know when. It's also done wonders to help with my phobia of insects.
( This is a cut for length, but also mildly for spoilers. If this sounds like a film you'd enjoy, and you have the ability, I'd urge you to see it before learning much else about it. If its limited release isn't anywhere near you, I don't think my review will detract from your seeing it later. )
I left the theatre smiling. I smile when I think about this movie. It is an embarrassment of riches. I have no idea what Peter Strickland will come up with next, but I will be there for it. If I see a better film this year, I will be very surprised indeed.
* I am uncertain about this, because the worldbuilding is not explicitly discussed onscreen (and why should it be, as there is no in-world reason to do so). I think there may be a very few men, because there are several scenes in a crowded lecture hall, which is filled with seated women and with seated mannequins dressed in female clothing. The mannequins are outnumbered by the women perhaps one hundred to one. The only reason I can think of for having them there is if there are men in those seats, who have been visually replaced by mannequins so that they are demarcated only by their own absence. Which, just, bless.
** Literally twenty minutes after making this entry I found out I have clothes moths. The lesson here is NEVER GIVE ANY GROUND.
jinian when she still lived in Seattle, so that we were able to rent Katalin Varga in European-region-only DVD release from the invaluable Scarecrow Video.Having seen all three of his feature films to date, then, there is a description which I have never seen applied to Strickland in a review or an essay or an article, but which I find readily visible in his work, delightful, and heartwarming:
Peter Strickland is one of the finest feminist filmmakers working at the moment.
Katalin Varga is a bitter little Hungarian murder ballad which has a wrinkle I had not seen on the classical rape-and-revenge plot-- and that is difficult-- a wrinkle based on the woman at the center of it having more agency than everyone else expects of her. Even the audience. Berberian Sound Studio, a complex and multivalent movie, contains among its many subjects a scathing critique of the way female characters are treated in horror movies and a scathing critique of the way female actors are all too often treated by male horror movie directors. I therefore expected the women in The Duke of Burgundy to be three-dimensional people, to be well-rounded characters who are subjects as well as objects, to have their own motivations and minds and methodologies. I got more than I expected, in multiple directions.
I got more than I expected in just about every direction, actually, because I do not go around expecting movies to be as good as The Duke of Burgundy is. Quite simply, they usually aren't.
A thing that has come up in every review of it I have read thus far is that The Duke of Burgundy is probably set in a world in which there are only women.* If this is the case, it's the only film I've seen where that is true. Certainly, every character we see is a woman, every extra, every passerby. This was incontrovertibly necessary, because, and this is one of the points Strickland is making, the story he is telling would change extremely for the audience if anyone performing gender in a currently culturally common male way so much as wandered through the background of one set, for five seconds, once. It would be like an event horizon. The entire film would be pulled after it like a black hole.
And this is because the story Strickland has chosen to tell is about power exchange. This is the best movie I have ever seen about kink. In order for this particular story to work, the characters must have what the audience sees as a basically even level of intrinsic personal power and dominance. They are women because either performing or specifically opting out of some amount of dominant behavior on various occasions is built into current popular conceptions of masculinity. If there were men around in the movie, the audience would be waiting for them to either demonstrate dominance or show that they weren't going to, and, as I said, event horizon, because that is a complete distraction from what is actually going on here.
What is actually going on here is one of the most complicated, beautiful, believable love stories I have encountered since I don't know when. It's also done wonders to help with my phobia of insects.
( This is a cut for length, but also mildly for spoilers. If this sounds like a film you'd enjoy, and you have the ability, I'd urge you to see it before learning much else about it. If its limited release isn't anywhere near you, I don't think my review will detract from your seeing it later. )
I left the theatre smiling. I smile when I think about this movie. It is an embarrassment of riches. I have no idea what Peter Strickland will come up with next, but I will be there for it. If I see a better film this year, I will be very surprised indeed.
* I am uncertain about this, because the worldbuilding is not explicitly discussed onscreen (and why should it be, as there is no in-world reason to do so). I think there may be a very few men, because there are several scenes in a crowded lecture hall, which is filled with seated women and with seated mannequins dressed in female clothing. The mannequins are outnumbered by the women perhaps one hundred to one. The only reason I can think of for having them there is if there are men in those seats, who have been visually replaced by mannequins so that they are demarcated only by their own absence. Which, just, bless.
** Literally twenty minutes after making this entry I found out I have clothes moths. The lesson here is NEVER GIVE ANY GROUND.
