I was so ready for this movie from the time it was announced. The premise – widows stuck with a debt left behind by their newly-deceased criminal husbands – is undeniable. Yes, in 2019, I want to see women take back their narrative and show they can do everything just as good, and likely better, as a man can. Yes, I want to see women be badasses and vulnerable at the same time. Yes, I want to see director Steve McQueen have a little bit of fun after being known for such serious, heavy movies. Everything about it sounded prime to explode. A true firecracker ready to be thrown under the porch of America.
Yet it came out in mid-November 2018 and more or less disappeared.
When I first started my blog back in 2014, I wrote a recurring column called Redbox Ready. For a variety of reasons, I dropped it (Redbox’s cultural foothold beginning to shrink with the influx of streaming, the format itself too laborious to leave energy to write). But I happened upon one really key discovery that I still think about today: the discrepancy between the critical and the audience reaction.
When people are talking about the general response to a movie, they’re often quick to mention the Rotten Tomatoes scores. There’s a number of issues with that, such as how the scores are developed, how the website decides what’s fresh and what isn’t, etc. But it does, in the end, give you a general flavor for how critics across the country (and aboard) are swaying.
What I find more interesting, however, is when you look at Rotten Tomatoes and compare the Tomatometer (critics) with the Audience Score. Some movies have been certified Rotten (below 60%), but the Audience Score is much higher. A recent example of this would be M. Night Shyamalan’s superhero sortasequel, Glass. The Tomatometer rates it at 37% for the critical response, but the Audience Score is over twice that, sitting at 74%. Even more, that’s 330 critics vs. 8,660 audience members.
(Now, I’m not going to say anyone is right or wrong. Everyone approaches a movie differently. Some critics will judge a movie based on what they want out of it, some will judge based on what they believe the movie’s goal to be, and some will judge based on some Unmentionable Criteria of Perfect Movies they’ve been forming over the years. The audience is just as varied with how their approach. Some want a good, complex story; some want escapism; some just want an accessible tale they can follow. You never know.)
There are also times where the Tomatometer is quite high and the Audience Score is significantly lower. WIDOWS is one of those situations. The movie sports a stellar Tomatometer of 91%, but rather head-scratchingly, a much lower audience score of 62%. Now, there is no right or wrong – that’s entirely beside the point of going to the movies, where we ideally want a conversation about what we saw – but it does suggest a disconnect. In the time that I wrote my Redbox Ready column (RIP those FOUR columns I wrote), whenever I saw a much higher Tomatometer score compared with a much lower Audience Score, often the case was simple: the movie was greatly admired and respected, but it left a good chunk of the audience cold.
It’s very easy to simply say, “Well, it just wasn’t for them”. And that is very likely true. But there is also the very real possibility that, for a significant chunk of an audience, something is missing.
I count myself a part of that group.
I want to be clear that there is so much to admire in this movie. The expert craft of it. The bold, crisp visual style. The quiet, furious power of acting led by Viola Davis, and continued with an absolutely stellar cast including Brian Tyree Henry, Daniel Kaluuya (holy shit, is that a character), and Michelle Rodriguez. Elizabeth Debicki gets her best role since GREAT GATSBY as a vulnerable, slightly naive woman trying to stand up for herself for once. Every actor here brings their A-game, but that’s where the coldness starts to leak in.
WIDOWS was originally conceived as a British crime drama that aired between 1983 and 1985, two series (seasons) of six episodes each. A casual reading of the plot on Wikipedia reveals that a significant twist (you’ve been warned) at the end of the first series is in the WIDOWS movie. That means writer Gillian Flynn condensed 6 episodes of television into one 2-hour movie. Unfortunately, it feels like it. There are so many characters that would likely be bit parts except for the fact they’re played by major actors like Colin Farrell and Robert Duvall. When you have a character played by Brian Tyree Henry or Carrie Coon, I sorta expect them to be central to the plot; when they drop out, even as intended, it feels like something got lost in the shuffle. As a work of adaptation, they understandably had to condense the story. But this almost feels like an Ant-Man adaptation – hoping to keep all the parts so the shrinking only increases the density, thus retaining the strength.
In that case, the density is there. But it makes it nearly emotionally impenetrable. I know I’m seeing great acting and great direction (McQueen’s long shot atop a limo driving through Chicago while a volatile conversation is only heard and not seen is an especially inspired way to show how removed these people are from the city they’re trying to take hold of), but it’s not taking hold of me. It’s missing that connective electricity that shocks it to life.
The best way I can think of this movie is that it’s like someone took an entertaining paperback novel, injected it with some timely lines and images (you’ll know them when you see them), and then framed certain pages inside an art museum. It is a stunning, immaculately crafted work of art to walk through. Individual pages and moments will surely draw your attention (just as there are individual scenes I will remember, most of which involve Kaliuuya’s and Davis’ characters).
But we all know that feeling of going into an art museum in which the art is not speaking directly to you. It’s gorgeous and to be admired, but it’s not shifting anything internally. The more you walk around, the more you feel slightly wearied by it, hoping for something to jolt you into feeling. You can see where they’re trying to go with Davis, Debicki, and Rodriguez’s characters; it just doesn’t quite land the punch it should. Maybe it’s a result of not knowing enough about them or their husbands. Maybe it’s not having enough time to breathe, narratively. Whether it’s an overabundance of plot or what, something is dragging this film, preventing it from reaching a full, cathartic sprint.
At this time of the year, when the Oscars are incoming, it’s common for writers and audiences on the internet to point out “This is a movie y’all forgot and it’s great!” WIDOWS has certainly been mentioned quite often. Maybe it will register with others far more than me. But this may also be another instance where a movie came and went for a reason: a disconnect with an audience just wanting to feel something.
