52 Films By Women: The Old Guard (2020)

Netflix

By Andrea Thompson

Action movies are every bit as much wish fulfillment fantasies as rom-coms. We want to believe that people are capable of these kinds of breathtaking physical stunts, this formidable of a mindset, and that they could not only stand up to the bad guys, but beat them against all odds, just as we want to believe in the great love stories. 

In real life we know our heroes seldom live up to our impossibly high expectations, or they prove to be all too vulnerable, to pressure and bullets alike. And love can fade, or turn to outright contempt with little to no explanation save for the slow, mundanely cruel struggles of everyday life.

Part of the genius of the Netflix film “The Old Guard” is how brilliantly director Gina Prince-Bythewood gives us this fantasy while updating it for our times. There’s not just a damn good reason our action heroes survive everything their adventures have to offer, from hails of bullets, slit throats, and falls from multiple stories, there are major drawbacks to such resilience. If the immortals in “The Old Guard” no longer have any reason to fear death, an eternity of imprisonment offers chills galore.

Our introduction to this world is Nile Freeman (KiKi Layne), a Marine who gets her throat cut when she’s on a mission to take out a military target in Afghanistan, only to find herself healed without a scratch. When she’s approached, or rather, kidnapped by the world-weary Andromache, or Andy (Charlize Theron), she receives explanations, but precious few answers. Andy and the rest of her team, who are also immortals, not only don’t know how or why they received their gifts, they’re also on the run from those who wish to exploit their abilities.

What they have done is spend their time assisting those in need, which is a welcome change in a genre which often seems more interested in taking the time to reassure us that the men dying on-screen are evil in order to justify disposing of them with relish. But “The Old Guard” is more interested in telling us about the people Andy and her men are rescuing, rather than delving into the lives of those who victimized them.

Just as remarkable is the team’s diversity, with Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky’s (Luca Marinelli) relationship not only treated as a simple matter of fact, but spelled out with one of cinema’s most beautifully poetic declarations of love before adding another entry to one of its most passionate kisses. Such a simple thing as a great love story between two men shouldn’t feel so monumental, but it remains so, since the genre’s also known for its reverence for not just traditional masculinity, but hypermasculinity, and often has difficulty doing right by female love interests, let alone two male ones.

Netflix

Skill like this also goes a long way towards excusing plot holes, and this is one area where “The Old Guard” is by no means an exception. You’ll not only excuse Nile still having her phone, but perhaps the biggest hole of all, and that is people continuing to trust CEOs. But multiple people make the decision to trust Merrick (Harry Melling), who’s not just any CEO, but the head of a pharmaceutical empire. Why anyone would be shocked that he turns out to be, shall we say, ethically challenged is beyond me. 

Good thing there’s the incredible action scenes to distract. Andy and her cohorts may heal from any injury inflicted on them, but they still feel pain, and they aren’t gifted with any other power such as super strength. Their abilities come from the fact that they’ve had a very long time to hone their combat skills, and their time on the run is less than glamorous. You’d think they’d have made a few investments, but these action heroes don’t have unlimited access to a vast horde of resources; they hide out in trains and long abandoned buildings while they’re figuring out their next moves. 

Gina Prince-Bythewood saves the most satisfying fantasy for the end, where she gives us a taste of something we crave about as much as love: meaning. When the team gets a small sense of what their actions have wrought for humanity over just the last 150 years alone, it’s a realization that perhaps they are a part of a larger story after all, one that consists of humanity continually choosing their better natures. In our current moment, perhaps that’s the most unlikely belief of all, but “The Old Guard” sells it with such conviction that you can’t help but hope for the best, not just for its characters, but for us all.

52 Films By Women: Circus of Books (2019)

IMDB

By Andrea Thompson

Are the filmmakers behind “Circus of Books” here to give us what we need or what we want? Well, it depends on your definition of both. Subversive is an overused term, but part of what makes the Netflix documentary so damn enjoyable isn't just how it does indeed subvert our expectations, but how much sheer delight director Rachel Mason takes in it.

Not all of the enjoyment is intentional; certain family dynamics can only come through lived experience. Objectivity has been dead for a while, but it was still an incredibly wise decision on Mason's part not to distance herself from the fact that she's making a movie about her own family. “Circus of Books” is and remains a family affair, and Mason allows those aforementioned family dynamics to shine as she makes an incredibly personal vision of her own, often while examining how the term family itself was hijacked in the name of conservatism. Or more accurately, a conservative crusade that would only accept one definition of family and sought to remake the world in that image.

Karen and Barry Mason violated that definition by the nature of their work, even as they upheld the image of a close-knit, conventional life in the midst of secular, liberal West Hollywood. They were careful to keep their work life hidden, not just from their children, but everyone. This commitment to secrecy was so extensive that when Karen asks them to explain what their store, the titular Circus of Books, actually was, Karen and Barry look at each other in that uncomfortable way parents often do whenever they're forced to discuss anything related to sex. And why not? The store that they ran didn't just sell sex, it sold porn, and was actually the largest distributor of gay porn in the United States.

IMDB

Their paranoia was probably justified. The word porn alone is enough to send people scrambling for their pearls even today, but adding the word gay most likely would have sent the Masons' neighbors screaming in the other direction back in the 70s and 80s, and most likely well into the 90s, since Karen and Barry ran the store together for about 30 years. As magazine publisher Billy Miller puts it in the film, “To be a homo was unspeakable, basically.” In such a time, when even mentioning homosexuality was considered disgusting, the Circus of Books was a safe place, the center of the gay universe, where the men (and this was very much a business that catered to male tastes) could see other gay men “naked and unafraid,” and feel free to openly connect with each other. In some cases, they were very open, with the alley behind the store quickly becoming known as Vaseline Alley.

So how did a nice Jewish couple who regularly went to synagogue get into this? Like some of the best things start, mostly by accident. They needed to order a living, saw an ad in the paper from Hustlers publisher Larry Flynt, who was looking for magazine distributors, and jumped on it. From day one, the cash started flowing in, and the two quickly set up the business that would end up sending their kids to college. It was also a life that was strictly segregated, even from themselves, since Barry and Karen apparently never even watched the videos they sold, and in some cases, made themselves, albeit through others. To them it was a job, and to this day their employees speak highly of their honesty and trustworthiness, very rare qualities in themselves, but all the more so in the adult industry.

Even if “Circus of Books” doesn't directly address it, the Masons became bigamists in a sense, with a newfound family on the side as well, even if it was more of a response to the devastation of the AIDS epidemic. The Masons were often a source of support, even acting as surrogate parents in cases where biological parents refused to visit their dying child. Such attitudes didn't have to look too far for justification, given that it was upheld in the highest levels of government. Rather that funding treatments, the Reagan administration threw its money into a task force dedicated to arresting those who sold explicit materials. That the Masons would be swept up in it was feasible, and soon became a reality when Barry was arrested and charged. But the culture of silence and shame remained strong, with even the couple's children remaining ignorant of their father's imprisonment. Things only resolved happily because Clinton was elected, and suddenly, not only were the prosecutors switched, there were a whole new set of priorities that didn't involve controlling people's viewing and sexual habits.

IMDB

In the end, it wasn't their business that did the most damage to the family, but the culture of silence and shame they'd enabled. When Rachel's brother Josh came out as gay, Karen was so unprepared she initially believed god was punishing her for her work, and had to come to terms with what she'd absorbed from her conservative upbringing. Even if she worked with and was fine gay people, she felt the need to justify what she did as being for her family, and that meant she was unprepared for anyone in it being gay. Her decision to make the commitment to not just examine her beliefs, but join PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) and become an activist are some of the most touching moments in the film, especially since older people are often depicted as frozen in time.

Karen embarking on a new stage in her life is also thoughtfully juxtaposed with the decision to finally close the store. The reasons why the business model it was based on is no longer economically feasible hardly need to be stated, but even if its heyday is long past, the lights going off for the last time at the Circus of Books feels like a tribute. The past may be gone, but everyone involved in the doc, whether behind the camera or in front, seems ready to embrace and ensure a future many wish to prevent.