If you took a Western and a fairytale about a dashing prince trying to save his princess, the result would be Nathan and David Zellner’s new film Damsel.
It follows Samuel (Robert Pattinson), a dandy clearly unfit to be a cowboy, and Henry (David Zellner), a man posing as a parson, on a quest to save the former’s kidnapped love, Penelope (Mia Wasikowska). Though Damsel was made before Harvey Weinstein’s downfall sparked #MeToo, the film feels like the Zellners’ attempt to contribute. Unfortunately, they don’t seem empathetic or humble enough to realize that their take is the same as every other “nice guy” in history.
Though Damsel has many Western trappings, there’s also something clearly off about it. The most obvious is the dialogue, which is just a bit too modern (especially the curse words) to read as period-accurate. Another is Terry Anderson’s costumes. Many of the characters are performing a persona and their clothes feel like parodies of western garb. Perhaps the subtlest bit of weirdness, though, is the music, performed by The Octopus Project. Though it has a twangy, folksy sound, it’s also noticeably manic. It’s as if the Zellners are shaking the audience and asking, “Are you having fun yet? Are you having fun yet?! ARE YOU HAVING FUN YET?!?!” For the most part, the answer is no.
Damsel is a dark comedy that trades on the ridiculous and unexpected rather than traditional jokes, so its humor can be an acquired taste. Some moments are deliberately cartoonish. For instance, the way Samuel struggles to take off his guitar or the character who dies while urinating and then keeps spraying like a fountain in death. However, those absurd moments can clash with the otherwise subdued and realistic tone in a way that feels unintentional and–specially before the plot kicks in around the 40-minute mark–the film feels like an aimless progression of bizarre vignettes.
During those first 40 minutes, Pattinson is entirely responsible for keeping the audience interested. The actor has spent the years since Twilight hiding his handsomeness (last year’s Lost City of Z) or rejecting it (last year’s Good Time), but here, he subverts it. His beautiful clothes and handsome face are simply the attractive shell hiding the weirdness inside. Samuel is clearly playing dress up, but there’s something else wrong with him too. When he chases and kills someone he claims is the brother of the man who kidnapped Penelope, you’re not sure if he’s telling the truth or just trying to impress Henry. We don’t find out exactly the kind of guy Samuel is until over half way through the film. It’s hard to say exactly what happens without spoiling everything, but we end up spending the rest of the movie following Penelope because of it.
Wasikowsa’s work is also about subversion. Though she plays the titular damsel, she’s far from helpless. If anything, Penelope is surprisingly mean, but it makes sense once we get the full context of her relationships to the men around her. In part, that’s done by making comedy out of undermining the male characters’ perceptions of their own nobility. Take for instance, the way the film cuts from Samuel singing a silly love song he wrote for Penelope to a shot of him jerking off to her picture.
At its core, Damsel, is about the fantasies men project on beautiful women and the way that toxic attention causes Penelope to harden herself against the world. Switching our sympathies to Penelope halfway through the film is meant to make us realize that, but the Zellners don’t go as far as they think.
Rather than truly get Penelope’s perspective, we still see her emotions and actions through a man’s understanding—namely, Henry’s. In his eyes, she is remote, unknowable and unpredictable. Rather than let Penelope show the audience how exhausting it would be to be a beautiful woman in an uncivilized world controlled by egotistical men, she becomes just another stereotype of womanhood whose struggles are jokes to the men who objectify her. Her feelings are only worth acknowledging as a prelude to seduction.
At the end of the film, it’s unclear if the Zellners believe there’s a tragic romance in wanting a woman who doesn’t want you back or they understand that’s just patriarchal BS. The film’s title certainly suggests they have some idea, but Damsel’s final moments ring too sincere. Perhaps it doesn’t matter if the film itself understands what it’s saying about these men, though. It chooses to follow them rather than the woman they torture. We don’t get to understand how frustrated she is with her life. Instead, she’s a pawn in a story about a sad guy, the object all the men desire, but don’t bother to understand. #MeToo may be changing the industry that makes films, but the films themselves are still the same.
Rating: 5/10
