Author: Benjamin Rosenstock

This weekend, I watched two comedies, both great for different reasons: “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “Citizen Ruth.”

At this point, I’m not sure I could write anything about “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” that hasn’t been said, but I wanted to briefly share my thoughts because I actually liked the movie so much more than I expected. In fact, setting aside Mickey Rooney’s racist caricature of a Japanese man, of course, I really loved it.

The most obvious place to start is Audrey Hepburn, who is just a magnetic presence throughout the whole movie. Of course, part of that is her undeniable beauty, but it’s more than that. Whenever Holly Golightly was onscreen, I was just enraptured. There’s something offbeat, weird, and deeply intriguing about her. She’s like the flighty, unstable weirdo that Natalie Portman played in “Garden State,” but so much less grating and two-dimensional. While Sam from “Garden State” represented the purest form of the subtly sexist Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope, Holly has a rich backstory and layered psychology that explains her behavior.

When Buddy Ebsen came along as Doc Golightly, the movie briefly lost me; as interesting as Holly’s past life should be, I was more engaged by her present flirtation and evolving relationship with Paul Varjak (George Peppard, a funny, likable straight man). The subplot with Doc is kind of a weird digression stuck into the middle of the movie, considering he never even shows up again once he takes the bus home. That said, I recognize that it serves an important role in the movie. It’s just not what I was most interested in.

Pretty much everything else is golden. The party scene is just so great, and as odd as it sounds, I felt like I could relate a little bit to it, having seen some weird and random stuff at college parties. There are so many little moments in that scene that I love: the quick speed of Martin Balsam’s talking, the way Paul self-identifies as “Paul baby” when O.J. calls him “Fred baby,” the moment when Paul tosses a girl off Jose’s back and onto the back of another random attendee, and the comedic highpoint of the movie: the shot of one woman laughing hysterically at her reflection in a mirror, followed by the shot of the same woman sobbing at her reflection. Really, there are a lot of those small moments that I love throughout the movie. In some old movies, antiquated dialogue can create a bit of a distance between me and the movie, but here, it was funny and appealing. I love “the mean reds” and the way Holly calls all men “rats” or “super-rats.”

The way the romance between Holly and Paul proceeds seems like the standard romance formula, in some ways. Girl meets boy, girl gets boy, girl loses boy, girl gets boy back. (I put ‘girl’ as the subject because Holly is the one who has the real character arc here, but the other way around would work, too.) There’s a really cute date scene, lots of funny banter, numerous other love interests as obstacles (most notably Jose), a final confrontation, and a kiss in the rain. But there’s something so deep and unique about the conflict that drives Paul and Holly apart; it’s not as simple as Holly loving another man. The conflict is more internal—it’s a character flaw. It’s Holly’s love of materialism, her stubborn insistence that these temporary distractions will fill the hole in her heart.

This is best represented by the heartbreaking moment when she opens the cab door and shoos the nameless cat away. Pretty much any scene in any movie when a character gets rid of a cat will inevitably hit me hard since I love cats, but this one was especially potent because it was such a powerful metaphor for how Holly feels. Towards the end of the movie, I was so frustrated with her—I seriously wanted her to stop pretending she didn’t have any genuine love for Paul, or her cat, or her house, or her life in New York. And that final moment, as she jumps out of the cab, searches for the cat, finds it, and embraces Paul, is so cathartic.

Skipping forward 35 years, “Citizen Ruth” is most notable for being the debut film of Alexander Payne. I’ve always had mixed feelings about Payne; while I like “About Schmidt” and “The Descendants” well enough, I have to admit I found “Nebraska” pretty dull the first time I saw it. I was ready, for a while, to write Payne off as a filmmaker who simply didn’t fit my tastes, regardless of how beloved he may be. Then I watched “Election,” and I almost groaned, because I could no longer dismiss Alexander Payne. I absolutely loved “Election,” and “Citizen Ruth” represents another boost in my regard for Payne (I still haven’t seen “Sideways”).

Oddly enough, the first thing “Citizen Ruth” reminded me of was “Mockingjay,” the third book in the Hunger Games trilogy. In “Mockingjay,” Katniss defeats President Snow and the primary villains of the series with the help of ostensible good guys President Coin and her best friend, Gale. Eventually, though, you realize that the good guys have some dark secrets of their own. One of the fascinating twists of “Mockingjay” is that though President Coin might be trying to accomplish an admirable goal—defeating Snow and bringing justice to Panem—she’s ultimately just as manipulative, vindictive, and hateful as the presumed bad guys. Gale, too, though well-meaning, is implicated in some of Coin’s most heinous acts.

In this analogy, the pro-lifers that try to convince Ruth to keep her baby in “Citizen Ruth” are like President Snow and the corrupt citizens of the Capitol. They’re the most obvious choice for the antagonists; they’re religious zealots who seek to manipulate Ruth and use her to accomplish their own political agenda. Honestly, to me, abortion is the kind of issue that doesn’t need for both sides to be treated equally, just like a movie about gay people fighting for same-sex marriage to be legal doesn’t need an equally valid point of view showing that maybe gay marriage should be illegal. I would’ve been fine with an unequivocally pro-choice movie, just like I’d be fine with a pro-gay marriage or anti-racism movie.

And yet “Citizen Ruth” manages to humanize both sides. On the pro-choice side, the characters can be likable because they’re generally more accepting of Ruth and her lifestyle and her choices. On the pro-life side, the characters can be likable because Norm (Kurtwood Smith) and Gail (Mary Kay Place) are such kind people to Ruth, feeding her and clothing her and paying her bail and putting up with her shit. Us liberals tend to dismiss radical conservatives and pro-lifers, but Norm and Gail, despite being cartoonish, were genuinely caring people. It’s important to remember people’s humanity, even when their beliefs are damaging.

Yet the other striking thing about “Citizen Ruth” is that really, none of the characters are likable. They’re all mostly caricatures, the pro-choice side being stereotypical hippie liberals and the pro-life side being stereotypical Jesus freaks. To a degree, both sides are kind or respectful to Ruth, but a lot of that is pure manipulation. Ruth is treated like Katniss is in “Mockingjay”; she’s used as a symbol for a political agenda, and even if that agenda is arguably the correct one, it’s taking advantage of Ruth and using her, not treating her like a human with desires that should be respected.

It’s worth noting that Ruth is also a terrible person. She’s an addict, so not all of her actions are entirely her fault, but it still gets painful and exasperating to see her repeatedly huffing paint and glue and patio sealant when she knows it’s terrible for her. And she definitely acts entirely selfishly and ignorantly, regardless of any physiological drive. She acts entirely in her own self-interest, with no specifically pro-life or pro-choice stance of her own. She drops a toilet tank cover on a guard’s head and knocks him out. She ruthlessly uses profanity, including such hilarious gems as “suck the shit out of my ass, you fucker!” and a casual “oh yeah, well you’re a cunt.” When her pro-life mother begs her not to abort her baby and asks, “What if I’d aborted you?,” Ruth screams back over a megaphone, “Well, at least I wouldn’t have had to suck your boyfriend’s cock!” Laura Dern sinks her teeth into this role with a brilliant, hilarious gusto, and you have to admire her for how shamelessly abhorrent she makes Ruth.

[Spoilers for the ending in this paragraph.] And yet, despite Ruth’s despicability, you know that she deserves a happy ending just as much as any of these manipulative people trying to control her body. So when the movie ends with Ruth escaping with $15,000, you feel happy for her. Sure, there’s a good chance she’ll squander it all in a couple days on booze and drugs. Maybe she’ll end up back in jail by the end of the day. Maybe she’ll never turn her life around or see any of her kids again. Maybe she’ll die early after living an unhappy life with no support from family or friends, only drugs and the streets.

But whatever happens to Ruth after the credits roll, at least it’s her choice. And that, more than any explicit pro-abortion moral, is the most progressive message “Citizen Ruth” has.

There’s a phrase that gets thrown around a lot: “style over substance.” Movies that embody this phrase are often visually exciting and unique, but they’re shallow on a thematic level. Sometimes, being shallow is okay; action movies benefit greatly from style, so even some cliché entries in the genre (like this year’s “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”) provide solid entertainment.

Strong style can be used as a great tool to cover up a lack of substance, but just because a movie’s good quality is an illusion doesn’t mean it’s not necessarily real. If a sweeping, sad movie score plants an emotional seed that the story itself lacks, the effect can still be genuine. It might not be as strong or cathartic as an emotional reaction caused by the story, but it’s not inherently fake just because it’s caused by something artificial.

So while I found “The Revenant” to be pretty shallow when I looked at it in retrospect, that didn’t take away from my enjoyment of it as I was watching. It’s the kind of movie that the phrase ‘style over substance’ was created for, but that style is so amazingly done that the illusion works better than it has any right to, creating an immersive and frequently captivating experience that makes you forget how hollow most of it is.

The first way “The Revenant” creates the illusion is by featuring some great performances. Tom Hardy gives such an engaging performance as John Fitzgerald, by far the most complex character in the film. Between his gruff, barely intelligible voice, his wide eyes, and his twisted moral code, Fitzgerald is such a captivating presence, and Hardy is a huge part of that. Domhnall Gleeson and Will Poulter won’t get any credit for their roles, but they’re both really solid in supporting roles.

Ironically, Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance as Hugh Glass is the one that can make you remember how shallow the movie is. He definitely does a good job—he manages to keep you interested and invested for the bulk of the 156-minute running time that’s focused on him, in the same way that Robert Redford gave a silent solo performance in “All is Lost.” But the best performances of the year are usually performances that convey all the nuances and complexities of the character, and Hugh Glass isn’t really a nuanced or complex character. Hardy is able to squeeze every ounce of complexity that he can out of Fitzgerald’s dialogue, but DiCaprio doesn’t particularly do anything to transcend the lack of characterization on the page. He plays what he’s told to, and does a fine job.

By seeing Glass go through so much shit trying to survive, you realize the whole journey is fairly one-note. There are interesting new challenges and new survival tactics that come up throughout the movie—like, of course, the scene of Glass removing a horse’s organs and then curling up to sleep inside its body—but the bulk of his journey is just slow recovery and the struggle to survive.

Unlike Fitzgerald, there isn’t much inner psychology going on with Glass. He’s driven to survive by the desperate need to get revenge on the man who killed his son. He feels grief over his dead son, and the dead Native American woman who gave birth to him. That’s about it, honestly.

[Spoilers for the next three paragraphs.] If there’s one central theme that “The Revenant” seems to explicitly be going for, it’s this idea that revenge is best left for the Creator, whether that means nature or some nebulous spiritual force like God or fate. This isn’t a bad idea for a revenge thriller, honestly. The real-life Hugh Glass, after tracking down John Fitzgerald and confronting him, decided not to kill him because of the heavy penalty for killing a soldier. This could’ve been incorporated well into the heavily fictionalized film to fit in with this theme of mercy and the relief of letting go of your desperate anger, but nope. Glass goes ahead and, effectively, kills Fitzgerald.

The most frustrating part of this isn’t that Glass goes back on the lesson he heard earlier. The movie could’ve easily made it appear like Glass considered showing mercy, then gave in to his anger and bloodlust. The frustrating part is that the movie acts like he is showing Fitzgerald mercy. Sure, he shoots him in the shoulder, stabs him in the gut, and sends him downriver to a group of ruthless natives who will undoubtedly seal Fitzgerald’s fate—but apparently since he didn’t deal the actual killing blow, he’s leaving the revenge to God.

And then the last few minutes depict one final scene of stumbling through the forest, with Glass imagining his dead wife…and, in the last shot, turning to stare straight into the camera. I gotta say, that’s a pretty dumb, self-important final shot. Does it really mean anything, or does it just seem like it’d be the cool, artsy thing to do?

Yeah, you could read more themes into the story. You could say it’s about the battle between man and nature, or the fundamental cruelty of humanity, or something. But I got the same sense I got from the last Alejandro G. Iñárritu movie, “Birdman”: a lot of the movie seemed like it was supposed to be meaningful, but it really wasn’t. I guess that’s why people call his movies pretentious; there’s this appearance of meaningfulness that the movie itself doesn’t actually back up.

Still, if all of Iñárritu’s movies are that way, like I said, this one does a pretty great job of maintaining the illusion. There’s a lot of people who are responsible for that; the production design, costume design, makeup, and visual effects are all pretty perfect. I mean, that bear attack alone is worth some recognition.

But by far the biggest asset to “The Revenant” is Emmanuel Lubezki, who has a ridiculous track record at this point. It’s difficult for me sometimes to tell where the director’s work ends and the cinematographer’s begins, but I have to imagine that a lot of the amazing camerawork in “Birdman” and “The Revenant” is really thanks to Lubezki’s creativity and flawless execution. Without the disorienting distortion of Lubezki’s fisheye-esque shots, without the protracted Steadicam takes, without the visceral visual immersion of the brutal battle scenes, without the stunning visuals of wintery forest landscapes and frigid mountain ranges, “The Revenant” would not be nearly as captivating as it is.

And “The Revenant” really is captivating. Its running time could probably shaved down a little (maybe just 10 or 15 minutes, so Glass’s recovery doesn’t feel too easy and unrealistic), and maybe that’d be a better choice for a focused revenge story—maybe Iñárritu would’ve been better off in general trying to tell a focused, visceral revenge story instead of this faux-meditation on nature and death and life and retribution or whatever. But that’s not what Alejandro G. Iñárritu likes to do. He doesn’t like to tell modest, low-key stories. He likes to shoot for the sky, even when there’s nothing up there.

Grade: B

“The Danish Girl” isn’t awful. I kind of thought it would be, for a lot of reasons. Despite a 70% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, most critics who I regularly follow gave it negative reviews, and some publications claimed it wasn’t a good representation of the transgender community. Overall, it seemed to be a very Oscar bait-y type movie to me, and the fact that Eddie Redmayne was the star was only more off-putting. I don’t really mind Redmayne (haven’t seen “Les Mis” yet), but I despised “The Theory of Everything,” the last movie that he was really recognized for. Even though “The Danish Girl” has a different director than “The Theory of Everything,” the presence of Eddie Redmayne somehow seemed to confirm to me that it’d be as bad.

And it isn’t. There are moments of “The Danish Girl” that are emotionally affecting, and it’s bolstered by solid performances from Eddie Redmayne, Alicia Vikander, and Matthias Schoenaerts. (This type of movie seems to always have committed actors that often outshine the script and direction. See: Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley in “The Imitation Game,” Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush in “The King’s Speech,” etc.)

The first 45 minutes or so, in fact, I really liked. I think the way Einar gradually realized that she was actually Lili was fairly well-done, and there’s some genuine fun in the scenes where Lili dresses up and hangs out with Gerda. Those are the kinds of scenes that are happy for multiple reasons—on the one hand, they’re like fun dress-up games with a cute couple, and on the other hand, they show a very important, serious transformation taking place. As much melodrama and repetition as there is late in the movie, these early scenes of Lili discovering her identity are nice because she seems genuinely happy to finally be dressing as the person she feels like inside.

The power of these early scenes is that you know that even though everything’s fun and happy and positive, it’s not going to stay that way. Gerda, inevitably, is not going to be okay with Lili’s transformation once she realizes it’s for real and not just a game. And there’s a power to seeing these pleasant scenes slowly melt into serious drama. Lili’s trip to the ball is initially fun and slightly humorous as she awkwardly pretends she’s a cisgender woman, but then there’s the very serious and emotional scene when Henrik (Ben Whishaw) goes off with Lili and kisses her. This is probably Redmayne’s best scene as Lili slowly gives in to Henrik’s advances and kisses him back, terrified and nervous. I could really feel the pain and confusion and desire. (More on gender versus sexuality down below.)

Despite this really solid early section, I couldn’t help but pick up some negative similarities between the movie and “The Theory of Everything.” While Lili’s childhood friend Hans is a potentially interesting character as played by the charismatic Schoenaerts, he ultimately seems to serve as a pointless ‘new partner’ role for Gerda, like Charlie Cox’s character in “Theory.” At least the romance isn’t really developed, and at least the movie ends with him quietly supporting Gerda after she loses Lili, but his character felt like a big missed opportunity to show what Lili was like when she was young.

Redmayne’s performance is more impressive to me here than the physical contortions of his role as Stephen Hawking, but I still get the sense that he’s really trying to show off to the Academy. Some of his scenes crying are really well-done, but there’s too many, and there’s something about his scenes dressed up as a female that seem especially showy. It’s like Look! I can dress up and look like a woman! Look how surprisingly attractive I am in traditional ladies’ clothes! This was one aspect that I hadn’t even picked up on until I read Carol Grant’s article about the movie simplifying womanhood, but “The Danish Girl” does tend to reduce being a woman to lipstick, traditionally feminine fashion, having gal pals, and sleeping with men.

Speaking of which: there isn’t much sex in this movie at all, and it’s kind of difficult to tell whether there should be more or even less. In real life, Lili was a heterosexual trans woman (or bisexual—it’s kind of hard to tell from the cursory research I’ve done), but it’s difficult to tell what role sexuality plays in the film. When Lili kisses Henrik, what does this exactly mean—that she’s solely attracted to men, or that she’s attracted to them in addition to women? During the sex scenes between Lili and Gerda, is Lili secretly thinking of men, or is she genuinely attracted to Gerda? When their marriage dissolves, is the implication that Lili has no genuine attraction to Gerda, romantic or sexual, or is it just that this dramatic transition drives them apart?

In many ways, this would be an easier story to tell if it focused exclusively on gender instead of adding in enough hints of sexuality to wish for more. If Lili began dressing exclusively as a woman, that’d provide ample reason for Gerda to be concerned; it didn’t need to be a kiss with a man that made her question it. Based on the kiss and the fact that Lili has secretly been seeing Henrik, Lili’s sexuality seems to be the main thing driving her and her wife apart, not her gender identity—the ostensible focus of the movie.

This lack of clarity about the characters, their sexualities, and their motivations makes the film begin feeling generally disjointed and shapeless after about 45 minutes. Gerda oscillates between a friendly support of Lili and a sudden rage at her husband seemingly every scene. In some movies, the occasional return of an old anger and sadness may be realistic (see the long fight scene in “Before Midnight”), but in this one, it gets exhausting to try to figure out what the nature of the characters’ relationship really is.

It doesn’t help that there aren’t many dimensions to the characters, especially Lili. What is Lili’s personality, really? ‘Painter’ and ‘transgender’ are descriptors, but not personality traits. Gerda actually acknowledges this in a rare self-aware moment when Lili says, “I want to be a woman, not a painter,” and Gerda says, “Well, some people have been known to do both.” Lili’s line epitomizes the flatness of her character post-gender revelation, but Gerda’s funny self-aware line doesn’t do enough to remedy that. Part of the strength of the beginning of the film is in seeing them talking and showing their personalities outside of the main conflict, but once the real plot kicks into gear, they play pretty flat characters, getting into the arguments and big dramatic discussions that you’d expect them to. Like when Gerda asks Lili to bring her husband back and she says, “I can’t.”

Speaking of which, there’s something vaguely uncomfortable about the repeated insistence that Einar and Lili are separate people. Lili speaks of her past male self like she is killing him by ‘becoming’ Lili. In the society when the movie is set, it’s not unreasonable to think of gender identity as something that changes a person into another person, so it’s not inherently offensive, but it becomes questionable when Lili repeatedly emphasizes that she’s becoming a new person, as if not a single aspect of her previous life was worth living.

And, going back to Gerda’s earlier self-aware line, here’s another instance of inconsistent characterization: sometimes, Lili (and, through her, the movie itself) does seem to be completely self-aware, but other times, it doesn’t. Once, Lili says, “I think Lili’s thoughts, I dream her dreams. She was always there.” But later on, she and Gerda speak as if Lili really never was there, that Lili genuinely was Einar, a male, for most of her life. As funny as Hans’s line “I’ve only liked a handful of people in my life, and you’ve been two of them” is, it’s too much of a literalization of the transition Lili has undergone. No, Hans—Lili has only been one of them. This is the same person you hung out with and loved as a kid.

And then there’s the ending, the maudlin death scene. I’m not sure what makes a death feel manipulative and empty; it’s hard to determine. I mean, in real life, Lili Elbe did die during an operation to construct a uterus and vagina for her. Still, though, there’s something off-putting about feeling the need to make one last attempt at eliciting emotion.

Because with movies like this, the best moments are the subtle ones, the ones that can’t be explained in a few words. There can be big, broad moments with obvious emotional connotations like Joan Clarke telling Alan Turing “Sometimes it’s the very people who no one imagines anything of who do the things no one can imagine” in “The Imitation Game,” and those can be affecting in their simplicity, but there’s nothing really interesting or new or thought-provoking about moments like that. Similarly, while I felt myself getting goose bumps several times in the movie, I was conscious that that was a result of Alexandre Desplat’s soaring score, the performances, and the feeling that I should be getting emotional at that point. I was not genuinely sad when Lili died at the end of the movie. I felt like it was an inevitability in a movie like this.

And I think that’s what reminded me the most of “The Theory of Everything,” a movie I found much worse than this one: the unfortunate feeling that all of this was so predictable. Yeah, maybe Lili Elbe did die during the operation in real life. But of course the movie had to end that way. Of course it did.

Everybody knows that realism is overrated when it comes to art. Even focusing on the genres of realistic dramas and comedies alone, even without elements of fantasy or science fiction, we typically don’t want to watch something realistic. Aaron Sorkin’s movies and TV shows are popular partly because all the characters are intelligent and witty and think quick on their feet, and you get to have fun watching them all shoot comebacks back and forth at each other.

Of course, some people don’t like ultra-stylized dialogue. My roommate Julie told me she thought John Green’s acclaimed book “The Fault in Our Stars” (one of my favorite books) was extremely overrated, and one of her reasons was that teenagers don’t actually talk like that. They’re too clever, she argued, too quick at thinking on their feet. It seems like John Green, at least when it comes to witty banter, is like a YA form of Aaron Sorkin.

I think it all boils down to what the given story is trying to achieve. “Steve Jobs” and “The Social Network” don’t strive for realism when it comes to speech, but they each have beating emotional hearts—Steve’s denial about being a parent and Mark Zuckerberg’s contentious relationship with his friend Eduardo Saverin, respectively. The same goes for “The Fault in Our Stars,” which deals with death, grief, and the innate human desire to leave a mark on the world. You can bring out those sophisticated themes without having dialogue that necessarily bears a great resemblance to real speech.

And then there’s the mumblecore movement, films that luxuriate in all the mundanity and awkwardness of real life. Dialogue is filled with “um”s and “uh”s and “kind of”s and “sort of”s. There are often no scripts, leaving actors to struggle to find the words that make the most sense to them. It’s like a modern form of the neorealist films that populated Italy after World War II. These are movies that purposely portray the day-to-day lives of people who feel real, with little sensationalist conflict.

Mumblecore movies are still fairly overlooked when it comes to mainstream filmgoers, though, possibly because they’re anti-climactic by design (just like the Italian neorealist films). It’s only natural that movies like “Drinking Buddies” fly under the radar, even when they have stars like Jake Johnson, Anna Kendrick, and Olivia Wilde. Crowds have the rightful desire to want to be entertained, or at least engaged. Sometimes unconventional endings—like the romantic leads never actually acting on their desire in “Drinking Buddies—leave you unsatisfied. Sometimes I feel like happy endings are underrated, not overrated. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the guy and the girl ending up together in the end if that’s the ending that feels right for the story.

Still, I think part of film’s gradual evolution should be a greater willingness to challenge audience expectations and force people to ask themselves why some movies feel so unoriginal. Maybe sometimes a movie doesn’t have to have a satisfying, conclusive ending to be worth watching. Sometimes giving a disarmingly accurate portrayal of life is enough.

I wrote about this before, writing about “Boyhood” and “The Strange Little Cat.” “Boyhood” has no conventional plot, conflict, or arc; it’s just an authentic portrayal of a boy growing up, and it’s enormously affecting despite lacking a climax or conventional path of rising and falling action. “The Strange Little Cat” is far more challenging, instilling mundane reality with a sense of mysteriousness. There’s almost a sense of spirituality in the movie the way characters tell minor stories about things that have happened to them over the course of their day. The movie makes every seemingly insignificant anecdote seem indicative of some higher power, some nebulous force we can only barely sense and never comprehend. As I wrote in my article, “Sometimes it seems like we always think of life in such broad terms. When we watch our movies or TV and read our books, we look for commentary on big, important concepts like love, hate, God, war, success and failure. It makes sense that we’d want a movie to give us a new perspective on something important, but too often, that makes us forget everything else. Things like a stranger’s foot or the white side of an orange peel may seem inconsequential, but they become important through the sheer amount of space and time they take up in our lives.”

Another unconventional portrayal of reality is Lars von Trier’s “Melancholia,” the first half of which is dedicated to a psychological exploration of Justine (Kirsten Dunst) on her wedding day. Justine has depression, and despite her loving, patient husband and the perfection of her wedding, she just can’t be happy. She collapses, sobs, wanders away from the wedding into the cold night, and has sex with a random guest.

I’ve only watched “Melancholia” once, and I came away from it thinking it was okay, but not great. Maybe the depiction of depression was accurate, I thought, but I had to admit that it got boring simply watching her be depressed for an hour or more. Movies are defined by change, by things happening, and no character should only play one note for the majority of the movie. In the second half, “Melancholia” becomes about how depressed people sometimes feel a sense of peace and calmness when faced with exterior catastrophe, so the lack of change isn’t much of a problem anymore, but still, it was hard for me to get through that first half, so humorless and dour and…well, depressing.

But “Melancholia” has stuck in my mind. I don’t have any plans to watch it again—it’s really hard to watch from its darkness alone, and I still stand by my belief that it was a little too one-note in the first half—but I remember it sometimes, its rawness, its realism. I don’t have depression, but I somehow know that there’s something unspeakably real about it. There’s something about the image of Justine’s face, completely apathetic and dead while she looks at her husband, or the image of Justine’s sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) helping carry a naked, despondent Justine to the bathtub and bathing her. Again, this isn’t how every depressed person acts. This is how Justine acts. But Dunst’s utter vulnerability and the honest imagery of her experience shows that these experiences don’t belong to Justine alone. “Melancholia” is perhaps the most unrelentingly grim yet accurate depiction of depression I’ve ever seen, and it’s stuck with me. I never would’ve seen it if I was only concerned with conventional crowd-pleasers.

Maybe “Boyhood” is a better example to use than “Melancholia”; “Boyhood” was received warmly by mainstream moviegoers, and I doubt most people would love “Melancholia” if they had to watch it. But my point is that movies like these don’t necessarily need to be loved, to have beautifully cathartic endings or naturally escalating first acts. Not every movie you watch should be one of your new favorite, most satisfying movies. Sometimes, challenging us emotionally is enough.

Today, I had the opportunity to read my writing out loud in public for, well, kind of the first time. It seems strange that I’d never done it, aside from reading excerpts to my creative writing classes pre-workshop or reading things to my family or whatever. But I’ve never participated in a poetry slam, never given a speech, really.

I was nominated by my creative writing professor to share my writing at this yearly event where, for four nights, there are casual readings in the Shapiro Undergraduate Library. It was an honor to get nominated by him, although I have no idea how much that counts; did he nominate me over other people in the class, or did he nominate the whole class and wait to see who accepted? In any event, there’s only one other person in the class who I know was also sharing, and even if she was just the only other person who accepted, it felt nice to get the recognition.

I showed up today at 7:00, ready to share an essay I’d published last summer on College Magazine about secondhand grief. As always, I was a little anxious the whole day about the experience. I’ve always had stage fright, which reached its height in high school when I went onstage to play piano at recitals with 50 or so people. Though it wasn’t as big of a deal this time, I was still a little nervous.

It turned out the ‘Café Shapiro’ event was even more casual than I’d realized. Outside of a couple fellow readers’ friends, one reader’s parents, and a couple random people glancing over, there was basically nobody listening to the readings. I didn’t really have a problem with that because it meant less stress for me, but I did wish I’d invited a few people just because it felt so empty. I almost felt bad for the librarians who’d organized it.

So as I went up there and started reading (I was the ninth and last reader), I was only a little nervous. There was a ton of ambient library noise as people walked by constantly, which made it feel less scary. My essay was short and thematically in line with many of the other readings. And, to be honest, almost nobody was listening.

As I was sitting there waiting to go up before I actually read, though, I thought of something that calmed my remaining nerves. I thought about how, in the future, once I’m a famous published author (something I’ve always been unusually confident about), I’ll be doing readings all the time. It’ll be different from this; there’ll be dozens, maybe hundreds, hey, maybe thousands of people. And once I’m there, I realized, I’ll look back on this day, this moment standing in a library near a busy café with a couple random college students glancing over every once in a while and only a few people really listening and obligatorily clapping.

Your college years are the years when you feel like you’re being forced to grow up, like childhood is terrifyingly far in the rearview mirror even though it feels like you are still an ignorant child. It’s helpful sometimes to realize that if you’re having a rough time in college, this doesn’t have to be the stereotypical ‘best years of your life.’ This isn’t the destination. As my smart friend Caroline said, we’re “still in peak transitional years, even if it doesn’t always feel like it.” Sometimes it’s comforting to remember that. Me, standing in the café and reading to an audience of five—this isn’t the end. This is only the beginning.

I am part of the Harry Potter generation, the generation of kids for whom Harry Potter was a formative experience. Harry Potter’s influence has obviously been massive, to the point that it’s its own culture. It transcends art—reading the books isn’t really like reading a book, it’s like being in another dimension, and even watching the movies is the same just because they’re so inextricably tied to the books. Words like ‘Gryffindor’ and ‘Voldemort’ are so familiar that when I hear somebody mention them in public, I don’t think Hey, they’re mentioning my favorite books! I don’t think anything, really. They’re just words that have somehow entered the cultural canon as comfortably as any other name.

And personally, I feel totally shaped by Harry Potter. I respect so much about J.K. Rowling, personally and professionally. Somehow, she created a world. To attain her level of fame and wealth is impressive to begin with, but to attain her level of influence on children everywhere is incredible. And yes, adults love the series too—I just think it’s particularly amazing that she could shape so many young minds. I was one of those minds, and I will always love every book, every character, every word of Harry Potter.

But I’ve always believed that you can criticize the things you love, just like you can like pieces of things you hate. “Elf” was my first favorite movie, and looking back at it now, I find the climax a little problematic. Sure, the scene with Jovie singing to the crowd of people is great, and Walter Hobbs saving the Clausometer by finally joining in is brilliant. The celebration of Christmas cheer is a great thing to focus on, but isn’t it a little cheap that Michael has to get the Clausometer kick-started by blatantly revealing Santa’s list on live TV? The whole point of faith is that you have some internal compulsion to believe. It’s based on your intrinsic belief, not proof. By revealing Santa’s list, Michael isn’t asking people to believe in something they can’t see; he’s forcing them to see the truth. And that’s not as powerful.

But “Elf” still might be my favorite movie, and that thematic flaw doesn’t come anywhere close to undoing the countless laughs, the tear-jerking moments, Will Ferrell’s hilarious performance, and the overwhelming Christmas cheer it instills in me whenever I watch it.

And I feel the same way about Harry Potter. It holds a special place in my heart and can never be tarnished, but I think it has some problems. And I think it’s okay to acknowledge that.

Starting with the first book, the Sorting Hat…doesn’t make a lot of sense when you think about it. By itself, it’s a pretty cool little idea, but does it really make sense to try to categorize people that way in real life? Pretty much everyone I know would be either a Ravenclaw or a Hufflepuff. Maybe a Gryffindor or Slytherin every once in a while, but kindness, loyalty, and intelligence are more visible and common than bravery and cunning. It’s kind of hard to think of anyone I know as ‘brave’—I mean, yeah, there’s casual everyday bravery, but the characters in Harry Potter were able to more easily show their bravery when facing magical death every day.

And let’s be honest: as much as J.K. Rowling and many fans might defend Hufflepuff and Slytherin, they really are the boring house and the evil house, respectively. Claiming that Nymphadora Tonks is a Hufflepuff doesn’t really redeem the severe shortage of characters that the house has, and seriously, it’s hard to say that Slytherin’s defining characteristic is ‘cunning’ or ‘ambitious’ when almost all of them seem to be racist traitor Dark Lord sympathizers. J.K. had plenty of opportunities to make Slytherin more of a morally gray house (she helped a little bit by making Peter Pettigrew a Gryffindor). If Sirius Black had been a Slytherin like the rest of the Blacks, he could’ve been a great example of a good guy Slytherin. But not enough was done to make Slytherin more than the House of Dicks.

Speaking of moral relativism…let’s talk about Snape. Let’s be clear: I love the character. I think he’s the most morally gray character in the series. But J.K. does stumble a little bit at the end of The Deathly Hallows in glorifying him by having Harry name his son after him when there were many more trustworthy, loving people he could’ve chosen (Hagrid, Lupin, etc.). J.K. confirmed in a series of tweets that she was aware of Snape’s bitterness and the horrible way he projected his hatred of James onto his son, but she explained it this way: “Snape died for Harry out of love for Lily. Harry paid him tribute in forgiveness and gratitude. There’s a whole essay in why Harry gave his son Snape’s name, but the decision goes to the heart of who Harry was, post-war. In honoring Snape, Harry hoped in his heart that he too would be forgiven. The deaths at the Battle of Hogwarts would haunt him forever.” Honestly, it’s a great explanation, and explains a lot. I’d totally embrace it…if it had actually been implied in the book. Unfortunately, in the book, we never get to see Harry struggling with post-war guilt. As far as we can see, Harry is honoring two men who continually withheld information from him and behaved selfishly.

Speaking of which, that’s a thing J.K. does a lot: talk about the future for these characters. I didn’t really mind the epilogue of the last book (though it’s unnecessary) because this is the kind of series where it’s okay to skip forward and show a much-deserved happily ever after, but I’m not a fan of the way she still talks about the characters’ futures after the fact. John Green has spoken about this before—the author isn’t necessarily allowed to say what happens to the characters after the events of the book, because that’s not part of the contained story of the series. Just like John simply didn’t know whether Hazel Grace Lancaster dies after The Fault in Our Stars, J.K. isn’t necessarily allowed to just say that George grows up, has a baby with Angelina Johnson, and names him Fred. I also don’t like how she just claims that Harry is an Auror, and Hermione works for the Ministry. If it came out in the epilogue, that’s fine, but it’s unnecessary to draw out this elaborate future for every character outside of the story itself.

In fact, most of my problems have to do with the story’s conclusion. The idea of the Deathly Hallows is super cool, but if you think about it, it’s pretty unsatisfying that the villain’s inevitable demise happens because of a logical fallacy involving who a wand’s owner is. J.K. made Horcruxes feel integral to the plot by setting them up in the previous book (and laying clues throughout the series), but the Elder Wand is something we couldn’t have anticipated playing a role in Voldemort’s death.

Like I said, most of these problems barely affected my reading of it, maybe partly because I was a kid who didn’t understand narrative like I do now. Maybe if I was reading it for the first time now, I’d love it, but I’d be a little let down by the end. It’s hard to tell. But my ultimate point is that it’s okay to acknowledge that everything has flaws, even the stories you love the most. Nothing is perfect. Not even Harry Potter.