It's the long awaited return to music on the Pop Almanac this week!
A while ago, Brendan and Duncan highlighted some of their favorite songs from 2011. In the time since one of Duncan's selections, Gotye's "Somebody I Used To Know" has gone viral, been played on SNL, been covered on Glee, and hit number one on the Billboard charts — making Duncan feel like a true "I was into his early stuff!" hipster for the first time. But he also still has to explain who Adele is to people half the time- the beginning of this week's episode is basically determining the reasons why he's not that cool, musically.
But then, your hosts spin three songs apiece from the young 2012 music year, spotlighting new songs from artists like Fanfarlo, Cheap Girls, Andrew Bird and more! Make sure you listen for the punk band with a ridiculous name that Brendan is making a habit of choosing- it's seriously a terrible band name that gurantees that the song won't get covered on Glee. It is possibly the best and worst band name mentioned on the Pop Almanac to date.
Writer/director Lynne Ramsay does not make feel-good movies. Her previous two films —You Were Never Really Here and We Need to Talk About Kevin — were about a traumatized veteran who tracks down missing girls for a living and parents reckoning with a child who might be a sociopath, respectively. Her latest, Die My Love, has a story as dark as its title.
Grace (Jennifer Lawrence) and Jackson (Robert Pattinson) are a married couple who move into a run-down house that used to belong to Jackson’s uncle, who shot and killed himself on the property. That doesn’t exactly scream “great vibes,” but the somewhat manic duo quickly introduce a child into the equation, an event that forms a schism between two people who previously seemed to be on the same off-kilter wavelength.
While Jackson works to provide for the family, Grace is left to take care of the baby and herself at the somewhat remote house. She doesn’t appear to be a big fan of the arrangement, engaging in all manner of odd behavior, like crawling around the floor, talking to herself, and taking the baby on miles-long walks to visit her mother-in-law, Pam (Sissy Spacek), who’s not doing well herself after recently losing her husband, Harry (Nick Nolte).
Ramsay, who co-wrote the film with Enda Walsh and Alice Birch, foregrounds Grace’s experience above all others, but the film is far from straightforward. The idea of post-partum depression is raised as a reason for Grace’s weird behavior, but as both she and Jackson are introduced as two people who skew to the “ab” side of normal, it’s difficult to say that everything she does is due to feelings that arise after giving birth.
Plus, Grace has plenty to be upset about in general, including living in a death house, being left alone with their child the majority of the time, and Jackson bringing home a yapping dog without even so much as a conversation. But the manifestation of her anger/depression is hard to parse, as Ramsay includes scenes of her carrying around a butcher knife, meeting up with a mysterious figure on a motorcycle, and other strange things that may or may not actually be happening.
There is clearly a lot of metaphorical work being done by seemingly random things like the reappearance of a black horse on multiple occasions, blaring rock music that accompanies several scenes, and the use of the 1x1 aspect ratio by Ramsay. It’s easy to feel the intensity of the film’s central relationship and their conflicts even if you can’t make heads or tails of the allusions that the filmmaker seems to love.
Lawrence is put through the wringer almost as much as she was in Darren Aronofsky’s Mother!, and her performance is one that can be felt strongly. Still, because the narrative is unclear, she often appears to be overwrought in certain scenes. Pattinson never fits well with his uncaring and/or oblivious character. Spacek makes a nice impression in a limited amount of screen time, but why Ramsay chose to use the ultra-talented LaKeith Stanfield in the nothing part of the motorcycle rider is baffling.
Those who love to dig into symbolism and non-linear storytelling will have a field day with the arty Die My Love. But for everyone else, anything Ramsay might have been trying to say about the difficulties of being a mother gets buried under many scenes that don’t make any logical sense and over-the-top acting that’s only fit to match the bizarreness of the film itself.
