This review is about the movie "Joy" with Jennifer Lawrence, released December 2015.
The people I attended this movie with were disappointed by the lack of side stories, lightheartedness, and a love interest. But that wasn't the story this movie set out to tell, and the story it told is an extremely important story, and also a new one. It's not the story of princess-meets-prince or a story vaguely about business with it's heart about the family relationships. The heart of this movie is literally Joy's heart - and how much it believes that good things are possible.
I think it's definitely a feminist movie, and I want to address that shortly. Everything in this movie points toward it being feminist: the single female protaganist whom love has disappointed, the early line about not needing a prince, the way she has to stand up to businessmen, and how she literally decides to "wear the pants" in one scene.
But I think it's so much deeper than feminism as most of society views it. I think it's feminisim on it's most important level. Emma Watson made a great move for society when she declared feminism to be a man's fight as well as a woman's. I think this movie encompasses that idea beautifully. In our postmodern society, I feel that feminism has come farther than 180 and began to degrade the male counterpart. I sense this in the amount of "failing dad" steryotypes in movies and the trend toward "fairy tale romances aren't all they're cracked up to be." Then there are the statistics about young single females becoming a larger and larger percentage of homeowners. I don't want to comment on whether these trends are right or wrong in themselves, only on the danger of continuing down this path too far. Soon our society may be matriarchal instead of patriarchal unless we find some balance.
The only quibble I have with this movie is the lack of character development in Joy's ex-husband. In the ending, it says she cared for him all her life. I don't think the message that men should rely on women is any more healthy than the story that women should rely on men. However, the story was about Joy and didn't have room for any other complete arcs, and I thought it was a powerful detail that it was his advice about the lawyers that Joy should have listened to over Trudy's. I also think it's telling that he was willing to believe in Joy and her dream, just as she once believed in his. She divorced him because he wasn't willing to get another job while he also worked on his dream of singing. He seemed essentially lazy, not stupid or despairing. But he and Joy had so much in common - their dreams, their hope, their business instincts - and I think their relationship is interesting and beautiful even though it included a divorce. In other words, I think there is a subtle love story in this movie, one that is actually much sweeter than several rom-coms I've seen, which include quick dismisals of divorces and hot-and-fast new love interests. I'm not commenting on the health of their relationship, only suggesting that there may be more to their love story than what's caught on first viewing.
In an industry of hard edges and bittersweet endings I thought this movie was incredibly brave. In showing a strong woman, or rather the creation of a strong woman, it didn't cave to the pressure for an ending that showed life "realistically," society's new favorite word for "cynisism." Things got pretty tough for awhile, culminating in Joy signing papers to declare bankruptcy, but her despair didn't last forever. She refused to stop believing, and therein, I think, lies the power in this story - which is the power in Joy.
I appreciate how the story showed the weakness and the strength in Joy simultaneously. It wasn't a story of a weak woman becoming a strong one. In the beginning, Joy was strong by being patient and longsuffering with her father, her ex-husband, and her mother, but she also enabled them and wasn't strong enough to tell them "No." As we all have to, she hits a low point and uses her push-off to take action to make the dreams of her childhood a reality with her new invention. Jennifer Lawrence's acting is beautifully nuanced as she presents her case to multipule audiences with subtly varying levels of confidence. But in the end, it doesn't take only confidence to make it in business, it takes knowledge, proving once again the old saying that "knowledge is power." When her lawyers and investors fail her and her father pressures her to sign away her home for bankruptcy, after a freak-out session that involves tearing all her sketches from the wall, she sits down and starts reading legalese and making phone calls. The confidence with which she conducts herself in the last scene of the movie feels authentic to me. She has come to a place where it can't get any worse, and there she is shocked to find a strength she previously didn't know she had. When else in the movie does she present that sort of confidence? The stare down where the man finally ups his price to $50,000 plus interest - that kind of tough exterior wasn't present until that moment in the movie, when she reached deeply into her feminine, inventive, housekeeper's soul and found bravery and the security she needed to fight for her family and her self against anyone who would harm it.
I think the scene where Joy decides to wear pants and a blouse instead of a skirt is interesting. On first take, it represents a rejection of traditional female roles for a more masculine role. But upon closer inspection, I note that Joy decides to be herself for her moment on television, not a man. She is not willing to be anything but the working house keeper that she is, the one who cleans up yogurt from her mom's floor and reads her child a story before bed. What she rejects is the glitzy, showbiz glamor for her authentic personality. And what more can you ask of a person?
The thing is, Joy didn't change to find her courage. She didn't give up on men or stop caring, emotionally and physically, for her family. She didn't turn off her emotions or decide that cleaning her floors was beneath her. The idea of her becoming a strong, courageous woman in order to sell mops is deeply symbolic. Making a traditional women's role easier is what starts her on her journey in the first place. She isn't running from her role in the home, but she isn't willing to settle for the same old ways either.
It is important that at the end of the movie, we find that she has kept her heart even while she succeeded in business. She has kept belief in the fact that good things to happen to people. She has become a good thing that happens to people. And you know what? That's reality too. Grand job, producers on this film. Thank you for a movie that doesn't cave to the pressure to "be realistic" but instead tells us a story that resounds in our hearts. Thank you for the inspiration to follow our dreams embodied in the subtly lifting performance of Jennifer Lawrence. Thank you for a "real" fairy tale - the story of a girl with a dream who never gave up hope and who eventually became the fairy godmother herself.
I'm proud to share a name with this woman.
The people I attended this movie with were disappointed by the lack of side stories, lightheartedness, and a love interest. But that wasn't the story this movie set out to tell, and the story it told is an extremely important story, and also a new one. It's not the story of princess-meets-prince or a story vaguely about business with it's heart about the family relationships. The heart of this movie is literally Joy's heart - and how much it believes that good things are possible.
I think it's definitely a feminist movie, and I want to address that shortly. Everything in this movie points toward it being feminist: the single female protaganist whom love has disappointed, the early line about not needing a prince, the way she has to stand up to businessmen, and how she literally decides to "wear the pants" in one scene.
But I think it's so much deeper than feminism as most of society views it. I think it's feminisim on it's most important level. Emma Watson made a great move for society when she declared feminism to be a man's fight as well as a woman's. I think this movie encompasses that idea beautifully. In our postmodern society, I feel that feminism has come farther than 180 and began to degrade the male counterpart. I sense this in the amount of "failing dad" steryotypes in movies and the trend toward "fairy tale romances aren't all they're cracked up to be." Then there are the statistics about young single females becoming a larger and larger percentage of homeowners. I don't want to comment on whether these trends are right or wrong in themselves, only on the danger of continuing down this path too far. Soon our society may be matriarchal instead of patriarchal unless we find some balance.
The only quibble I have with this movie is the lack of character development in Joy's ex-husband. In the ending, it says she cared for him all her life. I don't think the message that men should rely on women is any more healthy than the story that women should rely on men. However, the story was about Joy and didn't have room for any other complete arcs, and I thought it was a powerful detail that it was his advice about the lawyers that Joy should have listened to over Trudy's. I also think it's telling that he was willing to believe in Joy and her dream, just as she once believed in his. She divorced him because he wasn't willing to get another job while he also worked on his dream of singing. He seemed essentially lazy, not stupid or despairing. But he and Joy had so much in common - their dreams, their hope, their business instincts - and I think their relationship is interesting and beautiful even though it included a divorce. In other words, I think there is a subtle love story in this movie, one that is actually much sweeter than several rom-coms I've seen, which include quick dismisals of divorces and hot-and-fast new love interests. I'm not commenting on the health of their relationship, only suggesting that there may be more to their love story than what's caught on first viewing.
In an industry of hard edges and bittersweet endings I thought this movie was incredibly brave. In showing a strong woman, or rather the creation of a strong woman, it didn't cave to the pressure for an ending that showed life "realistically," society's new favorite word for "cynisism." Things got pretty tough for awhile, culminating in Joy signing papers to declare bankruptcy, but her despair didn't last forever. She refused to stop believing, and therein, I think, lies the power in this story - which is the power in Joy.
I appreciate how the story showed the weakness and the strength in Joy simultaneously. It wasn't a story of a weak woman becoming a strong one. In the beginning, Joy was strong by being patient and longsuffering with her father, her ex-husband, and her mother, but she also enabled them and wasn't strong enough to tell them "No." As we all have to, she hits a low point and uses her push-off to take action to make the dreams of her childhood a reality with her new invention. Jennifer Lawrence's acting is beautifully nuanced as she presents her case to multipule audiences with subtly varying levels of confidence. But in the end, it doesn't take only confidence to make it in business, it takes knowledge, proving once again the old saying that "knowledge is power." When her lawyers and investors fail her and her father pressures her to sign away her home for bankruptcy, after a freak-out session that involves tearing all her sketches from the wall, she sits down and starts reading legalese and making phone calls. The confidence with which she conducts herself in the last scene of the movie feels authentic to me. She has come to a place where it can't get any worse, and there she is shocked to find a strength she previously didn't know she had. When else in the movie does she present that sort of confidence? The stare down where the man finally ups his price to $50,000 plus interest - that kind of tough exterior wasn't present until that moment in the movie, when she reached deeply into her feminine, inventive, housekeeper's soul and found bravery and the security she needed to fight for her family and her self against anyone who would harm it.
I think the scene where Joy decides to wear pants and a blouse instead of a skirt is interesting. On first take, it represents a rejection of traditional female roles for a more masculine role. But upon closer inspection, I note that Joy decides to be herself for her moment on television, not a man. She is not willing to be anything but the working house keeper that she is, the one who cleans up yogurt from her mom's floor and reads her child a story before bed. What she rejects is the glitzy, showbiz glamor for her authentic personality. And what more can you ask of a person?
The thing is, Joy didn't change to find her courage. She didn't give up on men or stop caring, emotionally and physically, for her family. She didn't turn off her emotions or decide that cleaning her floors was beneath her. The idea of her becoming a strong, courageous woman in order to sell mops is deeply symbolic. Making a traditional women's role easier is what starts her on her journey in the first place. She isn't running from her role in the home, but she isn't willing to settle for the same old ways either.
It is important that at the end of the movie, we find that she has kept her heart even while she succeeded in business. She has kept belief in the fact that good things to happen to people. She has become a good thing that happens to people. And you know what? That's reality too. Grand job, producers on this film. Thank you for a movie that doesn't cave to the pressure to "be realistic" but instead tells us a story that resounds in our hearts. Thank you for the inspiration to follow our dreams embodied in the subtly lifting performance of Jennifer Lawrence. Thank you for a "real" fairy tale - the story of a girl with a dream who never gave up hope and who eventually became the fairy godmother herself.
I'm proud to share a name with this woman.