After a somewhat chaotic production and tabloid-driven controversy, Warner Brothers' Don't Worry Darling has been released into theaters. Carrying the prestige of solid but glaring antecedents, the film is a calculated, patient mix of classics like Rosemary's Baby, The Stepford Wives, Brave New World, and a slew of other classic media about those trapped within their worlds and their minds.
Don't Worry Darling is directed by Olivia Wilde, her sophomore effort after the wildly popular Booksmart, and written by Katie Silberman, Carey Van Dyke, and Shane Van Dyke. Wilde's contributions are singular and focused, an impressive second effort for a relatively inexperienced filmmaker. The script, ironically, is sophomoric - messy, repetitive, and painfully reductive.
The film is set during the 1950s and follows Alice Chambers, who lives with her husband Jack in the pleasant, picturesque town of Victory. Their decadent lifestyle is paid for by the Victory Project, who oversee the town and its people, but Alice's serenity and routine are soon disrupted after she witnesses a plane crash. With her mind unravelling, she begins to sense something sinister about the town, the company, and her own place within its borders.
There's a lot to like about Don't Worry Darling. The entire production is meticulous and perfectly styled, enveloping viewers into a brilliantly suffocating atmosphere of 50s utopia. The 1950s in film (especially modern films) is often painted with a heavy and distracting gauze of irony; the overbearing aesthetics of the period usually feel purposefully synthetic, like they've been lifted straight from a brochure. Wilde sidesteps these cliches.
Don't Worry Darling's Victory is pleasant and sunny, but the film keeps a unique balance, presenting a town which feels lived in and practical. The desert sun sears residents, the fine china feels personal and authentic, and the homes look genuinely inviting. Where most filmic landscapes of the 50s never feel like more than a façade, Victory looks like an enjoyable, livable place. In short, Don't Worry Darling does for mid-century suburbia what Star Wars (and Alien) did for spaceships.
The legitimacy of the atmosphere is wonderfully complimented by Wilde's eye and Affonso Goncalves' editing. The pair are in harmony with each other and effectively synthesize tension from the flimsy script. Wilde's main tools are symmetry and visual repetition, while Goncalves uses a classical, Griffith-like accelerating tempo in his cutting structure.
The mixture of these elements (atmosphere, symmetry, and tempo) emulates the sort of high tension found within other contemporary thrillers of the mundane like We Need to Talk About Kevin. Both films have contextually ordinary realities but use filmmaking techniques to clue audiences into the abnormalities subtly boiling just beneath their manicured surfaces.
It bears repeating: the core strengths of the film are its singleness of vision and its wholly engrossing atmosphere and pacing. It's become cliched praise, but Don't Worry Darling would make delectable prestige television, straight down to its too-thin premise.
Helping construct the film's perfectly pitched tone are cinematographer Matthew Libatique and composer John Powell. Libatique emphasizes Victory's heat; every performer glows under Victory's scorching sun, shiny and tanned. The film is uber-colorful and highly saturated to evoke the gauzy, saccharine pleasures of the town. Indoors, at night, things cool off but aren't cool. Shadows fall and colors are more muted, but blacks are never overly emphasized. Every scene is visually pitched to a delicious, delirious heat.
Conversely, Powell's soundtrack uses whispers and delicate strings to poke and prod inside Alice's mind. While his soundscape does become overbearing and too forceful by film's end, the quieter, more relaxed chords are entrancing and effective. Powell uses an eclectic mix of acapella and instrumentation to keep viewers on their toes and scratching their heads, punctuating moments with a hushed cacophony and keeping a firm grip on his sonic harnesses through most of the film.
All of these cleverly conceived and passionately executed elements make Don't Worry Darling's sloppy, thin story a crushing disappointment. Most glaringly, the script is poorly structured. Its opening act conveys little information about anything or anybody, setting up early context and later revelations on a foundation of sand.
The bulk of the film is nothing but a series of teases and vagaries, so poorly connected to each other or immediate consequences that they might as well be dream sequences. Wilde does make effective use of their surreal tones and abstract qualities, but a series of paranoid fake outs does not make for a holistic or satisfying story. The story behind the story, what audiences are ultimately paying for, stretches plausibility.
Lack of substance is not the only defining quality of the script. It's also glaringly derivative, highly repetitive, insultingly reductive, and maddeningly obtuse. The writers' influences are myriad, but the key works are listed up top. As a bonus, the film also borrows 1984's iconic cover illustration. Like Jordan Peele's Us, Don't Worry Darling struggles to reconcile its subtext with its literal thrills, opting for wheel spinning and unanswerable questions in lieu of a logical or internally rigorous narrative.
Unlike Us, the subtext isn't worth the effort; the film has little to say beyond a tepid rehashing of current political dogma. For a fleeting moment, interesting questions about contemporary work life, the nature of exhaustion, and the desire to live within comfortable lies are raised, but they're quickly abandoned for an obligatory and out of place climax. On top of the stale message, the film quickly unravels after the big reveal, instantly raising plot-based questions of motivation, financing, and pointless secrecy.
Don't Worry Darling is exceedingly frustrating. The film is made with clear forethought and an eye for the edit, which is depressingly refreshing in today's assembly line filmmaking mode. It's snappily paced and never boring, though its constant motion and narrative gimmicks keep the viewer at arm's length emotionally and psychologically. The story is far too thin, mostly predictable, and gratingly simplistic, in stark contrast to the film's depth of atmosphere and visual construction.
Overall, it's a solid effort which lives halfway up to its potential. I tentatively recommend it, with two words of caution: stay away from the trailer (I sorely wish I'd gone in blind) and don't expect anything too shocking. Admittedly, it's a paradox; the less you know the better, but there's not much worth spoiling.
Don't Worry Darling is directed by Olivia Wilde, her sophomore effort after the wildly popular Booksmart, and written by Katie Silberman, Carey Van Dyke, and Shane Van Dyke. Wilde's contributions are singular and focused, an impressive second effort for a relatively inexperienced filmmaker. The script, ironically, is sophomoric - messy, repetitive, and painfully reductive.
The film is set during the 1950s and follows Alice Chambers, who lives with her husband Jack in the pleasant, picturesque town of Victory. Their decadent lifestyle is paid for by the Victory Project, who oversee the town and its people, but Alice's serenity and routine are soon disrupted after she witnesses a plane crash. With her mind unravelling, she begins to sense something sinister about the town, the company, and her own place within its borders.
There's a lot to like about Don't Worry Darling. The entire production is meticulous and perfectly styled, enveloping viewers into a brilliantly suffocating atmosphere of 50s utopia. The 1950s in film (especially modern films) is often painted with a heavy and distracting gauze of irony; the overbearing aesthetics of the period usually feel purposefully synthetic, like they've been lifted straight from a brochure. Wilde sidesteps these cliches.
Don't Worry Darling's Victory is pleasant and sunny, but the film keeps a unique balance, presenting a town which feels lived in and practical. The desert sun sears residents, the fine china feels personal and authentic, and the homes look genuinely inviting. Where most filmic landscapes of the 50s never feel like more than a façade, Victory looks like an enjoyable, livable place. In short, Don't Worry Darling does for mid-century suburbia what Star Wars (and Alien) did for spaceships.
The legitimacy of the atmosphere is wonderfully complimented by Wilde's eye and Affonso Goncalves' editing. The pair are in harmony with each other and effectively synthesize tension from the flimsy script. Wilde's main tools are symmetry and visual repetition, while Goncalves uses a classical, Griffith-like accelerating tempo in his cutting structure.
The mixture of these elements (atmosphere, symmetry, and tempo) emulates the sort of high tension found within other contemporary thrillers of the mundane like We Need to Talk About Kevin. Both films have contextually ordinary realities but use filmmaking techniques to clue audiences into the abnormalities subtly boiling just beneath their manicured surfaces.
It bears repeating: the core strengths of the film are its singleness of vision and its wholly engrossing atmosphere and pacing. It's become cliched praise, but Don't Worry Darling would make delectable prestige television, straight down to its too-thin premise.
Helping construct the film's perfectly pitched tone are cinematographer Matthew Libatique and composer John Powell. Libatique emphasizes Victory's heat; every performer glows under Victory's scorching sun, shiny and tanned. The film is uber-colorful and highly saturated to evoke the gauzy, saccharine pleasures of the town. Indoors, at night, things cool off but aren't cool. Shadows fall and colors are more muted, but blacks are never overly emphasized. Every scene is visually pitched to a delicious, delirious heat.
Conversely, Powell's soundtrack uses whispers and delicate strings to poke and prod inside Alice's mind. While his soundscape does become overbearing and too forceful by film's end, the quieter, more relaxed chords are entrancing and effective. Powell uses an eclectic mix of acapella and instrumentation to keep viewers on their toes and scratching their heads, punctuating moments with a hushed cacophony and keeping a firm grip on his sonic harnesses through most of the film.
All of these cleverly conceived and passionately executed elements make Don't Worry Darling's sloppy, thin story a crushing disappointment. Most glaringly, the script is poorly structured. Its opening act conveys little information about anything or anybody, setting up early context and later revelations on a foundation of sand.
The bulk of the film is nothing but a series of teases and vagaries, so poorly connected to each other or immediate consequences that they might as well be dream sequences. Wilde does make effective use of their surreal tones and abstract qualities, but a series of paranoid fake outs does not make for a holistic or satisfying story. The story behind the story, what audiences are ultimately paying for, stretches plausibility.
Lack of substance is not the only defining quality of the script. It's also glaringly derivative, highly repetitive, insultingly reductive, and maddeningly obtuse. The writers' influences are myriad, but the key works are listed up top. As a bonus, the film also borrows 1984's iconic cover illustration. Like Jordan Peele's Us, Don't Worry Darling struggles to reconcile its subtext with its literal thrills, opting for wheel spinning and unanswerable questions in lieu of a logical or internally rigorous narrative.
Unlike Us, the subtext isn't worth the effort; the film has little to say beyond a tepid rehashing of current political dogma. For a fleeting moment, interesting questions about contemporary work life, the nature of exhaustion, and the desire to live within comfortable lies are raised, but they're quickly abandoned for an obligatory and out of place climax. On top of the stale message, the film quickly unravels after the big reveal, instantly raising plot-based questions of motivation, financing, and pointless secrecy.
Don't Worry Darling is exceedingly frustrating. The film is made with clear forethought and an eye for the edit, which is depressingly refreshing in today's assembly line filmmaking mode. It's snappily paced and never boring, though its constant motion and narrative gimmicks keep the viewer at arm's length emotionally and psychologically. The story is far too thin, mostly predictable, and gratingly simplistic, in stark contrast to the film's depth of atmosphere and visual construction.
Overall, it's a solid effort which lives halfway up to its potential. I tentatively recommend it, with two words of caution: stay away from the trailer (I sorely wish I'd gone in blind) and don't expect anything too shocking. Admittedly, it's a paradox; the less you know the better, but there's not much worth spoiling.