#20
Post
by senseabove » Thu Feb 11, 2021 10:49 pm
It's amusing that bottleofsmoke and Roscoe have opposing reactions to Tracy: bottleofsmoke thinks the movie "suffers mightily from excessively placing blame on Tracy" while Roscoe tires of it "telling me how wonderful glorious marvelous its heroine is." Meanwhile, I think the well-rounded humanity of Tracy, and the rest of the leads, really, is the movie's strength. Firstly, because it underlines our own expectations by showing them evolving from shorthand caricatures—reckless and alcoholic playboy, overly-principled snobbish artist, spoiled high-minded rich girl; and secondly, because all of the lead characters have strengths and flaws beyond those caricatures that are clearly laid out for us by other characters, who each perceive them differently from their different relationships: father, sister, mother, ex-wife, fiancé, unrequited lover. Not only those traits, positive or negative, but the ways that others view them differently are put into delightful interplay as the movie progresses.
Dext's development is the most careful and considered because he has, in fact, already changed, so what changes in his stead is our awareness of him. Rather than Kittredge, Dext is the "villain" of the film until the last third. He's selfish, cadish, unruly, disruptive, and, of course, alcholic. Those expectations play beautifully to Grant's strengths as an actor as well as his on-screen persona. His deadpan cheek reads as aloof, distant, passively manipulative—he just has to sit there and wait for Tracy to throw herself at him (which is why the twist of her drunkenly falling for Stewart is such an unexpected surprise); he's a weasel intruding on the wedding preparations, until Stewart's drunken intrusion in turn reveals that, from the start, he's only been playing the role his own actions from the distant past have cast him in, right down to the blackmail. Then, Grant's cheek becomes, in retrospect, a graceful, earnest acquiescence: he knows he can't simply ask people to trust him again, and nobody he cares about will trust him unless they are forced to reckon with their distrust, and he can't be caught in even half a lie or he'll lose any good will he's gained. It's a long anti-con. He can't explain why he's there, because no one will believe him. So when Tracy catches him and he explains the Spy situation to her and she says to him, "And you, you're really enjoying it," his retort is that beautiful, flat "Am I, Red," with its halo of a question mark. Which is to say, "I won't try to deny it, because you already think I am" but also, "I hope you notice: I've arranged it to protect you and yours, too."
Which, to echo barbarella satyricon, is to say that Dexter's corollary is Liz, and the two of them together really are the heroes of the movie: they're the clear-eyed, sober observers, biding their time, waiting until the person they love is ready to receive their love: "Liz, why don't you marry him?" "You really want to know? He's still got a lot to learn... I don't wanna get in his way for a while. Okay?" She's sidelined so early in the film because she's the fully developed ideal of patience and understanding. She's waiting for everyone else, and us, to catch up. Even Dext is still learning his own limitations: "Then you don't know women." "That's possible." "Then you're a fool." "That's quite possible."
Both are, thanks to their own profound, historic mistakes, very aware that they have limitations, and that others have limitations, and that they may or may not be able to grow past them: "I knew a plain Joe Smith once... Worst rat I ever met," whom we come to find out was Liz's first husband, mentioned to Connor's shock—"You never asked!"—when Tracy "interviews" them, and whose specter is pointedly raised by Liz correcting Tracy's "Maid of Honor?" to "Matron." It's most succinctly phrased, though, in Dext's humorous, pitch-perfect correction of Liz pleading her understanding to George with "But a man expects his wife to behave herself, naturally": "To behave herself naturally!"
And that last bit, I think, is also a succinct argument against michael kerpan's dismissal: the movie pivots around people learning to live their ideals—whatever those may be—more practically, and to grant both themselves and others leniency with regard to their shortfalls. (This also underlies, and makes sense of, Tracy's comments on and interactions with her father.) Which is to say Tracy's faults—as well as Connor's, as well as Liz's and Dext's in the past—do not depend on her inability to meet her or anyone else's standards of womanhood, but on her inability to meet her own standards, and her expectation that everyone else should meet hers for them as well. Meanwhile, everything Tracy is most faulted for, Connor is also faulted for, if to a lesser degree; all five characters involved in the romance are on a kind of sliding scale, from Liz to George. The movie is gender essentialist, sure (cf. Tracy's father's speeches especially), like very nearly every movie that doesn't explicitly engage gender essentialism, so gender assumptions factor into everybody's standards for themselves and others, but the movie's final development is a willingness, and plea, to let everyone have ample leeway with those standards anyway.
