Finally, a porno with a decent story!
I kid.:)
Women have been talking about Fifty Shades of Grey for as long as I can remember. First it was the novel, and then it was about who they’d cast as Christian Grey, and then it was the trailer for the movie – it’s insane! But I notice that not a lot of women are talking about the movie since it came out. I know it made a lot of money, but I haven’t heard anyone actually say it was good. All I hear from people is that there were a lot of blurs, and it was mostly sex scenes. But…wasn’t that the whole point of the book too?
Well, I liked it. No, it’s not because I’m a dude and I like beewbs, but because it was honestly a pretty decent movie. The directing, the acting, the story development, and even that amazing soundtrack all meshed well together to make my 2 hour stay at the cinema fly by.
If you’ve been living under a rock and you’ve no clue what Fifty Shades of Grey is, well it’s a film based on a book of the same name that follows the story of Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) and her relationship with the sexy and mysterious, billionaire bachelor, Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan). Little does Ana know that Christian is after something a bit different than the conventional romantic relationship that she’s expecting…
…It’s BDSM (Bondage and Discipline (BD), Dominance and Submission (DS), Sadism and Masochism (SM)). It’s not a spoiler. It’s in the trailer. And it’s pretty much the entire premise of the movie.
Let’s start with the big, fat, horny elephant in the room – the sex. This is probably the main issue anyone is going to have with a film adaptation of a novel like this. Filipino’s are customarily conservative, so for sure a lot of the grown-ups are going to be appalled by what they see here. For a while there was a rumor going around that they weren’t even going to show the movie in the Philippines AT ALL. But really, it wasn’t THAT bad. (Considering the subject matter) The sexual content was done tastefully. The sex scenes were carnal and very sensual but never became offensive or racy.
Such a gentleman! Haha!
They even made use of blurs and black spots in the local release, something I thought were totally unnecessary. We could clearly see what was going on so the censoring was practically useless. Were they expecting us to say “Oh, wow, thank you for saving me from the evils of sexual profanity”? Who was the censoring for anyway? Anyone who was there is expected to be able to maturely and comfortably handle the subject matter. Those black spots just became a nuisance.
Honestly, it wasn’t even audacious ENOUGH. I liked how the movie tackles such a taboo topic, but I thought the envelope could have been pushed a little further. The first 5 minutes of The Wolf of Wall Street was much bolder than the whole of this film. I’m sure the movie was a dialed down version of its more sexually-charged novel counterpart, something the hardcore fans are likely to take notice.
But I digress. Noticeable blurs aside, the movie was actually pretty cool. I know I’m the minority in this opinion, but I thought it was well directed and well-acted. And it gave us a unique reflection of a sexual culture/reality we often get glimpses of but never really scrutinize.
Like I said, Director Sam Taylor-Johnson masterful cinematography hit all the right notes when it came to building the sexual tension in the film. From her zooming in on Dakota’s lips, to her choice of music, Taylor-Johnson really knew how to make the sex, sexy.
Classehhh.
The plot’s pace and development felt natural (which is more than I can say about most novel-to-film adaptations) and made the film’s unusual relationship feel more genuine. The great chemistry between the two actors contributed largely to that end as well.
And both actors played their parts admirably. Dakota Johnson portrayed a believably meek and naïve Anastacia and Jamie Dornan’s performance as the eccentric Mr. Grey really was a real stand out (no pun intended). Dornan accurately displayed a gentleman bachelor with a deep troubling secret. 15 minutes into the movie and I already compared him to Michael C. Hall’s sociopath serial-killer, Dexter. Christian Grey is the Dexter of sex. He’s no murderer, but still a different kind of sociopath and Dornan subtly emitted that internal anguish.
There’s one part of the movie I’m sure people are going to have trouble with though, that ending. I don’t need to tell you that we’re venturing in some spoiler-y territory here, so if you’re still about to watch, you can skip this paragraph. The movie ends with Ana seeing just how deep the Christian Grey rabbit hole goes and she’s horrified by it. No resolution. No conclusion. That’s it. It cuts to credits right after Ana storms out of Christian’s apartment. Everyone in the cinema were like, whuuuuuuuuut??!! But looking back, I actually appreciate the humor/creativity in that ending. ‘Coz that movie gave the whole audience the same serious case of blue balls that Christian Grey was feeling! I mean, think about it, what if that was the point? What if the point was to deliver the ultimate viewer experience; to profoundly convey the emotion of the scene to its audience? If that dichotomy was intentional, then bravo movie makers, because that was genius! If not, then I’m apparently reading too much into it.
This pretty much sums up the whole movie.
I see a lot of myself in Christian Grey…I mean, not the sex fetish or the money part, but the face and abs part. (Budubum-tsss!) So naturally, I’m part of the very rare few who enjoyed the movie. The movie had no romantic value in it, no extraordinary artistic value, no concrete conflict, it wasn't GREAT, but it did have an interesting and peculiar subject matter; one that is handled maturely and tastefully. If you’re expecting some cheesy love story, this isn’t it. But if you can appreciate the distinctiveness about this film, and how it's breaks a lot of norms (and I'm not just talking about the sex deviance) then you might just enjoy it too. I for one was absorbed as the story unraveled Grey’s many shades and dove more and more into the provocative world of BDSM.
Parang gusto ko tuloy panoorin.
ReplyDeleteAt not the sex fetish part ang nakuha kay grey ha hehehe