The drama about don’t worry darling has conquered the world in many ways. From the on-set rumors to the comment that public entertainment wouldn’t have gone that way on a male-directed project, to misleading press comments and more, the entire promotional tour deserves a film of its own. One of the more disturbing parts of this film came from Olivia Wilde’s comments about female pleasure and its place in film.
when you see don’t worry darlingyou will understand why Comments like this are not only detrimental to the message the film is actually sending, but also to young fans who will be watching this film (despite its R rating) because they love its male lead, Harry Styles. Our Princess Weekes wrote down why this was a terrible strategy from the start, and it plays out one of the twists the film gives us.
While the film as a whole is visually stunning and an interesting watch that I rated 3.5/5 stars, its bigger issues outweigh what works. So let’s talk a little bit about the “twist” and how it’s sort of a commentary on masculinity and male fragility, without really saying much more about it.
**Spoilers for don’t worry darling lying in front of you.**
When I went into my screening for don’t worry darling, I worried about a lot of things, but the main thing was that the rumor I saw online was true – that the win was just an illusion and that we were going to get into the twisted minds of the people who were there have locked up. What I got was both worse and not as bad as it could have been. But it reminded me of Ready player one when it came to his male characters.
The story takes us to Victory, a picturesque town that seems to have fallen out of time. Set in a location resembling the 50’s or 60’s, but with no concrete dates to give us a clue, the film has the women stay at home with their children all day, cleaning the house while the men do important chores , about which they cannot speak home. It feeds into this idea that modern men want women to be taken back to a time when their jobs were household chores and nothing more.
But the film does a somewhat lackluster job of pointing that out. We’re instead left to guess what it all means, and as the twist comes at the end, Alice (Florence Pugh) is unknowingly being held captive by Jack (Harry Styles) in their once-shared bedroom for him to do with his imagination acting out with her in virtual reality, it quickly becomes a descent into non-consensual territory (with those “female pleasure” sex scenes that director and star Olivia Wilde kept talking about), as well as what I call the incel- version of Ready player one.
Immerse yourself in a reality by Andrew Tate
If you remember the world of Ready player one was full of people who would rather play video games and stay at home in their virtual reality than live in the current world, and that’s what Victory is. The difference here is that those in charge are keyboard warriors and incels who think they know what’s best for the women they supposedly love.
There are some people who are willingly there because they want to relive their past, like Olivia Wilde’s character Bunny, who is there because her children live in Victory. But that gets complicated when you consider what the overall message of the film is supposed to be. One of the things about don’t worry darling What didn’t work for me was that everything seemed rushed, which is strange for a film that’s over two hours long, where about an hour of that is stirring shots of Victory and beautiful dresses.
The final act comes with Alice realizing that her reality and victory are two different things. We find out that she was successful and worked in a hospital, but Jack, to whom she is married, lost his job and is convinced he has to provide for her family but seems to blame Alice for her working, to support her when he spends his time listening to Frank (Chris Pine) on a podcast.
Through this, he finds the Victory Project and captures Alice (after Jack is fully psyched), and we learn that the “job” the men do every day is to go back to the real world to take care of themselves tending to the bodies of the women they’ve held captive in the virtual world of Victory. See? Ready player one for incels.
(Selected image: Warner Bros.)
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