Back Row is not a spoiler free site.
Reader beware.
•
Send us a tip!
or join our Patreon
All in Essays
A common question among first-year philosophy students, religious types, and stoners is: are we in control of our own destiny? Veronica explores this question through Lisa Frankenstein, She is Conann and The Iron Claw
The platforms and buzzwords available to Gen Z can be welded as weapons or tools, depending on whose hand they’re in. The kids in Bodies Bodies Bodies, Pleasure and Medusa, approach life and adulthood as something they can opt-out of.
In The Card Counter, the schism between processing trauma and self-forgiveness comes to a head. To Bill, this living prison he has set up for himself is akin to a religion. But salvation cannot be achieved without true consciousness – simply having suffered great punishment is not enough.
There’s no standard way to behave for a breakdown, so it can be a challenge to make something read clearly on screen when the majority of the drama takes place internally. Veronica discusses The Sound of Violence, The Voices and Muriel's Wedding, three films that explore how to have a mental breakdown.
The only way Robert Downey Sr knew how to communicate with his audience was to level with them. He’d undercut your expectations while openly ribbing your reactions, delighting in the intrigue of blatant overindulgence while acknowledging it with disgust and then forcing you to wallow in it alongside him.
Veronica writes an ode to Alexander Payne’s Election – a perfect microcosm of the US, our inherent mistrust of ambitious women, and the gross reality of being a human.
Anxiety is what bonds us women together, even more than that sisterhood junk or whichever biological grossness, because it exists inside every type of woman there is. If you’ve spent a minute of your life as a woman, you’ve experienced female anxiety. That’s just the way it goes.
Watching movies filmed in a place you love when you are physically present in said place but unable to enjoy it has become a strange panacea for Veronica. Between Petulia, Foul Play and The Manitou she almost feels like she’s really in the Bay Area… which she is, but, y’know, it’s weird right now,
