Mandy [2018]
“That was my favorite shirt!”
Artistically perfect, narratively a little flawed, 2018’s Mandy is a “love it or hate it” kind of experience that will leave a lasting effect regardless of which side you land on.
The plot is simple: Red Miller and Mandy Bloom enjoy their bucolic, isolated life amid tall trees and tranquil wildlife. He works as a logger, she runs a small, roadside convenience store. They have each other, they have a place to live, and that’s all they need. Enter Jeremiah and his wacky cult of followers. Predictably, something catastrophic happens that tears the two lovers apart, and the only thing left on the menu… is revenge.
Mandy is a major feat in physical filmmaking, breakthrough directing, and uncompromising vision. From its wild and unconventional use of overly saturated colors to its clever implementation of what can be called “lighting” only in an abstract way, Mandy is a visual treat unlike any other. I think the best way to describe Mandy’s style is “a nostalgic 70’s/80’s revenge thriller written for the stage that accidentally made it into the hands of a film producer”. It’s stunning, it’s weird, and it’s perfect.
That being said, I do think it would be difficult to watch on a standard TV set because it is DARK. If you have access to an OLED, Mandy really pops. Otherwise, it might be like watching a movie through sunglasses.
The casting is great, the acting is great, the score is [mostly] great, the effects are FANTASTIC… the only place Mandy really struggles is its narrative. If you try and watch this and can’t make it to the interesting parts, I highly recommend trying it again with this advice:
Watch the first 15 minutes, then just skip ahead to minute 36 and go from there.
As much as I loved this experience, it takes way too long to get going. We don’t need nearly as much setup or introduction and the film really suffers for it. As is, the this either needs to be 20-minutes longer [to flesh out the middle and really shore up some of the more rushed parts of the story] or the intro needs to be 20-minutes shorter… so we can then use that time to shore up some of the more rushed parts of the story. Mandy’s narrative isn’t bad by any means, it’s just a little uneven. Like a rubber-band being stretched out, the force to get the film going is fairly great, then it all snaps back to neutral so fast you’re not entirely sure what happened between release of that tension and the near circle now sitting on your table.
Despite this, I loved Mandy and cannot wait for more of director Panos Cosmatos and cinematographer Benjamin Loeb.
Like a love-child between 2021’s Censor and 2020’s Possessor, Mandy is an absolute visual masterpiece in semi-experimental filmmaking and proof that even the weirdest ideas totally work if you put the time, effort, and passion into them. As with all media that leans more towards art than convention, Mandy is a polarizing experience that is well worth the investment, but presents challenges that not all viewers will be interested in overcoming.
“A psychotic drowns where the mystic swims. You're drowning. I'm swimming.”
