I have to confess, I didn’t imagine that I would be using this space for movie reviews since I don’t feel especially qualified in that regard, despite suffering through requisite amount of Stan Brakhage as an undergraduate at a liberal arts college. A little over a week ago, I saw a notice somewhere for a movie called LUV. Looking at the trailer, I realized it was set in Baltimore and phoned my sister asking if she’d heard of it. “Oh, my gosh,” she said, “that must have been the movie they were filming around here [East Baltimore] a while ago. I saw the trucks and the film crews but I didn’t know what 
they were making.” We made plans to go that night, the Friday it opened, but she had to work late and our plans were postponed until this weekend. In the meantime, I checked out a few reviews online and I started doubting whether or not it was worth seeing, which is why I’m now writing my own review. Typically, if a majority of critics dislike a movie, I avoid it. If anything, I tend to be pickier then the average critic. If it hadn’t been set in Baltimore, we probably would have done something else yesterday.
After seeing the movie, I felt so puzzled by why the critics had disliked it, my sister and I sat down and read some of the negative reviews. If you really miss the t.v. show The Wire and you’re hoping, since LUV is set in Baltimore this will be reminiscent of that, you’ll be disappointed. If you’re hoping for a carefully plotted crime thriller, LUV is not that. Nor is it a gritty policier, or a gangland opera. So what is it?
At one level, it’s a love letter to the city of Baltimore. The first thing that impressed me was the fact that Sheldon Candis, the writer and the director, clearly knows the city. While watching, I had no doubt that he was a native of Baltimore, a fact I later confirmed. He doesn’t get a lot of details right; he gets all the details right. This is a movie deeply rooted in a particular place in a way that I haven’t seen in a movie in a long time. My sister could name every location in every shot except one. Unfortunately, these details would probably escape most of the critics. They probably also aren’t aware of how many wooded areas exist within the city limits. I live here. The texture of the city feels right. This alone constitutes an artistic achievement. It’s a hard city to love. I admire those who do because I can’t. So perhaps this particular achievement isn’t to everyone’s taste.
I won’t bother summarizing the movie here since the trailer gives you an idea of basic outline. If the movie could be said to follow any classic pattern, it would be tragedy. The pridefullness of the protagonist, Vincent, prevents him from being able to accept a setback to his plan to open his own business. When he makes the decision to seek financial help from a crime boss he knew in his past he sets in motion a chain of events which will ultimately lead to his downfall.
This tragic course that ends violently is viewed by Vincent’s eleven year old nephew, Woody. Early in the movie we see the back of Woody’s head in front of us and it is very clear that this story is being told through his eyes. Shortly after that, we see him have an imaginary confrontation with himself in the mirror. Towards the end of the movie, we see him looking at himself in the mirror again. At the very end, we see the back of his head again.
Yesterday, I brought up the subject of the gaze in the context of feminist theory and I mentioned that the idea originated in psychoanalysis. What I didn’t mention is that it entered feminism through film theory. That it would be film, a medium in which the spectator sees the action through the view of the director, that would lend itself to this sort of critique is unsurprising. The presumption underlying the feminist notion of the male gaze in film is that the director is usually male and the film is being made for a male audience. This concept has been extended to include the notion of the racialized gaze, that the implied viewpoint of most films is that of a white person. With that in mind, it is very much worthwhile to consider that the characters in the film are almost entirely African American, as is the director who himself grew up in the city in which it is was filmed. It is unsurprising that it would take place in the city of Baltimore, a city with an African American majority where a day in which almost everyone you encounter is black is unremarkable. Returning to the context of the male gaze it is interesting that one of the movie’s major themes is the concept of masculinity. In most movies, masculinity, while frequently portrayed on screen, is shown without much questioning. In LUV, we have a male director very frankly confronting our notions of masculinity.
It is really a character driven movie that happens to take place in the world riven by crime and it has the pacing of a psychological drama, not a thriller.
Another detail about the movie that I liked was the way that there were hints at story lines other than the ones that appeared on the screen. At one point, Vincent and Woody go to see a guy called Reg, formerly known as Lil Baby. Vincent says a female name I’ve since forgotten and ask how she’s doing. Reg has a reaction that indicates that something has happened that Vincent doesn’t know about. This is never clarified. In this way, we get the sense that there is a world that exists beyond the world shown on the screen.
One of the greatest criticisms leveled against this movie by multiple critics was it’s lack of realism. I am almost totally floored by this. Sure, there are a couple of moments when it’s necessary to suspend disbelief, like the speed with which Woody is able to be fitted with a suit. My sister, as I mentioned in a previous post, works with former felons, among other groups, in many of the rougher neighborhoods in town. So the milieu depicted in the film is not unknown to her and she thought the film felt very real. Like many of the critics, I had a problem with the very ending of the film, which I won’t give away here, but it didn’t wreck the entire experience for me. I find it ironic that film critics are telling Candis what the reality in his own town is supposed to be like. After watching dozens of movies in which heroes leap onto moving trucks from overpasses, am I really supposed to get upset because a kid gets a suit more quickly than is believable?
If you’re a fan of good acting, this film is worth seeing. Michael Rainey Jr., who plays Woody, has been universally praised for his performance and rightly so. Common, who plays Vincent, gives a wonderfully subtle, understated and, ultimately, very real performance. The actors playing the secondary characters turn in some notable performances as well. Nothing is showy. I like seeing actors work and the economical writing gave good actors a lot of room. Candis strikes me as a director that respects actors.
The film has it’s flaws. The ending, as I mentioned, is a bit hard to swallow. Still, it’s tempting to wonder a bit about the strength of the criticism. The most unusual thing about this movie is, at the end, you don’t walk out of the movie feeling that you want to be like the hero. Even anti-heroes often function as fantasy projections. The movie probably won’t make any of your “best of” lists, but it is a thoughtful movie and I’m glad I saw it.
