THE NIGHTLY MIRROR

I was nerding out with Dave Weigel about an Ari Aster movie that didn’t exist.

What I found interesting was that from the beginning through to almost the end, you are not really sure Colin is a sub at all. The whole issue of who he is when he’s not being told who he is, is kind of the whole point. We are seeing the pre-history of Colin.

There is the whole segment of Colin’s life where he is his mother’s sub, that I think a lot of people would take for granted as “the real Colin”, but really, that’s just Colin the Child.

I think for someone so green, those scenes of lounging around the campfire looking at all the other subs getting cuddled by their masters and Colin realizing that he wants that, and that Ray is particularly cold even for a leather daddy, is an important revelation for him to feel. Because it’s like, Colin, what do you want? By the end of the story, he has a much better idea.

How his relationship with his mother concludes really hit hard. Sometimes you really only get one chance. I think about the last time I spoke to my aunt before she died, and I really let her have it about Trump and QAnon, and her delusions she clings to because she can’t handle how humiliating America really is. She just said she can’t wait to see me on the New Earth. And she died suddenly a few weeks later. That’s it.

Sometimes I’m so happy she never has to think about me again.

Anyways. You’ve got to live forward. I’m glad Colin picked up some shrapnel of a future self he didn’t quite know was him yet. People change you. The ways they change you that are not suitable for polite company are still beautiful, important. Just picking up tools.

Ray is really all about one look that only a Skarsgard could pull off, that one climactic expression of raw grief. He really plays a great monster. I don’t mean it in the dumb way that so many people will likely interpret this movie. I mean from the other side of it. I found it interesting that even though he is such an idealized fuck monster, there really isn’t a very humanistically eroticized relationship there. Colin doesn’t seem to really want to lick his boots. If I were licking boots, I’m afraid I’d ham it up a bit. I hate it when people ham it up. But I would be into it in a self- what’s the word? In an already self-actualized way. I know how to lick boots. I’m there.