Widows (Steve McQueen, 2018): UK, USA

Reviewed by Yuan Luo, watched in AFI Filmfest 2018

The film tells the story of a widow who, after the accidental death of the thief husband, combined with other widows. Steve McQueen is very telling stories, with various timelines crossing, and two story lines (crimes, campaigns) crossing, not blunt. The script was written by Steve McQueen and the popular suspense novel Gillian Flynn, and the maturity is impeccable. In terms of film aesthetics, Steve McQueen and Hans Zimmer join forces, and the aesthetics of the picture and music are almost perfect. Hans’s soundtrack is accompanied by the rhythm of the film, sometimes soothing and sometimes tense, completely controlling the mood of the audience. It is a pity that such a neat work, and the theme that fits my favorite, is not perfect to the five-star level. The biggest and most deadly shortcoming of the film is that the theme of the rise of women clearly has very little discussion about women themselves. The personality of women is not clear enough. We know nothing about them except their previous occupations. What character did they have before, what they liked, what they pursued, we don’t know at all. We only know that Veronica is a teacher federation, but she is more like an old canary raised by her husband in a gold silk cage, living in a luxury apartment, and a private driver, and she actually has a real career for her husband. Little is known. Linda basically raised her own money with her own money, but she was as good as it was. And Alice, basically a useless person attached to a domestic violence boyfriend. “The best thing we have going for us is being who we are,because no one thinks we have the balls to pull this off.”

The trailer for this film gives you a pre-set story, and the story it really tells is totally different. This is the bottom woman, self-rescue in a marginalized community of patriarchal, violent rule. There are no tall office malls, only ordinary apartments and shops with 34 shooting incidents every weekend. There are no handsome men here who robbed the rich and helped the poor. Only the men with darker minds were deceiving violence and abandoning betrayal. The story is absolutely different from what you thought at first. Some of these subtle reversals occur naturally, and they are also very reasonable and impactful.

A few women who are completely different are entangled in fate, do not appreciate each other, and cannot agree with each other. Cooperate briefly, just to be able to survive. They are women who have lost their husbands, from the physical loss at the beginning to the loss of the soul, and finally to holding everything in their hands, like a new life. The whole film is completely lyrical, and the expression of emotion is just right but heavy and determined. Bold & Strong. This is the background color of the film. The first half of the film hasn’t much to do with the robbery itself. The director has been showing the widow’s background and the storyline’s confession – the election of a regional leader in a black district in Chicago – a white elite and a black man struggle. The director discussed many contemporary American issues, such as racial discrimination, unstable law and order, and so on.

But in the final analysis, this film is still a feminist feast. This group of widows who have never met each other have not chosen to waste time crying for their dead husbands, but know that only by taking their own lives in their hands can they have a chance to turn over, no matter how dangerous and uncontrollable the road ahead. In essence, this film is still telling a “disapproval” story, which is in line with the mainstream values ​​of the United States that advocate personal values. The film set by this great women shows us a hearty female group image, which is a rare piece of this year. Positioning it as a pure feminist film seems unfair because it really contains too many other flash points.