“Don’t Worry Darling” is Terrific

I’ve just come back from seeing Olivia Wilde’s new movie, Don’t Worry Darling, and I’m very excited to report that it was a terrific undertaking. I’ve seen many reports from people who found the movie unoriginal, dull, and insubstantial – and they’re entitled to those views – but my own experience was very, very different. From what I had heard, I was expecting a retread of The Stepford Wives, but from the movie’s first moments, it emerges as a keenly observed, deeply emotional, fiercely engaging work. And Wilde is shown to be a strong and distinctive director, one who can focus her assembled cast and crew not only into the absorbing endeavour of finely crafted storytelling, but into a unified artistic vision, a white-hot worldview presented visually.

If you’re interested in watching the movie fresh, perhaps you should stop reading here and go see it, because a lot of the thrill comes from the unfolding of the plot (though I won’t give away any details here). The setting of the movie is the microcosm of the wide world that is traditionally seen as the modern man’s lorded realm; namely, the household and the picture-perfect family that resides there. Like Ira Levin before her, Wilde has selected the insular and isolated suburban American neighbourhood of the 1950s as its quintessential representation – it’s the archetype of nuclear families with half-deified heads, as well as of women’s repressed individuality. It’s almost like Wilde has put a visual form of voiceover over her movie, to say, there’s a reason the mid-century feminist movement broke out in places that looked just as idyllic as this.

Maybe many viewers’ problem with Don’t Worry Darling was their strong recollection of Jordan Peele’s Get Out, with which this movie compares unfavourably (as most movies will). Wilde’s subject is the widespread contemporary reminiscences (however distorted) of the serene and unchallenged control that men enjoyed over these family settings in the past, and how some men, when confronted with what they perceive as the loss of that authority to power-hungry women, will go to brutal lengths to wrest it back. Similarly to Get Out, the horror in this movie doesn’t come from gore and physical disgust, but from how Wilde exposes real-life modern-day horrors as soul-destroying for the women who fall into the wrong man’s psychotic trap.

Wilde delivers a kaleidoscope of gliding, reeling, swinging images – a cavalcade of stylish movements, angles, and cuts that lend the emotions of the movie an alluring energy. She matches this with a swinging soundtrack of jazz and 60s pop, and a keen attention to the stunning and meticulous detail of the period setting built into the sets, sounds, décor, cars, and costumes that makes it feel all the more strange (as do a few gratifying surrealist touches she adds). I felt like I was seeing the movie from inside the action, as if I was grabbed and held within the images themselves. Wilde’s directorial vibrancy is matched by the gestural and verbal precision of the performers – indeed of the very characters, because people in American company towns in the 50s had to watch and control their every word and movement as closely as professional actors. No one who has seen Florence Pugh’s previous movies (like Midsommar and Little Women) will be surprised to hear of her strong mix of fierce emotional expression and lightning-quick intelligence, nor should anyone be unfamiliar with the formidable energy of Olivia Wilde, who plays a major part in her own movie. But I think that Harry Styles has been unjustly derided as vacant and stiff – he brings a smooth charm and breezy romanticism to the early scenes that makes the dramatic reveal of his character all the more ugly a shock. The gossip around a troubled production and soured personal relationships has clouded over the real story: Wilde and Styles join Pugh among today’s inspired artists.