I saw this yesterday and I’m still trying to make up my mind what I think of it. On the one hand, it has some very good things to recommend it. Good writing and direction, the music is good, there are effective moments of humor, tension and drama. It feels authentic and the acting (in particular by Terrence Howard) is extremely good.
On the other hand, I was so put off by the relentless misogeny of the film that I could never really cheer for the protaganist. The main character is a pimp who conatantly manipulates women to his own ends, All of his rap lyrics are about brutalizing women (“beat that bitch,” “stomp that ho.” etc.) There is never any sense that the movie feels like his treatment of women is wrong. The only “good” women in the film are those which are abjectly servile to men. Those with any spark of independence are bitches.
The character is also a jerk in other ways. There is a scene in which he throws one of his women out of the house with whom he has a young son. He then goes and grabs the highchair that the child (who appears to be about a year old) is sitting in and carries it out to dump it on the porch. The other women in the house are sobbing and begging him not to do it. Neither the woman nor the child are seen in the film again.
It felt like the movie saw this scene as somehow being triumphant for the character but after that, I just could not sympathize for him anymore. There is no excuse for a man to treat his own child (or any other child) like that.
I won’t give away the ending, but the character engages in some other behaviors which play to the worst stereotypes about rappers and get him admiration for actions which are not remotely noble.
It sounds like I hated the movie, but the funny thing is, I didn’t it. I was quite engrossed and entertained. It’s a very well made film and on some levels it works very well. Terrence Howard is incredible and manages to generate more sympathy than the character probably deserves. I also liked a couple of the smaller performances- Ludacris is terriffic as a successful, self-absorbed rap star and I liked the two guys (whose names I don’t know) who play the sound tech and the white keyboard player who help put the demo together.
I’d like to get some other thoughts on the mvie in general and the misogeny in particular. Am I being oversensitive?
As you’re probably aware, this film was made in Memphis by a director named Craig Brewer. I became acquainted with him a few years ago through the Memphis film scene when his first film The Poor and Hungry won Best Digital Feature at the Hollywood Film Festival. I actually wrote the first article about Hustle and Flow back in 2002 for a local arts magazine, so I’ve watched this movie go from a script that nobody wanted to the winning film at Sundance.
I think it’s a great movie. I’ve seen it three times, once with an audience of local film people, once in Craig’s office on his computer monitor, and once at the premier. I was kind of surprised when I saw how they were marketing it (a cross between 8 Mile and Superfly) and it really made me wonder how people would recieve it once they actually saw the movie, because at its heart it is a character piece with an ending that isn’t nearly as happy as it may seem. DtC, the scenes you’ve picked out as problematic are supposed to be distubing and to make you question DJay’s character. The whole movie, IMHO, is about DJay’s struggle between (for lack of a better term) his light side and dark side. He’s been a pimp for years and misogyny and violence are part and parcel with his job. He thinks he never really had a choice as to what he does for a living and has a “I do what I gotta do to survive” attitude. But he’s maybe a bit too thoughtful for his job, and has a crisis of conscience at the scene in the church when he is moved by the gospel singer. He realizes, as he has for a while, that what he does for a living is evil and maybe just because he does it because he has to doesn’t mean it doesn’t make him evil, too. For the rest of the film, DJay vacilates between his good side, like during the scenes where he and his crew are making music, and his bad side, like the very disturbing scene that Dio spoilered above.
And in the end, it’s still not clear which side of DJay prevails. He’s not recognized for his music so much as he is recognized as the guy who “slapped Skinny Black,” and even getting airplay for the single is as much the result of Nola’s hustling as it is the quailty of the music. Pretty much how things work in the music industry today, isn’t it?
I disagree that the movie presents the spoilered scene as some kind of triumph for DJay; it’s a defeat. I think the scene is presented neutrally, as is DJay’s character. It’s awful to watch, and the fact that someone you’re rooting for in the movie could be capable of something like that is supposed to be disturbing to the audience. But that’s the key scene where we see that DJay’s transformation is not complete and may never be complete. People don’t know what to do with it–it certainly doesn’t fit with the “downtrodden hero with the heart of gold” trope people expecting from the marketing.
I agree that the awful (spoiler-boxed) scene in question was much more of a defeat than some sort of a bad-ass misogynist smack-my-b*tch-up power trip, and I suppose it’s understood that Djay’s flesh-peddling career (the one he is trying to get out of) is not exactly pro-feminist.
Yes indeed, that scene and others are hard to watch; I guess the viewer just has to watch the goings-on in their context, without passing judgment.
I enjoyed all the performances, esp Terence Howard’s.
I think you hit the nail on the head here. I didn’t know what to do with the scene or how i was supposed to feel about DJay after that. Maybe I incorrectly read the tone of scene as trumphant because the film follows the form of an underdog story so I was just assuming that we were supposed to root for whatever the character did. The film does a very good job of showing the desperate desire of its characters to succeed as well as the cathartic joy that their music brings them. Djay is not exactly a good person but he’s not exactly an evil person either. He shows moments of humanity and empathy. He loves Shug and Lola. He hates being a pimp, but he definitely has flaws. He’s got rage and he misdirects it. He becomes so consumed with his own goals that he becomes oblivious to the feelings of those close to him even as he’s using them.
It’s too Terrence Howard’s credit that he was able to create such a complex and ambiguous character. The scene near the end with Skinny Black where [/spoiler]after striking out with his initial attempt to ingratiate himself with Skinny, we see an amazing range of emotion on DJay’s face as he goes from bleak disappointment, to renewed resolve, to cocky hustler, all in the amount of time it takes to light a cigarette[/spoiler] was a virtuoso piece of acting.
Did Howard do his own rapping in the film? I thought his voice and delivery were awesome in those scenes.
I’m bumping threads left and right during Oscar season. I guess I am a fair weather movie fan, but if it gets Oscar noms, I check it out. Then I want to make my opinion part of the permanent record.
Glad I did here. I thought this movie was better than at least 3 of the Best Picture films. Maybe all of them. T. Howard was incredible.
I agree with the criticisms of the characters in the film, but I also agree that this is not an indictment of the film itself, but rather the flaws of people.
That scene where DJay goes from sniveling, nervous fan to master of the moment was incredible. I was wondering if they would just have to bleep it a lot to make it his Oscar clip. There are few scenes that doing have language in them.
The only other scene of note that had minimal language, was the scene where he gets T. Manning to sleep with the sound store owner so he can get the expensive microphone. His salesmanship and her subsequent response was a high point of the film.
I liked that the film didn’t sugarcoat people. And in the end, I don’t think they necessarily romanticized anything. This was a pretty heady movie, and I am glad it got some nominations.
I may have overlooked it as “just another rapper movie” if it hadn’t.