I'm not even going to talk about Jordan Peterson. It's unproductive and won't end well. I was curious about Wilde's decision to cast Harry Styles, but then I realised she'd spent most of the budget on the soundtrack. Which is excellent, by the way. Far better than the film it accompanies, in fact. She clearly loves music.
Now we are all long in the tooth by now in regard to how apparently spawned, well-intentioned utopian dreams inevitably end up as societal nightmares. What would Wilde do with this, aside from don a pretty frock and slowly reduce the idyllic paradise to a predictably formulaic hellscape?
Now, I thought the opposite of chaos was order, not progress, but not according to Chris Pine's Frank, the man behind this new, experimental vision of perfection. A microcosm of opportunity to be involved in a community that seems just too good to be true. Rightly, we might wonder why.
And it would (and should) have surprised Frank, especially in this finger-pointing blame-athon aimed squarely at the fifties, when a woman, A MERE WOMAN, can cause such a curious ruckus. This pretty little thing, Alice (Florence Pugh) is a step out of time, Wilde would have you believe, in a wonderland slowly becoming less and less inviting.
Women were, after all, just empty-headed, overly made-up prostitutes that were also a dab hand at most domestic chores. That was until the sixties, birth control and someone decided to do the decent thing and replace their batteries with new ones. Okay, it was a risk, and it was madness for a bit, but then they all calmed down eventually. Well, mostly. Still, think of all those bras they didn't have to burn.
Stands to reason that this young woman who begins to question her reality and that of those people around her would be treated as the actions of crazy, unstable woman. Typical. Doesn't matter the decade, there will always be a fine line between madness and genius. It just so happens that all the really good geniuses are male.
When does a man buying a dress for his wife to wear to go out for the evening stop being thoughtful and romantic and starts to become controlling and domineering? Jordan Peterson would know. But so would Bioshock's Andrew Ryan and I know which one I would believe. I really don't think Wilde has thought it about long enough to even understand the question, let alone provide a coherent answer, as much as she flatters to deceive.