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- [00:00]
NPR Sponsor
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- [00:34]
Stephen Thompson
In the twisty new movie Opus, a journalist attends a press event for a reclusive pop star who's been in hiding for decades. Then things get weird. The film stars Ayo Odebri as well as John Malkovich, who even recorded a few pop songs for the occasion. I'm Stephen Thompson and today we are talking about Opus on Pop Culture Happy Hour from npr.
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- [01:30]
Sydney Madden
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Sydney Madden
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- [02:36]
Stephen Thompson
Is NPR music reporter Sydney Madden. Hey Sydney.
- [02:39]
Isabella Gomez Sarmiento
Hey Stephen.
- [02:40]
Stephen Thompson
Also with us is NPR CultureDesk reporter Isabella Gomez Sarmiento. Hey Isabella.
- [02:45]
Isabella Gomez Sarmiento
Howdy.
- [02:45]
Stephen Thompson
It is a pleasure to have you both. So Opus stars IO Edebri as a journalist named Ariel who works at a GQ style magazine. After toiling for years in hopes of getting her shot, she receives an invitation to attend a very exclusive press event for a pop star named Alfred Moretti. He's played by John Malkovich. Moretti is presented in the film as a massively beloved genius whose disappearance has become the stuff of legend. And when the small gaggle of journalists arrives at his compound, it plays out like a fantasy. They have minders who tend to their every need. They're given up close and personal access to Moretti himself, who holds court in eccentric fashion and gives them occasional glimpses of his first album in 27 years. Then questions arise. What's the deal with this weird compound and the people who work there? What happened to that one guy who was just here a minute ago? And why did Moretti ch these journalists, including Ariel, to whom he has no connection? Opus is in theaters now. Sidney Madden, I'm gonna start with you. What did you think of Opus?
- [04:00]
Isabella Gomez Sarmiento
Let me just start by saying I had really high hopes and really high expectations for this film. I think the casting is amazing. Iowa Debris is a shining star in my opinion. John Malkovich is a goat. Juliet Lewis is one of my favorite chameleons. And Marc Anthony Green, who is the writer and first time director of this film, he is a former music, fashion, and culture journalist himself, having spent many years at gq and he's been privy to these exclusive events, gotten exclusive interviews in the past. So I was like, okay, this is gonna be infused with some lived experience, and it's gonna be a mirror to all the slimy power dynamics that come with celebrity proximity. But ultimately, Opus asks a lot of questions that it doesn't end up answering. And that mirror just becomes way too foggy and smudged by some resting laurels and reinforcement of the very thing it aims to call out.
- [05:03]
Stephen Thompson
What do you mean by reinforcing what it intends to call out?
- [05:05]
Isabella Gomez Sarmiento
Well, I think we've gotten a lot of movies in the last few years that are indictments of power dynamics and cult of personality, cult of celebrity.
- [05:14]
Stephen Thompson
I mean, blink Twice for one, is a direct reflection of that.
- [05:18]
Isabella Gomez Sarmiento
Exactly. Whether you're going to a billionaire's private island and blink twice or you're going to an exclusive restaurant in the menu, or you're getting on this wacky mega yacht in Triangle of Sadness, there's always this creepy festering itch in the back of your neck that asks you as the Viewer, what would you do to get closer to this starshine, to get closer to the celebrity? As you're watching, these people make these decisions and let their guards down just for. For some access and from some intimacy with these really powerful people, really famous people. But more often than not, when our protagonists get in those situations and they see how slimy and smarmy it gets, rather than wanting to change their trajectory or back away, they do something that shifts the power dynamic that sometimes reinforces them as the celebrity themselves, Which I think was a great setup opus of how Ariel Ecton wanted to interview celebrities who she says are inherently fascinating. And she wanted to get so good at that that she herself becomes a celebrity. And it's her boo thing. I want to say in the beginning of the movie, who says, you can't really do that because your opinions are so mid. Because your life is so average. You know, you have so much want and so much, you know, dogged gut and ideas, but you have no lived experience to fill it with. So then when she goes on this trip, she gets a lot lived experience. We're gonna just say trauma in large fashion. And that's what she's able to use to become somewhat of a celebrity herself rather than indict the horrible notion and our obsession with celebrity overall.
- [07:06]
Stephen Thompson
Okay, how about you, Isabella? What did you think of the film?
- [07:09]
Isabella Gomez Sarmiento
I agree with Sidney. I'm always excited about pieces of media that raise questions with how celebrity pilled we are and our obsession with clout and exclusivity and Stan culture. I think it's like one of the most fascinating topics to me. And I think the movie set up the premise well. I think the execution. I think it didn't point enough fingers to me towards, like, the audience and towards the stands and what responsibility we hold. That's kind of how I felt. I felt like it was a film that was more trying to analyze the pop figure himself. And I think to me, what would have been more interesting is if it was a film that was more occupied with why are we so fascinated with these people? And what does that say about us? So I guess that's kind of more what I was hoping to get from it.
- [07:56]
Stephen Thompson
Yeah, I had somewhat of the same reaction. I think it ultimately does a nice job of building this world and setting up this story. I think the part of the film that is, like, depicting what press junkets are like, the part of the film that is depicting what this scurry for Access is like and what it is like to be a journalist where you're coming in and, like, people are kind of trying to cater. Cater to you, but it's in hopes that you'll cater to them. I think the film gets that part really pretty right. Obviously, it's an. It's an elevated kind of extreme version of that. I've certainly never been flown on a private jet to some weird compound, but I felt like it seemed to basically get the language of celebrity journalism more or less right. I agree with Sidney that it doesn't necessarily come to a particularly satisfying conclusion. And for me, where it falls down. Even though they got Nile Rogers and the dream to write these original songs for this film, it's actually really important to this film that you get a feel for who this guy is and what he's about. The film takes great pains to establish that he is this massive reclusive icon, that he is a household name, that he is somebody or everybody loves and.
- [09:19]
Isabella Gomez Sarmiento
Remembers his song, that he spans generations.
- [09:22]
Stephen Thompson
And then the song that we are presented with as the great pearls of his genius is a song called Dina Simone. And it's Dina, comma Simone. Let's hear a little bit of it.
- [09:36]
Isabella Gomez Sarmiento
Yeah, you model body bad. And the curves on her drive. Men, man.
- [09:41]
NPR Sponsor
Simone.
- [09:43]
Isabella Gomez Sarmiento
Hold me, baby, hold me tight I.
- [09:47]
Stephen Thompson
Spent days trying to conjure up, like, what song does this kind of remind me of? And how. How would that, like, affect my picture of who Moretti is? And I realized the song it kind of reminds me of is How Bizarre by omc. Do you remember?
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Isabella Gomez Sarmiento
Do you remember?
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How bizarre?
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How bizarre, how bizarre, how bizarre, how bizarre.
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Stephen Thompson
And I'm just imagining this alternate universe where OMC became like the Rosetta Stone of pop music, where everybody is just hanging on the words of omc. For me, that created this massive disconnect where I'm watching this pop star who we are told over and over and over again is just the voice of multiple generations. And then the music is so flimsy.
- [10:42]
Isabella Gomez Sarmiento
Yeah, that's a good point you bring up. Because even though this is a movie about visiting a recluse to hear this iconoclast type album, and it's even set up that way they dress them to go to the listening event of the album, the music itself, it does feel a little Prince Bowie chatgpt esque. And it's not a music movie. That's what's so funny about it too. I mean, it's like the music doesn't even matter because he's just ballooned to be this figure that we're all told and we all know that we are to respect and revere, but the actual, like, sauce itself is missing a couple ingredients there. It's funny.
- [11:28]
We.
- [11:29]
Isabella and I even went to go see this at a screening, and Marc Anthony Green was there, and he was teeing it up, and he said he wanted the movie itself to be sequenced and feel like an album. But there are certain parts of it, like, the actual music that I feel could be skippable. Like, there are certain movements that could have benefited from a little more bass and some that could have just been taken out of the sequence altogether.
- [11:53]
Yeah. I also feel like, just in terms of volume, like, I was trying to think of other movies where they've created these fictional artists and fictional soundtracks to really, like, immerse you in the cult of the celebrity or really immerse you in the sound of that fictional figure. And, like, I was thinking of, like, Josie and the Pussycats or, like, Juliet Naked. And I'm like, for a movie about music, it just didn't have that much music.
- [12:15]
Stephen Thompson
No.
- [12:15]
Isabella Gomez Sarmiento
Yeah.
- [12:16]
Like, I didn't really feel immersed in it. And then the sequences of people listening to the music, it just wasn't really landing. Like, I was just kind of like, question mark, question mark. Is this supposed to be weird on purpose, or is this supposed to be good? And I'm not getting it. It was, like, a really weird experience.
- [12:33]
But I think that speaks to the overall, like, groupthink that comes from. Yeah, we're all supposed to love him, so we're all supposed to just gush over this music. And even going through some scenes where you can clearly tell we're in a cult setting, like passing the bread around to everybody in a post Covid world. I'm not biting a piece of bread. That 30 other people before me bit. Oh, it's one roll. It comes from Moretti. Moretti took the first bite. So any proximity to that celebrity is gonna, like, absolutely suspend your disbelief or suspend your normal boundaries and your normal notions of what is allowed and what you will allow of yourself. And I think that extends to the music. We could get into a whole bunch of things that just point blank, don't make sense about this movie. He takes Ariel to a hut and talks about the artistic practice of shucking oysters to get pearls. First of all, y'all were supposed to be in Utah. This is a landlocked state. How do you have so many oysters? There was a lot of seafood in this movie. That just did not make sense. Why are there voodoo dolls there? That's what I mean. About a lot of moments that you're like, you're just in it, and you're in the throes of it. So you're absolutely gonna do everything to go along with the group. And, I mean, that's how groupthink evolves into things like cults.
- [13:57]
It's interesting that you bring that up, Sydney, because to me, it felt like the film sprinkled in very flattened depictions of cult.
- [14:04]
Exactly right.
- [14:05]
Like, I didn't quite understand the religion aspect, and I think it could have been interesting, but I think it was a very stereotypical and flattened exhibition of what group think or of what, like, a quote unquote, cult looks like. And I don't think it did any of the work of actually explaining why people were there or what the motivations were, other than, like, we love Moretti, but that was a little too simple for me.
- [14:26]
Mm.
- [14:27]
Stephen Thompson
And I think it. It ties back to one central issues with the film was I didn't necessarily feel like the film had a sure grip on what is Ariel's perspective on all this. And I think, in a way, it's a more interesting film if she comes in as a little bit more of a skeptic than she is. She's certainly, like, unnerved by some of this stuff, maybe because in part because she's younger, she hasn't been in the industry as long. It's kind of presented like she has questions that the other journalists, who are a little more seasoned, just kind of go along with it because it's like, it's Moretti. He's a loopy guy. What are you gonna do? The fact that she seems awed by his music, that she keeps kind of presenting like, the music is brilliant, the music is whatever. And I think it's a more interesting film if she's able to step back as a little more of a skeptic and maybe a little more of an audience surrogate than she is. It becomes a little unclear where she's coming from. So by the time you get to the conclusion that is sort of wrapping some of these things up, it feels a little unsatisfying.
- [15:27]
Isabella Gomez Sarmiento
Absolutely. I think she tries to do that at some turns, but ultimately she does want to be going back to what her aim was at the beginning of the film. She wants to become a celebrity as this amazing culture critic. And it goes back to that push and pull of wanting to be close to the starshine. And we're not going to do this dance of separating the art from the artist and having this conversation like Ariel Even though she does want to ebb and flow into that, ultimately she's no, okay, this is not a joke anymore. It just. It obscures from that conversation. Like, it. It's about to have that conversation and then it totally changes trajectories.
- [16:08]
Yeah, I mean, I think the flip side of that too. Like, even at the beginning when she's talking about her motivations, it doesn't seem like she actually establishes what she cares about or what she's passionate about, other than getting bylines and other than, like, ascending the ladder so she can do meaningful work. I feel like we don't get a sense of what she takes meaning in. And that's part of the problem with her perspective throughout the film, because it just goes back and forth, like Steven was saying, in terms of being like, she loves the music. She's also kind of the only voice of reason here. But I feel like her motivations also aren't completely well developed enough to understand what she's trying to get out of being here. And I guess the point of that is maybe that she doesn't even know that herself. And at the end, she's just as allured by the fame and by the celebrity of it all as everybody else is. But I think the character could have just been a little bit sharper in that regard.
- [17:00]
Stephen Thompson
Yeah, I agree with that completely. And I think it's interesting this particular subgenre is so tricky to pull off. And by subgenre, I'm sort of referring to what I would call Shyamalan Corps, you know, which is kind of a twisty thriller where the central mystery is what's going on. And there's some kind of creative DNA here between this movie. I think it's a more successful movie, but there's some shared DNA with Trapp, the very weird and misbegotten M. Night Shyamalan movie from last year, which is also built around that, has, like, three different endings and a fake pop star. I guess my question is sort of if you're going in for a silly, M. Night Shyamalan type, twisty movie, did it work for you on that level? Cause I think it kind of worked for me.
- [17:47]
Isabella Gomez Sarmiento
Yeah. It's entertaining and it's engaging. So on that level, yes. Like, I was hooked. I was like, what? Where is this gonna go? How is this gonna end up? I think I just went into it expecting it to answer much bigger questions than it did. But if you're approaching it from that perspective, it was fun. I had a good time.
- [18:03]
Yeah. I mean, I think there's really solid dialogue in it. The cinematography is really great. There's a lot of moments where a turn just does make you jump and you think Ariel is actually done for and you do root for the protagonist. And yeah, it is a fun watch. But I agree with Isabella. I feel like seeing who was on the arsenal, seeing who's on the bill for this, and seeing and knowing that the writer and director comes from the world of pop culture criticism and, and let's face it, the amount of erosion that's happening in that space right now, I thought it would have had more juicy and timely social commentary baked in there. But if you're just looking to have a good time, it's a good time.
- [18:53]
Stephen Thompson
I think it feels like an intriguing first film.
- [18:55]
Isabella Gomez Sarmiento
Yes, definitely.
- [18:56]
Stephen Thompson
All right, well, we want to know what you think about Opus. Find us on Facebook@facebook.com PCHH and on Letterboxd@Letterboxd.com NPR PopCulture we'll have a link in our episode description that brings us to the end of our show. Sydney Madden, Isabella Gomez Sarmiento, thanks so much for being here.
- [19:15]
Isabella Gomez Sarmiento
Thank you.
- [19:16]
Thank you.
- [19:17]
Stephen Thompson
And just a reminder that signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour plus is a great way to support our show and public radio. And you get to listen to all of our episodes sponsor free. So please go find out more at@plus.NPR.org HappyAur or visit the link in our show notes this episode was produced by Liz Metzger and Hafsa Fathoma and edited by Mike Katsif. Our supervising producer is Jessica Reedy and hello. Come in provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from npr. I'm Stephen Thompson and we will see you all tomorrow.
- [19:54]
NPR Sponsor
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