Monstrous Masculinity: "Colossal" Review

"Gloria is an out of work party-girl forced to leave her life in New York City, and move back home. When reports surface that a giant monster is destroying Seoul, she gradually comes to the realization that she is somehow connected to this phenomenon."

Written and Directed by: Nacho Vigalondo
Starring: Anne Hathaway 

                 Jason Sudeikis 

                 Austin Stowell

                 Tim Blake Nelson 

                 Dan Stevens 

While the monster destroying Seoul, South Korea is very real and very dangerous, the real monster of Colossal lies within the men on the other side of the world. At first glance, Nacho Vigalondo's monster mash comes off as a comedy about a down on her luck woman finding true love after she moves back home. What you aren't prepared for is the jarring tonal shift that takes place. A tonal shift that makes the film more worthwhile than it ever would have been had it been a stock rom-com. From this point forward, there are going to be slight spoilers. This film is kind of impossible to talk about without discussing some key aspects. I'm going to do my very best not to give everything away. However, I heavily recommend seeing this as soon as you can. It's one of 2017's very best. It's wildly inventive, important and Anne Hathaway gives the best performance of a career littered with great ones. Go see it. 

Ok, with that out of the way, this is not a rom-com. Whatever the marketing has suggested to you, be it a light hearted romp starring Hathaway and that lovable scamp Jason Sudeikis, or a wacky monster flick, is wrong. Colossal is a deadly serious look at just how fucked up toxic masculinity can be when boiled down to its most potent toxicity. Anne Hathaway plays Gloria, an alcoholic who's kicked out of her NY apartment by her boyfriend (Dan Stevens). She's had one too many nights out and he's had enough. With no job prospects and nowhere to go, Gloria returns to her tiny hometown. It's here that she runs into to childhood friend Oscar (Sudeikis) and the two reconnect immediately. What follows is a typical girl/guy back and forth and it seems like the two are really hitting it off. They go out for drinks at Oscar's bar and all seems well. Then Gloria wakes up. 

The framing device of the film in the early stages is that Gloria goes out, get hammered and passes out. Each day when she wakes up, Oscar is there with a new piece of furniture claiming that she agreed to take it the night before. Oh, and there's a giant monster attacking Seoul while she sleeps. We'll get to the monster in a minute. The brilliance of Oscar's supposed benevolence is that we never see Gloria agreeing to anything. We're as lost as she is and on the surface, it would appear that Oscar is just a good guy helping a friend out with some furniture. But as Oscar becomes more insistent with his "gifts", his veneer of politeness starts to erode. It's unsettling how Sudeikis plays this. He displays a rigid intensity in how nice he in that while you're never sure if you can buy it, he overwhelms you (and Gloria) into submission. Gloria is helpless because she can't remember a thing from the night before. And while Oscar is passing all of this off as just a guy trying to help a friend out, what he's doing is slowly putting Gloria in his back pocket as "his." 

This is truly one of the darkest films you'll see all year. The unravelling of their "friendship" into what Oscar's true intentions are is unnerving. You've never seen Sudeikis like this. The sarcastic, fun loving guy from SNL is almost invisible here. Instead we have a man that at his core is an angry, narcissistic child. He punishes people for the smallest transgressions, he worms his way into your good graces and then gaslights you into thinking you've fucked up and he's abusive in every sense of the word. This might be the most disturbing character I've seen onscreen in quite some time because he forces you to face some hard truths. Especially if you're a man. Watching this, I became despondent because I saw myself in some of the things he was doing. The gaslighting was the toughest to watch. It's one thing to call someone names or even to hit them (which is something that is never excusable). But the systematic breaking down of someone's psyche is despicable. He swoops in as her savior and convinces her that she was so wasted that she obviously can't remember anything. And she's forced to believe it. Who's she to say he's wrong? He's just being nice right? And if you question him? Well you're just being ungrateful! It's a masterclass in the disgusting nature of power dynamics between men and women. The monster in Seoul is almost secondary to the monster delivering Gloria a new television. 

But what a monster it is.  It has some ties to Gloria as she quickly finds out. A nearby playground doubles as Seoul and whenever Gloria stands in it, she "is" the monster. Whatever she does while in the park, the monster does in Seoul. This is where the film becomes a bit too hard to talk about at length so instead, I'd like to focus on the technical aspects. This is a Neon release which is the production company owned by Alamo Drafthouse. They're a new upstart and based off of this and some of their upcoming projects, they'll most likely be joining A24 as my favorite production company. Since they're relatively new, this is a low budget film. That said? The monster looks great. It has a pretty fun design and the CG never looks bad. Unlike other films who try to hide their monsters as a way to cover the lack of budget, Colossal puts us up close and personal with it and it never looks off. The monster also provides some of the film's brief bits of true comedy. Especially when Gloria begins dancing and the monster follows suit. None of it is laugh out loud hilarious but they're nice moments of levity in a film that veers into some dark territory.

Anne Hathaway is the true MVP though, anchoring a slightly absurd premise with a pathos and believability that few actresses possess. As a performer that bounces between indie dramas and light hearted kids' films, Hathaway has a had a somewhat peculiar career and this for me, is her standout moment. What's so compelling about Gloria is that despite her ex being such an asshole in how he goes about dumping her, she is wrong in a lot of ways. She is an alcoholic. She does have a hard time taking responsibility for things. She's messy. She's thoughtless. But here's the kicker, she's everything a lot of men are but she gets shit for it for being a woman. I'm not excusing alcoholism because it's a serious problem. But in another film, with the gender reversed, Gloria would be a hard partying, care free dude that we all would think was "cool, maaaaaaan." That's another layer to the film that Vigalondo and Hathaway really break open. Gloria isn't someone to look up but she's also not someone to dress down or vilify. She's a broken woman who has insecurities both self-made and brought on by the many men in her life. She's human. Hathaway nails every level of this and delivers such a stunningly heartbreaking portrayal of what it means to be a woman in the male dominated society of hard drinking and late nights. 

If I had any problems they mostly lie in the underdeveloped side characters. Dan Stevens makes brief appearances as Gloria's ex and is mainly used to expound on her flaws. He's another facet to the many men giving her grief but there isn't much to him. Oscar's friends (Austin Stowell and Tim Blake Nelson) deliver some pretty decent performances but again, exist to further the narrative. These aren't bad things at all but you do get the sense that their characterization suffers at the expense of Gloria and Oscar. Tim Blake Nelson does have a heart wrenching scene with Sudeikis though. It's one of the most enraging moments in film I've had in quite some time.

At its core, Colossal is one of the most important films to be released this year. It plays as a repudiation to how women are treated on almost every level. The monster stuff is just the icing on a fucked up cake of toxic masculinity, gaslighting, abuse and alcoholism. You're really not ready for the kind of film this is but you should give it a chance all the same. Why? Because we all need to be reminded of these things every once in awhile and sometimes we need it when we least expect it from the unlikeliest of places. Don't worry, the ending is as cathartic as, if not more than Get Out's. You'll be smiling from ear to ear once you're finished picking your jaw up from the floor.

VERDICT

Wildly inventive, powerfully bold and punishingly accurate, Colossal is one of the year's very best. One part monster movie, one part social commentary, this is one of the coolest films you'll see in a long time. Come for the monster and Hathway and leave ready to have a discussion with yourself and with others. You aren't ready.

9/10