Seventh Row is a nonprofit Canadian film criticism publication and publishing house. We're dedicated to helping you expand your horizons by curating the best socially progressive films from around the world and helping you think deeply about them. This newsletter is run by Seventh Row (http://seventh-row.com) but features exclusive content not found on the website.
The key to great character dramas
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Hello Reader, A great character drama isn't just interested in its characters as individuals but as people responding to the world around them (other people, the culture, systemic structures, etc.). So many movies make the mistake of becoming star vehicles without realizing the star can only shine as bright as the world they're responding to. But there's a new movie out this week that exemplifies this definition of a great character drama: a film as interested in the characters at its centre as the world around them which defines them. That film is... The Girl with the NeedleIt's Denmark's Oscar submission for Best International Film and one of the year's best films. Set around WWI in Copenhagen, The Girl with the Needle sits at the edge between social realism and horror, a black-and-white film about a young woman in crisis in a society that's indifferent at best and actively cruel at worst. But her choices (and the choices of a woman she meets and starts to work for) can only be fully understood through discovering the world they're living in. Today on the podcast...I discuss what good world-building looks like and why it's so important, using The Girl with the Needle as the exemplar. Then, I talk to the film's director, Magnus von Horn, about how he conceived the world of the film (shooting in black and white, working with miniatures, and beyond!) and what that taught him about the characters' choices. Happy watching/listening! Alex P.S. The December Globetrotting Newsletter, which offers streaming recommendations for under-the-radar films, goes out on Friday at 6 p.m. ET. Sign up now so you don't miss it!
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Seventh Row
Seventh Row is a nonprofit Canadian film criticism publication and publishing house. We're dedicated to helping you expand your horizons by curating the best socially progressive films from around the world and helping you think deeply about them. This newsletter is run by Seventh Row (http://seventh-row.com) but features exclusive content not found on the website.
There's a moment in the first episode of Looking that still lives rent-free in my head: Patrick meets Richie — his love interest for the season — on Muni (San Francisco's public transit). I lived in the Bay Area when it aired in 2014. So I spent the next three years riding Muni hoping my Richie would find me there, too. Which is a lot of influence for a scene that lasts only a few minutes. Of course, that was partly about what happens later in the show — when we find out just how great Richie...
There's a moment in the first episode of Looking that I didn't fully appreciate until I was on my, IDK, 15th rewatch. After a catastrophically bad first date, Patrick (Jonathan Groff) gets on the Muni (San Francisco's public transit) to head to the bachelor party of his ex-boyfriend who he dumped for being boring. But first, he looks at a map: Like so much of Looking, it plays as completely naturalistic the first time you watch it. Patrick is trying to figure out where he's going next. But...
What do Mad Men, The Good Wife, Gossip Girl, and Looking have in common? Aside from being four of the best TV series of this century? (I said what I said.) On the surface, they look very different. Mad Men is about advertising creatives in 1960s New York. The Good Wife is about a Chicago lawyer rebuilding her career after years spent raising children. Gossip Girl (the OG one) is Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth — if it were about teenagers with smartphones. And Looking is about three gay...