How "May December" presents a tragedy for every age

A well-known pundit tweeted some thoughts linked to George Orwell’s essay “Decline of the English Murder” last week. I found myself thinking about that piece while watching Todd Haynes’ “May December,” released on Netflix this past Friday.

Orwell wrote about how Britons processed stories of true crime in the age of war. That the “Americanized” cheapness most readers assign the common tale of “old domestic poisoning dramas” is the sign of a “stable society.” Meanwhile, the brutalizing effects of war have brought a seriousness to otherwise “meaningless” stories.

In other words, perhaps it’s not so bad for readers to indulge in tales of woe that have no threat to the overall moral order of the universe.

“May December” revolves around one of those “Americanized” crime stories people used to read about in tabloids or watch on shows like “A Current Affair.” Which would make it easy to dismiss as Orwell’s hypothetical reader might, except the film plants itself in the lives of the characters decades after the crime is committed and the audience sees what happens when the dust clears and the paparazzi move on.

The film is set in Savannah, Georgia, as actress Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman) arrives to shadow the real-life person she is to play in a made-for-TV movie.

Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore) lives in an idyllic house by the shore with a large extended family. She has a baking business and two pretty dogs. Her husband Joe (Charles Melton) is handsome. Quite young compared to his wife. By a few decades, in fact. You might see where this is going.

Yes, we are in Mary Kay Letourneau territory.

If you are old enough to remember this scandal, congratulations. No trip to Wikipedia for you, because you remember the sensational headlines and endless coverage of private lives spilling out into the public spotlight. Unlike me, you might even remember a 2000 film starring Penelope Ann Miller; Letourneau cooperated with that drama as a consultant. I had to look that one up myself.

That’s where Haynes and “May December” pick up. Much time has passed since the crime of passion commenced. Why there’s interest in a 30-year-old tabloid melodrama is never explained. Not the point. What the film is about is how — no matter how much time has passed — the pain and the damage remain. Elizabeth’s prodding questions, her insistence, her mere presence dredges up plenty of trauma.

Although there’s not much dredging to be done. All this heartache and destruction lingers under the surface. Time does not heal all wounds. Something, or someone, would eventually cause the emotional dam to break.

Every person Elizabeth meets adds another puzzle piece to the trauma still in plain sight. There’s the former husband. The kids from the previous marriage. The love child born in prison.

Gracie may say there’s nothing wrong; that everything’s fine and she’s willfully naïve. But if one little thing goes wrong, like a client canceling a cake order, an uncontrollable crying jag commences. Moore is so good at playing these types of damaged people — the distraught housewife is a specialty — but that doesn’t make it any easier to watch.

Trickier is Portman’s performance. She has a job to do, and Elizabeth wants to be authentic for something that seems exploitative and sleazy. But does she need to be this exacting? This probing? This present?

Portman walks a fine line, suggesting her interests go beyond the professional to the more psychological. Only the film lets her down very later on by making her motivations more literal, establishing Elizabeth as a fiend. It just might be enough to keep it out of my Top Ten list. But Portman does deliver one of the better acting showcases I’ve seen so far in 2023.

Haynes also walks a fine line. He tells a story about real emotion steeped in melodrama. It’s not unfamiliar territory for the director. His previous weakness has been to set his work in stylized historical dramas like “Far From Heaven” and “Carol.” Those films invite a distance for the audience.

Of course we were much more repressed in the 1950s. We’re so much more progressive now, one can almost hear the audience say. With “May December,” Haynes takes down that veil and creates a contemporary dramatic conundrum.

Stylized Haynes remains. The light glow of the film resembles a TV movie at times. The over-the-top piano score is lifted directly from a British parlor drama, “The Go-Between,” from 1971 and its use is funny in an ironic sense rather than a “ha ha” sort of way.

A lot of mileage will be made with some of the dialogue in the film. I’ve already seen the scene where Gracie declares — with said piano music in the background — “We don’t have enough hot dogs!” used as a meme. But moments like this are what “May December” is about: Gracie showing everyone around her, and more importantly herself, how normal she is. Which is distressing and concerning but not normal.

The story of Gracie and Joe is like one of those old domestic poisoning dramas. Its tawdriness makes it seem harmless. But “May December” understands any crime is an affront to the moral order of things and that everyone is a victim.

James Owen is the Tribune’s film columnist. In real life, he is a lawyer and executive director of energy policy group Renew Missouri. A graduate of Drury University and the University of Kansas, he created Filmsnobs.com, where he co-hosts a podcast. He enjoyed an extended stint as an on-air film critic for KY3, the NBC affiliate in Springfield, and now regularly guests on Columbia radio station KFRU.

This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: How "May December" presents a tragedy for every age