On Friday September 23, the most anticipated film of the year, Don’t Worry Darling, was released nationwide and sparked a lot of controversy and questions. The acting, directing, cinematography, and fashion were key topics in the many conversations about this film. The film revolves around a 1950’s housewife, Alice and her husband, Jack, who live in the idealized community of Victory, an experimental company town that houses the men who work on a top-secret project. While the husbands go to work, the wives stay at home and do housework. As the story progresses, Alice begins to experience flashbacks of her life prior to the Victory project and questions why she is there in the first place. Firstly, the acting in this film was just as expected. Florence Pugh was amazing (as always), giving a very authentic performance. Harry Styles’ performance shocked many of us by showing more depth and range than what was anticipated. Prior to the film, he faced criticism from the media and was made a joke on Twitter and TikTok. Although Styles’ performance wasn’t the best, it definitely exceeded my expectations. Another actress is Kiki Layne, who played Margaret. Layne’s eerie character was one of the most essential elements to the plot, creating a lot of depth and helped move the story forward. As for the other characters, they weren’t as pivotal in the plot until the second half of the film, which is where director Olivia Wilde went wrong.
On the director’s side, Wilde did a decent job with the plot ideas, but the quality of the execution of the film was not as audiences hoped. She used specific tropes in the film it didn’t make sense with the story. The plot was difficult to follow and was only cleared up at the end. In retrospect, that could be argued this created a sense of suspense. I think that the use of cinematography helped mask the director’s faults of the film. The shots of of all the characters, imagery, and hidden clues made it more compelling to watch. Similar to the cinematography, the fashion in the film was another aspect that was greatly representative of the time period and overall theme. For example, in the beginning, Florence’s character wears a lot of clothes containing pink, red, as well as florals, but as the story progresses, her choice in wardrobe moves away from the typical 1950’s housewife look the more she snaps back into reality. Since the story revolves around mid-century suburban life, the use of dresses, hairstyles, and nail colors helped create the setting, and showed great amounts of attention to detail. However, I think the real success of the film was the drama surrounding it.
Prior to the film, there have been many reports of conflict between cast members and Wilde, such as a video circulating social media that showed Olivia saying that Pugh was being “difficult.” This sparked a media frenzy bashing the director for her unprofessional behavior. Another video showed Harry Styles looking like he spat on Chris Pines at the Venice Film Festival. These two instances caused immense attention to the film, which is what made the movie so successful. All in all, I would rate the movie a 7/10 and would recommend it to anyone who loves fashion, mind games, or simply Florence Pugh.
