In the new movie Opus, Ayo Edebiri plays a journalist who attends a press event at the compound of a reclusive pop star (John Malkovich) who'd been in hiding for decades. And then, things get weird and questions arise.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
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 Edebiri 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.
THOMPSON: Joining me today is NPR music reporter, Sidney Madden. Hey, Sidney.
SIDNEY MADDEN: Hey, Stephen.
THOMPSON: Also with us is NPR culture desk reporter, Isabella Gomez Sarmiento. Hey, Isabella.
ISABELLA GOMEZ SARMIENTO: Howdy.
THOMPSON: It is a pleasure to have you both. So Opus stars Ayo Edebiri 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 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.
[AUDIO PLAYBACK]
THOMPSON: [MUSIC PLAYING] Stop, shoot, post, shoot
THOMPSON: Pulse with Vogue, lose Light, love, rogue, live or die
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THOMPSON: 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 choose these journalists, including Ariel, to whom he has no connection? Opus is in theaters now. Sidney Madden, I'm going to start with you. What did you think of Opus?
MADDEN: [SIGHS] Let me just start by saying, I had really high hopes and really high expectations for this film. I think the casting is amazing. Ayo Edebiri is a shining star, in my opinion. John Malkovich is a GOAT. Juliette Lewis is one of my favorite chameleons. And Mark 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, OK, this is going to be infused with some lived experience. And it's going to 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.
THOMPSON: What do you mean by reinforcing what it intends to call out?
MADDEN: 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.
THOMPSON: I mean, Blink Twice, for one, I mean, it is a direct reflection of that.
MADDEN: Exactly. Whether you're going to a billionaire's private island in 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 star shine, to get closer to the celebrity as you're watching these people make these decisions and let their guards down just 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 in Opus of how Ariel Acton wanted to interview celebrities who she says are inherently fascinating. And she wanted to get so good at 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 have so much want and so much 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 of lived experience. We're going to 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.
THOMPSON: OK. How about you, Isabella? What did you think of the film.
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 what I was hoping to get from it.
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 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 to you, but it's in hopes that you'll cater to them, I think the film gets that part really right. Obviously, 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 Rodgers 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 where everybody loves and remembers his songs.
MADDEN: That he spans generations.
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.
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[ALFRED MORETTI, "DINA, SIMONE"]
THOMPSON: Yeah, your model body bad Tina! And the curves on her drive men mad Simone Hold me, baby, Hold me tight
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THOMPSON: I spent days trying to conjure up like, what song does this kind of remind me of? And how would that, like, affect my picture of who Moretti is? And I realize the song it kind of reminds me of is "How Bizarre" by OMC.
MADDEN: Oh!
THOMPSON: Do you remember-- do you remember
MADDEN: How bizarre? How bizarre? Yes.
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MADDEN: [OMC, "HOW BIZARRE"] Do you realize how bizarre
MADDEN: How bizarre How bizarre
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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 were told over and over and over again is just the voice of multiple generations. And then the is so flimsy.
MADDEN: 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 dressed 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 movie. That's what's so funny about it too. I mean, it's like the 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. Isabella and I even went to go see this at a screening, and Mark 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.
SARMIENTO: 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, it just didn't have that much music.
THOMPSON: No.
MADDEN: Yeah.
SARMIENTO: 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.
MADDEN: But I think that speaks to the overall, like, groupthink that comes from it. It's like, 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 going to, 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 are 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 going to do everything to go along with the group. And I mean, that's how groupthink evolves into things like cults.
SARMIENTO: It's interesting that you bring that up, Sidney, because to me, it felt like the film sprinkled in very flattened depictions of cult.
MADDEN: Exactly.
SARMIENTO: Right? 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.
THOMPSON: And I think it ties back to one of my 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 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 go along with it because it's like, it's Moretti. He's a loopy guy. What are you going to do? But like, 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.
MADDEN: 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 stars shine. 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 like, no, OK, this is not a joke anymore. It obscures from that conversation. Like, it's about to have that conversation and then it totally changes trajectories.
SARMIENTO: 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 Stephen 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.
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 referring to what I would call Shyamalan-core, 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 Trap, the very weird and misbegotten M. Night Shyamalan movie from last year, which is also built around--
MADDEN: That has like three different endings.
THOMPSON: 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? Because I think it kind of worked for me.
SARMIENTO: Yeah, it's entertaining and it's engaging. So on that level, yes. Like, I was hooked. I was like, where is this going to go? How is this going to 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.
MADDEN: 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 the world of pop culture criticism-- 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.
THOMPSON: I think it feels like an intriguing first film.
MADDEN: Yes.
SARMIENTO: Definitely.
THOMPSON: All right. Well, we want to know what you think about Opus. Find us on Facebook at facebook.com/pchh and on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture. We'll have a link in our episode. That brings us to the end of our show. Sidney Madden, Isabella Gomez Sarmiento, thanks so much for being here.
SARMIENTO: Thank you.
MADDEN: Thank you. 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 all of our episodes sponsor-free. So please go find out more at plus.npr.org/happyhour or visit the link in our show notes. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger and Hafsa Fathima and edited by Mike Katzif. 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.
