I Watched The Substance.

To begin, I’m going to talk about this movie in full, with notes on the ending, the climax, the performances and the meanings of some of the things that are best seen in the movie without knowing what’s coming. I went into this film blind, not really knowing much of what to expect, and that ultimately served (in my opinion) for what ended up being the best possible movie experience for me. Before reading ahead, I recommend seeing the movie first and to go in with as little context or preconceived notions so you can have the best experience possible.

I want you to see this movie because I want you to see the way that it demands something more intrinsic of the viewer. It begs critical questions of ourselves and who we believe we are.

The internet (as far as we can tell) is eternal.
These thoughts will remain here forever.
Come back when you’re done.

When I think back about watching The Substance (for my first and only time so far), I see a massive billowing of color out of every orifice of this film. Hallways, outfits, city streets, teeth, dinner plates, irises… all of these have had the color ratcheted up to new and unexpected levels of clarity and structure. Brilliant blues and harrowing yellows dominate my mindspace when trying to relive what this movie was to me. Of course what follows is the social and body horror that the film explores, begging these questions:

• How far would you go to belabor the point of your own beauty?
• When do we believe we’re done with us?
• How attainable is beauty?
• What is the cost of self?
• Who are we giving them? Who are we giving up?

While a lot of energy can be contributed to examining the way that the female beauty standard and the gender equality gap is portrayed in this film, I think there’s something else worming its way into the mind of its viewer. A powerful phrase which comes up several times in the movie is one that has been working its way deeper into my lexicon is one which tries again and again to right the sinking ship:

REMEMBER YOU ARE ONE.

The way the film applies this phrase is in trying to rein in the radical actions of the New Beauty and the demanding expectations of the Old Beauty. But I think in analog, it’s something that we can apply to our lives in The New Regime of Social Media and how we can also temper the dynamics that we set for ourselves based on the hollow role models and idols that we worship on our screens.

For every Sue there is an Elisabeth.

This can apply not only in the most obvious sense of the metaphor, the sense that there are beautiful people across every size and dimension and use-case of screen we can find, but behind those influencers are just people who operate on the same 24 hour clock we operate on, who have the same digestive system, the same exhaustion cycle, the same dopamine receptors, the same addiction loops. I think this is the easiest example of how to look at what this movie’s telling us. But also, even at its base, I think this film talks a lot about the dichotomy of Who We Are and Who Our Online Avatar is, and the expectations we have in terms of what this Glowing New Me can yield for us.

If The Substance arrives as a syringe in which we inject ourselves with a serum that causes us to birth a new and better form of ourselves, then The Internet arrives as an email address we provide that allows us to provide a window towards a more curated and edited form of ourselves.

Our friends posting images of their families in the throes of joy while they explore the new exhibits of fall, the anniversary photos below gorgeous paintings at a museum, the curated, perfectly angled, perfectly lit, moderately edited food before it became mash in their gut. All of these events are the blooming and redolent manifestations of everyone’s individual ‘Sue’, an incarnation of all the ways that they wanted their life to be frozen in time in those exact morsels of time. When we browse the brochure of their lives (which they’ve provided), these are the ways that we believe their every moment exists. One step to the next, a perfect and idyllic sentiment, one to the next, an aesthetic dream. Becoming the future we’ve always dreamed of, if only we weren’t so human.

The perfect bodies on the fitness women. The sculpted everything on each male Adonis. The creaseless makeup. The way their eyelashes segment into perfect blossoms. The sweater that never clings. The home that never gathers dust. The kiss that never ages. The joke that never gets old. The fights they never lose. The nights that never end. The things we’ll never have.

My instagram is filled with a growing vinyl collection, a steady progression of music recommendations, of passion projects, of creativity run amuck. It’s affirmations of how to continue to make new art into the world, it’s observations into the fringes of human banality, it’s flippant joy from wall to wall and a representation of how to live as an abstract and dynamic Free Spirit.

What’s not shown in any is the 40+ hour work week. The nasty things we say to one another when we’re having micro-daydreams of sleep or debt. What’s not shown is the credit card bill that we pay minimum payments to just to slam the door on the incurring interest for another 30 days. The sound that comes from the bottom of the car that we’re ignoring because it’s still getting us “from point A to point B”. The view in every mirror. The bag under each eye. The hair on our arms. The new mole. What’s not shown is our Elisabeth.

If only we, too, were beautiful [again].

What you post & Who you are.
Remember. You are one.

This line has stuck with me from the moment I was wapped with it from the starter kit that Elisabeth opened. It still echoes in my mind and somehow I’ve tried to apply it to so many situations, even when it’s not discussing the personal joys and aesthetics that battle within ourselves. And in the end of the film, as we climax towards the all-important New Years Eve show, when we finally are able to see what it means when the two beings, the New and Old, the Envious and the Hedonistic, come together to truly become One.

In the final act, as the two Selves merge into one final form, when the fear finally fades, when the realization hits that they Are One, there seems to be a level of serene acceptance that’s washed over the new creation. More than complacence, there is a level of Self Love, Self Acceptance that seems to embody the entirety of the grotesque tumor that They have become. Despite staggering to the event as a shivering conglomerate of flesh, bleeding and squelching and dripping, there’s a lightness about their gait. Even walking into the building, paper mask haphazardly smattered to where the approximation of a face should be, the media, the photographers, the handlers, the influencers, the Public love her. Despite Elisabeth’s face being frozen in the form of a scream, the new and old skin pulled too taut to allow the sealing of her lips, there’s a culmination of perseverance that feels less tentative and more… glowing. This was such a revelation to me, an admission that not until we allow the fears of our ego and the gall of our projections to unite will we find true happiness. Even if we’re just a gorgon, a bleeding frenzy of orifi, a melting and unsound meat… happiness is possible if we embrace: Remember You Are One.

A few times over the release window of this film, I heard that Margaret Qualley’s performance was the one to watch for. I think she did fine. A lot of her performance surrounded the qualities of Being Hot, Acting Hot, Being Disappointed That Being Hot Is Not Working Out, and also the less [least] strenuous Being Hot Is Working Out. I think she’s great. I believe she understood the heavy handed irony that surrounded her character and the minimal, nearly totally propped up dialog she had and the way to deliver it. But I think you could have cast one of a great many actors to embody this Sue and the message could have been sent. I think the male models that were selected for some of the instruments of love were just as well cast, but easily just as interchangeable with the next.

In all honesty, I am stunned at the performance which Demi Moore turned in as Elisabeth, oscillating from Mickey Rourke-esque floundering (a la The Wrestler) and also unhinged shattered celebrity (somewhere between Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard and Ellen Burstyn in Requiem For a Dream). But also some of the more quiet moments of her performance were somewhat unheralded gems, too. I think the two scenes which really shined at her most natural involved the reconnecting with her former classmate, not only as she met him outside the studio and the way she awkwardly took inventory of who she was as she was approached by him. But also as she prepared for their eventual date later on, the level of second (third, fourth) guessing her appearance really felt authentic and stressful. I thought she was absolutely transformed and gave the full-body performance of a lifetime.

Dennis Quaid smashed his role as well, embodying all that is The Patriarchy and the imbalance of power in The Industry. The frothing sins of lust, of hunger, of greed are all in harrowing display throughout his character and he owned each and every minute he had on screen. Impossible to not despise, he became the new emperor of male depravity.

One final point I want to make about this film that I won’t spend too much time on is its score/soundtrack. I’ve tried to do some looking into where to find the full score of the film, but mostly what I’m finding is the soundtrack and which songs were included on it, which I’m less interested in. I do want to leave you with the one song I was able to find by Raffertie, a song which is exactly the kind of mood and theme matches the manufactured and slightly acrid taste of the film’s aesthetic altogether. Super cool.

I don’t know that I’ll run to see this film again, but I will heavily recommend it, often in the same breath as The Neon Demon. The tales told in each of these movies warn of the cost of beauty, the cost of fame, the cost of reaching for the unattainable. Where Nicholas Winding Refn’s film tended to lean a little more into the heavenly, the angelic standards of feminine beauty, Coralie Fargeat took The Substance in a direction that made Beauty and Sex Appeal almost demonic in its results. There’s something evil that its people are clamoring for, a world that feels only achievable by tearing open Pandora’s Box by breaking its hinges.