Imitation of Strife: On ‘May December’

Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore in May December

May December cuts off our access to aesthetic gratification through continual fractures, showing how our forms of storytelling have become imbricated with a vapid mud of psychology and moral sentiment. All telling is constitutively perjured. By “thinking with borrowed terms” Haynes produces a quasi-material atmosphere (or “feeling tone”) but one incapable of finding any abstract referent to attach itself to. The chopped up and overlaid frames and formulas keep it severed from mechanisms of satisfaction. Storytelling has nowhere to go.

I’ve written an article on Todd Haynes’ 2023 film May December for The Hobbyhorse. Read the full piece here: https://thehobbyhorse.substack.com/p/imitation-of-strife