Boy Movies #51

Nicholas Russell on The Killer

This is Boy Movies, a newsletter about movies for boys and everyone else, written by me, Allison Picurro. You won’t be hearing from me in today’s issue, but you’re getting something EVEN BETTER: a dispatch from Nicholas Russell, noted friend of the newsletter and friend to me in my life. The other day, Nicholas pitched me a piece on The Killer, the latest film from David Fincher (Fincher February is a state of mind and will not be constrained by the limitations of the calendar year), which I gave him the enthusiastic go-ahead to write before either of us had even seen the movie, mostly because I was confident that he would bring the party. And he did! I am on record as being a huge fan of Nicholas’s writing, but I especially love this piece and I know you will too. Enjoy!

[“I Know It’s Over” by The Smiths plays on headphones]

In some ways, it was inevitable for a character in a David Fincher movie to say the word “normies.” But to think it was “inevitable” requires familiarity. Maybe too much familiarity, not only with the director’s filmography (including his early commercial and music video work), but Fincher’s sometimes withholding, sometimes glib persona in profiles and Q&As. So, basically, people like me whose brains have been poisoned from forming their adolescent personalities around him. 

I’ve been listening to this man talk for years. David Fincher has his own artist listing in my iPod, where I keep all his audio commentaries and a few ripped-from-Youtube interviews. I have what one could call a high Fincher tolerance, which is like bragging about how many Monster energy drinks you can down before your urine turns fluorescent green. It can be, to put it mildly, a bit cringe to “love” David Fincher though, it should be noted, loving David Fincher itself is not strictly boy behavior. If anything, the Fincher girlies are more right and more powerful than his faithful bros. So I’m not ashamed of loving his work as a boy even if the stereotype rings true: There are many Fincher bros, many of them stinky white men, who completely misinterpret the motivations and themes of his work into alpha-male, nihilistic, vaguely fascist drivel. 

What’s remained fascinating to me about Fincher (I will get to The Killer soon!) is his ever-shifting trajectory toward a certain kind of narrative efficiency. His credits sequences have gotten shorter, his method of doling out exposition faster, his exploration of the workflow possibilities of digital filmmaking more brazen. In that way, he mirrors the evolution of his friend and fellow director Steven Soderbergh. I bring this up because it begs the question of what this front-end streamlining is in service of. Now that Fincher has freed up his runtime from elements that would normally bog a story down, how does he otherwise utilize those precious seconds? Of course, this is the ever-present question for the aforementioned coterie of us who are ill: What is Fincher trying to say in his work? Is he actually trying to say anything? Or is he just laughing at us while we run around blindly searching for subtext? 

This brings me back to the “normie” thing. At one point in The Killer, the [Beanie Feldstein voice] titular character complains about why another character would want to be “living amongst the normies.” It’s the kind of thing only someone –really, an older someone– with a hopelessly online-edgelord-addled brain could say. Fittingly, this is one of Fincher’s more recent descriptors by his critics and it pains me to admit there’s not nothing there. Lately, he’s been more cavalier than usual about his opinions on, say, cancel culture or the recently-ended SAG/WGA strike (chronic case of both-sidesism). 

It pains me, and likely his more ardent fans, because these flubs, which reveal the limited depths of his thinking, undermine the complexity of his work. Indeed, sometimes, it seems like Fincher intentionally muddies the interpretive waters of his movies to fool people into believing that what’s on the surface is all there is. There’s a famous behind-the-scenes clip of him that’s now basically a meme from The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo saying “I think people are perverts. That’s the foundation of my career,” and he says it with a smile. Slipping reference to “normies” is the exact kind of red herring Fincher loves to tease people with. And so we arrive at The Killer: what many are mistakenly calling a return to form even though it’s not really like any of Fincher’s previous films, a movie that begs you to try and pry meaning from its slick, precision-machined surface.

You better believe The Killer eats McDonald’s, brother

The Killer follows an assassin (Michael Fassbender, always scary) who spends the entire movie killing people for “revenge” even though he’s actually just trying to come to terms with the fact that he fucked up (relatable). He waits around in an abandoned WeWork office in Paris for several days until his mark shows up, then he shoots the wrong person. Dumbass! We can think of The Killer as the anti-John Wick, especially because, though the Killer’s girlfriend is imperiled due to his messing up, there is a palpable vacancy at the center of his motivations. Unlike John Wick, there is no cloying, simplistic sentiment or glorious, bloody triumph. There is no annoying, repetitive neon lighting because even Fincher at his worst actually has a distinct sense of style (I also just hate John Wick/Bullet Train director David Leitch). There is no gun fetish or macho posturing (or any of that horrible car commercial rock music). The Killer is about being a freelancer. It’s about being bored with your job. It’s about defending your boring job to others, but most vociferously to yourself.  

Fight Club is the closest analog people have been reaching for because of all the internal monologuing and jibes at cultureless, corporatized America, but the Killer (we never learn his name) isn’t trying to destroy the status quo. In the beginning scene, he devotes one monologue, using statistics and numbers, to why his killing people on a small scale could never make a difference in the social fabric. Besides, he doesn’t want to make a difference. He cares only about himself, his work, and how he can use any situation to his advantage. He follows stupid little mantras: Don’t improvise, empathy is weakness, only fight the battle you’re paid to fight, etc. After his girlfriend gets brutally assaulted, there is no emotion on his face. His eyes get watery, but even as she tells him how proud he should be for the fact that she didn’t blab to her attackers, he just stares at her. In essence, instead of a loved one, his girlfriend is more like an asset that’s been tampered with because, again, he fucked up. 

The Killer is coming out after all the stupid “how often does your boyfriend think about the Roman Empire” bullshit, but it was filmed far before then and thus is a minor illustration of Fincher’s clairvoyant insight into the stunted male American mind. The Killer’s grating stoicism, his goofy self-help grindset, his constant need to frame his work and his life in abstract, stereotypical terms is illustrative of a very specific kind of guy that we can all imagine instantly. He loves efficiency. He dreams of a man cave that isn’t a beer-soaked sports den, but a hyper-organized and sterile storage space with little boxes for all the power tool accessories he never uses. He reads Marcus Aurelius. He thinks Malcolm Gladwell is underrated (The Killer even references his 10,000 hours). His body is an operating system and food is simply an energy-delivery device. Crucially, this man is fine with the world the way it is. Sad that justice isn’t real, but what can you do? There is no point griping about change, about the dehumanizing existence of life under the crushing weight of brand-name capitalism. For this kind of man, the anonymity and endless, frenzied rush of modern life gives him a welcome stream to disappear into. 

What’s so funny and so depressing about The Killer is that it adds a new Fincher boy to the rogue’s gallery who is, in some ways, a terrifying amalgam of all who came before. The Fincher boy is recognizable, first and foremost, for being a boy: Mark Zuckerberg, Tyler Durden, Nick Dunne, Benjamin Button. In order, a child-man, a man-child, a misogynist adolescent, and a literal man who can’t help from turning into a child. These are process-obsessed, systems-driven characters who fail to exert control over their environment or their own lives. The Killer’s observations switch quickly from dryly funny (“WWJWBD: What Would John Wilkes Booth Do?”) to full-throated delusion (“Whatever it takes, be one of the few”). These asides are made more bizarre and unsettling thanks to Fassbender’s insane American accent and his lithe, impossibly small frame. At one point, The Killer leans against a car and the car doesn’t even move; it’s like he truly doesn’t exist. All the while, as the body count rises and he works his way up the bureaucratic ladder of those who hired him, an emptiness festers. The Killer claims he doesn’t care about his work, or the people he kills. But, as the movie continues, as he laughs at the idea of struggling against the little boxes we’re put into, stuck in this gig-plagued faceless hell of so-called convenience, it becomes clear The Killer wishes his self-imposed rules and his subsequent actions would yield some sense of satisfaction. And they don’t. 

To me, this is the defining reason why the newest Fincher boy can’t be written off simply as a psychopath. He chooses this frame of mind over and over, despite the fact that it doesn’t even help him do his job! In a standout scene featuring Tilda Swinton as a fellow assassin (“Leo said she looked like a Q-tip”; I LOL’d), Swinton mocks the Killer for taking his job so seriously. For her, their profession is easy, but it also troubles her. She implies that maybe the Killer likes pointless monotony. Otherwise, what else would he do with his time? Sit at home with his hot girlfriend? Spend his many millions of dollars? Sounds like a real drag! But the real sticking point to me upon rewatching the film (as I said, poisoned!) is the degree to which the Killer is, in Fincher’s mind, a stand-in for the audience. More often than most, what that possible parallel signifies is incredibly depressing. Via a particularly vulgar metaphor espoused by Swinton’s character, and The Killer’s intentionally anticlimactic ending, Fincher might be saying not only that we as a society are fucked, but that we might like it that way. 

And before anyone thinks I’m skipping over something, I’ll end with the elephant in the room: the Smiths. Throughout The Killer, Fassbender’s character is shown listening exclusively to the Smiths.¹ Music, he says, is merely a distraction. He plays this “Work” playlist on some unbranded media player that looks like a cross between an iPod nano and a Zune. During the Venice Film Festival, Fincher said the choice to use the Smiths was entirely retroactive and started because he wanted to set a scene to “How Soon Is Now?” Indeed, the opening sequence features maybe the best use of a Smiths song since (***) D*ys *f *ummer. 

The entire time, as a kind of greatest hits run of Smiths songs played during the movie, I kept thinking about Fincher’s background in music videos, specifically his work with Madonna (who he dated???) and George Michael. It’s cliche to be like “Music is integral to a director’s work”, but music plays a more interesting, sometimes obtuse role in Fincher’s work compared to others. I’m thinking of “Trouble Man” playing in the background of the dinner scene between Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, and Gwyneth Paltrow in Se7en. Or “Ball & Biscuit” in the opening scene of The Social Network.² I mean, even in The Killer, Fincher uses Portishead’s “Glory Box” to truly disturbing effect. 

But the Smiths’ work here functions like an anti-need drop; the audience catches snippets of songs from opened car doors or tinny headphones. Even the scene that uses “How Soon Is Now?” teases you by blaring that recognizable guitar riff before snatching it away again. And the placement of these songs isn’t random. If anything, it takes someone who knows exactly how to match sound and motion in order to elicit a visceral response to calculate when and where it makes sense to place a bit of sonic familiarity that’s just a bit off center. I know Fincher primarily used the Smiths because he likes their music and because he thought the juxtaposition of a po-faced assassin listening to Morrissey compare himself to Joan of Arc would be funny. It is! But I think it also says something about Fincher. It’s maybe the most meta thing I could buy into amongst all the theories about how The Killer is autobiographical. A guy says art, in this case music, is just a tool and to be fair, we do see him use it to shut the world out. But it also points to an emotional core. If the Killer’s placid exterior barely ever slips, the chink in his stoic armor is the brief moment we see of him driving onto a ferry, listening to “This Charming Man” and, much like some members of the audience, nodding his head along to the chorus. 

1. Allison here: Why lie and pretend I didn’t laugh my ass off at the use of “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” over the end credits? It tickled me!

2. Allison again: Lest we forget the gay treachery as underscored by a band synonymous with gay treachery.