The Brangelina breakup has made 'By the Sea' into a too-real masterpiece
LOS ANGELES -- Who knew?
Who knew that Angelina Jolie's 2015 nouveau arthouse melodrama By the Sea wasn't just some indulgent critics' punching-bag -- but rather, a secret cinematic treasure about the infirmity of celebrity marriage, just waiting for its catalytic moment to emerge as a modern meta masterpiece?
Who. Knew?
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I'll tell you who. You can see it in the eyes:
By the Sea premiered Nov. 5, 2015, as the prestigious opening-night film at AFI Fest in Hollywood.
It was the last time Brad and Angie stepped out together for a glitzy Tinseltown to-do, for the unveiling of their second collaboration -- the first, of course, coming a decade before in Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
But unlike that fizzy star vehicle that brought them together, Angie had both written and directed By the Sea. This was her movie, her moment, her Big Artistic Statement.
Within it, you can quite literally see them falling apart.
"We tried together to be open, to be honest, to give of ourselves," Jolie said from the podium that night. "And you never know if you're going to connect with your audience. This film is at its core about grief ... but in the end, this is also about learning how to move past it."
The beautiful fiasco
The reaction was the stuff of grief, alright.
By the Sea took a critical thrashing like nothing Jolie had ever done. Set in the 1970s south of France, the film certainly had style in spades, a sun-dappled sampling of huge hats, swank sunglasses, skinny arms, puffy lips, crushing Beautiful People ennui -- and not much else.
As a work of fiction, it was dreadful.
Its 34% on Rotten Tomatoes seemed downright generous, given the abundance of critics' snarling phrases like "destined to rank with such celebrity-couple fiascos as Gigli" and "tedious collection of frowning, drinking, bickering, peeping and smoking scenes."
A week after its premiere, Universal Pictures scrapped a national rollout plan in favor of a paltry 10 theaters. Rather than take sail, By the Sea washed up with a pathetic $538,000 at the North American box office (more than $5 million less than Gigli). Not even star-struck foreign audiences could save the $10 million production, which grossed $3.3 million worldwide.
It was, by every measure, a disaster.
Ahhh, but -- we did not know then what we know now.
The shocking news Tuesday that Jolie had filed for divorce from Pitt has suddenly cast By the Sea in an all-new, far more brilliant, relevant, you-gotta-see-this-movie light.
What one year ago was an indulgent, fairly pointless slog is now a fascinating, endlessly delicious study of the beginning of the end for the most famous couple Hollywood has ever known.
As a work of meta pseudo-nonfiction, By the Sea is dazzling -- whether it was meant that way or not.
Their working 'honeymoon'
By the Sea began shooting some time in mid- to late-August 2014 on Malta, the southern European islands consisting of a Mediterranean archipelago between Sicily and Tunisia.
But a few days into the four-month production, Brangelina slipped away from the set on a six-hour flight to Chateau de Miraval, a vineyard in the south of France, for a wedding that mostly went off in secret.
By the time their nuptials were widely reported, they'd made their way back down to the set in Malta -- which they later called their "honeymoon."
Ummm, does this look like a honeymoon to you?
We know you like to watch
Observing the muddled madness that is By the Sea, knowing full well that its stars are a ticking time bomb in real life, is quite unlike any other cinematic experience.
Its unprecedented concoction of beauty, futility, discomfort, silliness, too-close-to-home, too-real and too-soon make it worth your time, right now. (By the Sea is not yet available on subscription streaming, but you can rent it for $4.99 on most digital platforms. And you should do it. Tonight).
The film opens on the road -- Roland (Pitt) is behind the wheel of a classic Citroën, Vanessa (Jolie Pitt) in the passenger's seat, wearing one of the many large, dramatic hats she's packed for this getaway. He is fumbling with a cigarette, angry that the lighter isn't working. She is not happy that he is smoking so much.
See? Two minutes in and already we're connecting this thing to real life.
"I smell fish," are the first words out of Vanessa's mouth, as if something is afoul. From there, By the Sea devolves into a rapid succession of scenes that blur the line between movie and reality.
Vanessa is sullen, withdrawn, clearly clinically depressed, "too old" to still be a dancer. Roland is a writer in need of inspiration, happy to be on vacation but unhappy that his wife no longer desires him.
"We could be happy, you know," he tells her. "You resist happiness ... You're a good woman." To which she replies: "Jesus. Have I become that dull?"
At one point, Roland befriends the innkeeper, also a widower, who advises him to love her at all costs.
"She's not easy to love," Roland responds.
"And you are?"
"I'm an asshole."
"You deserve each other."
Did I mention that this was written and directed by Angelia Jolie?
The parallels continue apace, most pointedly in the form of an old radiator tube that serves as a peephole into the room next door, where a couple is -- get this -- honeymooning.
Vanessa and Roland begin to make a game of watching them talking, fighting, having sex -- and suddenly it dawns on you that we, the viewers, are Roland and Vanessa, observing the struggling newlyweds on their honeymoon, peeping in on a doomed relationship at a critical moment.
There's hardly a beat of By the Sea that doesn't resonate -- and that's just as of Tuesday.
"Now my outsides match my insides," Vanessa says, in what had been the silliest line of By the Sea, after she'd thrown herself into the water for some kind of twisted, failed half-suicide attempt. But now it makes perfect sense.
Now the movie matches the marriage.
Josh Dickey is Mashable's Entertainment Editor, leading Mashable's TV, music, gaming and sports reporters as well as writing movie features and reviews.Josh has been the Film Editor at Variety, Entertainment Editor at The Associated Press and Managing Editor at TheWrap.com.A finalist for the Los Angeles Press Club's Best Entertainment Feature in 2015 for "Everyone is Altered: The Secret Hollywood Procedure that Fooled Us for Years," Josh received his BA in Journalism from The University of Minnesota.In between screenings, he can be found skating longboards, shredding guitar and wandering the streets of his beloved downtown Los Angeles.
