Crazy Movie Soft & Quiet Unpacked and Discussed. I just watched a crazy movie. And we watch a lot of crazy movies around here, but I’m really not sure what to do with this particular brand of crazy. Soft & Quiet is next level in pretty much every category a film can get critiqued in. Dialog: “this one goes to 11.” Cinematography: “Eleven.” Chaos: “Eleven..” Political Firebrand-ness: “And this one? Let’s push this one? To twelve.”
The idea is simple. A group of women, spun up by the deteriorating world around them, decide to create a women’s club. And in a surprise to absolutely no one, in any universe, anywhere… it spirals completely out of control. If you haven’t heard of this flyer of a movie – no worries, I hadn’t either. So, shout out to Chris from our Patreon club… spot on crazy movie recommendation sir. Well played.
Crazy Movie Soft & Quiet Unpacked and Discussed
Emily (played by Stefanie Estes – Tales from the Loop), a kindergarten teacher, definitely has some really other worldly and subterranean opinions bubbling up to the surface of her life. Not just in her teaching style, her children’s book writing, her opinions of the help at the school… everywhere. She is just one bubbling volcano of hate and vitriol. Wait, what kind of hatred and vitriol are we talking about you ask?? Well, you know, only hatred of the racist variety. That’s all. So what’s a girl to do when you hate anyone who isn’t white? Well, of course, you start up a women’s Aryan hate group. I mean, right? Makes sense. Emily brings together another group of other disenfranchised Aryan, hate-filled women, and they decide to gossip, and dream about what a real hate group could softly, and quietly, do behind the scenes that would actually make a difference in the world today.
Eventually, the owner of the space kicks them out, and they decide they’ll move the party elsewhere, and onward towards alcohol. But as they are purchasing said alcohol, they have a run-in with a couple of women. Their non-white races are pointed out, and commented on, until the exchange goes full-blown hostile. After the owner of the liquor store pulls out a gun and clears the shop, the Aryan Women’s Group decides to take the hate on a walkabout. They know who the two women are, why not take the fear directly to their homes?
Fast forward a bit, and the gaggle of racists break into the women’s home. Finding no one there, they argue internally about what it is they are doing there. Destroying the home? Lying in wait? But all the philosophical discussions cease suddenly when the duo walk in and suddenly they have been caught by the excited troop. They debate momentarily about what it is exactly they are doing to these two, but when one of the women turns up dead, things start sliding irretrievably off the ledge. So it logically follows that the next one should die as well. But what to do with the bodies??!? The lake! Rowing out to the middle of the lake the women dump the body in the water.
Only to have the woman come up from the lake, resurrected from the dead – only feigning her death until they threw her overboard. The End.
Crazy Movie Soft & Quiet Unpacked and Discussed
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie that made me quite this uncomfortable before. While watching Soft & Quiet I found myself pausing it regularly… finding other things I’d forgotten I needed to do. Trips to the bathroom, only to realize I didn’t have to go. Distractions on top of distractions, in order to avoid actually pushing through and watching these ignorant women abuse two perfectly innocent women. Why? What rattled me so about this particular movie? Well, I have a theory… maybe it was just too painfully realistic for my liking. Most movies we watch here are too amped, too fueled with rocket fuel and launched into orbit as opposed to walking the daily streets we tread day in and day out. You know? Don’t know if I can explain it any other way. It was way too closely aligned with daily life.
I do think the opening of the women’s Aryan club was a little hoakie. The pie, the “what do you want out of your club” dialog, but the rest of it? Really dialed in. Notice the opening as we watch Emily glare at the Hispanic custodian at her school. Watch as she pushes a six-year-old student into harassing her for mopping before all the students have left school. Emily is so closely mirroring so many other Karens prevalantly captured on video and posted on social media that it’s hyper-disconcerting.
Beth de Araújo, the writer and the director of the movie, has said that this incredibly uncomfortable look at these potluck throwing, hate-mongeringly terrifying women is not a horror movie per se. These are humans doing these terrible things. Real people. Not monsters. And it’s in the realization that these are not monsters but people who are comfortable enough to be their real selves. These women want to be soft on the outside… so that their “vigorous” ideas can be seen as normal. And their real secret weapon is that no one will even think twice about them. Why? Because they tread quietly. They are our neighbors, and that is why they are so disquieting. Terrifyingly disquieting. Looking for other movies like this one? I mean minus the Aryan repugnancy of course…. I would recommend Calibre. Highly recommend that one.
Final Thoughts on Soft & Quiet
This movie hit me in a similar way as Midsommer did. It literally broke me. I couldn’t watch it straight through, as I mentioned. I fidgeted. I wanted to be anywhere else but here, watching this. Why? Well, one obvious detail I haven’t spoken about at all is that it is 100% shot in a single take. (Let’s not split hairs, but it wasn’t entirely one cut, similar to Birdman, it found clever cut points to hide the switch from one really long cut to the next.) But for all intents and purposes, you are a member of this crew. You are partaking in this mayhem. You are complicit. And that really got to me.
Why did it get to me? Well, just like you… I am not perfect. I want to love everyone the same. I want to be accepting of all. But I am not capable of that. And so these women, and their reign of terror, hit me in those places where I am my worst. You know? Jim Gaffigan has this horrible joke about Trump right after he was elected… “I actually don’t think Trump’s presidency will be all bad, I mean, I am a white, straight, male after all.” Everyone put your pitchforks away, this isn’t me going after Trump or equating these women to anything at all. They are evil in and of themselves. But my point? For me, the darkness of my brain is the worst when I think – “Well, if it all goes really pear-shaped, I could just take one step backwards.” Do you get what I’m saying there? And that is HORRIFYING to me. I could just side-step the problem and let —–> that guy over there take the brunt of it. Why? Because I’m white. I’m male. And I’m not gay. You know? And I want to be super clear… that is evil. The darkest, scariest thoughts. And I wouldn’t stand down if it went sideways… But man, what a seductive thought. And so many of you don’t have that luxury. You are female. You are black. You are gay. Hell, you are all three. And doing a quick side-step isn’t a luxury that you have available to you.
The point here – is that this movie points out our own complicity. It works hard to implicitly implicate you in these crimes whether you would ever in a million years side with women like these. Also, did anyone else pick up on the idea that the movie is Soft & Quiet, and there is literally nothing soft, nor quiet about them? The title is 100% ironic… has to be. And it’s what they are hoping to be. You know. To subtly slide into society and change it from the inside out. Or something. And what they do instead is that they assault, and almost kill, two innocent women.
Anyway – I almost didn’t bring this one to you solely because it is so out there… so utterly evil, that it’s really uncomfortable. But heck, if it causes us to stop, and think, maybe it might be worth the encounter? Dunno. Love to hear your thoughts and ideas about what this film did to you if you watched it.
If you want another (HONEST) single take movie that will always be my #1 single shot film… go with Victoria (Why didn’t you say 1917?!?! Because meh. That’s why.)
Edited by: CY
