Movie: Materialists (2025)
Written by/Directed by: Celine Song
Starring: Pedro Pascal, Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans
Dear Materialists, and Anti-Materialists, and Regular Folks Just Doing Their Thang,
I, personally, do not believe that having a disagreement with another person means that you cannot be friends, lovers, family, or colleagues with that other person.
Personally, I believe that it is healthy to disagree and to discuss—unless disagreements cause a lot of heartache, pain, suffering, and stagnancy.
Now, there are different kinds of discussions to be had. There may be personal discussions—which are usually more awkward and emotionally-triggering. “You did this [insert an action] on this date!” Or “You said this [insert words or phraseology] and I have never been able to make sense of it or forgive you! Get out of my house!”
Personal disagreements/differences are, like, woah—scary and challenging, because people’s emotions can take over. But social discussions, political discussions, religious discussions—do people have the same reactions and extreme emotions around those topics, too?
Like, if we disagree about the death penalty—Materialists, Anti-Materialists, and Regular Folks—can we still have sushi and split a bottle of wine at a nearby restaurant? Will you still bring me flowers? Will I still offer you kind words and gestures?
I am asking because I am inviting you to disagree with me. I am asking because the United States of America is so divided rather than united. I am also asking, because I just saw Materialists, that new moving-image-demonstration-on-a-big-screen, and I am so disappointed in the lack of courage in dealing with the main issue the movie purports to address—materialism.
I feel like we need to dig into some old French, Russian, English, and Olde Ye American literature to see how this question in canonical novels and short stories has been addressed. Should we just get some old books and convert them into movies, because the writer/director Celine Song just made a slightly more intuitive cute-ish Sex and the City that is kind of anti-Sex and the City, which makes it practically the same twin sister as Sex and the City and I am pretty angry with her and the whole casting department of this film, and all the producers, and all the people who signed on to make money from this moving-image-demonstration.
Listen, I have not even googled who the writer/director Celine Song is. I am going to guess a little bit about Celine Song and then I am going to google and we’re going to see if I’m right. This is so vulnerable and transparent of me right now. We are in real time.
Based on this film, Celine Song, I imagine that I will google you and you will be blonde and white, and you will be wearing some really nice lip gloss in the image I find of you. What else can I kind of guess? (I don’t really do this about people but this movie calls for me to do it, because all the people who hire a matchmaker in this film are focused on external appearances.) Um, okay, Celine, I’m guessing that you live in New York City or you grew up in New York City. Um… Also, you know some people in the movie industry. Like, you had a mom or dad or aunt or something who helped you go to LA for a while and learn the ropes of cinema and whatnot. How old are you? Um, gosh, I am imagining you’re like, 35. I suspect your last name, Song, is not really your last name. In one scene of Materialists, there is a play poster where your name is in the byline, so I guess you have done some acting and theater in New York, and maybe you connected with the star, Dakota Johnson, when she did that Daddio movie with Sean Penn, and the author of that movie Daddio (which was also written as a play) may know you. Maybe you all have breakfast in Manhattan or something, and this mutual pretty friend helped you get your Materialists movie made, wherein you—as the creator—basically do the same thing that all the annoying New York City women caricatures do in being classist, racist, and materialist. No one turns down Pedro Pascal for Chris Evans, in my world. Pedro Pascal is hot. Chris Evans is not.
Okay, I don’t really make presumptions about people but I just did, for the heck of it, and now I am going to google Celine Song and see if anything I said was right.
Oh my God, I am so wrong about everything! Woah!
So Celine Song is Canadian, and she is in her 30s, and she also was the creator of Past Lives. I saw Past Lives! That was a cute movie.
So this is your second jawn, Celine? It is so white and New York and materialist. Why couldn’t the main character, Lucy, get with an Asian guy in this film? Why couldn’t she get with the Latin-American guy? I just didn’t feel the truth of anything happening here. Like, there were more sparks between Lucy (main character, Dakota Johnson) and Harry (rich guy, established, Pedro-Pascal) than Lucy and John (poor guy, actor and catering staff, Chris Evans). Poor-actor-guy was just miserable and all he did was take her phone calls in between arguing with his roommates. Can’t he and cute Lucy just be friends?
Is this movie script based on a book by a white girl from New York City, or is it original? (Let me see.) (Hold on a moment, I’m googling.)
No, it’s original. Okay. Hmm.
So, like, what did Celine have to do to sell this movie so she could stay viable as a writer and director? How much did she have to dance around the true topic of the movie and the real energy of the actors who are cast in it, so that we could have a story that seems like a twist, without it really being a twist—when the white girl chooses the broke white guy instead of the hot, sexy, Latin-American millionaire?
Are you kidding me, Celine? Did you just Trump it all the way across America with this film?
The hot, sexy, Latin-American man with all the money anyone could ever want, who brings Lucy flowers, and offers to take her to Iceland, and has a little bit of self-consciousness about his height—is somehow negated for the broke white actor dude who is buying burritos from a truck stand, and giving Lucy a daisy?
WE ARE NOT DOING THIS, CELINE!
This movie is more about you trying to keep your job than it is about creating art! Are people looking more at the outside of you than the inside of you? Are you being tokenized? I don’t know. I have no idea how this is working other than the story is nonsensical and not believable. And even if the story could work, somehow, with some edits, it doesn’t feel real. I don’t feel the love happening between the white girl and the white guy! Dakota Johnson is clearly more attracted to Pedro Pascal IRL!
But there are so many interesting questions to engage with here, that I think someone else can pick up the Big Ball that was dropped and abandoned on this soccer field of a production, and really engage with what materialism is.
Spiritual materialism, for instance, is a way of trying to gain a credential through spiritual practice. Saying, “I have gone to X number of retreats on this topic, and therefore I am an expert. I have so many credentials that make me spiritually significant.”
Materialism, in essence, is about looking at the fabric of how something is put together, and the fabric of how many industries and organizations function, and being a person who wants to build on that same material and just make more of the same.
I guess, for the sake of my addressees in this blog post, anti-materialism is when someone wants to take apart the material something is based on, but the challenge with that, is that having no material can be just as chaotic and damaging.
Creating a new fabric or pattern (being a Regular Folk Doing Your Thang), is weaving the threads of gold into the material that is there. This is true dignity and respect for an art form. I just don’t see this film bringing any gold threads to a discussion and an exploration we desperately need to be having in the United States, and which a film can address or at least become entangled with in a more unique way.
Has anyone considered making a film of George Saunders’ Pastoralia? That could be fun.
The more courageous and challenging storyline for a film called Materialists, would be for Lucy to adore the money the millionaire has, and to adore the wonderful way he treats her, and still pursue her own business, and to become philanthropic and help people in need in the way she is led to do, and to be friends with out-of-work actors and lift them up the best way she is able. Maybe she builds a freakin’ theater for radical, fring-ey art people or something. Maybe it becomes a place where singles mingle and she still wears her matchmaking hat and changes the way people interact with each other. Maybe she starts a wine vineyard and helps young women gain wealth through selling good wine.
Or, would this idea not sell very well?
A simple fix in casting could have made this movie work better to fulfill its “rebel” premise, I think. The white guy millionaire could be the one Lucy rejects, and instead she chooses Pedro Pascal, a Latin-American broke actor with the catering job. Still, a dude—broke or rich!!—has gotta show a little more zest, passion, and flair to win a lady’s heart. She can’t just pick a guy because “he has no money and we want to make a point.”
Ick.
Yours in Destiny,
Ms. Wonderful
