Chained for Life movie review (2019)

Aaron Schimberg's "Chained for Life" opens with a lengthy quote from Pauline Kael, similar to her words on "Funny Girl," about the beauty of actors and actresses. Even without knowing what "Chained for Life" is about, the quote acts as a preemptive finger-wagging, an anticipatory scold, setting us up for all that follows, a meaningful, moving, and often quite funny interrogation of beauty in the movies, and—by extension—how we judge one another (and ourselves) based on looks. This may sound a little bit like a dreary lecture on a well-covered topic, but "Chained for Life"—and Schimberg's approach—turns the lecture inside out, fracturing it into various "meta" dialogues, before piecing things back together, only now imperfectly, nothing quite fitting together in the same way. 

The Kael quote leads us into one of the many show-stopping shots in "Chained for Life" (cinematographer Adam J. Minnick's work is a stunner throughout): a long take down a hospital hallway, the camera following a woman (Jess Weixler) as she peers into different rooms, finally ending up in an operating room, where a prone patient is being worked on by a doctor and nurse. The mood is gloomy and ominous. When we finally see the woman's face, her beauty is breathtaking, all ivory skin, golden curls, red lipstick. Because Schimberg has held back a view of her face, the moment is like an old-school movie-star "reveal," and it works as a counterpoint to the initial Kael quote. There's something playful and ironic going on, driven home further when an off-screen voice calls "CUT" and there's another reveal: everything we've seen thus far has been a movie in the process of being filmed. 

The golden-curled woman is an actress named Mabel (maybe a nod to silent film actress Mabel Normand?), who, when interviewed by a reporter later, gives vaguely "inspirational" answers to the tough questions asked about the potential "exploitive" qualities of the movie she's acting in. Her character is blind, and Mabel is not blind. How does she justify that? You can imagine how Mabel's answer—"blindness is a metaphor," "we all can relate" to "being blind"—would go over on Twitter. Meanwhile, Minnick's camera floats through the "set," showing the hustle and bustle of the crew, hearing snippets of overheard conversations (Altman is clearly a guiding inspiration for "Chained for Life"). There are occasional zooms in on this or that person, before the camera moves on like a stalker. The overheard conversations have a random quality, but they twine around the film like vines: electrolysis, "it was an all-female cast," "It was an all-African-American cast," circus sideshows, Orson Welles as Othello. A pompous actor (Stephen Plunkett) is heard quoting "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow ... " to the baffled still photographer (Frank Mosley), who murmurs uncomfortably, "Doesn't ring a bell." Later, the actor is shown proclaiming to the same still photographer, "We tell ourselves stories in order to live." "Who said that?" "I don't know."