Wesley Morris

We should be clearer about Sean Penn raging military racist.

Whatever.

I think that you're identifying like some of the major criticisms of this movie, which is, you know, you have this, you're going to give us this badass black revolutionary who then proceeds to complete a checklist of all the things that,

all the problems that the movies have given black women, all of the sort of conservative, um, disrespects, um, stereotypes that have been built, you know, to judge, deny, um, erase black women and black womanhood from, from American life.

What's the letter doing for you?

To me, I think this, this is a really interesting question about creative tension.

Because I, what I wonder is,

It's almost philosophical here, which is at what point does a character stop being a representation of something and begin being an individual human who makes shitty decisions?

And if you allow this character, Perfidia Beverly Hills, that I do not think that's the name on her birth certificate, by the way.

because you meet her you meet her mother and an aunt and I just don't believe that what's the difference between what's the difference between a shitty decision and a reprehensible decision

I understand that.

But this is a thing that happens in revolutions.

I just want to be clear.

That's fine, Bill.

I mean, yes.

But what I'm wondering is Paul Thomas Anderson writes this fictional character who does the reprehensible.

And then exits, right?

It's not like you have to spend the rest of the movie.

She has essentially exiled herself from the proceedings.

And I think that the time that passes, we're talking about 16 years, basically, of time for her to think about the life that she's currently living and the life she abandoned.