To Die For (1995)

It's difficult to determine the exact locus of the film's critique. Is it all the fault of an repellent media class? Is it the viewers' fault for watching in the first place? Or is it simply ambitious women qua women?

Personally, I think that the claims that To Die For is "eerily prescient of the present-day influencer era" (Jake Cole) are a bit of a stretch, and lacks the post-2008 stagnancy that I believe an influencer culture needs as its material base. (The cinematic precedent of the surface glamour of influencer culture might be food and clothes porn we see in Depression-era Hollywood.) To Die For is also lacking any mention of reality TV, which eliminated the social concept of offstage/private space, destroyed the notion of mystery and celebrated banality, and the media we consumed became a place where "art slides into decorative commerce; rebellion is commodified and marketed like a fashion brand", which is all belied by a numbing conformity that gives it a schizoid psychological base. By contrast, while the social role of television in To Die For is no doubt corrosive, television is depicted as ultimately a broadcast medium. TV, as shown, cannot serve as the sole mediator of all social relations, especially with bars, bowling and ice skating clubs. Yet when you know all of your friends solely through your phone (which doubles as a kind of dopamine slot machine), notions of presentation and reality start to warp back on themselves with unstable results. Still, with a 1990s TV culture like this, it's no wonder that so much early social media analysis now reads as extremely naive utopianism.

The question To Die For really seems to be exploring is what would be the result if we remade Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd (1957) for the 1990s but made it even angrier. I don't necessarily disagree with To Die For's critique of U.S. celebrity culture but it seems more than a little overcranked and cartoonish throughout, with Exhibit A being its surreal Danny Elfman soundtrack. Every sociological point seems hammered home again and again, which then seems to spill over into the storytelling machinery. Exhibit B being the initially subtle portrayal of her murder being swiftly undercut by then being shown her dog, the killer speaking in 'mafia', the knowing looks of the step-parents… and then her body under the ice as well, just in case we didn't understand that she was just killed, despite the powerfully effective change in the film's long-established camera strategy. Still, that does make the final 'dancing on her grave' gag work.

Obviously, many (if not all) of the characters are grossly misogynistic by today's standards. (Drink every time someone's weight is mentioned.) And Jake Cole is no doubt correct that:

[…] the film doesn’t single out Suzanne as unique in this respect, instead revealing how others naturally gravitate to even the faintest possibility of fame. Lydia proves just as eager to get on TV as Suzanne, while local station producer Ed [cannot] hide the glee from his voice as he boasts that some of the station’s footage aired on national news.

Yet it's difficult to shake the idea that films' insults aimed at men are not only watered down or treated as acidic asides, they are also far less specific to their qualities as men. Ed is proud that he made a lot of money from the footage and his venality is hardly an endearing quality. It is, however, legible as a universal motivating factor for any human being. Yet the film never posits a reason for Suzanne's impulse to engage in her behaviour, except for a few tantalising suggestions of an Electra complex. (For another film that seems to have two markedly different scoring cards for its men and women, see 1999's Election.)

Ultimately, as an inditement of mid-90s culture, the film's broad and violent swings at its target make it difficult to discern what is intended to be critique and what is simply in the sexist water of 1990s America. This alone makes it strangely compelling viewing in 2024, and not least because it's now easier to see the paratextual presence of Hillary Clinton, the O.J. Simpson trial soon to come (watched by half of Americans…), as well as the now much lesser-remembered 1993 trial of the Menéndez brothers.

Anyway, not only did this obviously influence May December, but I have no doubt that Kubrick saw this and thought, "okay, but what if we drain every bit of energy behind of Kidman's sexy shtick and see what's behind that — that would be a performance."

For another, longer, 2024 retrospective on this film, see Jessica Kiang's piece published by Criterion.

Given the moments putatively lifted from a real human’s real murder, it takes considerable skill to even out potentially tasteless deviations in mood, and to steady the seesaw between poignancy and camp.

[…]

Van Sant plays with reality, or at least with metafiction, through casting too. [Original novella author] Maynard appears in a small role as Suzanne’s lawyer. [Screenwriter Buck] Henry plays the school principal [and] Director David Cronenberg, known for body horror, cameos wittily as a mafia hit man posing as a studio exec. [The] passage in Maynard’s novel where Suzanne wonders who should play her in the movie of her life ends with two suggestions: either Julia Roberts or “that actress that just got married to Tom Cruise in real life—I can’t think of her name.”

[…]

Watch To Die For again and the surprise is that Kidman is also kind of heartbreaking. There are cracks in the glaze—a flub, a flash of panic, a glimmer of glue on false eyelashes—through which we see the vulnerability beneath the lacquered-on layers of ambition and delusion and we understand a simple, scintillating fact: Suzannes are made, not born. In fact, we make them. [The] OG might be frozen in the midnineties lake ice near Little Hope, New Hampshire, but never fear. There’s a new Suzanne Stone minted every minute, in the little TVs we all carry around in our pockets these days.

— Jessica Kiang (Criterion)