Hysteria, or: When self-awareness works, and when it goes horribly wrong

Hysteria (2011)


Directed by Tanya Wexler

***SPOILERS***

“This is the 1880s!” Mortimer (Hugh Dancy) proclaims to his roommate, expelling his frustrations with the narrow-minded medical practices of his superiors. “I must make my own way in the world!” In this instance, we see Hysteria is not striving for subtlety. I mean, hell, this is a film about the origin of the vibrator, so I don’t exactly expect this British Rom-Com to be aristocratic in its proceedings. But…

“Try as you might to keep us in the kitchen!” Charlotte (Maggie Gyllenhaal) screams at her suffocating father.

“You thrombus is the key to your future. You’re destined for fame,” Emily (Felicity Jones) says to Mortimer as she massages his scalp.

“Stiff prick, that’s all a girl wants,” Edmund (Rupert Everett) elegantly explains to Mortimer.

“Charlotte just feels everything so strongly,” says Emily, aloofly defending her sister’s insanely capricious personality.

Oh yeah, and there’s a scene with ducks fucking, which is meant to convey the uneasy and nonexistent sexual chemistry between Mortimer and Emily, while also pushing the manufactured legitimacy of Mortimer and Charlotte's relationship. Oh boy, that's a mouthful. Anyway, in each of these cases, we see laziness creeping in via the screenplay. Charlotte’s quote relates the suppressed-woman dynamic the film repeatedly perpetuates; Emily’s comment on Mortimer’s thrombus unabashedly foreshadows Mortimer’s eventual “feather duster” idea; Edmund’s quote pushes each side of the societal gender tiff to radically comical extremes; Emily’s comment on Charlotte is empty, due to a poor character introduction, which involved the filmmakers confoundingly tossing Charlotte into a screaming match, thus making her a product of Mortimer and Dr. Dalrymple’s (Jonathon Pryce) plight. For a film that searches to capture ignorance surrounding women's rights, it's an ironic method for humanizing your character. Lazy ends up being the perfect word, and that's because such a self-aware approach isn’t necessarily wrong.

Take The Muppets: an EXTREMELY self-aware film, populating itself with obvious throwbacks, unflinchingly relevant celebrity cameos, and a number of characters wearing their emotions on their sleeves. Tex Richman (Chris Cooper) repeats the phrase “maniacal laugh,” a cue for his two henchmen to laugh alongside him. Such a joke isn’t exactly “funny” in the most traditional sense, but it’s certainly “comical.” For along with being shamelessly candid, such a statement actually means something in the long run. In an effort to save The Muppets’ big night, one of his henchmen screams at Tex, “You don’t even know how to laugh!” Suddenly, the parallel is drawn: Tex, incapable of loving The Muppets, directly counteracts the audience. While clearly a blunt statement, it’s not exactly laconic—Tex is incapable of love, thus reminding the audience that we are. It’s a circular, drawn-out joke that contradicts the lethargy surrounding the original “maniacal laugh” bit.

So because The Muppets is dedicated to rounding out its characters, I would say writer Jason Segel earned his right to be self-aware. In each of the listed quotes’ cases, there is no rounding out. They’re blatant plot points in the screenplay, holding as much substance as the bullet points accompanying them on the script outline. As aforementioned, Charlotte’s opening string of shouted dialogue isn’t “character revealing” in the slightest, but more or less “theme revealing.” Self-awareness in film can work wonders, especially in the comedy world. But it has to mean something. Hysteria’s self-awareness is so resolutely one-note and to-the-point that it comes at the sacrifice of the characters, reducing them to vehicles for montages and haphazardly thrown together relationships. As seen in the court case, characters’ true feelings are constantly extracted from some outside force. We almost feel the puppeteering hands of screenwriters Stephen Dyer and Jonah Lisa Dyer guiding the scene through the prosecutor, asking Mortimer the questions that will eventually guide him into Charlotte’s arms. There’s no sense of building any real relationship with these two, as just before the trial Charlotte laughs off the possibility of ever marrying Moritmer. So when he gets on one knee and presents a wedding ring, the rather candid revelation that he’s now wealthy, but hey, willing to help the less fortunate! means more to Charlotte than any bit of genuine chemistry. In this case, we find the screenwriters not only lazily bringing self-awareness to the forefront, but also doing a disservice to a character who, for an entire film, fought against such simplemindedness. 

The self-awareness also disrupts any intention of interweaving Hysteria’s cut-and-dry themes into the story of the vibrator’s invention. It seems a gold mine, as the invention of the vibrator itself was grounded in sexism, owing its existence to a bigoted doctor who fingered his patients, while at the same time proving to be an externally symbolic tool for women whose husbands could not please them in the bedroom. Shit, that’s enough right there! But instead of building around such an innately lavish concept, the viewer is instead subjected to forceful statements relating that people were prejudice in the 19^th century—didn’t you know?!

There’s such an inconsistent aura surrounding the characters and the relationship between men and women. Charlotte is self-righteous and a fighter for the woman race, challenging Mortimer and her father’s uniquely intimate diagnosing methods. But the fact that Mortimer eloquently rubs his fingers on widows and sexually frustrated wives’ vaginas does nothing to rouse her. She instead jokes of the method with Mortimer, who arrogantly defends the doctor with the elegance of a horny baboon. Shouldn't there be a fine line between what's accepted by such a merciless defender of gender equality? She's absolutely appalled by men's ignorent mindset, but hahahaahaha you think touching a woman's clitoris cures her hysteria! Instead of committing, such a lighthearted debate contradicts the nature of the film. If you’re going to abruptly insert manufactured themes into the film, make a choice: either you offset the ignorance of these 19^th century citizens with comical absurdity, or you bask in the troubled relationship between men and women, utilizing comedy in proper situations. Instead, any argument between Charlotte and Mortimer echoes itself, pitting the sensible women against the bafflingly defensive Mortimer, who spoke out against such crack procedures earlier in the film.

Do you know why there’s a Jim Halpert in The Office? Or a Ben Wyatt in Parks & Recreation? Because we need a sensible person to offset the wackos. These types of characters look directly into the camera, asking, “Are you seeing what I’m seeing? Did he/she just do that?” Well, in Hysteria, it’s sort of like combining Jim with Dwight: all the characters in Hysteria exist to balance another; all themes are accompanied with radical opposing extremes. The characters are self-aware, which can be funny in its own right, but there’s no sense of harmonization or affection in Hysteria. The only sense of unintentionally meaningful self-awareness I witnessed was the final kiss, where Charlotte finally accepts Mortimer as her lover. Being their very first kiss, the screenwriters are almost winking at the audience, admitting that these two have had shared no convincing journey together. But I say “almost” because I know it’s not true, since the kiss is as empty and insubstantial as any bit of self-awareness in Hysteria, and it's trying damn hard to be anything but.

Final thoughts:

The film swings and misses constantly, but Hysteria isn’t completely devoid of entertainment. At times it can be uproariously funny, despite the comedy coming at the expense of the characters. Felicity Jones is maddeningly under-utilized, but otherwise the acting is exquisite, further baffling me as to why people hate Maggie Gyllenhaal so much. Sure, she’s typecast, but I found her wonderful in this film. Along with Tanya Wexler’s disciplined direction and steadied camera, Hysteria ends up being a charming hunk of junk—pretty to look at, fun to watch, but utterly barren of anything human or judicious on the narrative front. The actors can try as hard as they want, but let’s face it: the vibrator was the most interesting character in Hysteria.

P.S. Felicity Jones, I'm in love with you. I have a girlfriend, but she's cool with it, trust me. She gets to have Ryan Gosling. I saw your performance in Like Crazy and fell head-over-heels for you. Not only are you a fuckin' dynamite actress who probably should have won a bunch of awards or something like that, but you're an absolutely gorgeous British woman. Please keep making films so I have a reason to keep this blog going...thanks!