To make a good suit, a classic 1950s suit, the kind of suit that James Mason or Cary Grant might wear, requires twenty three different pieces of fabric. The material is very important, and the accuracy of the measurements and the precision of the cuts is essential. But even if the elements are perfect they won’t make a great suit unless they are stitched together just right.
And that, I think, is the problem with Don’t Worry Darling. Many great pieces of fabric that haven’t quite been sewn together into the suit they deserve.
Florence Pugh is Alice, a 1950s housewife living with her husband Jack (Harry Styles) in an isolated desert community where the women cook and clean and gossip and the men drive off everyday to a secret facility lead by Frank (Chris Pine), to do work that no one will talk about. Are they making ‘innovative materials’ as they claim, or is it weapons or maybe mind-control machines? After she sees one of the other wives apparently commit suicide, Alice’s ‘perfect’ life starts to unravel, amid strange hallucinations and possible flashbacks to a different life altogether. What is real, what is illusory, and what is going on?
Pugh is fantastic at the centre of the picture, ably supported by Styles who gives a performance far better than the lukewarm reception he seemed to get at the time of the film’s release would suggest, and Pine – not an actor I generally warm to – gives maybe a career-best turn as a cult leader dressed as a CEO.
So with all those great elements, why doesn’t the film quite work?
It’s a screenwriting truism that directors are interested in scenes while screenwriters are interested in stories, and this film seems to me to be a terrific example of this conflict. Because there are many outstanding scenes in this film. Many. Eerie, foreboding, romantic, tragic. Director Olivia Wilde has created many wonderful scenes with a beautifully balanced cocktail of acting, soundtrack and especially cinematography – this film looks fabulous. There’s a real ‘The Prisoner’ goes to Nevada vibe here.
But all these great scenes just don’t quite gel into a coherent whole. It is a director’s film and not a writer’s one. The story resets too many times – we see something weird happen but then Alice is okay, again and again. Plot threads are established then abandoned – what happened with the plane? Who are the bus driver and the medical staff, are they simulations or real people? And the world building is patchy, with some essential rules only explained at the last minute, or not explained at all – how does death work in this place? Who knows what’s happening and who doesn’t? Is Frank’s wife a pawn in the whole endeavour, or is she a grand master? The building blocks are good but the issues are with the thread that holds them together.
The result of this haphazard sewing is to leave the viewer with a poorly fitting suit made of the very finest fabric. Beautiful in closeup, yes, and stylish in many parts, but ultimately too tight here, too loose there, too baggy all over and eventually tripping you up when you try to climb the stairs. With just a firmer grasp on the big arcs of the story, it could have been terrific, though. I look forward to Wilde’s next runway show with anticipation.