Surveying those who’ve watched Celine Song’s beautifully lit, minimalist Materialists — dying to discuss this conversation-starter of a movie with you! (Spoiler-alert, of course)
(From left) Chris Evans, Dakota Johnson, and Pedro Pascal in Celine Song’s Materialists. PIC/A24
Isn’t dating about validation, rather than love? I think so. What about you?
Well, according to the charming lead (Dakota Johnson) in Celine Song’s beautifully lit, minimalist Materialists — playing at select theatres near you that I’ve watched twice, already; once to catch, second time on to hold — “dating is effort, love’s easy.”
Johnson says, “Love simply walks into your life… You can’t help it.” As in, it happens to you; if it does, at all. That’s a rare line in this hardened movie, where you might feel mush in the room.
Unlike the flamboyant Hugh Grant type energy of a ’90s-ish romcom, Materialists (2025) is a romantic drama that looks way lighter than it feels.
It’s steeped in practicalities over feel-good fantasy, albeit set between really good-looking people still.
Johnson plays a high-end matchmaker, Lucy, from a dating consultancy firm in New York City. This matchmaking, I reckon, is similar to how arranged marriages work among desis.
In the sense that, through a common connection, men/women behave like merchandise at a mart, exchanging fool-proof bio-data, enumerating professional, and social/familial attributes.
Only, that families don’t get directly involved in this “math” shared between Lucy’s clients. They’re on their own, and evidently lonely; that’s somewhat the film’s latent theme. The desperate line you hear often is they don’t wanna, or are gonna, “die alone”.
Which, as you know, is a fallacy. Like YOLO for ‘you only live once’. You live every day. You will die once. It should be YWDO!
Likewise, everybody dies alone. You probably don’t wish to live by yourself. How you define that is up to you, isn’t it?
Say, I could go with lifelong friends, for a deeply caring companionship; for someone else, a conventional “life-partner”, even in the age of consensual separations, may be a non-negotiable. What do you think?
Maybe it’s the blissful naivete emerging from not being tower-like tall myself, my biggest takeaway from Materialists is how, among all the math in the dating-exchange — height (for women seeking men) is perhaps highest on the priority list (six-feet-plus), along with annual income ($500K), and age (for men seeking women; ideally, girls in their 20s).
TIL (Today I learnt), thanks to Song’s second film, there’s a possibly popular leg-lengthening surgery that makes you taller by six inches, max — if you spend $200K to insert rod that painfully, over time, pulls bone apart to allow new bone growth in the gap.
It’s a fine investment, says dating-expert Lucy, that “doubles a man’s value in the market”!
Song’s Materialists instantly stands out in the ‘now showing’ section of the theatre/multiplex, with most of the Hollywood show-timings, as for a couple of decades now, comprising regurgitative franchises/reboots for nostalgia baits, with little/nothing to say.
Within the same American mainstream, Korean-born Song had pulled off a stunningly sensitive, semi-autobiographical debut, Past Lives (2023), that remains among the most real (East-West) migrant stories/conversation-starters — about a girl (tracked between age 12, 24, and 36), and a childhood friend from back where she’s from.
Most people move places (even figuratively); and naturally, move on. What about those they leave behind? How much of your past would you like to participate in your present? I guess, with age, we learn to more seamlessly mix the two.
Song’s Materialists is not so much about dating consultant Lucy’s clients as it’s about her. Lucy’s single herself. Presumably, not so ready to mingle. Marriage is on her agenda that, she’s clear, is a “deal”, driven by money, foremost.
She possibly learnt this the hard way, given her own background, and dating someone that meant “shitty car, shitty bedroom, shitty restaurants…”
But it’s not like Guy #1 (Chris Evans) she was with was congenitally designed to wait tables at banquets.
He’s an aspiring theatre-actor. Talent, I suppose, transcends class; or does it? This allows Guy #1 the aura of having picked semi-poverty as a choice. No matter what the future.
Luckily, Lucy lands a ‘perfect 10’ (Pedro Pascal) to date; in dating math, a “unicorn”: tall, beyond wealthy, good-looking, polished, emotionally stable…
She seems suitably besotted. He makes her feel “valuable” in his company. That, according to her, is the reason to be with someone. Is it?
An abiding mystery for the audience could well be why/how she instantly gets over him. Maybe, you don’t connect with the perfect?
Besides, that the film had a deep enough impact on me that I can’t ever look at Pascal on the screen anymore, without thinking he’s had a six-inch, leg-lengthening surgery!
Lucy, who still considers herself, “judgmental, materialistic, and cold” goes back to Guy #1. I’m told, many people have deemed Materialists, thus, a “broke boy propaganda” picture! Cut through the centre, the film, at its core, is really about the choice between checklist perfection (money, height, etc), and love/care.
I personally know both types of men from this movie. Can I tell which one could work better for Lucy/you, in the long run? Let’s suppose, heartbreak is around the corner, regardless — better to cry about loss of love, in a Lamborghini; yes/no?
Lucy first broke up with Guy #1, because he was broke! Would you? Have placed quite a lotta questions above, if I’ve read up till here. Yeah, I really do wanna know/discuss!
Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture.
He tweets @mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!
