Casual Shinji said:
Mandy is a simple revenge story, but filmed in such a way that it feels like your head is stuck in a lava lamp.
Mandy was a film I initially wasn't sure I enjoyed, then I found it stuck with me for a few days and I went back and watched it again, and I started to notice more little things about it. I don't mean that the plot actually has some secret hidden deeper meaning, I'm pretty sure as you say it's just a generic revenge story. But tonally and thematically, there's something going on..
A close friend of mine is a classicist, and one thing we've been talking about a lot lately is the fact that we live in a culture that doesn't really do tragedy as a genre. Our closest counterpart to tragedy is horror, which often does focus on human suffering as a form of catharsis, but also massively glosses over the actual significance of suffering.
Imagine if a person was trying to process an emotion like grief through the popular culture and sensibility of the 1980s. I think it's quite fun to watch
Mandy with that thought in mind.
Anyway, speaking of horror and tragedy and grief.. if you haven't seen them I'm going to recommend either of Ari Aster's films (
Hereditary and
Midsommar). They're more horror than thriller really (I know some people have issues with calling things horror unless they have overt jumpscares in, but those people are idiots) but they both raise questions about distorted reality and have sufficiently complex themes that I think you'd probably enjoy thinking about them.
I would specifically recommend the director's cut of
Midsommar. It doesn't fundamentally change the film in any way and the theatrical cut is definately "complete", but the directors cut adds context which I feel greatly benefits the story.
