THENEWYORKER,M AY16, 2022 81
for herself but for her less resourceful
roommate. The setting is provincial Ro-
mania, in the grimy twilight of Com-
munist rule; whereas Diwan is address-
ing a specific flaw within an otherwise
free society, Mungiu is exposing the mal-
function of an entire system, right down
to the use of cigarettes as currency. What
everyone remembers from “4 Months,
3 Weeks and 2 Days” is the face of Otilia,
as she sits at a dinner party, among chat-
tering adults, and worries about her friend,
who is lying in a hotel room and wait-
ing to lose her baby. The loss of a life
that never was, for Otilia’s generation,
takes its place in a wider, dying world.
For Anne, in “Happening,” it is a terri-
ble and solitary woe.
That may be why so much of this
story, despite the dedication of Vartolo-
mei in the leading role, feels punitive
and pinched. Affording us no possible
leeway with which to dispute its point
of view, the film is determined to indict
the past on a charge of being the past.
(There’s not much we can do about that.)
Far more valuable is the urgency with
which the movie stares ahead, as it were,
at any future legislation that would in-
cite women to take such dire measures
once again. In fact, with a timeliness that
even Diwan could not have predicted,
the U.S. release of “Happening” has been
both overtaken and fortified by events.
It’s difficult to know exactly what rela-
tion the draft opinion that was leaked
from the Supreme Court on May 2nd,
indicating a decision to overturn Roe v.
Wade, will bear to the Court’s final judg-
ment; nonetheless, the leak was enough
to bring protesters into the streets. What
they foresee, one might say, is a multi-
tude of Annes, often poorer and less ed-
ucated than Anne, who may be driven
to commit an act that, in many states,
could make them criminals. If you find
“Happening” too distressing for words,
think of “Happening” writ large.A
t the preview of “Doctor Strange
in the Multiverse of Madness” that
I was fortunate to attend, the audience
was implored, by a prefatory message
onscreen, not to reveal “character de-
velopments and detailed story points.”
That’s like being asked to keep quiet
about particular peas in a Russian salad.
The movie, directed by Sam Raimi, is
the latest mega-mess from Marvel Stu-
dios, and none of the characters do any-
thing as suburban as developing. They
roll up, intone some gnomic poppycock,
and fight. As for “story points,” I saw
nothing that answers to that descrip-
tion. All we get is a grab bag of odd-
ments. The giant monocular octopus
that invades New York. The blossom-
ing orchard laid waste with a wave of
the hand. The remote fortress, where
wannabe magi are taught to engender
what seem to be Frisbees of fire.
Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumber-
batch), you will not need reminding, is
a surgeon with unearthly powers and a
dashing red cloak—endowed with pow-
ers of its own, like the rug in Disney’s
“Aladdin.” He meets a young woman
who can scoot from one universe to the
next, and who bears the name America
(Xochitl Gomez). Cue various tasty nug-
gets of dialogue, including “America
doesn’t have long” and “Is America
O.K.?” Good question. Her long-range
travel pass is the envy of Wanda Max-
imoff (Elizabeth Olsen), better known
as the Scarlet Witch, who dreams of analternative reality in which she is the
mother of two boys—annoying little
tykes, if you ask me, but Wanda, for
whatever reason, is willing to breed in-
finite squalls of destruction in order to
make that reality real.
The movie may do temporary dam-
age to your central nervous system, yet
it’s not unenlightening. For one thing,
it clarifies the purpose of a multiverse.
(I was startled to find the word being
used by the poet and critic Allen Tate
almost a century ago, in 1923: “I sup-
pose Keats was insincere in his letters
because he exposes a multiverse.” Don’t
tell the Scarlet Witch.) This has noth-
ing to do with astrophysical speculation
and plenty to do with the special-effects
teams, for whom the multiverse means
party time. It gives them carte blanche—
which never bodes well—to dish up
anything they fancy. The one smidgen
of wit, as opposed to visual overkill, is
the sight of a storm in an actual teacup,
complete with raging waves.
Raimi’s movie could also be of in-
terest to sociologists. What stirred the
fans around me, causing them to levi-
tate in their seats, was not the film’s
emotional sway (for it has none) but
the miraculous visitation of characters
from other Marvel flicks, many of them
played by embarrassed-looking British
actors, whose every entrance was met
with ejaculations of joy. The cinema, at
such moments, becomes a place of wor-
ship. I sat there, strewn with popcorn
rubble, lost in the liturgy, jealous of the
true believers, and baffled by their in-
comprehensible gods. NEWYORKER.COM
Richard Brody blogs about movies.THE NEW YORKER IS A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF ADVANCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS INC. COPYRIGHT ©2022 CONDÉ NAST. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
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