Stab me with money
The mood is set immediately with sound and visuals. The color palette remains earthy and real with blues, browns, and greens throughout the film. A soothing musical tone plays as the sun peeks through trees at our protagonists as they embrace in the woods. She asks for forgiveness in this natural setting, and though we are left to wonder why she needs forgiveness, we offer it almost unconditionally. Her innocence and courage is obvious in the tone of her voice. Before we officially meet her and her partner, we are voyeurs experiencing a painful and loving moment. We are on their side. Takashi Doscher’s daring film Only gently guides you into your seat so that you can witness a story as it ushers you through the complexities of the relationship between men and women.
The first scene with interactive dialogue shows us that Eva (played by Freida Pinto) needs to be hidden. Her partner Will (played by Leslie Odom Jr.) must pretend that he’s alone in his home. He hides Eva in a secret compartment they’ve built together beneath the bed. It’s reminiscent of hiding from Nazis, and there’s no way around it, that’s exactly what it is. The names have been changed, and the persecuted are women. As the story unfolds, we understand why. While the origin of the cause is never fully explained, the world is covered in ash that falls intermittently for an undetermined length of time. The event is linked to humans contracting the HNV-21 Virus. They slowly learn that men can be asymptomatic carriers of the disease, but women are stricken with the fatal disease worldwide.
Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, made widely popular by its cinematic adaptations The Last Man on Earth (1964), The Omega Man (1971), and the more recent I Am Legend (2007), explores a similar concept, though Only isn’t about just swapping the roles. Vincent Price, Charlton Heston, and Will Smith were alone against altered humans. It’s a masculine fantasy to be alone against a world that doesn’t make sense anymore; one that no longer functions in the way we are comfortable. Complacency is replaced by urgency and necessity. It’s about survival. A la Mars Needs Women, men have constantly imagined a world where women are more literally a commodity for sex and procreation than we care to admit. The women of ancient Greece understood this concept in Lysistrata from Aristophanes. In this classic tale from twenty-four centuries ago, the women attempt to control the manly urge for war through withholding sex. Appealing to one natural drive in order to quell a more destructive, natural drive is an attempt at switching the power dynamic between the sexes. Only is effective in finding a balance of power that doesn’t typically exist. The protagonists in the film are challenged to find an ideal balance and peace, but Eva knows all too well that she’s not facing anything she’s not used to.
Causing Eva to be a fugitive in this world only puts the microscope on her. We understand that her treatment isn’t much different from what it was before the changing event. It’s only being concentrated because she’s left to endure the universal burden of women alone. Masculinity under the guise of human survival rules. While tampons remain in abundance on store shelves, guns and ammo are not so easy to come by. Toxicity has a focus: Find the surviving women so they can be shipped off to procreation centers called “safe havens” in order to “ensure the future of America.” It’s eerily comparable to themes from The Handmaid’s Tale. Science is working on ways to further human existence through the Embryo Project, an artificial womb technology; but science takes time. Mankind doesn’t have time. The reward for turning in a living female American was just increased from one million to two million dollars. Enter the less metaphoric antagonists.
Arthur (played by Jayson Warner Smith) and Casey (played by Chandler Riggs) are on to them like it’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers or They Live. The hunt begins and the prey are unaware they’re being pursued. Will and Eva plan to find “the waterfall,” and Eva wants a last cooked sit-down meal before they leave civilization.
As the couple is fleeing to the woods, the flashbacks explore Will and Eva’s decaying trust for one another as Will attempts to assert control while trying to protect her. Feminism is juxtaposed with misogyny in their arguments while villainy and empathy are compared as we learn the human side of the antagonists. In drastic times, we are faced with impossible decisions. Some will cling to love heroically, and some will cling to love desperately. People will do whatever they think is necessary in order to persevere through adversity.
Eva feels like she is in a prison under Will’s protective wing. He valiantly embraces and adheres to his own masculinity while Eva evolves from a character who gives in to frustration and despair to that of one whose assertion is driven by surrender to her seemingly hopeless circumstance. She’s the reluctant hero. Will represents unconditional love and support.
The film persists in a consistent level of drama that rarely raises your adrenaline, but rather inspires you to consider the what-if scenarios as if they were your own. If you’re looking for high-grade action, stay away. But I’d be surprised if you don’t walk out of the theater already in the middle of a deep conversation about your role in society, and how that might change if everything went sideways.
Only is now available in theaters and On Demand from Vertical Entertainment.
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Stab me with money
