Patty Jenkins’ film about an idealist warrior’s rude awakening is among the best entries in its genre. I don’t think it’s perfect, but I don’t think any superhero movie is.
Wonder Woman was of course lauded for flying through the old glass ceiling. But representation aside, I think the real takeaway from this comes after the village gets gassed. If you don’t remember (I hope I do), Diana goes against any notion of war logistics to break a wretched stalemate and liberate the village at the other end of it. She reveals her costume and goes straight up against the effing machine gun and it is glorious. Then they celebrate and the village gets eradicated by a new little something called a mustard gas attack.
And so she goes to the foggy wasteland where a minute ago stood a human community and she laments. She wails, she cries uncontrollably, and if Jenkins could have her rend her garments, she might have.
The freedom to have Diana cry her eyes out comes with her being a female star. If you think I’m being gender-condescending here you don’t understand the power of the lament. Diana’s grief in this scene is more glorious than her earlier stomping on imperial Germans. It’s a rare moment when the Real shines through the circus of cartoon violence. The lament cements her as a deeply human hero who draws strength from her bottomless empathy, and even kinda-sorta validates her culminating “fighting for love” spiel.
In addition to being a thing of haunting beauty, the lament is also the only thing in the movie that’s not gift shop-Greek. If you squint, you can see some Aeschylus in Diana’s grief. Conversely, if you squint at the fresco-like Evil Ares flashback you’ll see the same Manichaist boilerplate the genre runs on since the days of Siegel & Shuster.
The lament is a core material in tragedy , in art, in life. Yet we hardly see any of it in our pop culture — it’s just too much. And who would do it? Chris Evans as Steve Rogers was great but you can’t really take him past tearing up, maybe a few gentle sobs. This is patriarchy working in reverse.
the Budafoki amended 