{"id":125884,"date":"2025-11-10T15:28:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T15:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/125884\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T15:28:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T15:28:09","slug":"materialists-director-celine-song-on-her-films-success-and-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/125884\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Materialists\u2019 Director Celine Song on Her Film’s Success and Debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tCeline Song<\/a> was waiting for it. The Oscar-nominated filmmaker was in London, a few months after her sophomore feature Materialists<\/a> had bowed to critical and commercial success in the U.S. \u2014 and spurred dozens of thinkpieces about its depictions of modern dating, capitalism, and gender roles (okay, and leg-lengthening surgery). She\u2019d noticed a pattern in reactions to her New York-set rom-dramedy\u2019s love triangle that surprised her: Viewers were sympathizing more with Harry (Pedro Pascal<\/a>), a wealthy financier courting matchmaker Lucy (Dakota Johnson<\/a>), than John (Chris Evans<\/a>), Lucy\u2019s old flame still living with roommates while struggling to make it as an actor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFor most of the world in late capitalism, it\u2019s like, \u2018No, the way that Harry lives, where it\u2019s about wealth accumulation, is actually the one that makes more sense,\u2019\u201d Song says. She wanted someone to let her know they had this perspective \u2014 because she wanted to respond, on the record. \u201cThe whole time I was like, \u2018Just try me,\u2019\u201d she says now, grinning. \u201cI\u2019ll tell you what I think.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn promoting the European release, she got her wish. One on-camera exchange between Song and a Refinery29 journalist, who asked Song to react to the cheeky claim that Materialists is \u201cbroke man propaganda,\u201d went especially viral. \u201cThe thing that\u2019s very important to me is to stress that poverty is not the fault of the poor \u2014 and I think that given that, it is very brutal.\u201d Song told the reporter. \u201cI find it very cruel to talk about John as a character who loves Lucy, and who is a beautiful character being played beautifully by Chris \u2014 to talk about him in such cruel terms as \u2018broke boy\u2019 or \u2018broke man.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019m speaking with Song three months out from that quote. The Empire State Building hovers in the back of Song\u2019s Zoom window, capturing her favorite view from her apartment. Zohran Mamdani has just been elected mayor of her city, fueled by an inequality-focused campaign very relevant to the director and to her film\u2019s themes. And without prompting, Song brings up that \u201cbroke man propaganda\u201d exchange for me in response to my question about her film\u2019s striking success, having grossed $108 million worldwide on a $20 million budget. To her, it says it all.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m able to be fearless because I\u2019m not full of shit,\u201d she says. \u201cThat\u2019s how it feels to me, always. What am I afraid of? I know that I stand by every single thing that I make and every single thing that I believe in. I didn\u2019t make this movie for jokes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn conversation, Song beams with assurance. She knows the movie she made, she knows why it resonated, and she knows what she wanted to say with it. The film is written to the anxious and, yes, materialistic beats of the here and now. \u201cThe way that the characters talk is actually pretty reflective of the way that we talk \u2014 maybe not even online, but just between our friends,\u201d Song says. \u201cIt\u2019s like, \u2018Well, how was your Tinder date?\u2019 Then they\u2019ll be like, \u2018He\u2019s so short.\u2019 It\u2019s meant to feel quite exposing of the way that we have let the marketplace of the world seep into our hearts.\u201d Song, her actors, and her crew were in constant dialogue about their own romantic lives, prioritizing a level of vulnerable, authentic experience to inform Materialists\u2019 complex modern spirit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe process of making it has to embody what the movie is,\u201d Song says. \u201cThe making of it will reflect how it connects to the audience.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAtsushi Nishijima<\/p>\n

\n\tAmong rising filmmakers, Song, previously best known as an acclaimed playwright, is in rare company. Her debut movie, Past Lives<\/a>, was the hit of 2023\u2019s Sundance and scored Oscar noms for best picture and screenplay. To follow that up with one of 2025\u2019s highest-grossing releases for original films, in a year where good box-office news has been increasingly hard to find? \u201cThere\u2019s been so much discussion right now in our world about how many things aren\u2019t working,\u201d says producer Christine Vachon<\/a>. \u201cBut I have a kid in her mid 20s and a lot of our employees are in their mid 20s. Being around people that age, you really got a sense that this was the kind of movie that was going to hit a bullseye with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile Song was heartened by the commercial response to Materialists, she says repeatedly in our conversation that \u201ceverything good comes with something bad\u201d \u2014 another idea of the movie, and one she relates back to her own commercial success. \u201cI don\u2019t like it when audience members know how the movie\u2019s doing,\u201d she says. \u201cThe movie wasn\u2019t made so that it can make a certain rich group richer. The movie exists so the movie can be itself.\u201d She connects this bag to the slogan for Mamdani\u2019s successful mayoral campaign: \u201cOur city is not for sale.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEvery inch of our attention is being eaten up, is completely being colonized by corporate interests \u2014 everybody\u2019s just trying to sell you something,\u201d Song says. \u201cSo anytime a movie is interested in just being itself, I do think that it can sneak into people\u2019s hearts.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a fiery speech at the Academy Women\u2019s Luncheon on Tuesday, Kristen Stewart<\/a> lambasted Hollywood\u2019s treatment of female filmmakers, echoing new studies showing that following an immediate post-#MeToo bump, the industry is again simply not backing movies helmed by women. \u201cThe backsliding from our brief moment of progress is statistically devastating,\u201d Stewart said. \u201cSuch a pitiful number of films from the past year have been made by women.\u201d The Ankler\u2019s Richard Rushfield recently pointed out that only three 2025 studio movies were directed by women, while only one specialty film helmed by a woman cracked the top 100 at the box office: Materialists.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhenever a film is directed by a woman or is female-forward in any way, its box-office success is always treated like, \u2018Who saw that coming?\u2019\u201d Vachon tells me. \u201cThat\u2019s always so confounding because there\u2019s a history of those kinds of movies doing very well if they\u2019re executed as well as this one.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSong felt that dynamic in the lead-up to Materialists. \u201cThere is this severe underestimation that is very infuriating, but on the other hand, it\u2019s so easy to surprise people,\u201d she says. \u201cEverybody was so surprised by Materialists. I was like, \u2018Why are you so surprised?\u2019\u201d Song felt in sync with the same backers who steered her Past Lives success. \u201cWe made the movie responsibly. We understood how to set it up for success,\u201d says producer David Hinojosa<\/a>. \u201cEvery domino was set up very carefully.\u201d And Song felt steadfast support from A24<\/a>, who gave the film a commercial summer release \u2014 unlike Past Lives, Materialists bypassed festivals \u2014 and didn\u2019t intervene with her vision. \u201cA24 didn\u2019t underestimate the female audience,\u201d she says. \u201cThey didn\u2019t underestimate romance.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSources close to A24 say that the movie has \u201credefined\u201d its genre\u2019s expectations for the studio going forward, particularly given its massive showing overseas. It\u2019s a bright light for the studio in 2025 as other follow-ups from its homegrown filmmakers, like Ari Aster<\/a> (Eddington<\/a>) and Benny Safdie<\/a> (The Smashing Machine<\/a>), struggled to find traction relative to their budgets. Combined, their two movies have made less than half of Materialists\u2019 worldwide haul, and both cost more.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSong hopes there\u2019s a lesson for the industry in seeing that her movie worked. \u201cIt\u2019s a love story, but it\u2019s about being a modern woman. I know that there is an audience for that, that wants to feel seen in it and feel very connected,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s not hard to believe that a movie like this makes this kind of money and cultural impact. It\u2019s so crazy because I don\u2019t know how many times it has to be proven for people to believe it on the next one.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Song first tried breaking into film, she was taken aback by \u201chow deep this systematic misogyny\u201d ran in the industry, having come from the (relatively) egalitarian theater world. \u201cYou start making movies like the boys, for the film bros, or you have to just accept that there is a part of it where you\u2019re going to constantly be underestimated and undercut,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

\n\tSo far, Song has consistently chosen the latter path. It\u2019s paying off.\u00a0\u201cUntil the movie is actually out in the world, there\u2019s no way to know,\u201d Song continues. \u201cNow that it\u2019s out, I\u2019m like, \u2018No, actually I can ask the audience to be as openhearted as I am. That to me is the thing that guides me throughout all of it. The audience met Materialists with a total open heart. What I feel confident in is that, as long as I\u2019m showing up, the audience is always going to be open-hearted. That\u2019s the north star of my work moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Celine Song was waiting for it. The Oscar-nominated filmmaker was in London, a few months after her sophomore…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125885,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[12698,79573,3217,15945,1641,79574,12479,79575,79576,146,85,46,6951,15947,397,79577,460,7792],"class_list":["post-125884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-a24","tag-ari-aster","tag-benny-safdie","tag-celine-song","tag-chris-evans","tag-christine-vachon","tag-dakota-johnson","tag-david-hinojosa","tag-eddington","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-kristen-stewart","tag-materialists","tag-movies","tag-past-lives","tag-pedro-pascal","tag-the-smashing-machine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}