Review of The Devil Wears Prada (2006) by Meritcoba — 21 Jun 2016

So the devil wears Prada, which is an expensive brand of glasses I saw on the wikipedia with a revenue of four billion euros. I am a total illiterate as it comes to fashion, so I just assume that this implies he has good taste.. or is he a she? I gamble the devil is in fact Miranda Priestly, chief editor of Vogue.., eh..Runway, played by Meryl Streep in another excellent performance portraying someone who is an absolute #### but just human enough to not totally hate her and make you exit the theatre in disgust.

I wonder what makes such a person tick, operate in the human world and what life she must have had to develop into the nasty being she has become. "Everyone wants to be like us," Priestly says to Anne Hathaway with such absolute certainty that you know it is a setup for having that rug pulled from under her. And so Anne does. It might sound corny, but the thing to watch here is Streep. Instead of going for something obvious Streep looks back for a few moments when Anne walks out of her. She is a bit disturbed perhaps but she never gives in to feelings. We will get back to this in a moment. Incidentally I just call Anne Anne because her movie name doesn't really matter. She is after all a non-entity in the scheme of things, that is, she is the MacGuffin in the story and might as well be a briefcase.

Anne is the doe-eyed deer who walks into the hunting grounds of Priestly as a post-graduate from a prestigious school for Journalism and being the spineless damsel she is, she first looks down on her fellow doormats for being a doormat at first, but then proceeds to become a doormat herself willingly. Adapt or perish she is told. And so she adapts.

Anne is surrounded by an excellent cast of the likes of a young Emily Blunt(Blimey it is Blunt!) and Stanley Tucci. The first being that other doormat that gets surpassed by Anne in the hierarchy of doormats. And the second being a kind of reluctant mentor that sets Anne straight without becoming too cuddly.. I commend his acting for he plays a man in the fashion business that seems a bit fluffy, but he never goes for that obvious gay trick. Well acted there.

This movie perhaps could best be defined as an acting movie with a strong cast that keeps the whole going and avoids most of the obvious traps through acting. The weakness in this movie is however the script and Anne's persona(her being a briefcase). The script is so predictable that I actually expected that I would be proven wrong.But in the end it just follows the same path to an unspectacular end. I do not even bother to tell the spoilers for the spoiler is that there is nothing to spoil. You have seen it before and you know where it leads.

What probably is most disturbing is the moral bankruptcy of Anne, who basically offers up her whole life to serve Priestly and feels some kind of devotion to her that seems totally unwarranted and never gets explained. This is undiluted Stockholm syndrome. After Anne gives Priestly the middle finger in her spineless way(she just walks away), she gets back into the arms of her boyfriend whom she previously screwed over(literally). And her friends and family just accept her again as if nothing has happened.

Anne, in all her spineless ways, gets to escape the consequences of her actions and her year with Vogue.. ehhh Runway. Priestly remarks in one of her few intimate statements about Anne that Anne makes choices and that is such a hilarious statement coming from Priestly. This assessment of Anne's character by this high witch of Haute Couture is so of the mark that it made me laugh. And then the irresolute Anne for once makes a decision: she flees. But even that choice might not have been totally hers...it might have been Priestly's.