Review of The Favourite (2018) by Alex P — 20 Dec 2018

Career best performances by Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, and Rachel Weisz. This is the rare period piece that stays true to its time, yet still makes audiences feel as participants rather than spectators.

Moreover, an even greater feat is its portrayal of anti-heroes with whom we can still relate. "The Favourite" succeeds in avoiding any hint of heavy-handedness by refusing to blame human nature for the horrors and temptations it reveals, leaving a vacuum of culpability that can only be filled by the socio-political construct itself, poking at wounds we unfortunately still know intimately today.

It exquisitely illustrates a perspective crucial to eventually curing the disease. While the rest of us commiserate with peers about being stepped on by evil hierarchies ruling our world, it is easy to overlook that hierarchical rule is unkinder to those on top, who have no peers with which to commiserate, and suffer the most chronic of loneliness, avoiding disaster to their particular realms only by recognizing any appearance of friendship, love, or mitigation of their mental solitude to be fraud and cruel deception.