Don’t Worry Darling: It’s Not Real
Written by Liz Garcia
Graphic by Kendall Darnell
When spaced out in class, many of us probably daydream about some perfect life we wish we had to feel a little glimpse of joy in the chaos of life. Whether we fantasize about perfect grades, having shiny hair, or being married to Harry Styles (in the case of Olivia Wilde’s sophomore film, “Don't Worry Darling”), the glorification of delusions has a powerful effect on our minds. Wilde explores this theme and the products of their actualization.
Okay, okay, although my dreams do include being married to Harry Styles, “Don’t Worry Darling” surpasses this superficial lens. Happily married, Alice (Florence Pugh) and Jack Chambers (Harry Styles) live in Victory, a shiny utopia free of imperfections. Men lead important projects at work, wives live structured schedules at home, and neighbors gather together for dinner and cocktail-filled nights. The film follows Alice in her plucked-from-a-50s-advertisement life: two eggs and bacon served for breakfast, dinner already started in the oven, and an endless amount of laundry and cleaning. As her friend and neighbor, Margaret, begins to exhibit concerning behavior that disrupts the peace in Victory, a sinister, unsettling feeling begins to simmer within Alice that challenges her beliefs about her perfect life with Jack.
The thematic representation and metaphors in “Don’t Worry Darling” were effectively executed, immersing the audience into the movie’s reality. The setting of a society with such an idyllic yet uncanny resemblance to the 1950s, but there still being no indication of when the film takes place, created a familiar, but uneasy sensation. With its alluring pastel color palette, niche for symmetry, and stunning cinematography, the movie perpetuated a false sense of security for the audience to become enthralled in, only to be snapped out of it by the fascinating plot twist at the end — just as our female heroine Alice experiences. The consistent flashes of entrancing images that we find out are hypnotizing Alice in the real world are jarring at first and perhaps a little overused, but are still effective at mesmerizing the viewer.
Despite the beauty of the film, “Don’t Worry Darling” didn’t bring any new perspectives or commentary to an already oversaturated subject matter in the arts. Despite this, the finale sparked a modern take on contemporary women’s issues. The end of the film pulls the audience out of the charming illusion of Victory and into the dreary reality Alice and Jack Chambers actually live in, revealing the life we had been shown is a complete simulation. Alice, a confident, hard-working woman, lives with her partner Jack, a sheltered, insecure man who has an affinity for a certain misogynistic podcast that led him to enter his girlfriend into a simulation where they could prosper without grim financial and romantic struggles. This power dynamic highlights a larger social issue: a surplus of fragile masculinity at the rise of confident women. At its core, the film depicts a dangerous male fantasy where women’s opinions, thoughts, and independence are invaluable and dismissed by the community, and where men are important, powerful people that keep the structure of the society afloat.
Perhaps to thank for its success, “Don’t Worry Darling” leaped through flaming hoops of drama to reach such popularity. Rumored arguments between director Olivia Wilde and leading lady Florence Pugh, romantic pursuits with the world’s favorite British pop star, and leaked videos all made headlines, feeding social media’s hungry mouth for content. While the controversy filled TikTok pages and overflowed Twitter feeds, assumptions about the movie were already made, which may explain its mixed reviews and backlash. Olivia Wilde herself said it best on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert: “But, really, it’s kind of ironic, because all of this is really what the film’s about. The film is about the narratives we are fed and whether we choose to accept them or question their sources.”