DieDieBooks’ Latest Will Have You Swooning Over ‘The Love Witch’
Not to be sappy, but movies really are all about love. They’re labors of love and subsequently expressions of love. When my partner and I first started dating, I’d shown him Scream through Scream 4 within the first month. That was how I shared my love, how I connected with him. Here’s this thing that means a lot to me—I’d like it to hopefully mean a lot to you, too. And love is complicated. Messy. Sometimes, nay, often, painful and unwieldy. That’s what makes it so worth it. Movies are love, and love is the movies. Matt Latham’s The Love Witch, the latest release from phenomenal indie press DieDieBooks, is really just a love letter to one of the most singular genre releases of the century.
Latham’s ode to Anna Biller’s technicolor masterpiece is swooning and romantic. Love is everywhere, from Latham’s conjecture around why you might be reading the book in the first place (maybe you secretly love him, he suggests), to the precise, technical way he breaks Biller’s film into four parts, painstakingly expounding upon both themes and indie grit. As detailed, Biller’s road to The Love Witch was an exhausting process, spanning several years. The production was punctuated by illness, uncertainty, and most importantly, that indomitable creative spirit to make something by any means necessary.
You’re probably familiar with the subject, at least in passing, even if you’ve not seen Biller’s greatest (and latest). There were recent casting updates on the filmmaker’s newest ghost story just last month, though The Love Witch, despite the immense acclaim, is an almost decade-old artifact, and Biller hasn’t helmed anything since. It’s unusual, if not surprising, though it parallels nicely with Latham’s bookends on the indie filmmaking scene as a whole. Biller has a singular voice and perspective (every artist does), and while a decade is a pretty substantial gap, Latham coyly suggests it’s better than seeing Biller’s name attached to The Avengers: Part 9,999.
That love for the game, and Latham’s love for The Love Witch by extension, is really just an appreciation for a dissolving, nearly bygone era of art for art’s sake. Biller, after all, spent years designing the production work herself before filming even began, and even critics of The Love Witch concede the film is nothing if not a rich tapestry of unmatched costuming and set design. The Love Witch is tactile, reach out and touch it in a way too few films made today, or even in the past decade, are. Everything is about money, the bottom line, and while it’d be myopic to suggest that hasn’t necessarily always been the case, The Love Witch at least allows us to dream. Sure, the film is about Elaine Parks’ (Samantha Robinson) desire to find Prince Charming, though it’s just as much about our desire to find that perfect movie. The one whose cues match ours perfectly, the movie whose reels reach in and squeeze at our hearts until they burst because we just can’t take it anymore.
Latham makes as strong a case as any for you to believe just that. The Love Witch not only shaped him, but also reignited his own creative spirit. That’s what the best movies do, no? Inspire us to act, to move, to connect and share with, and love those around us? To tell everyone we know to watch this great, new thing, and to let it guide us to maybe, one day, create a great new thing of our own?
And sometimes that’s painful. It can hurt. Latham cheekily points out the life of poverty so many creatives tether themselves to, intentionally or not, and I’m not sure anyone is willing to argue a creative life isn’t a challenging one. It’s romanticized, ironically enough, on-screen, though never anywhere near that glamorous in reality. Just like Elaine. The men she meets, so perfect at the start, all devolve into the same cultural patterns and patriarchal norms that compel her to kill them and move on, ever hopeful that the next man will be different.
Probably not. But it’s less about the end, more about those intermittent paths we take to get there. And Latham’s path led him to this book, a sensational ballad on one of the century’s greats. And that same love, different it may look, is why I’m here on my couch, right now, writing this review. It’s all really about love. Love of genre, love of cinema, love of one another. And that’s a pretty beautiful thing, if you ask me.
The Love Witch is presently streaming free on Tubi. You can purchase a copy of Matt Latham’s The Love Witch directly from DieDieBooks here.
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The Love Witch
