It's Not That Deep: Why You Need to Watch Catfight

Recently, Sandra Oh completed her doctorate in medicine and everyone has been talking about Grey's Anatomy again. As someone who is constantly discovering old movies way too late in the game, I was ready to bring my A-game to the conversation and share my thoughts on Catfight, which, in my opinion, should be considered a classic.

Imagine my surprise when I realized that barely anyone I knew had heard of this masterpiece.

I first stumbled upon this movie a few years ago, purely by accident. I also happened to be watching Grey's Anatomy back then, but it was depressing me too much. After a quick google search for movies with Sandra Oh (I love her so much) in it, I discovered the movie at the top of some reddit list.

At its core, Catfight is about war. About the ridiculousness of it. About the futility of it. It is, by far, the perfect allegory of humankind as it stupidly lurches forward, guns ablaze, wanting to be the bigger man. No one ever is bigger, it turns out, and everyone only gets hurt.

Catfight revolves around two former college friends, Ashley (Anne Heche) and Veronica (Sandra Oh), who unexpectedly reunite one evening. Veronica is married to a finance man who happens to be bankrolling the war on terror in the Middle East, while Ashley is a starving artist, struggling to make ends meet. Neither of them are happy, and both loathe each other. Tensions arise as the girls come face to face in the stairwell, and a three-part epic battle commences.

It Starts With a Punch

This movie doesn't start with the expected bitch-slap; it's not some holistic, in your face commentary about feminism or female rage; we begin with a full on "masculine" punch. We get blood. We get gore. We get perfectly, absurdly, choreographed fight sequences that get wilder and more deranged. These women aren't here to play; they are here to kill.

And, it gets crazier.

Now, when I first watched this movie, I was stunned. It was brilliant. It was fun. This movie humanizes the protagonists in a way that we don't often see, stripping them down to their true selves: stupid and ultimately meaningless. Yet, somehow, the movie manages to make its statement loudly: capitalism sucks. The world sucks. Nobody is waking up.

It literally slaps you in the face with it.

Let's Talk About Waste

What's cool about Catfight is the way it subverts the female characters in the most unserious way possible. From the very beginning, the movie rejects the pure, rational woman and flips it over on its head. There is no such thing as diplomacy in this world; everyone is wasting, everyone is toxic, and everyone benefits off of each other's suffering.

To see two women, especially, manifest as these spaces of waste is strangely liberating. There is something powerful watching Ashley and Veronica be so destructive. Neither of them are capable of sustaining life, which, of course, is the point — humankind sucks. We see that most clearly in the way that Ashley and Veronica absorb the same violence and animosity as the rest of the world around them, ultimately ruining everything that they touch.

Veronica, who is supposedly living the perfect dream life, ends up being a messy drunk in an even messier relationship with her husband. Ashley ends up stuck in a toxic relationship with her partner, unable to achieve her dreams. What the movie shows, right off the bat, is that there is no such thing as a good person.

Even motherhood, which at first was celebrated (when Veronica uses it to defend herself when she's called a trophy wife, and later when Ashley becomes pregnant), very quickly derails into something unsustainable, perhaps even lethal. Neither one of the mothers are able to protect their children, and instead face mutual destruction.

In Veronica's case, her child becomes a reminder of everything she gave up. When she tries to get close with her son, his affinity for art highlights the cost to her wealth: her freedom and independence. This notion is further emphasized when her husband comes in to drag her out of the room. She was supposed to be an entrepreneur, someone who builds her own success; instead, she becomes wasted. With Ashley, the baby that is supposed to provide her with happiness amidst her newfound success as an artist quickly becomes a life-force that strips her of her artistic vigour and separates her from her partner. During her baby shower, when Lisa reveals her true nature, Ashley sketches a demon baby tearing out of her vagina. This is a moment of truth; a rejection of the sanctity that motherhood supposedly entails.

Then Comes the Fighting

So, we are at Veronica's husband's party, celebrating the war on terror in the Middle East because it's making them wealthy. Veronica promised her husband she wouldn't drink because she embarrasses him when she gets drunk. At Lisa's command, Ashley reluctantly serves drinks at the bar. The pressure grows. Veronica breaks. She goes for a drink.

The face-off is as catty as you could imagine. Sandra Oh and Anne Heche bring the screen to life with their snottish remarks. The tension and jealousy is palpable. Veronica's final words are swift; the winner is obvious. Yet the fight has only just begun.

We get to the staircase scene, and this is where things begin to unravel. The first punch is thrown.

From afar, the fight is as ridiculous as it can get. There's a lot of flailing, a lot of kicking, and grunting, and I was locked in; this was our rage, all of womanhood, splattering grossly onto the screen right there in the moment. There was nothing smooth or fluid about it; this was raw, unkempt anger pulled to the surface.

To depict women in this manner, to have them succumb to the worst parts of themselves, to have them unravel and regress into whirlwinds of emotion; to have them fill spaces that we only usually see men take (John Wick, Jason Bourne), is intentional. This is a moment where the film reminds us that just because there are two female leads doesn't mean the movie has to be about feminism. I mean, sure, there are feminist themes that can be analyzed, but I want to highlight how it also strays away from it.

The fight ends on a painful note; Veronica is knocked unconscious, but it's not Ashley's hand that ends the battle; it's the moment afterwards, when Veronica pulls out the mirror to see her reflection and falls down the stairs.

You guys, I don't think anyone understands just how important this scene is. This is the pivotal moment where everything falls into place; it is the literal rest of the movie. It isn't about who throws the final blow, or who loses more; there is no such thing as the bigger man, or woman. There is just destruction and meaninglessness.

So, What About Feminism?

Nothing, really. What I love about this movie is how it stands on its own. It is deep and philosophical. It is in your face, screaming at you about exactly what is wrong, and you might just consume it exactly as predicted. But it's okay, because sometimes things are just not that deep. Sometimes it is okay to react stupidly and callously and ostentatiously without reason or rationality. Sometimes it's okay to just hate the world. And, yes, just as Ashley proclaimed as she stared at her painting of Veronica's bloodied face, "sometimes people need their ass kicked."

And that is a huge thing.