The movie unfolds into three levels of reality. The grounding frame story is a bleak tragedy, visualized in a washed-out palette. The next level is a lurid melodrama, in lurid colors, set in a whorehouse. Embedded in the second story are "battle scenes" visualized as over-the-top-CGI-Matrix-meets-video-game action sequences (this is the third level of reality).
From the opening scene we know we are watching a feminist narrative. A woman dies. Her two daughters are left to the devices of their evil step-father, who becomes enraged when he finds out his wife cut him out of her will. He first tries to rape the older sister (known to us later as Babydoll), but she fights back, so he locks her in a room and attempts to rape the younger sister. Babydoll escapes, and saves her sister by shooting at the step-father. Tragically, the bullet passes through his hand and kills the younger sister.
Babydoll is taken to an asylum. All the inmates are young women. All the staff are male except the resident shrink (played by Carla Gugino), who conducts unorthodox therapy on a stage, where the girls relive the scenes of abuse that presumably led them to their present situation. The evil step-father bribes the corrupt orderly who runs the place to arrange for Baby Doll's lobotomy, to ensure her silence while the step-father presumably enjoys free reign over the younger sister and the the mother's money. The lobotomist is due in five days, and the movie takes place during that time.
So far, so conventional. Tired Hollywood tropes are transmuted into a heavy-handed feminist allegory. (Women's asylum as snake pit, male medicalizing of women's experience, sisterhood rendered impossible, etc.) Women are victims, men are cruel, violent, and manipulative, lacking human sympathy and driven only by desire for sex and money. The truth of women's experience is suppressed, even to the point of physically erasing their memories. The protective mother figure is gone in the first minute of the film, conspicuous by her absence. This last plot feature reminded me of David Lynch's Blue Velvet, which makes a point of putting the parental figure out of play in the first scene.
Suddenly (and inexplicably), the story and style modulate from the washed-out color and tragedy and bleakness of the frame story, to over-saturated color (another echo of David Lynch) and a melodrama about sex workers trapped in a house where they are forced to dance on stage for, and then have sex with, paying customers. The same actors are now playing different characters. The corrupt orderly has become the boss of the brothel, Blue (played brilliantly by Oscar Isaac), whose lust and cruelty is only surpassed by his craving for the money the girls can make for him. The therapist has become Madame Gorski, who trains the girls in the dances they will use to entertain their clients (and thus survive). This is the reality in which the bulk of the story takes place
We've switched from one Hollywood cliche (the "women's picture" AKA the weepy) to another, the musical. The plucky heroine will prevail because of her talent. She can entertain (both us, the audience of Sucker Punch and the audience within the movie). We imagine we'll be treated to a series of musical numbers, each more exciting than the last, building to a fabulous finale! But not in Sucker Punch; it's a musical without musical numbers. Every musical number is replaced with an action sequence. In each of these Babydoll, and the four girls she befriends, use swords and guns to battle (and defeat) stereotypical male bad guys: samurai, soldiers, robots. For me, this is the least interesting of the three levels of reality, and I won't discuss it. No doubt this is the main draw for a large portion of the audience, an instance of a pop culture trope: hotties doing battle. One of Sucker Punch's contradictions is that it panders to an objectifying male gaze, while simultaneously delivering a feminist perspective.
But wait...which is this the real story? Is Babydoll trapped in an asylum, imagining the brothel melodrama and the action scenes? Or did she just imagine the frame story? Are these multiple realities experienced by the same mind, or are we seeing separate narratives that just happen to reflect and comment on each other?
Don't ask. You'll enjoy the movie much more if you just accept each story on its own terms and don't try to make all the puzzle pieces fit. In this sense it reminds me of Murakimi's Hard Boiled Wonderland, in which multiple story lines are different ways of seeing a single story arc, but no one perspective is privileged.
Left without her mother's protection, Babydoll is thrown back on her own resources and forced to fight for her survival. Blue does not pimp out Baby Doll immediately, but rather is saving her for a nameless "high roller" who is due to arrive in five days (the lobotomist of the frame story).
The principal dialectic of the movie is a feminist one: how to respond to the patriarchy: sisterhood or collaboration? Women compete against each other to get ahead in an unjust situation. On the other hand, they also help each other, and collectively plan their escape. Sisterhood is brought from the subtext out in the open by the fact that two of the five protagonists (Sweet Pea and Rocket) are literally sisters.
All the protagonist/victims are female. All the females are good guys, except Gorski, the madam (that perennial figure of collaboration). She serves to mediate between the girls and Blue, serving to exploit the girls as an agent of the patriarchal system but at the same time training them to use what weapons they have to survive that system. All the male figures are bad guys except Scott Glenn, who appears only in the action scenes (as the girls' mentor). He embodies the Wise Old Man archetype. In the first action scene, he sets Babydoll on a quest for freedom. He emboldens her by telling her "you have all the weapons you need," and by revealing that she must find five objects to to fulfill the quest. This quest corresponds to the escape plot in the brothel reality, and the five quest objects correspond to things the girls need for their plot to succeed (a map, a weapon, means to create a diversion, etc.).
In Sucker Punch, dance symbolizes the fact that women under patriarchy are forced to perform to a sexualized male conception of being-in-the-world. As John Lennon said in "Woman is the Nigger of the World," "we make her paint her face and dance." At the same time, this sexuality is often women's only weapon, and can be used to escape the worst aspects of patriarchy, at least temporarily. Thus when, on one level Babydoll is dancing, on another she (and her "band of sisters") are slicing up male figures with samurai swords, or shooting them in the face with handguns, or blowing them away with shotgun blasts.
Collaboration is often viewed as morally reprehensible, but Sucker Punch offers a more nuanced analysis. Sweet Pea and Babydoll represent a tactical division within the sisterhood. Above all, Sweet Pea wants to survive, she does not want to rock the boat. She perceives that her best chance for survival (and more importantly, that of her sister Rocket) is to play the game as well as possible, to accept the hand she has been dealt and to play those cards with whatever skill she has. To collaborate, as the lesser of evils. And we can't say she's wrong. On the other hand, Babydoll is the revolutionary. With the high roller on his way, she has nothing to lose. She will either escape (and her "sisters" with her), or she will die trying. And we can't say that this approach is wrong, either. Both are understandable reactions to an inherently immoral situation.
The most fascinating character is Gorski. She's a survivor. Who knows what brought her to the brothel? Whatever her backstory, she has risen in the ranks to become the supreme collaborator. She's hard on the girls, but it's for their own good (anyone who can't dance well enough is killed). Gorski is a mother figure in that she is somewhat able to protect the girls from the worst of Blue's ravages. On the other hand, she is privileged above the girls by the power system of the brothel. She has one foot in the patriarchy and one in solidarity with its victims. However, as with Sweet Pea, without being in her place we can't impose our moral judgment on her. Here are Gorski's words to Babydoll, spoken to try to convince Babydoll she must collaborate, at least for the time being:
If you do not dance, you have no purpose.
And we don't keep things here that have no purpose.
You see your fight for survival, it starts right now.
You don't want to be judged. You won't be.
You don't think you're strong enough. You are.
You're afraid, don't be. You have all the weapons you need.
Now...fight!
I won't give away the end of the story, except to say it's surprising yet satisfying. Someone dies. There's a fascinating shift of perspective, and we are asked to consider whose story is this, anyway? Babydoll is revealed as a Christ figure. (For another recent female Christ, see the film Easy A.) The mother/daughter tension is addressed, if not resolved.
There are five days, five girls, five quest objects, and five battle scenes. The last segment of the story is simultaneously a return to the frame story and the fifth battle scene (as evidenced by the presence of Scott Glenn).
The closing words of the film are so stirring, they're worth quoting in full:
Who drives us mad, lashes us with whips and crowns us with victory when we survive the impossible? Who is it that does all these things? Who honors those we love with the very life we live? Who sends monsters to kill us and at the same time sings we will never die? Who teaches us what's real and how to laugh at lies? Who decides why we live and what we die to defend? Who chains us and who holds the key that can set us free?
Its you! You have all the weapons you need. Now fight!
