Stephanie Rogers – Page 9

Best Picture Nominee Review Series: 2008 Roundup

It’s easy to want to live in a world like this, where a pregnant sixteen-year-old seems to get by pretty well, with her parents’ support and a relationship with her baby’s adoptive family. She has a sweet teenage love affair and doesn’t seem to struggle much. While teen angst is the stuff of Hollywood cliché, things just seemed too easy for Juno. I wish my teenage years could’ve been a bit more like Juno’s. Hell, I wish my life now could be.

The final question remains, though, about whether we should criticize a movie like Juno. Representations of role models for American girls tend to inhabit the poles; either young girls are encouraged to be the beautiful bimbo or the chaste Christian. This film has a strong personality (that masquerades as strong values—even an ethic) without being preachy or moralistic. That can’t inherently be a bad thing. Yet I find myself asking for more, wanting more–something that steps outside of the realm of safety. Perhaps Juno isn’t the film to give me more.

Atonement reviewed by Marcia Herring

Briony’s obsession with atonement, with losing herself in the quest to right the wrongs she has committed is decidedly un-feminist. Though this is, essentially, Briony’s story, her story is consumed with the stories of others, so much so that she undergoes an erasure of self to ensure the happiness of her protagonists. Briony has been stuck for her whole life revising and rewriting her story, trapped in her youth (her hair-style remains the same), only able to present the truth upon her death, and even then her tidied up version of the truth.

Any deconstruction of the traditional romantic narrative does have the potential to be feminist, however in this case, because the story is filtered not only through Briony Tallis’s obsession with that very narrative but through a male author and director, the deconstruction is seen as a loss of something good. A loss of cherished innocence, of childlike femininity.

Michael Clayton reviewed by Robin Hitchcock

It’s a terrific performance in a rich role, but unfortunately some of that richness of character is rife with sexism, or at least relies on the sexism of the audience. We first see the character breaking down in a bathroom stall, pouring sweat broadly staining the pits of her conservative blouse. Her first dialogue is anxious practice for an interview discussing her recent promotion to general counsel as she dresses in the morning. Karen sits on her hotel bed in a practical nude bra and slip, posture slumped enough that some rolls of fat form on her midsection. Rarely is a half-dressed woman so de-sexualized in Hollywood film, and that captures our interest, but only because it relies on our presumption of sexist exploitation. So much of the complexity of the character is derived from our sexist expectations of what a cold-blooded corporate killer would be like and the “feminine vulnerability” (a phrase woefully common in reveiwers’ discussions of Swinton’s performance) of Karen Crowder. Swinton’s performance is strong enough to transcend this and actually earn the mantle of “complex villain”, but it is nevertheless problematic from a feminist perspective.

There Will Be Blood reviewed by Lesley Jenike

It’s important to pause here and mention changing views concerning the portrayal of women, minorities, the disabled, and the disenfranchised at large in American films. If we consider some of our American cinematic “masterpieces,” we often find them absent vibrant female characters, for example (think The Godfather, Citizen Kane, and Chinatown to name just three). As much as I desperately want to see my gender portrayed with respect, honesty, and integrity, many films that deal with the great American mythos don’t have much room for female characters, simply because women haven’t been a part of, and are often still excluded from, the creation story we tell ourselves—a story of brutal boots-on-the-ground capitalism and, negatively speaking, punishing exploitation. It’s a Judeo-Christian story in which the individual male forges his path through the wilderness, an anti-hero who, despite his great wealth and power, can’t overcome his subsequent moral corruption. What’s important to recognize is that the marked absence of “the other” in these films is a comment on an institutionalized patriarchy that extends beyond our everyday interactions to the very heart of our cultural mythos. There Will Be Blood is yet another film that further cements a white male-dominated American story of origin.

No Country For Old Men reviewed by Anna Rose

Of course, when I say “something to do,” I mean “a grand total of ten minutes’ screentime, all of it oriented to onscreen husband Brolin.” As Carla Jean Moss, Macdonald bears an expression of chronic worriment to rival Jones’s, and almost all of her scenes require her to do nothing more than fret at Brolin, asking him for guidance or expressing concern for his safety.

In a way, Carla Jean ties the film together, but she does so solely in terms of the male characters: she is the only character to share screentime with all three of the main characters (who never appear onscreen together). Occasional hints are dropped regarding her life outside of the men–“I’m used to lots of things. I work at Wal-Mart”–but, frustratingly, these are not expanded in any way. Only in her final scene does she talk about something other than Llewelyn.

Be sure to check out our reviews of the 2010 and 2011 Best Picture Nominees as well.

YouTube Break: Roseanne Barr Is Awesome

From the description at Democracy Now:

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Emmy Award-winning actress Roseanne Barr starred in the popular and groundbreaking show on television titled simply Roseanne, the first TV series to openly advocate for gay rights. Roseanne featured one of the first lesbian kisses on TV, in an episode when Roseanne kisses Mariel Hemingway. Roseanne was also the first sitcom to ever feature a gay marriage. The series tackled other controversial topics, as well: poverty, class, abortion and feminism. From her open support of unions in earlier shows to her tribute to Native Americans toward the end of the series, Roseanne never shied away from contentious issues. The writer Barbara Ehrenreich once praised Roseanne Barr for representing “the hopeless underclass of the female sex: polyester-clad, overweight occupants of the slow track; fast-food waitresses, factory workers, housewives, members of the invisible pink-collar army; the despised, the jilted, the underpaid.” We play excerpts from the groundbreaking sitcom and speak with Barr about her childhood in Utah, where she was raised half-Jewish and half-Mormon, and talk about how she “made it OK for women to talk about their actual lives on television.

Pioneering Comedian Roseanne Barr on Her Life on Screen as a “Working-Class Domestic Goddess”

Mad Men Week at Bitch Flicks – Call for Writers

Mad Men…it’s on.

Announcing…Mad Men Week at Bitch Flicks! Monday, August 29th – Friday, September 2nd!

We’ve alluded to it…and now it’s here.

We invite readers to submit original and/or cross-posted (with permission) pieces on Mad Men, for a week-long focus on the AMC series. We hope to find various perspectives and differing opinions on the show, start new conversations, and continue discussions that have been going since the show’s debut.

The details:

All pieces must be emailed by Friday, August 26th.
If you intend to submit, please email a brief description of your piece as soon as possible.
Contact us at btchflcks(at)gmail(dot)com.

Need some ideas? Here are some themes you could write about (you can also propose your own):
~~Character analysis of Betty~~
Character analysis of Peggy
Character analysis of Joan
Character analysis of the (individual) men
~~The supporting women~~
Sexual assault in MM
Race in MM
Betty Draper and the Feminine Mystique
Sexual harassment in the agency
~~Motherhood in MM~~
Female bodies and the male gaze of MM
~~MM and Feminism~~
MM and Enlightened Sexism
Review/analysis of pivotal episode(s)
Favorite lines/moments
Fashion & the performance of the feminine
Critique of article you’ve read about the show
The possibilities are endless…

We look forward to reading your pieces for our first Theme Week here at Bitch Flicks!

Best Picture Nominee Review Series: Frost/Nixon

Men will be Men: Frost/Nixon

This is a guest post from Stephanie Brown.

Frost/Nixon is a movie about male power as it looked in 1977. Starring Frank Langella as Richard Nixon and Michael Sheen as David Frost, the story recounts the efforts of David Frost, a television talk show host from Great Britain, to interview former president Richard Nixon, then living in disgrace and exile in his “Western White House” in San Clemente, California. The movie is based on a stage play by Peter Morgan, which debuted in 2006 in London; Langella and Sheen were the debut actors in that production. Directed by Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon was a critical and financial success when it was released in 2008, and was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor for Frank Langella’s performance. Frost/Nixon is the story of two men who have lost power and whose lives have become claustrophobic and small. Frost and Nixon have much to gain by using each other—each sorely needs credibility and needs the other’s help to regain it.

The plot of the movie is simple: it recounts Frost’s efforts to obtain an interview with Richard Nixon, who had remained silent and incommunicado after his historic resignation on August 9, 1974, and the short and strange relationship they had while filming the interview. Nixon remains the only American president to resign from office, and did so because of his involvement in the Watergate break-in and cover-up, which revealed the efforts of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (also known as CREEP) to sabotage the efforts of the Democratic Party and its candidate George McGovern. The Watergate scandal also revealed that the President taped all his conversations, that some potentially incriminating conversations were missing from these tapes, and the conversations revealed the president to be a nasty, ruthless, and uncouth person. Many allies and aides in the White House were eventually implicated in the scandal, and the nation watched and read about it as more was revealed every day in newspapers, magazines, and in the televised Watergate hearings.

In Frost/Nixon, David Frost is at a nadir in his career. A formerly popular television talk show host who is fond of parties, power and fame, he is in the process of losing it all. His talk shows in the U.S. and in Australia have been cancelled, and he’s also lost “his table at Sardi’s,” a perk of his fame that he cherishes. A raconteur and jet-setter, he’s considered an intellectual lightweight, even a joke. While in the first class cabin on his flight to the U.S. to meet with Nixon, he encounters Caroline Cushing (Rebecca Hall), a beautiful and beguiling international beauty from Monte Carlo, who lets him know just how much of a punch line he has become. She rattles off several caustic comments that have been made by the press about his career and even his personal style.

After this, however, they are together for the rest of the film, and she is the kind of woman who enters the room softly (looking gorgeous in a series of halter dresses), retreats quietly, knows how to say the right thing in support of him, and makes a presentable companion. The only woman in the movie save for a brief scene with Pat Nixon (Patty McCormack) and the silent presence of Diane Sawyer (Kate Jennings Grant), who was a Nixon team member,Charlotte is a goddess amidst the power-jockeying of the mortal men around her. Upon meeting her, Nixon remarks to Frost that he ought to marry her, not because she’s lovely but because she lives in Monte Carlo and “those people pay no taxes.” Is Nixon trying to be witty here? As played by Langella, he is too much of a galoot, too artless, to try for wit, and it seems wholly believable. Langella captures the awkwardness and oddness of Nixon, in both his speech and stiff, stooped body.

Frost seeks the interviews with Nixon as a way to get back on top with this coup of an interview; the problem is that no one is really interested in financing it, but he proceeds anyway, gambling on the idea that the show will be bought when all is said and done, and he will recoup the considerable amount of money he’s invested in the project, including a check for $200,000 that he’s written to Nixon for the interviews. As played by Michael Sheen, Frost has good manners and plenty of English self-deprecation and modesty, even as he is shown to be a dandy and someone perfectly comfortable in posh surroundings. He flits in and out of the Plaza Hotel in New York and the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles, after schmoozing on white push-button phones. I remember watching the David Frost Show as a kid, and even I remember him being a little more pompous than he’s portrayed here. Finding himself at a vulnerable time in his life, he’s humbled by failure and from hearing the truth about his reputation, not only from Caroline, but from the two researchers who have come to help him prepare questions for the interview, Bob Zelnick (Oliver Platt) and James Reston, Jr. (Sam Rockwell), who are a PBS journalist and academic, respectively. Each possesses serious bona fides, and risk losing it if they are involved in a bogus and lightweight interview.

Assisted by Frost’s aide John Birt (Matthew Macfadyen), the three are shown working together in a comfortable camaraderie, with Reston agitating for harder attacks on Nixon in the interviews than Frost is comfortable with. Parallel with Birt, Nixon also has an aide de camp and defender, Jack Brennan, who is a true believer in Nixon and defends and protects him. Played somewhat tongue-in-cheek by Kevin Bacon, it’s as if his ROTC character from Animal House, Chip Diller, has grown up and achieved his Young Republican wet dreams. The supporting actors inhabit the characters believably and comfortably. Rockwell as Reston is especially effective in his talking head segments, where he conveys gravitas as well as the stubborn single-mindedness of the expert.

The movie belongs to Frank Langella, however, whose performance is a tour de force. The movie was filmed on the grounds and in some of the rooms of the Western White House (Casa Pacifica) in San Clemente, and he’s like a giant inhabiting a fairy tale cottage, barely able to stand up straight. The claustrophobic feel of these rooms as well as those of the tract house where the interviews are filmed, remind us that this once giant man of power and influence has shrunk, and he doesn’t fit in well in these more plebian surroundings. Ungainly and weird, full endless, meandering stories, he’s a deposed king who still expects to be deferred to, and he comes with courtiers who smooth over his tics and translate him to the world. Langella’s voice takes on the literal, even tone of Nixon’s, reflecting Nixon’s dogged and single-minded personality. The centerpiece of the movie is a soliloquy that Langella delivers as a drunken phone call to Frost where he reveals his innermost character: his is a personality built on lifelong resentments. Real or perceived, his dismissal by East Coast power brokers throughout his career will never be forgotten or forgiven. He tries to find a common ground between the two in their class differences, but Frost is too cautious to comment or let on that he might agree. This scene is hypnotic and fascinating, and even more so when it’s revealed later that Nixon had no memory of the conversation because he’s said it all while in a blackout from drinking.

Ron Howard’s direction is straightforward, a “style of no style” that allows the actors and story to shine, but it’s full of wit and sly humor, such as a scene in which an unwatched TV is playing the ubiquitous and silly television commercial of the 1970’s which depicted a tear-stained American Indian man canoeing through a polluted river. The costumes and art direction give us the wide lapels, shag carpet, black limousines and white phones of the era and they look normal; no one is making fun of past lapses in taste—indeed, they look like totems of power. Frost/Nixon is a movie full of men who are talking, standing, sitting, and walking through halls on the way to important meetings. Charlotte Cushing, Pat Nixon, and Diane Sawyer are not central players, either in the cast or in the drama of the story. This is right and fitting at a time when Martha Mitchell was deemed crazy for truth telling about Watergate, and was alleged to have been drugged in order to keep her quiet. It was a man’s world, and it is their power as well as their corruption depicted here.

Stephanie Brown is the author of two collections of poetry, Domestic Interior and Allegory of the Supermarket. She’s published work in American Poetry Review, Ploughshares and The Best American Poetry series. She was awarded an NEA Fellowship in 2001 and a Breadloaf Fellowship in 2009. She has taught at UC Irvine and the University of Redlands and is a regional branch manager for OC Public Libraries in southern California. She grew up in the same area as Richard Nixon and lives in San Clemente, where the Western White House still stands at its southernmost shore.

Best Picture Nominee Review Series: Juno

This review by Amber Leab originally appeared at Bitch Flicks in October 2008.

Juno(2007)

It took me a long time to see the film Juno. I was thrilled when Diablo Cody won the Oscar for Best Screenplay, but at the same time suspicious about her little movie being so lauded. To win an Oscar, the film must be saying the “right” things to the “right” people, a dynamic that rarely favors progressive thinking (see the movie Crash as a recent example). In other words, when too many people love a movie, there’s probably something wrong.

Aside from critical praise and popularity, the topic of teen pregnancy is rarely done without a hefty dose of morality. While we are in a peculiar cultural gray area on the subject—consider the cover of OK Magazine, featuring smiling teen mom Jamie Lynn Spears, or the Republican VP nominee’s pregnant teenage daughter—there seems to be an anti-choice undercurrent running through pregnancy plots, not to mention the culture at large.

The expectations I had going in were also based on reading commentary about the ultra-hip dialogue and soundtrack of the film. While certainly not negative in themselves, coupled with a controversial topic, these features could be enough to couch a conservative, anti-woman message in a hip, fresh film.

It turns out, however, that after an initial adjustment period to the dialogue (and a question about whether the film is set in the early ‘90s), Juno turns out to be planted in a feminist worldview, and is a film that teenagers, especially, ought to see. It was thoroughly enjoyable, funny and touching. I liked it so much that I watched it again, but when I started to write about it, what I liked about the movie became all the more confusing. I loved the music, although Juno MacGuff is way hipper than I was (or am), and I saw a representation that reminded me of myself at that age. I saw a paternal relationship that I never had and a familial openness that I’ve also never had. I saw characters who I wanted as my childhood friends and family.

And while in Juno we have a strong, unconventional female character—and a lead character, at that—the film itself was very, very safe. And I worry whether that’s a good thing. It’s certainly understandable for a first film. A Hollywood outsider would have a much more difficult time making an overtly progressive movie about teen pregnancy, but if she plays the politics safe, and if her own personality is enough of a draw, she just might make it.

I was worried when Juno visited the dumpy abortion clinic and met her pro-life classmate protesting in the parking lot, and I was worried by the very dumpiness of the clinic. I was struck by the notion that a clinic like that would look and feel much more sterile—even in the lobby, as far as Juno went. The thought of fingernails sent her running out of the building. A detail like “fingernails” made the abortion too real for Juno, a teenager, I suppose. Is this a good or bad thing? I don’t know.

Juno, in a rather nonchalant way, seeks permission of the baby’s father, her good friend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera), for the abortion. Or, rather, she seeks his opinion; she seems to want him to resist her plans. But his lack of resistance causes her to make the following decisions on her own. This straddles the line somewhat. She wants to be told what to do, and rather than seeking out someone smarter and more experienced than she is, she asks the boy whose approval she’s still seeking.

Juno wants her baby to have the perfect family; one unlike her own, which her mother abandoned. Her family now consists of her father, her stepmother Bren (Allison Janney), and her half-sister Liberty Bell. Juno doesn’t have a bad deal going. Her folks are markedly working class (they’re both members of the labor class, a group that doesn’t see much Hollywood recognition; he’s an HVAC repairman, she’s a nail technician). Yet Juno imagines a perfect life to consist of two loving parents and a McMansion.Why would she seek out people of this particular class? Is this a case of Juno’s lack of class awareness or the film’s?

The film’s real progressive moment comes when Juno realizes that her idea of perfection isn’t perfect. She realizes that a father who doesn’t want to be there would be as bad as a mother who hadn’t wanted to be there. She sees that a father isn’t a necessity–or perhaps simply that two parents aren’t a necessity. Yet what does this all add up to mean? There’s certainly a moment of female solidarity (and this isn’t the only one, certainly, in the film), and a difficult decision that she makes independently. But, as with other conclusions I’ve made, I’m left with the question of “So what?”

The film does love all of its characters, which is a refreshing change for a high school flick. Juno’s best friend, Leah, is a cheerleader who exhibits some flaky, teenage qualities (her crush on the chubby, bearded, middle-aged math teacher takes a cliché and gives it a twist), but the film loves her nonetheless. Vanessa Loring (Jennifer Garner) is an obsessional, middle-class mommy blogger type, but we see that she would be a good mother, and the film cares for her. We even have sympathy for Mark (Jason Bateman) who, through his relationship with Juno, realizes that he and his wife no longer want the same thing (if they ever did). There are cringe-worthy moments with Mark and Juno, but none that damn him completely. It’s a rare film that gives us no bad guys, which is a large part of its charm.

In all, I fear Juno suffers from the same postmodern condition afflicting so many films today. It strives for a non-message in order not to offend anyone, thus allowing anti-choice advocates to cheer the film as loudly as pro-choice feminists. There’s a problem here. If a film that almost universally passes as hip and progressive is so murky in its values and allegiance that we’re not really sure what to think of it, how can a truly hip and progressive film make it today?

Best Picture Nominee Review Series: Atonement

This is a guest post from Marcia Herring.

I’d like to start this review with a confession: Atonement is the second book in my long history of reading that has made me so angry, so upset, that I literally threw it across the room.

My anger was directed at the narrator, Briony Tallis, who I had no idea was pulling the strings of the story I had grown so engrossed in, the story that, had I stepped back for one moment, I would have realized was being shaped and tugged by an even larger narrator.

First published in 2001 by Ian McEwan (author of one of my favorite gender-questioning novels The Cement Garden), Atonement was adapted to film by Joe Wright in 2007 (he’d previously directed Pride & Prejudice and has since directed Hanna). I’d heard of the novel sort of peripherally, “Oh, everyone’s reading it! You’ve got to!” and as consequence, avoided it until forced to indulge for a class and found myself (cliché alert) unable to put it down.

Both as an Academy Award-nominated (and winning, for soundtrack) film and as a book adaptation, Joe Wright’s Atonement succeeds. The film is a gorgeous and gritty, if frustrating, portrait of childhood, of war, of love, of lies and the lies one tells to correct them.

The first section of the film and novel set up the plot. The wealthy Tallis family has temporary custody of their lesser-off red-headed cousins, the Quinceys, and young Briony (Saoirse Ronan) is determined to lead them all in a play to celebrate her older brother Leon’s homecoming. Mother Tallis is sick in bed, and older sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley) is awkward around the son of the Tallis’s lawn worker, Robbie (James McAvoy) and excited to hear that her brother is coming home, despite news that he’s bringing along a friend, cocky Paul Marshall.

Briony lives in a world saturated with innocence. She still writes fairy tales, slaying imaginary dragons in the tall grass. The politics of childhood become confused with budding sexuality–something that Briony witnesses in cousin Lola, and becomes obsessed and terrified with an encounter she witnesses between Cecilia and Robbie. This desire for her own sexual awakening and simultaneously not being ready for it leads to Briony witnessing and misunderstanding the encounter at the fountain, the stark near-nudity of her sister, the tableau of Robbie standing by, the broken vase.

In direct contrast to this innocence comes Paul Marshall, introduced as a dapper gentleman who intends to make money off of the war with his Army Amo chocolate bar factory. He descends upon the safe haven of the nursery where Lola is meant to be watching over her twin brothers. “You have to bite it,” he says, handing her a bar of chocolate, his face stony.

The sexuality, too, of Robbie has another angle. His attempts at a polite apology devolve quickly into crude sexual expression. Robbie is faced with the sheer absurdity and irrationality of expressing sexual attraction to one who is of a higher class. Paul Marshall experiences the opposite problem, his power over Lola used to his advantage as he inflicts first rough treatment and then a rape in the woods. That power keeps Lola from seeing the truth, that she has been mistreated, brutally; Paul Marshall keeps Lola at his side, and she eventually marries him.

Mistaken perception continues as the plot device for the first section of the film, as Briony intercepts a note from Robbie to Cecilia–the word “cunt” startling her into dangerous assumption–and interprets a hasty sexual encounter between them as rape. She tells Lola that she has read “the worst word you could possibly imagine,” the idea of desiring or expressing desire after such a secret and surely filthy part is appalling to Briony, more appalling perhaps than accepting innocence or guilt, more appalling than recognizing shades of gray. As cousin Lola is, nigh simultaneously to the romantic scene, being raped by Paul Marshall, the twins go missing and Robbie tracks them down. Because of his absence and because of her surety that Robbie’s crude note was that of a “sex maniac,” Briony accuses Robbie of Lola’s rape. Surely his wildly expressed sexual appetite is equal to and capable of no less than rape. There must be a villain, there is in all of Briony’s fairy tales, and that villain appears to be Robbie.

What follows is Rob and Briony’s means of atoning for their crimes. Rob, unable to fight the accusation against the wealthy and certain young Tallis, is sentenced to prison and then to fight in WWI. Briony, realizing years later that there were cracks in what she witnessed, that there are, perhaps, alternate truths, becomes a nurse in an attempt to undo some of the wrong she has inflicted upon Cecilia and Robbie.

On the issue of alternate truths, it is nearly impossible to discuss Atonement without discussing its construction, and therefore, its twist ending. Atonement is a movie directed by a man, adapted from a book by a man, about and concerning a woman and her version of the story of her sister and a man they both knew. To say there are layers of subterfuge to consider is an understatement.

A story is being crafted, an attempt to fill in the blanks. An attempt to create rational cause and effect as happens in all stories when we are young. An attempt to understand what must be truly random and unpredictable. Motive must be established.

But of course, things don’t follow a logical order. The wrong person is blamed for a tragedy while another gets off scot-free. War happens and the best and worst of us are lost, caught in causes we might not respect ourselves. Illness, a car crash, a lightning strike. Do we blame Briony, then, for trying to set order in her confusing world? Do we blame her for attempting to set things right that she helped to set wrong? I remember upon first completing the novel, my rage was so complete, so strong. I hated Briony for what she had done, for creating ugly and beautiful lies to cover up the truth, for believing that life was as simple as “Yes. I saw him with my own eyes.” I hated Briony for the very reasons that I love reading and watching films: writers and directors create lies for us, and we indulge in them. Fiction is called such for a reason–it isn’t real.

And as much as we would like to believe Briony’s version of events, as much as we sit, dutiful audience members and readers, we know simultaneously that life is not that simple. It is not as simple as letting oneself fall into a pond and be saved by the handsome hero. Romantic notions of rescue and war come with real danger–something which the film explores with gusto. Countless romantic tales, such as the sort that Briony is enamored with, feature a hero away at war, returning to his true love. But that is simply that: a story and one we buy into with such eagerness that it is easy for Briony, for McEwan, for Wright to pull the wool over our eyes. We want to believe that Robbie lives, that he and Cecilia are reunited, that Briony somehow makes peace with what she has done. At the end of the film, older Briony states in an interview that she could no longer find any use for honesty or reality, but where do the lies actually come in to play? As moviegoers, we anticipate a story. We know that story is not real. So what makes Briony’s betrayal any different?

The soundtrack, interlaced with the sounds of a typewriter, never lets us completely forget that this is a story that is being crafted. It is no mistake that the first shot of the movie is Briony typing away at her play, “The Trials of Arabella,” taking her work very seriously. Briony expresses the difficulty of writing: that a play depends on other people.

The difference between play and story, as Briony postulates, are similar to the difference between novel and film. McEwan spends pages describing the intricacies of the vase, complete and then broken, whereas in a film, the vase is simply there. A long camera shot transports the viewer from room to room; instead of the turn of pages, the soundtrack interacts with the actions on screen instead of, for example, a rowdy neighbor or interrupting child pulling attention from the work.

While it is, in a way, refreshing to give the narrative over so completely to a woman in what is most certainly not a “chick flick,” and while Cecilia appears to be a strong, fierce woman in charge of her own sexuality, and while Briony, if not the most trustworthy of narrators, is more than skilled enough to do the job of telling this story, both of their stories center around Robbie. Even small conversations between Briony and Cecilia, Briony and Lola, Briony and a young nurse at training devolve quickly into a discussion of Leon, or Robbie, or marriage.

There is no denying the technical mastery of Atonement. Simply look at the long shot as Robbie arrives at Dunkirk, despair and small hope surrounding him and swooning around him as the camera floats through soldiers waiting. Look at small consistent hints of cracks in the narrative, look at changes in perspective looped together by setting and soundtrack. Atonement is a master work of fiction and of film, but feminism is not something I believe it can claim.

Marcia Herring is a rollergirl receptionist from Southeast Missouri. She is still working on her graduate degree, but swears to have it done someday. She spends most of her time watching television and movies and wishes she could listen to music and read while doing so without going insane. She previously contributed an analysis of Degrassi, Teens, and Rape Apologism and a review of X-Men First Class.

Best Picture Nominee Review Series: There Will Be Blood

Best Picture Oscar nominee, There Will Be Blood

This is a guest post from Lesley Jenike.

I’m one of those hothouse flower film enthusiasts who feel relieved whenever Citizen Kane comes on Turner Classic Movies, as if it were a remedy for my chronic migraine. I’m oddly grateful to Ted Turner (my undergraduate commencement speaker and an American mogul/eccentric much like Kane and Plainview) for TCM, though I find myself muttering after I’ve clicked back over to, say, some Jennifer Aniston rom-com, “What happened to Hollywood?” Sure, it’s a cliché of a question, but the answers are myriad and complicated, having mainly to do with changes in the culture and in the medium itself. There are certain images, ideas, and obsessions that are inherent to our collective identity as a nation, and every once in a great while contemporary filmmakers who happen to have the money, the talent, the connections, and the audacity, explore them with varying degrees of success. P.T. Anderson’s 2007 Oscar-winning There Will Be Blood is one if those movies, a masterpiece in the tradition of Welles’ Citizen Kane and, yes, I can without hesitation tell you that I absolutely adore it. Classic Hollywood lives on.

There Will Be Blood is loosely based on Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel Oil! Though I haven’t read the novel, I do know that while adapting the material for his screenplay, Anderson chose to concentrate on the troubled and troubling relationship between Daniel Plainview, a self-made oilman played to perfection by a John Huston-inspired Daniel Day Lewis, and his more politically and emotionally progressive “son,” H.W., rather than the Teapot Dome Scandal of the 1920’s; it was an important and effective choice. During the first ten minutes of the film, Anderson provides us with all the exposition we’ll need through a largely dialogue-free sequence in which we’re witness to the crudity and danger of early American oil exploration, our main character’s relentless vigor and drive, and H.W.’s entrance into Plainview’s life as an infant orphaned by an oil-well accident. The final scene in the opening sequence is masterful: Daniel Plainview alone on a train with H.W. as a baby tucked into an open suitcase. H.W. plays with Daniel’s mustache as Daniel looks down on him with tenderness. Right from the start, Anderson is confounding our initial assumptions about Daniel specifically and about turn-of-the-century oilmen in general, by juxtaposing ruthlessness with familial love and loyalty. This is, after all, a movie in which conflict is created and developed via a collection of Biblical proportioned antagonisms—father v son and brother v brother. The film ultimately ends with the dissolution of any real (or imagined) family connection between Daniel and H.W. in lieu of a philosophical (and literal) battle of sorts between two conmen—Daniel Plainview the oilman, and Eli Sunday the preacher (played by the excellent Paul Dano. Dano, who can go toe-to-toe with the finest screen actor working today, is definitely one to watch.)

But what makes this particular film so thrilling is that it’s ultimately much more than a postmodern cop to an earlier American form; it’s a visceral, earnest portrayal of the forces at work in opposition to, and in support of, our American fantasy of self-sufficiency and self-reinvention. Anderson creates a highly stylized world in which a boy can seemingly spring from Plainview’s oil well, sans womb, in a sort of male Immaculate Conception. It’s a Cain and Abel world (though the twentieth century has already obscured the moral clarity of earlier epochs) where blazing fire erupts from great swaths of desert and where men, faces blacked by oil, seem to crawl up from the earth’s very crust. It’s a film that leaves us wondering which of the two “brothers” is more evil: Paul or Eli? Daniel or Henry? What I mean is, at its core, There Will Be Blood describes the convoluted love/hate relationship between capitalism and Eli Sunday’s frontier-style Christianity. Who will win in this war for men’s (and women’s, I guess) souls?

Both Daniel and Eli vie for the hearts, minds, and pocketbooks of Little Boston’s citizens, most effectively illustrated in the scenes between Daniel, Mary Sunday, and Abel Sunday—Mary and Eli’s father. Mary is really the only female character who gets any airtime in There Will Be Blood and, like the rest of the movie’s characters, she’s given a name with Biblical significance. As an innocent, she’s a likely victim and both her religious family and the faithless Daniel Plainview, attempt to use her as an example. When H.W. tells Daniel that Abel “beats her [Mary] when she doesn’t pray,” we watch Daniel’s wheels start to turn. As a slap-in-face to Eli, Daniel invites Mary to stand with him at the well’s christening, instead of allowing Eli to lead his “congregation” in prayer, and later, at the picnic, Daniel makes a point to tell Mary he’ll “protect her” from her father while Abel’s still in earshot. We could interpret Daniel’s gestures of warmth and affection toward Mary as genuine—after all, he was willing to take orphaned H.W. on as his son—but Anderson doesn’t shy away from also suggesting that Daniel is perfectly willing to use the cult of familial loyalty to win trust for financial gain—a savvy ploy we see time and time again in films like The Godfather, Chinatown, and, yes, Citizen Kane. It’s an ultimately destructive ruse and Daniel falls victim to it, naturally, in the end.

When H.W. is made deaf by another oil well accident, Daniel finds him to be a less than effective business partner, though Anderson and Day-Lewis endow the character with so much fervent contradiction, it’s hard to tell how Daniel really feels about his son’s handicap. Later, when a stranger approaches Daniel to tell him he’s his long-lost stepbrother, we can tell, in his own convoluted way, that Daniel is looking for an opportunity to trust—somebody, anybody—while he claims, of course, to have disdain for “these people.” And finally, after his own self-delusion proves, well, illusory, and he’s bereft of his “son” and his “brother,” (dispatched by his own hand, no less), we watch Daniel rage further into a kind of Charles Foster Kane-type isolation. The film closes with a terrifying scene that frankly verges on bathos (it takes place in Plainview’s private bowling alley of all places) in which Daniel forces Eli to submit, aloud, that he is “a false prophet” and that “God is a superstition” after Eli attempts to extort money from his old enemy.

Anderson has proven his tremendous potential with There Will Be Blood, so much so, I wonder how, after plumbing the bloody depths of our Great American Hang-ups, he could possibly top its achievement. It’s a difficult film and most likely not to everyone’s taste, but it’s a film I’m certain will age well thanks to its satisfying complexity and nuance. “Give me the blood,” indeed!

Lesley Jenike received her PhD from the University of Cincinnati in 2008. She currently teaches poetry writing, screenwriting, and literature classes at the Columbus College of Art and Design. Her book of poems is Ghost of Fashion (CustomWords, 2009). She reviewed the Oscar-nominated film, A Serious Man as part of our 2010 Best Picture Nominee Review Series.

Best Picture Nominee Review Series: No Country For Old Men

Best Picture Oscar Winner, No Country For Old Men

This is a guest post from Max Thornton.

Cormac McCarthy doesn’t understand women.

Statements like this are responsible for the ever-growing dent in my desk and the permanent lump on my forehead. McCarthy is a very highly respected writer. He’s won the Pulitzer Prize. He’s a MacArthur Fellow. He’s been compared to Faulkner, Joyce, and Melville. Can you even imagine a female writer garnering such acclaim without writing a single prominent male character, and then telling Oprah, “I don’t pretend to understand men”?

The Coen brothers, happy to say, make no such nonsense generalizations about 50% of humankind. Not only did they create one of my favorite female characters of all time in one of my favorite movies of all time–Frances McDormand’s Best-Actress-Oscar-winning turn as Marge Gunderson in 1996’s criminally non-Best-Picture-winning Fargo–but they often portray prominent female characters in their films: notably in Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Burn After Reading, and last year’s True Grit.

The union of Cormac McCarthy and the Coen brothers is, aesthetically and thematically, an excellent idea. No Country For Old Men the novel, with its sparse and evocative prose, reads like a treatment for a Coen brothers film. Violence, greed, fate, and the average joe who gets caught up in criminal activity are all recurring Coen motifs, even if the unremitting bleakness leaves almost no room for their characteristic gallows humor. However, as Ira Boudway’s Salon review puts it, in the novel’s milieu “[w]omen exist mainly to show primordial attraction and inarticulate loyalty toward men; men are more at ease sawing off shotgun barrels or dressing their own bullet wounds than they are in the presence of women, children or their own emotions.”

That’s as true of the film as it is of the book. In McCarthy’s portrayal of rural West Texas, 1980, women are receptionists, secretaries, loyal wives, and not much else. A handful of women make single-scene appearances in this movie to serve coffee or give motel room keys to the three main characters: average joe Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), old Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones, sporting a permanent worried frown that makes you want to hug him and feed him Snausages), and serial killer Anton Chigurh (a spine-tingling Javier Bardem). The only woman who really has something to do in the film is the wonderful Kelly Macdonald, whom you can witness being wonderful to the max in the terrific Boardwalk Empire (roll on fall!).

Those three main characters are all men with a mission. Llewelyn’s mission is as simple as staying alive: stumbling on the scene of a drug deal gone kaput, he swipes a satchel full of cash, and in that singularly ill-thought-out action of basic greed he finds himself a hunted man, pursued by the chillingly ruthless and single-minded Chigurh. He in turn is hunted by Sheriff Bell, who is haunted by an existential crisis born of his age and sense of his own mortality. Of the three, only Chigurh operates within a clear and unambiguous moral code. Bell feels overwhelmed by the unremitting violence of his county and plans to retire, and Llewelyn dooms himself with an act of kindness (returning to the scene of the drug deal to help the wounded man who had earlier begged him for water, thus gaining the attention of his pursuers); Chigurh, though, shows no weakness or indecision, but complies fully with a set of inflexible rules.

In perhaps the movie’s most famous scene, Chigurh asks a too-observant store owner, “What’s the most you ever lost on a coin toss?” When the owner calls the toss correctly, the hitman abides by the coin’s ruling and lets him live. By allowing external cues–the sound of a toilet flushing, the ringing of a phone, the result of a coin toss–to determine his actions, Chigurh presents himself as an instrument of fate. In fact, he can be read as the personified figure of Death itself, hunting down his victims with absolute implacability, killing or sparing them on the basis of chance outcomes that invoke chaos theory and the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Over the phone, Chigurh offers Llewelyn a deal: “You bring me the money, and I’ll let [Carla Jean] go. Otherwise she’s accountable, same as you.” Even after Llewelyn is dead and the money has been recovered, Chigurh’s moral code demands that he honor the terms of this deal, and he hunts down Carla Jean.

If Chigurh is, as I read him, not Death itself but a man who believes he is enacting the works of Death on earth, then Carla Jean is the one character to call him out on this. Llewelyn, the store owner, bounty hunter Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson)–all operate within Chigurh’s framework, trying to trick him or compromise with him, accepting the rules he gives them: “You need to call it. I can’t call it for you. It wouldn’t be fair.” Only Carla Jean refuses to engage, declining to call the coin toss and telling him, “It’s not the coin [that determines your actions]. It’s just you.” It’s a fascinating glimpse into her character, which remains frustratingly underdeveloped, because recognizing the arbitrary nature of the rules does not free her from them.

The film’s final scene is of now ex-Sheriff Bell talking to (or possibly at) his wife Loretta over breakfast, aimless in his retirement. He describes his dreams of his late father, who “was goin’ on ahead and he was fixin’ to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold, and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up…” His world has no place for an older man, for a sense of morality or law as he knows it. He might well be asking himself the question Chigurh asks of Wells, moments before killing him: “If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?”

Fargo ends similarly, after all the action and thrills are played out, with a moment of intimacy between law officer and spouse. The tone of the two endings, however, could hardly be farther apart: Ed Tom Bell ends No Country a defeated man, adrift in a harsh and incomprehensible world, with death the only blessing on his horizon; Marge Gunderson ends Fargo smiling, sharing in her husband’s little triumph, and saying, “Two more months.” Fargo offers hope and redemption for humanity in the suggestion that there is indeed more to life than a little money, whereas the philosophy of No Country For Old Men is summed up by an old white man complaining bitterly about “the money, and the drugs…[and] children[…]with green hair and bones in their noses.”

The offer of redemption, I think, makes Fargo the superior film. It’s telling that the Academy, an institution frequently criticized for demonstrating the reactionary politics of a bunch of complaining old white men, chose to honor the film with no female protagonist and no redemption.

Max Thornton is about to move halfway across the world to be a grad student. She writes words at Gay Christian Geek.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Kathryn Stockett Needs Help from Race-Talk

Tropes vs. Women #5: The Mystical Pregnancy from Feminist Frequency

From the Archive: The Power of Representation

Given the Obama administration’s embarrassing failure to discuss—hell, even mention—the War on Women, I thought Amber’s following post, which was first published here on February 16, 2009, would warrant rereading.

This Is What a Feminist Looks Like?

Representing President Obama as a “Super-feminist” has ignited a debate over who the savior of feminism ought to be (see here for a good overview), and likely sold a lot of copies of Ms. magazine’s January edition. Praise for the new president’s political aspirations regarding women’s rights isn’t contended; it’s how the feminist magazine chose to portray Obama: tearing open his Clark Kent clothes to swoop in and rescue us. It’s the representation that has people peeved.

For our purposes here at BF, two articles were published last month—the weekend before the inauguration—about the impact the movies had on Obama’s election. Not that the movies got him elected, but how roles black American men play in the movies have a real effect on the people who see them, and how we can see, through the movies, our own cultural values reflected back on us.

If you ever question how important representation in film really is, I think these articles make the point well. While they specifically focus on male presidential aspirations (and on the unique history of black Americans), they also remind us how pop culture permeates our society and informs opinions and values.

The New York Times published “How the Movies Made a President,” written by A.O. Scott and Manhola Dargis, in their Film section. The article provides an overview of black male roles, from the “Black Everyman” of the ’60s to the “Black Messiah,” currently played and re-played by Will Smith.

Make no mistake: Hollywood’s historic refusal to embrace black artists and its insistence on racist caricatures and stereotypes linger to this day. Yet in the past 50 years — or, to be precise, in the 47 years since Mr. Obama was born — black men in the movies have traveled from the ghetto to the boardroom, from supporting roles in kitchens, liveries and social-problem movies to the rarefied summit of the Hollywood A-list. In those years the movies have helped images of black popular life emerge from behind what W. E. B. Du Bois called “a vast veil,” creating public spaces in which we could glimpse who we are and what we might become.

We hear from the likes of Elizabeth Banks and Katherine Heigl that the only roles really open to them—genuinely talented, lovely young actresses—are that of sidekick, buddy, and romantic object. It’s not that there haven’t been good, meaty roles for women; there have, for sure. But what movie roles do young girls imitate? What fictional figures can women look up to?

The Root’s “Hollywood’s Leading Man: From Sammy Davis Jr. to Dave Chappelle’s Black Bush, how pop culture tested the waters for a black president” offers a more nuanced and contrarian view of the power of pop culture (and reminds us of the egos of those who really believe their art makes a difference). The article surveys the satirical representations of a black president as representative of the racial divide in America, but cites the series 24 as a shift—although one not without its problems—and questions how television and cinema will change.

So now that we have a black president, how will we react to media portrayals? Will there be pressure among writers and producers to create black leaders who feel real and black-led administrations that feel plausible? Will we, as viewers, be able to enjoy over-the-top portrayals of black presidents, such as Terry Crews’ wig-wearing wrestler in Idiocracy, as merely fun entertainment, devoid of racial and social commentary?

Might we perhaps see a black actor playing the lead in a complex drama like The West Wing, or a romantic comedy along An American President, where the president gets to be a fully fleshed out human, and not a cardboard icon? And isn’t it about time that we saw a portrayal of an African-American president who just happens to be a woman, too?

I, too, would like to see that woman. And I think we’d all like to see her on the cover of Ms., wearing a t-shirt that reads “This is what a feminist looks like.”

Kickstarter Helps Young Filmmakers Bypass Studio System

We received the following press release in our e-mail inbox. Please consider supporting Michek’s film. Fundraising officially ends Saturday, August 6, 2011.

Independent filmmaker Alyssa Michek uses kickstarter.com to fund It’s All In My Head, a short film about breaking-up told from the woman’s perspective.

Silver Spring, MD — Independent filmmaker Alyssa Michek must raise $5000 online to fund her short film “It’s All In My Head” in 30 days or less. The 25-year-old filmmaker is directing and producing her first professional short film. With experience directing student films, “It’s All In My Head” is her most ambitious yet, spanning five locations, shot on 16mm color film, with a professional cast and crew. Without a website like kickstarter.com Michek’s film would most likely never be made.

Kickstarter is a new way of funding creative projects “powered by a unique all-or-nothing funding method where projects must be fully-funded or no money changes hands.” Instead of pitching to a studio, creators pitch to the kickstarter community, then use their network of supporters and self-promote in order to fund creative projects. In the first week Michek raised almost $1,500 and with 15 days left to go she is almost halfway there.

To promote “It’s All In My Head,” Michek, a DC native, is offering DC area residents access to special events. For a pledge of $150 spend a day on set. For $200 be an extra in the film with an open bar. With a pledge of $250 the backer and a guest will be VIPs at the film premiere.

“I’m a feminist,” says Michek, “and I think female perspectives are often under-represented in mainstream films.” Her film will center a woman’s story and encourage male viewers to identify with her, as the only fully realized character. “I wanted to come at this with a female perspective, but also have it be universal.”

“It’s All In My Head” is a 20-minute short film exploring the break-up script and how our culture shapes our concept of love. The film follows Alex and Michelle through their break-up showing the highlights of their relationship in flashbacks with voice-over from Michelle commenting on the relationship. Michelle criticizes the typical break-up speech and its excuses. She imagines herself in classic films that have shaped her concept of love and dreams a happy ending interspersed with contemporary film references. When she comes back to reality she finds that life is not like the movies.

“I do think our expectations and our concept of relationships are very much shaped by pop culture” says Michek “and most movies create unreal expectations.” With her film she hopes to combat and comment on these expectations and the culture that creates them.

Fundraising for “It’s All In My Head” ends August 6, 2011. If Michek does not meet her goal, she gets nothing. If all goes as planned, the film will shoot at the end of August and beginning of September and should be finished by the end of the year. Those interested in supporting the project should visit http://kck.st/nEZV4W to learn more.

For more information about this project or to schedule an interview with Alyssa Michek, contact her at alyssamichek@gmail.com or at itsallinmyheadfilm@gmail.com.

Kickstarter site: http://kck.st/nEZV4W

Film Website: http://itsallinmyheadfilm.wordpress.com/