Category: Films by Women

Women in Politics Week: Women, War & Peace: The Roundup

The Women, War & Peace Documentary Series on PBS
This post by Megan Kearns originally appeared at Bitch Flicks on January 9, 2012.
Over the course of the past two months, Megan Kearns of The Opinioness of the World reviewed all five parts of the PBS series Women, War & Peace. We’ve rounded them up here, with excerpts from each review. Be sure to check them out if you missed any! (You can also watch the full episodes online here.)

While rape had been charged as a crime before, it usually falls under the umbrella of hate crimes. With this groundbreaking tribunal, for the first time rape was charged as “a crime against humanity.” The case wouldn’t prevent all rapes. But Kuo said that even though they couldn’t prosecute every rape, it was a significant statement to acknowledge what happens to women during war. The case “transformed the definition of wartime slavery,” laying the “foundation of trials involving violence against women in international courts.”

War leaves devastation in its wake. Yet historically, when we talk about war, we talk about it in terms of soldiers and casualties; too often from a male perspective, forgetting that it equally destroys women’s lives.

In the 2nd installment of the Women, War & Peace series, director Gini Reticker and producer Abigail E. Disney, and WWP series executive producers and co-creators, create a Tribeca Film Festival-winning documentary. Pray the Devil Back to Hell tells the powerful and uplifting story of the Liberian women, including activist and social worker Leymah Gbowee, who joined together and peacefully protested, helping end the civil war ravaging their country.

For almost 15 years, beginning on Christmas Eve in 1989, two civil wars plagued Liberia. Warlord and former president Charles Taylor resided at the center of both. He overthrew the regime during the first civil war and committed war crimes and human rights atrocities while president during the second civil war. Taylor recruited soldiers as young as 9-15 years old. With his private army, the dictator controlled the finances and terrorized the country.

Hasina Safi, one of the 3,000 members of the Afghan Women’s Network (AWN), a non-partisan NGO working to empower women, visits villages to monitor the programs she coordinates for illiterate women. Classes for women could not be held openly with the Taliban in power. Almost 90% of Afghan women cannot read or write. Through classes, many women are just learning Islam encourages women’s education.
But working women like Safi risk their lives. They receive death threats via horrific letters in the night, telling them they must stop working or else their children will be killed and their homes burned.

Over the course of the last two decades, at least 16 million acres of land have been violently taken from Colombians. In the last 8 years, over 2 million have been displaced. Colombia has the second largest number of internally displaced people in the world after Sudan. With no jobs and contaminated water, displacement traumatizes civilians and rips families apart. Under international law,internally displaced citizens don’t receive the same protections that refugees do. Their government is supposed to address their rights. But in this case, how are Colombians supposed to obtain justice when their own government condemns them?

Afro-Colombians make up one quarter of Colombia’s population. In May 2010, coinciding with Afro-Colombian Day, which commemorates the end of slavery in Colombia, Sarria’s eviction was set to commence. People took to the streets, barricading the road to halt the eviction.

‘War Redefined’ Challenges War as a Male Domain and Examines How Violent Conflict Impacts Women:

When we think of war, we often think of soldiers, tanks, weapons and battlefields. But most wars breach boundaries, affecting civilians, mostly women and children. Soldiers, guerillas and paramilitaries use tactics such as rape, fear, murder and pushing people off their land. We need to shift our paradigm of war and look at how it affects women’s lives.
War Redefined, the 5th and final installment in Women, War & Peace (WWP), is the capstone of the groundbreaking series featuring politicians, military personnel, scholars and activists discussing how women play a vital role in war and peace-keeping. Narrated by actor Geena Davis, a phenomenal women’s media activist, written and produced by Peter Bull, co-produced by Nina Chaudry, this powerful film threads stories told in the other parts of the series: Bosnian women surviving rape camps, Liberian women protesting for peace, Afghan women demanding their rights in negotiations and Afro-Colombian women contending with internal displacement. War Redefined, and the entire WWP series, challenges the assumption that war and peace belong to men’s domain.

‘Return’ – One of the Best Films You Probably Haven’t Seen – Features a Story Rarely Depicted: A Female Soldier Struggling to Resume Her Life

Linda Cardellini as Kelli in Return
Written by Megan Kearns.
When people discuss war, they often don’t take women or gender into account. While we regularly watch male soldiers on-screen, we almost never see war through women’s eyes. If women are in war films, they serve as wives and girlfriends. We see women supporting men, never soldiers themselves. That’s what makes Return so unique. It puts a female soldier center stage.
Written and directed by Liza Johnson (her directorial debut) and executive produced by Abigail Disney and Meredith Viera, Return features a captivating and quietly powerful performance by Linda Cardellini (the soul and strength of the film) as Kelli, a female soldier grappling to step back into her life after returning home from her tour of active duty.
Kelli is excited to reunite with her husband (Michael Shannon) and her two young daughters. Disconnected from her former life, she eventually finds she can no longer relate to her friends, co-workers and family. Return tells the story of a complex woman struggling to survive and wrestling with her inner demons.
While it moves at a glacial pace, it pays to be a vigilant audience. For in those silent moments, the restrained film speaks volumes. The devastatingly outstanding Cardellini (it will seriously be a crime if she’s not nominated for an Oscar) doesn’t need to utter a single word. Her expressive face reveals everything. We glimpse Kelli’s isolation and torment. It’s incredibly moving and heartbreaking as we see a woman trying to assert control as her life begins to crumble.
Unlike her husband and daughter, Kelli doesn’t find humor in a woman falling down on an America’s Funniest Home Videos show. She watches in stunned silence as another mother ebulliently applauds her daughter at cheerleading practice. When she goes to get a drink with her girlfriends, Kelli crawls out the bathroom window to escape. She quits her factory job thinking it’s a “giant waste of time.” Her relationships suffer as she unravels.
Linda Cardellini and Michael Shannon
Throughout the film, people keep telling Kelli to open up and talk about her deployment. They claim sharing trauma will heal her wounds. But Kelli insists there’s nothing to tell and incessantly says, “A lot of people had it worse than I did.” While researching her role, Cardellini found reticence and refusal to discuss combat a common thread connecting veterans, both female and male.
We never really discover Kelli’s war experiences other than she worked with military supplies. The beautifully restrained film shows rather than tells as subtle clues to Kelli’s inner turmoil unfold. When she’s in a large cage with some pigeons, Kelli cowers, her hands protecting her head. She watches a TV screen with a hollow dazed stare. When her husband tries to reignite their spark by tickling her, Kelli becomes increasingly uncomfortable and defensive, finally screaming for him to stop.
Her family and friends, while relatively supportive at first, seem to expect Kelli to remain unchanged and have little tolerance for her growing instability. Adrift with no anchor, we witness Kelli’s growing desperation as she spirals out of control. When her friend accuses her of “acting crazy” and asks her what happened to her over there, Kelly replies:
“Yeah, well a lot of people had a lot worse. You know I didn’t get raped in a port-o-potty. I didn’t have to fucking carry a dead body. And I didn’t get blown up by an EOD so I consider myself pretty lucky cause that’s what happens over there.”
It’s vital we include a gender lens when discussing soldiers and war. Female soldiers face unique challenges such as rape (although yes, men are raped too) and sexual harassment. 1 in 3 women are raped while serving in the military. In fact, female soldiers are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed in combat. Horrifying. Return isn’t a film about female soldiers surviving rape. Yet it subtly weaves in a crucial gender commentary.
Linda Cardellini and John Slattery
As I’ve said before, mothers are supposed to be everything to everyone. So when she falters, Kelli’s motherhood is called into question. Amidst a fight, her husband tells her to “be a mother.” She struggles to provide the attention and care her daughters need. At her wits end, Kelli tries to get pregnant in order to prevent another deployment and stay with her daughters. The most poignant and wrenching scenes are the ones with Kelli playing with and embracing her daughters.
Inspired by a friend’s experiences, writer/director Johnson spoke with “women who have been deployed.” Talking about gendered expectations for female soldiers, Johnson said:
“Expectations and pressures are different for women – dealing with rage is harder for them and not as acceptable as it is for men.”
Kelli tries to deal with her anger, frustration and disappointment in a world telling her to express her feelings in an “appropriate” way yet really expecting her (and basically all women) to swallow her pain.
Soldiers risk their lives for our country. Return doesn’t make any overt political statements. It honors and respects soldiers’ sacrifices. Yet Kelli’s struggles crystallize the physical and emotional toll war exacts on soldiers and their families. Is the price worth it?
Without preaching or sermonizing, the film affirms we must do more to support our troops. And it reminds us women serve in the military too. Something we obviously all know yet too easily forget.
We need more films about women, created by women. And we desperately need more movies telling stories of female soldiers whose stories too often go unheard.

Women, War & Peace: The Roundup

Women, War & Peace
Over the course of the past two months, Megan Kearns of The Opinioness of the World reviewed all five parts of the PBS series Women, War & Peace. We’ve rounded them up here, with excerpts from each review. Be sure to check them out if you missed any! (You can also watch the full episodes online here.)

While rape had been charged as a crime before, it usually falls under the umbrella of hate crimes. With this groundbreaking tribunal, for the first time rape was charged as “a crime against humanity.” The case wouldn’t prevent all rapes. But Kuo said that even though they couldn’t prosecute every rape, it was a significant statement to acknowledge what happens to women during war. The case “transformed the definition of wartime slavery,” laying the “foundation of trials involving violence against women in international courts.”

War leaves devastation in its wake. Yet historically, when we talk about war, we talk about it in terms of soldiers and casualties; too often from a male perspective, forgetting that it equally destroys women’s lives.

In the 2nd installment of the Women, War & Peace series, director Gini Reticker and producer Abigail E. Disney, and WWP series executive producers and co-creators, create a Tribeca Film Festival-winning documentary. Pray the Devil Back to Hell tells the powerful and uplifting story of the Liberian women, including activist and social worker Leymah Gbowee, who joined together and peacefully protested, helping end the civil war ravaging their country.

For almost 15 years, beginning on Christmas Eve in 1989, two civil wars plagued Liberia. Warlord and former president Charles Taylor resided at the center of both. He overthrew the regime during the first civil war and committed war crimes and human rights atrocities while president during the second civil war. Taylor recruited soldiers as young as 9-15 years old. With his private army, the dictator controlled the finances and terrorized the country.

Hasina Safi, one of the 3,000 members of the Afghan Women’s Network (AWN), a non-partisan NGO working to empower women, visits villages to monitor the programs she coordinates for illiterate women. Classes for women could not be held openly with the Taliban in power. Almost 90% of Afghan women cannot read or write. Through classes, many women are just learning Islam encourages women’s education.

But working women like Safi risk their lives. They receive death threats via horrific letters in the night, telling them they must stop working or else their children will be killed and their homes burned.

Over the course of the last two decades, at least 16 million acres of land have been violently taken from Colombians. In the last 8 years, over 2 million have been displaced. Colombia has the second largest number of internally displaced people in the world after Sudan. With no jobs and contaminated water, displacement traumatizes civilians and rips families apart. Under international law, internally displaced citizens don’t receive the same protections that refugees do. Their government is supposed to address their rights. But in this case, how are Colombians supposed to obtain justice when their own government condemns them?

Afro-Colombians make up one quarter of Colombia’s population. In May 2010, coinciding with Afro-Colombian Day, which commemorates the end of slavery in Colombia, Sarria’s eviction was set to commence. People took to the streets, barricading the road to halt the eviction.

‘War Redefined’ Challenges War as a Male Domain and Examines How Violent Conflict Impacts Women:

When we think of war, we often think of soldiers, tanks, weapons and battlefields. But most wars breach boundaries, affecting civilians, mostly women and children. Soldiers, guerillas and paramilitaries use tactics such as rape, fear, murder and pushing people off their land. We need to shift our paradigm of war and look at how it affects women’s lives.

War Redefined, the 5th and final installment in Women, War & Peace (WWP), is the capstone of the groundbreaking series featuring politicians, military personnel, scholars and activists discussing how women play a vital role in war and peace-keeping. Narrated by actor Geena Davis, a phenomenal women’s media activist, written and produced by Peter Bull, co-produced by Nina Chaudry, this powerful film threads stories told in the other parts of the series: Bosnian women surviving rape camps, Liberian women protesting for peace, Afghan women demanding their rights in negotiations and Afro-Colombian women contending with internal displacement. War Redefined, and the entire WWP series, challenges the assumption that war and peace belong to men’s domain.

 

‘Pray the Devil Back to Hell’ Portrays How the Women of Liberia, United in Peace, Changed a Nation

 

Written by Megan Kearns.

Men often dominate the debate of war, negotiation and even peace. Only one woman had ever won the Nobel Peace Prize. Until now. Last month, three women won the prize, including Leymah Gbowee and President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (along with Tawakkul Karman in Yemen) who fought for women’s rights and helped achieve peace in war-torn Liberia.

We often think we can’t make a difference in the world. We’re just one person. How can anything we do matter? But the activism of the women of Liberia should inspire us all to realize that we can impact change.

In the 2nd installment of the Women, War & Peace series, director Gini Reticker and producer Abigail E. Disney, and WWP series executive producers and co-creators, create a Tribeca Film Festival-winning documentary. Pray the Devil Back to Hell tells the powerful and uplifting story of the Liberian women, including activist and social worker Leymah Gbowee, who joined together and peacefully protested, helping end the civil war ravaging their country.

For almost 15 years, beginning on Christmas Eve in 1989, two civil wars plagued Liberia. Warlord and former president Charles Taylor resided at the center of both. He overthrew the regime during the first civil war and committed war crimes and human rights atrocities while president during the second civil war. Taylor recruited soldiers as young as 9-15 years old. With his private army, the dictator controlled the finances and terrorized the country.

“Life was bad. People…couldn’t even afford a cup of rice.”

Everyone in Liberia lived in a perpetual state of fear. Gbowee told how she trekked to her parents’ house, walking for 7 hours, while 5 months pregnant with her two young children. Her 3-year-old lamenting that he just wanted a piece of donut to eat. She said:

“Liberia had been at war so long that my children had been hungry and afraid their entire lives.”

Many pundits and journalists claimed ethnic conflicts spurred the civil war. But Gbowee elaborates:

“Some say war was about the gap between rich and poor. Some also say it was about the hatred between the different ethnic groups. Others say the war was to control natural resources. Power, money, ethnicity, greed…but there is nothing in my mind that should make people do what they did to the children of Liberia.”

Gbowee shares the inception for her radically simple idea for peace:

“I had a dream and it was like a crazy dream. Like someone was actually telling me to get the women of the church together and pray for peace.”

She rallied women from the surrounding Christian churches. Comprised of “ordinary mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters,” Gbowee and other women started the Christian Women’s Peace Initiative.

Asatu Bah Kenneth, Assistant Director of the Liberian National Police, attended a meeting of the Initiative, the only Muslim woman in the church. Inspired by their work, she reached out to other Muslim women, encouraging them to get involved. Kenneth formed the Liberian Muslim Women’s Organization to work towards peace. Kenneth said:

“When I sold the idea to them, they were more than excited.”

Initially divided by faith, the Christian and Muslim women soon came together. The two peace groups united to form the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace. Vaiba Flomo shared:

“But the message we took on was: Can a bullet pick and choose? Does the bullet know Christian from Muslim?”

While the women were organizing, Taylor’s opponents prepared to go to war. The warlords wreaked havoc on the country, giving boys guns and intimidating civilians. Just as in Bosnia (and often happens in war), rape remained a constant threat for the women of Liberia. Journalist Janet Bryant-Johnson said:

“They can rape you in front of your children, they could rape you in front of your husband…And they just do anything because they had guns.”

People were forced to enter displacement camps. Not only did they live in “abject poverty,” people, especially children, died each day. The Liberian women went to the camps to see how people were faring. Their hope amidst tragedy inspired Gbowee:

“These women had seen the worst of the wars something that I had not seen but they still had that vibrancy for life. And just being able to help them, to sit and hold their hands, and to hug their kids and looking at people who had lost everything and still having hope, I think that was where I got baptized into the women’s movement.”

As the war progressed, the women wanted to take more drastic measures. Inspired by their faith, the women donned white garb to declare to people they stood for peace. Thousands of women protested at the fish market each and every day, a strategic location visible to Taylor. Carrying a huge banner stating, “The women of Liberia want peace now.” It was the first time in Liberia’s history where Christian & Muslim women came together.

While all of the women worked together, Gbowee’s indomitable will buoyed the women’s spirits. “Desperate for peace,” the women decided to engage in a sex strike from their husbands. As they protested, the women knew they had to be brave. Flomo declared:

“We were not afraid. My mother was like, “They will beat you people, and they will kill you.” And we said, “Well if I should get killed, just remember me, that I was fighting for peace.”

Kenneth became the women’s “spy,” keeping them abreast of developments. An international call for peace talks “emboldened the women.” Taylor initially refused to negotiate. But the women created a decree “demanding…not appealing” the Liberian government participate in the peace talks. Taylor finally decided to stop ignoring the women and meet with them, “the moment Gbowee had lived for.” The women marched to Taylor’s mansion to present their document. As they walked onward and chanted, groups of women joined them. When they reached Taylor’s mansion, Gbowee read their statement aloud:

“With this message that the women of Liberia…We are tired of war. We are tired of running. We are tired of begging for bulgur wheat. We are tired of our children being raped. We are now taking this stand to secure the future. Because we believe as custodians of society tomorrow our children will ask us, “Mama, what was your role during the crisis?”

Taylor succumbed to the women’s demands and attended the peace talks in Ghana. Some women traveled to Ghana to protest. Gbowee said:

“We are their conscience, sitting out here. We are calling to their conscience to do the right thing. And the right thing now is to give the Liberian women and their children the peace that they so desperately need.”

As violence erupted in Monrovia, Liberia, some of the women remained in Ghana at the peace talks. Despite missiles and stray bullets, the other Liberian women risked their lives, continuing to protest each day at the fish market, singing and praying.

After 6 weeks, peace talks went nowhere. For the warlords, sleeping in lush accommodations and removed from the fighting, it was “like they were on vacation.” Frustrated, the women sat in the hall where the peace talks were held. “Seizing the hall,” the women locked arms and wouldn’t leave until a peace agreement was signed. Gbowee, accused of obstructing justice, passionately declared to the media at the conference:

“What we’ve done here today is to send up a signal to the world that we the Liberian women in Ghana, we are fed up with the war. We are tired of fighting, the killing of our people. We can do it again if we want to. And next time, we’ll be more than a thousand…We can do it and we’ll do it again.”

Two weeks later, they finally reach an agreement, including Taylor’s exile to Nigeria and the implementation of a transitional government until democratic elections held. As the women returned home, they were met with hugs and children chanting, “We want peace, no more war.” They knew their work wasn’t over as “peace is a process; it’s not an event.”

The women believed they couldn’t achieve peace until they attained democracy. So they campaigned for presidential candidate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. With the “Iron Lady’s” election, President Johnson Sirleaf (who has helped erase the national debt, built schools, improved roads and increased access to healthcare) became the first elected female president in Africa. She acknowledged the Liberian women’s brave accomplishment:

“It is the women who labored and advocated for peace throughout our region.”

Despite the horrific subject matter of war, the uplifting documentary exudes optimism. The women achieved something “unimaginable.” The beauty of the documentary lies in director Reticker showcasing the Liberian women. With no narrator, she lets their voices speak for themselves.

The Liberian women’s unity brought about peace. Community activist Etweda “Sugars” Cooper admits:

“If we had not had different women from different walks of life, banding together, we may not have been able to solve the problem.”

Gbowee believes the film Pray the Devil Back to Hell has lasting impact and can inspire women to realize their power and mobilize:

” … This documentary is like a landmark or something that tells other women, ‘People did it before we came, we’ve done it, and they can also do it,'” she said. “So it’s not a fluke. It can happen. People just need to rise up and rise above the politics that so deeply divide us as women.”

The women’s tenacity, resilience and unity will amaze and inspire you. Social injustices plague the world; the staggering number of problems can overwhelm. But one person can make a difference; a powerful reminder that we each matter. We need to put aside our differences to combat injustice and reclaim peace. One voice can inspire others, triggering disparate voices to harmoniously come together; a symphony of voices can change the world.

Watch the full episode of Pray the Devil Back to Hell online or on PBS.

Megan Kearns is a blogger, freelance writer and activist. She blogs at The Opinioness of the World, a feminist vegan site. Her work has also appeared at Arts & Opinion, Fem2pt0, Italianieuropei, Open Letters Monthly, and A Safe World for Women. She earned her B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology and a Graduate Certificate in Women and Politics and Public Policy. Megan lives in Boston with more books than she will probably ever read in her lifetime.

Megan contributed reviews of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, Something Borrowed, !Women Art Revolution, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Kids Are All Right (for 2011 Best Picture Nominee Review Series), The Reader (for 2009 Best Picture Nominee Review Series), Man Men (for Mad Men Week), Game of Thrones and The Killing (for Emmy Week 2011), Alien/Aliens (for Women in Horror Week 2011), and I Came to Testify in the  Women, War & Peace series. She was the first writer featured as a Monthly Guest Contributor.

Ripley’s Pick: ‘Tiny Furniture’

Tiny Furniture. Starring Lena Dunham, Laurie Simmons, Grace Dunham, and Jemima Kirke. Written and directed by Lena Dunham.
The film follows Aura (played by writer/director Lena Dunham), a 20-something self-described misanthrope who, after graduating from a film program at a small liberal arts school in Ohio, moves back to New York City to live with her famous-artist mother, Siri (played by Dunham’s real-life mother Laurie Simmons) and her budding-genius sister, highschooler Nadine (played by Dunham’s real-life sister Grace Dunham). The film wants to show that Aura is, in fact, Having a Very, Very Hard Time, as the tagline reveals, and it puts her through the typical hell that’s common in the heterosexual coming-of-age stories of early twenties womanhood: the struggle to find a reasonably paying job, a desire to make that college degree mean something, and, of course, a few random hookups with emotionally unavailable men.
But more than anything, Tiny Furniture is a film about the relationships among women.
When Aura arrives home from college, she’s immediately confronted with her mother photographing her younger sister among a setup of, literally, tiny furniture. And, while the first indication of sibling rivalry appears, it already seems more refreshing and complicated than the traditional cliched portrayal of sister-hate and woman-on-woman divisiveness. The women converse with one another as if Aura hadn’t been in Ohio for four years; in fact, the casualness of their interaction–her mother barely looking up from her photography, her sister making sarcastic comparisons about her slender legs versus Aura’s heavier frame–suggests a comfort with one another that transcends their almost performed familial coldness.
Perhaps most intriguingly, the on-screen relationships feel so authentic that the unmentioned absent father is hardly noticeable. Who cares, after all?  Women rock the screen, and, unlike a couple of recent woman-centric films (The Kids Are All Right, Winter’s Bone–both arguably feminist) it has nothing to do with a need to compensate for the failings of the men in their lives.
Almost immediately when Aura moves back to New York, she meets up with her childhood friend Charlotte (played by Jemima Kirke) at a party. Charlotte is portrayed as a spoiled, drama-craving brat, but Aura clings to her, at one point even referring to Charlotte as her best friend. (Her mother later says sarcastically in response, “After two weeks?”) They hang out in Charlotte’s apartment, getting high together and talking about art, men, joblessness, addiction, their parents–and they flatter each other; the audience is never encouraged to view these women as rivals. The point of their friendship is to illustrate the absolute aloneness of being an aimless twenty-something and not knowing what the hell to do in life. In several hilarious scenes, Charlotte begs Aura not to leave, once going as far as to roll around on her bed saying, “Please stay,” which the audience is meant to find both endearing and pathetic.
And while the relationship between Charlotte and Aura works mainly because of their shared loneliness and need to connect, the onscreen relationship between the two sisters thoughtfully investigates the obstacles inherent in familial relationships. In fact, it didn’t surprise me at all when I discovered that they’re actually real-life sisters because their sibling rapport feels incredibly authentic. While Aura drinks bottle after bottle of her mother’s wine with her friends, Nadine runs on the treadmill, does crunches while reading a book, writes award-winning poetry, and teases Aura about her directionless existence. But the back-and-forth nitpicking between them is perfectly juxtaposed against scenes exhibiting such tenderness as can only occur in close relationships.
One of my favorite scenes in the movie involves Nadine throwing a party while her mother is out, leaving Aura to supervise things. Of course, the party gets out of hand–we’re dealing with a slew of highschoolers railing against Aura-as-Authority-Figure (because, let’s face it, if Aura is anything, Authority Figure isn’t on the list)–and Aura starts to have a panic attack. She does the only thing she can think to do, call Charlotte to come over and help her get the party under control. Which is hilarious. Because Charlotte is more of a disaster than Aura is. So, it isn’t surprising at all when Charlotte starts giving lap dances and Aura starts walking around the party in her underwear.
The screaming match that ensues between Aura and Nadine could’ve been taken from a direct transcript of a real-life sibling fight. I cringed at the truthfulness of Nadine’s accusations as she criticized Aura for craving the attention of high school boys. (Those boys, however, reciprocated by making fun of Aura and dissing her body.) And when Nadine starts smacking Aura with a spatula and storms off, the audience feels sympathy for both sisters; neither is the villain in this film, and Dunham’s navigation of that terrain seems effortless from beginning to end. I won’t spoil the brief make-up scene between Aura and Nadine because the film is worth watching for that moment alone.
Aura spends much of the film, when she isn’t fighting with her sister, thinking of herself as somewhat of an artist/filmmaker, as evidenced by her YouTube videos (where she usually wears only her underwear or a bathing suit). Since Aura isn’t traditionally beautiful, and isn’t a size two like most of the half-naked women we’re used to seeing onscreen, at first it’s almost shocking to watch her walk around barely clothed throughout the film (which further illustrates the level of comfort and intimacy she feels with her mother and sister). But Dunham doesn’t include those scenes merely for shock value. The comments left on her YouTube videos consistently make fun of her weight and her looks. She reads the insulting feedback aloud to Charlotte, and they both try to blow it off, but not without Aura remarking on how difficult it is to put that negativity out of her mind.
For anyone who’s ever browsed the comments on YouTube videos, it’s impossible not to notice the disgusting misogyny and homophobia that plague them. Not only does Dunham subtly comment on that, but she also manages to reinforce the importance of supportive women friendships as a way to help combat the barrage of bullshit women deal with daily, especially when it concerns unattainable beauty ideals. It’s interesting to note, too, that Charlotte is traditionally attractive, and yet their friendship never digresses into any sort of competition, least of all one that involves some stereotypical competition over men.
The film doesn’t completely shy away from the subject of men, though, and the two men Aura meets both basically suck. One spends the first half of the movie mooching off Aura–and she lets him–staying in her house, eating her food, drinking her mother’s wine, but when she tries to take their “friendship” to the next level, he refuses. For Aura to attempt to hook up with such a caricature of a loser further drives home her loneliness and desire for connection. With anyone. So it isn’t surprising either when she goes after the chef she works with, who likes “Asian tentacle rape” pornography–whatever the hell that is–and exploits Aura’s obvious crush on him to get her to give him pills (even though he has a girlfriend).
Watching the film, one can’t avoid thinking, “C’mon, Aura, you know better than this.” But the material is so impossible not to relate to–who hasn’t lusted after the entirely wrong person, and known it?–that one can’t fault her for putting herself through it.
Those interactions with men accompanied by Aura’s reading aloud of her mother’s diary (written during her twenties) give further insight into the relationship Aura has with her mother. In many ways, regardless of how often the two women clash, Aura admires her. She’s a successful artist who’s clearly independent. She’s rich. She has no apparent need for a man in her life. Yet her diary reveals many of her obsessions in her twenties: with body image–she constantly journaled her food choices, with men and their inadequacies, and particularly with feeling like she wasn’t living up to her potential as an artist.
The final scene of the film, with Aura curled up with her mother in her mother’s bed, discussing the diary, openly discussing Aura’s horrid sexual encounter from earlier in the evening (completely absent of judgment from her mother–her only concern is that Aura practices safe sex), discussing Aura’s own fears of failure, which her mother squashes with, “Oh, you’ll be much more successful than I am,” feels so heart-wrenchingly honest it’s almost difficult to watch. And the ending, which features a literal ticking clock that could’ve felt contrived and artificial, totally works. It isn’t that the two women desire to stop time; they just don’t want the obvious reminder of its passing.
As Aura struggles with all these issues, reading her mother’s diary (and sharing it with the audience) serves to remind us that even though coming-of-age ain’t fun, particularly for young women navigating the patriarchy, it’s still possible to come out on the other end fairly unscathed.

Director Spotlight: Kathryn Bigelow

Kathryn-Bigelow-001
Welcome to our second installment of Director Spotlight, where we explore the biographies and filmographies of an often overlooked group: women film directors. (We’ve also spotlighted Allison Anders.)
Kathryn Bigelow is all over the web right now for being the first woman to win an Academy Award for Best Achievement in Directing (not to mention the Oscar for Best Picture, the BAFTA for Best Director and Best Picture, and the DGA for Directing, among dozens of other awards for The Hurt Locker). Her win is a source of pride and great relief everywhere, though it’s not without its controversy (chiefly because the Academy rewarded a woman interested in portrayals of masculinity).

The 2000 book Feminist Hollywood: from Born in Flames to Point Break, by Christina Lane, contains a section on Bigelow that nicely rebuts critical reaction to her and her films.

Bigelow, who has taken up the traditionally “male” genre of the action film, has been criticized for lacking any new insight into gender politics. Feminist critic Ally Acker contends that Bigelow “adopt[s] the patriarchal values of fun-through-bloodshed and a relishing of violence” creating “nothing more than male clones.” Similarly, more mainstream male critics have echoed David Denby’s remark: “I can’t see that much has been gained now that a woman is free to make the same rotten movie as a man.” These simplistic generalizations do not allow for the nuances in Bigelow’s work, nor do they stop out of essentialist notions about what is possible in the “male category” of action films. I propose that Bigelow’s films rely on a complex relationship between genre and gender, often blending genres or reversing generic expectations, and that they are best understood in the context of her independent origins.

 Bigelow had been making films thirty years before being critically lauded for The Hurt Locker; here is a snapshot of her career.

The Loveless (1982)
Bigelow’s feature film debut was also Willem Dafoe’s debut. An homage to The Wild One, The Loveless parodied Reagan-style nostalgia for the 1950s. In a scathing review, Janet Maslin of The New York Times says:

This movie, a slavish homage to ”The Wild One,” is full of peach and aqua luncheonette scenes, which give it some minuscule visual edge over the original. But otherwise, it’s no improvement. Its evocation of tough- guy glamour is ridiculously stilted. (”This endless blacktop is my sweet eternity,” says the not-very-Brandoesque hero.) And it regards the past with absolutely no perspective or wit.

A more positive perspective come from Time Out London:

‘Man, I was what you call ragged… I knew I was gonna hell in a breadbasket’ intones the hero in the great opening moments of The Loveless, and as he zips up and bikes out, it’s clear that this is one of the most original American independents in years: a bike movie which celebrates the ’50s through ’80s eyes.

Near Dark (1987)

Fun fact: the above poster was designed to promote the DVD release of Near Dark, and the resemblance to a certain tween sensation is no coincidence–from a marketing perspective. The poster may, however, be the only thing these films have in common.

From Maryanne Johanson, The Flick Filosopher:

As darkly amusing as Near Dark is, though, Bigelow never romanticizes one of the great American perils. This is an intense film, an eerie depiction of the isolated, empty middle of America and the dangers that lurk there… and a surprisingly haunting, if never entirely sympathetic, portrait of the loneliness and torment of the eternally undead.

Blue Steel (1989)

Jamie Lee Curtis stars in Blue Steel, a psychologically intense cop thriller. IMDb describes it simply: “A female rookie in the police force engages in a cat and mouse game with a pistol wielding psychopath who becomes obsessed with her.”

Roger Ebert, in his review from 1990, says:

“Blue Steel” was directed by Kathryn Bigelow, whose previous credit was the well-regarded “Near Dark.” Does that make it a fundamentally different picture than if it had been directed by a man? Perhaps, in a way. The female “victim” is never helpless here, although she is set up in all the usual ways ordained by male-oriented thrillers. She can fight back with her intelligence, her police training and her physical strength. And there is an anger in the way the movie presents the male authorities in the film, who are blinded to the facts by their preconceptions about women in general and female cops in particular.

The bottom line, however, is that “Blue Steel” is an efficient thriller, a movie that pays off with one shock and surprise after another, including a couple of really serpentine twists and a couple of superior examples of the killer-jumping-unexpectedly-from-the-dark scene.

Point Break (1991)

Perhaps her best-known film before The Hurt Locker, Point Break is a film about an FBI agent (Keanu Reeves) who goes undercover to find a group of surfing bank robbers. It’s campy, goofy at times, but full of suspense and wonderfully-shot action sequences. As with most of her films, critics were harsh.

It’s hard to decide whether Point Break is a really bad good movie or a really good bad movie. On one hand, it boasts thrilling, original action sequences, a tightly woven caper plot, and a cast jam-packed with Hollywood middleweights acting — and surfing — their asses off. On the other hand, it also suffers from terrifying leaps of story logic, a vacuous emotional core, and some of the silliest dialogue ever spoken onscreen. It’s a Hollywood formula movie at its best and worst.

Strange Days (1995)

Written by James Cameron and starring Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, and Juliette Lewis, Strange Days tackles the sci-fi topic of virtual reality.

The IMDb plot summary:

Set in the year 1999 during the last days of the old millennium, the movie tells the story of Lenny Nero, an ex-cop who now deals with data-discs containing recorded memories and emotions. One day he receives a disc which contains the memories of a murderer killing a prostitute. Lenny investigates and is pulled deeper and deeper in a whirl of blackmail, murder and rape. Will he survive and solve the case?

Once again, Mr. Ebert:

“Strange Days” does three things that will make it a cult film.

It creates a convincing future landscape; it populates it with a hero who comes out of the noir tradition and is flawed and complex rather than simply heroic, and it provides a vocabulary. Look for “tapehead,” “jacking in” and the movie’s spin on “playback” to appear in the vernacular.

At the same time, depending more on mood and character than logic, the movie backs into an ending that is completely implausible.

The Weight of Water (2000)

Adapted from Anita Shreve’s novel, The Weight of Water stars Sean Penn, Elizabeth Hurley, Sarah Polley, and Catherine McCormick. Perhaps best known for its two-year release delay (complete in 2000, but not released until 2002), the film received uneven reviews.

Here is the Rotten Tomatoes synopsis:

Two stories unravel simultaneously in this dark and suspenseful film. The first story, set in the present day, concerns a photographer, Jean (Catherine McCormack). She is working on an article for a magazine about a pair of bloody murders that happened 200 years before on the Isle of Shoals, just off the coast of New Hampshire. To get the pictures she needs she must visit the location of the murders, and so her husband, Thomas (Sean Penn), arranges a yachting trip with his brother, Rich (Josh Lucas), and Rich’s girlfriend, Adaline (Elizabeth Hurley). The foursome pal around, enjoying the sea and the sun, while Adaline shamelessly seduces Thomas. Meanwhile, Jean is reliving the Isle of Shoals murders in her head, which is where the second story comes in. Maren (Sarah Polley) is a Norwegian woman who has recently immigrated to America with her husband. When her sister (Katrin Cartlidge) and sister-in-law (Vinessa Shaw) are brutally bludgeoned to death with an axe, she is the sole survivor, and thus the only one who knows the truth about what happened. THE WEIGHT OF WATER draws a parallel between these two tense episodes, as the surf swirls menacingly, foretelling imminent disaster.

Stephanie Zacharek’s review from Salon:

Bigelow’s movie might not come together as cleanly as it should. But as it moves along, there’s always something to watch for, either in the performances or in the way the scenes are so thoughtfully joined. Bigelow is an uneven director — although I find pictures like “Point Break” hugely enjoyable, I couldn’t bring myself to face “K-19: The Widowmaker.” But in “The Weight of Water,” she’s clearly trying to tell a much different type of story, in a way that at least stretches her capabilities. (Considering the way Hollywood pigeonholes directors, that may have been her chief problem in getting this picture released.) We all complain when filmmakers “sell out” and give us recycled Hollywood formula. But maybe it’s also time to stop listening when we hear those handy, zombielike, all-purpose words, “I hear it’s not very good.”
***
Kathryn Bigelow has directed feature-length films, short films, and television episodes which aren’t included here. She isn’t afraid to take risks in filmmaking, and this trait alone insures we’ll see more work from her in the future.

A last word from Christina Lane:

By rewinding and fast-forwarding through Bigelow’s films–and thereby refusing to adhere to the counter-cinema/Hollywood divide–we can begin to locate her complication of genre conventions and her re-casting of the politics of gender and sexuality. While there is no need to label Bigelow’s films “feminist” per se, they certainly move within a “feminist orbit” and engage political issues. Her films encourage spectators to ask questions about gender, genre, and power.

‘Obvious Child’: Short Film Review

Obvious Child made its way around the blogosphere last month, but I just watched it today. Here are some general thoughts.

Abortion is a legal medical procedure, and it’s presented as such in this film. That alone is a welcome change–as others have stated–from recent film and television. Obvious comparisons have been made to Knocked Up and Juno, as both completely failed in their representations of options for a woman facing an unplanned pregnancy (the former refusing to even speak the word abortion, and the latter representing a dumpy and disturbing clinic).

The star of Obvious Child, Donna (played by Jenny Slate), is a freelancer who lives in hipster Brooklyn. Others have mentioned the “indie sensibility” of the film, and Donna is the kind of privileged hipster many of us love to hate–and she’s a little bit like Juno in this regard, with toned-down dialogue and ten years added. She has an immature sense of humor (her use of “fart-face” and “fucktard” come to mind), and she just wants to go out and have a good time after the ugly end of her two-year relationship with Joe.

But her maturity level is kind of the point. She is an obvious child. Not a woman who is ready to bring a child into the world. It’s okay that she’s childish, because she’s mature enough to recognize where she is in life, and what her priorities are. She might be a tad immature, but she’s smart and independent. What could have been a self-destructive one-night-stand was handled about as responsibly as possible, and when she learned of her pregnancy she didn’t break down. She handled it.

There are some weaknesses in the film. Donna’s phone conversation with her mother–which was the ethical high point of the film–fell flat. I like that little was made of the revelation–and comparison–of abortion pre- and post-Roe, but the acting left something to be desired. And, there is the whole privileged-white-hipster-with-easy-access-to-a-clinic issue. While the tone and tenor of the humor isn’t my favorite, I like the film and its smart, sweet nature.

Read what Jezebel, Reproductive Health Reality Check, Feministing, and Bitch have to say, and share your thoughts with us!

 

Obvious Child from Gillian Robespierre on Vimeo.