‘Nightcrawler’: Centering the White Fear Narrative

Two Things:

1. Jake Gyllenhaal will be nominated for an Oscar.

2. ‘Nightcrawler’ is one of the most honest depictions of the White Fear Narrative on film.

 

Jake Gyllenhaal as Lou Bloom.
Jake Gyllenhaal as Lou Bloom

 

Two Things:

1. Jake Gyllenhaal will be nominated for an Oscar.

2. Nightcrawler is one of the most honest depictions of the White Fear Narrative on film.

 

Bloom and Rick on the scene (Jake Gyllenhaal and Riz Ahmed)
Bloom and Rick on the scene (Jake Gyllenhaal and Riz Ahmed)

 

Gyllenhaal plays Louis Bloom, a thief, a liar, and from my observations, a man on the spectrum of some form of neurodiversity. Obsessive compulsive perhaps, or living with some form of high functioning autism. (It was fascinating to watch Gyllenhaal’s face transmit so much dubious thinking behind those intense detail-oriented eyes.) Bloom is a lonely man who scrapes by on the underbelly of society. His white male privilege allows him to steal, beat up people, and sabotage competitors without fear of repercussions from the police. As the renowned comedian Paul Mooney would say, Bloom has “the complexion for the protection.”

Bloom lives in what appears to be an average working-class L.A. neighborhood (his basic studio apartment is as meticulous as his choice of words when speaking), but his only source of income and his only real viable skill is stealing from others. To the casual observer, his freshly pressed clothes, average white guy looks, and cheap car render him almost invisible. He is perceived to be a normal white person. And this perception of “normal” is crucial to his eventual rise in the world of crime journalism—nightcrawling, capturing horrific images of the worst of humanity and selling them to the highest TV network bidder. The bloodier the images the better. These “stringer” clips of film can bring in hundreds and upwards of thousands of dollars depending on who captures the images first and uploads them to the TV station the fastest. The mantra of “if it bleeds it leads” can now be given a dollar value. And the clock is always ticking.

Bloom stumbles across a car accident on the freeway one late night, and for some inexplicable reason, decides to pull over and watch the rescue of a woman from her burning car. As some police officers try to save the woman, a freelance stringer arrives (Bill Paxton in a small but compelling role) and begins filming the rescue operation. Bloom is introduced to his new obsession, TV crime news, and in his compulsive fashion, steals a high-end bike and sells it to get his hands on a cheap video recorder. A TV news starter kit.

 

Boss Lady. TV producer Nina Romino (Rene Russo) showing Bloom the ropes.
Boss Lady. TV producer Nina Romino (Rene Russo) showing Bloom the ropes.

 

Bloom sells his first piece of shaky footage to Nina Romina (Rene Russo), a jaded veteran TV news producer who works at the lowest-rated TV station in Los Angeles. Nina tells Bloom that he has a good eye, and with this bit of encouragement (and his intense obsessive nature) Bloom sets off to take crime journalism by storm. He buys a police scanner and even hires his first crew member (Riz Ahmed in a heartbreaking role as a marginalized Guy Friday just desperate enough to endure Bloom’s reckless behavior).

 

Rick (Riz Ahmed) enduring the Mad hatter that is Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal)
Rick (Riz Ahmed) enduring the Mad Hatter that is Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal)

 

Bloom is heckled by Paxton for being slow to big stories, and this disrespect spurns Bloom to be the best in the biz. Being the best means manipulating the raw footage before Nina gets her hands on it. The film moves into even darker territory when the quest to impress Nina and one up Paxton taps into Bloom’s deceitful nature: he now begins staging crime scenes by moving bodies, rearranging evidence, and omitting images to play up white fears of crime from the urban areas creeping into lily white suburbs. Nina even tells Bloom that the best stories are “A woman running down the street with her throat cut.” The implication here is a preference for white women because they illicit the most sympathy from white mainstream audiences. White news producers play up the recycled white woman in distress angle so often that it has become banal today.

Bloom stages the narrative.
Bloom stages the narrative.

 

 

Bloom creates the perfect angle to spin a story.
Bloom creates the perfect angle to spin a story.

 

It’s a narrative used since the early 17th century. This narrative provides high viewership numbers, and Nina needs high ratings or she will be sacked by her bosses. Nina is unapologetic about framing whiteness as the center of the universe and churning out fear-based stories that disrupt the sanctity of white comfort. She is so apathetic about it, that she appears to dismiss how this narrative implicates her in upholding white supremacy, patriarchy, and the erroneous belief that whiteness is the be all to end all. This makes the film brutally honest. It does not sugarcoat what all non-white Americans understand from jump: the implicit bias of the American mainstream media. The centering of whiteness and white comfort are the only stories worth telling and protecting. And I applaud that honesty in this movie. It made me angry too since I am someone who comes from the margins of society trying not to be marginalized on a daily basis. At the same time, I give serious props to the writer/director Dan Gilroy. He gives it to you straight with no chaser. As much as I grew to loathe Bloom, I was still compelled to see him through to the end. He’s a real punch in the gut. And Gyllenhaal is simply brilliant in his portrayal of a man I want to see burn for his transgressions.

 

Bloom having a moment after failing to please Nina with great footage.
Bloom having a moment after failing to please Nina with great footage.

 

Eventually Bloom films the biggest story of his new career, a home invasion in an exclusive suburb, with plenty of blood, guns, and bodies, including a missing baby. He arrives at the scene before the police and enters the home filming every gory detail, including the murderers who escaped before Bloom entered the house. He withholds the footage of the killers and their SUV license plate. He has plans to keep the story going by following the so-called “Horror House” murderers and setting them up for a bigger news story– a future staged police shootout he will capture on film. He will control and manipulate white public fear. Because he can.

 

Bloom capturing the story of his life, and manipulating it.
Bloom capturing the story of his life inside the “Horror House”, and manipulating it.

 

When Bloom shows the pre-edited Horror House footage to Nina, I swear her face appears orgasmic as she savors every bullet hole, and every inch of blood splatter. It seriously looks like she’s getting the best sex of her life. Nina calls in the newsroom lawyer to see how much she can get away with showing on live TV. As long as the victim’s faces are pixelated and the home address isn’t given out, it’s a go.

This move spins the story into a new direction with the appearance of the police who want to confiscate all the footage of the Horror House crime scene. Nina sends them to Bloom’s home, and no-nonsense Detective Fronteiri (Michael Hyatt) is determined to solve this case. From the moment she enters Bloom’s apartment, Detective Fronteiri knows he’s a conniving liar.

 

Detective Fronteiri (Michael Hyatt) has no chill. She sees through Bloom's b.s.
Detective Fronteiri (Michael Hyatt) has no chill. She sees through Bloom’s b.s.

 

Later, when Bloom sets into motion the tragic events that will net him his biggest stringer payday yet, Detective Fronteiri has to concede that she can never prove Bloom’s willful obfuscation, but she lets him know that she is aware of his deceit. He withheld crucial evidence to make a name for himself. And there are chalk lines on the ground for unnecessary deaths because of this deceit. In her eyes we see that she understands that he is controlling the false narrative of events. He has painted himself as a white victim who feared for his life and safety, and only called the police when he thought some big bad Latinos were following him. In reality, he planned to capitalize on the script he had pre-written for others to play out, including the Latino bad guys. He is the puppet master who pulls the strings. Detective Fronteiri knows this but is unable to take Bloom down. And Bloom gets to prosper in the end and continue nightcrawling with a brand new crew of underlings who have no idea that he has sociopathic tendencies. He just looks like a clean cut articulate white man with ambition. Y’know, the good guy.

The core story of Nightcrawler is how the media, TV news in particular, controls and manipulates the cultural discourse that portrays whiteness and white privilege as tangible things to be protected in America. Whiteness takes preeminence over non-white individuals and cultures. Non-white individuals in news stories are always seen as the scary Other, disrupting the comfort of good white folks–especially good white folks who live within high income zip codes. Fear-based media sells and it goes hand-in-hand with the threat of white comfort. Any challenge to the white comfort narrative is an assault on the perception that whiteness is the norm. Challenges to that white comfort norm are often rendered meaningless and worse, pathological. Look at real life TV news. Black Americans like Trayvon Martin, Renisha McBride, Marissa Alexander, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Jordan Davis, Eric Garner et al, are victims of police violence, violent anti-Black citizens, majority white jurors with irrational fears of Black skin, and the racist court of public opinion that puts Black victims on trial with immediate character assassinations. This violence done to Black Americans is used to uphold the sanctity of white comfort, and the delusions that white privilege perpetuates. Nothing in the media is happenstance. It is created, shaped, edited, and shared on television and the internet to protect a perceived white normality. All hail Hydra, darkies be damned.

 

Recent cartoon depicting the irrational fear whites have of Black bodies. #MikeBrown
Recent cartoon depicting the irrational and dehumanizing fear whites have of Black bodies. #MikeBrown

 

Perceptions of fear-based news do not match reality. Recently, Rudy Giuliani (in a television debate with Professor Michael Eric Dyson) tried to conflate Black-on-Black crime as an excuse to ignore state sanctioned violence on Black bodies, many of whom are children. He failed to mention white-on-white crime, or how most violent crimes are perpetuated by loved ones people already know. He misused facts to be obtuse and to derail the #BlackLivesMatter conversation on social media, once again centering the white fear narrative, and painting Black people for the zillionth time as the monstrous Other, the boogie man that has to be kept in check by more police crackdowns on Blackness. He became part of the media-created frenzy used to frighten good suburban white folk. The perception he tried to paint didn’t match the reality of the discussion. Much like the TV producer Nina, when faced with a counter-narrative that didn’t match the story she was trying to sell, Giuliani stuck to his erroneous script to fan the flames of white centered fear. Truth is more fucked up than fiction.

The power dynamics between Bloom and Nina is an engaging interplay of sexual tension, and sexual manipulation.  At the start of the film, Bloom is Nina’s subordinate, her little free-lance worker bee. Halfway through there’s a shift in the relationship, not quite equal, but Nina does treat him like a colleague. Bloom wants Nina sexually, and when he’s done his painstaking research on her career failures and her desperate need to keep her job, he calculates that he is worth more to her professionally than she lets on and uses this truth to pressure her into a date, and soon after, a sexual relationship.

 

Boss Lady still in charge. Angle framed forcing Bloom to look up at her.
Boss Lady still in charge. Angle framed so that Bloom has to look up at Nina.

 

 

Not equals but Bloom impresses TV news producer Nina with his work ethic.
Not equals, but Bloom impresses TV news producer Nina with his work ethic.

 

Power Dynamic shift: Nina realizes her new stringer has demands.
Power Dynamic shift: Nina realizes her new stringer has demands. Low angle framed so she appears to look up at Bloom.

 

Nina coerced into a dinner date she didn't want to keep Bloom's stringer hits.
Nina coerced into a dinner date she didn’t want to keep Bloom’s stringer hits.

 

One reading of this sexual coercion can be viewed as blackmail and harassment. But Rene Russo imbues Nina with a calculated agency that can also be interpreted as a woman who also knows her worth to Bloom, and uses his desire for her to get what she wants. I also sense that Nina actually finds Bloom attractive, especially when he makes demands of her. The same sexual look she gives bloody images is the same look she gives Bloom when he tries to dominate her. A lesser script would’ve used this tension as a subplot for Nina to rise above Bloom’s coercion. Instead, Nina concedes, has an off-screen relationship with him that we don’t see, and it is a stunning tête-à-tête to witness. It may very well gain Rene Russo her own Supporting Actor nod come Oscar season.

Nightcrawler is a wonderful respite from the big budget tent-pole films dominating the cinema. Original, daring, infuriating, and honest about ugly truths, I expect Jake Gyllenhaal to see his name on the Best Actor Oscar Ballot. He might even walk away with that gold statuette. And I would applaud him for it.

 

Jake Gyllenhaal, this film makes up for "Prince of Persia". Expect to be nominated for an Oscar.
Jake Gyllenhaal, this film makes up for “Prince of Persia.” Expect to be nominated for an Oscar.

 

 

Come get this work.
Come get this work.

_______________________________

Lisa Bolekaja is a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Workshop and was named an Octavia E. Butler Scholar by the Carl Brandon Society. She co-hosts a screenwriting podcast called “Hilliard Guess’ Screenwriters Rant Room” and her work has appeared in “Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History” (Crossed Genres Publishing), “The WisCon Chronicles: Volume 8″  (Aqueduct Press), and the SF/F anthology, “How to Live on Other Planets: A Handbook for Aspiring Aliens” (Upper Rubber Boot Books). An associate member of the Horror Writers Association, and a former Film Independent Fellow. She is a profesional agitator on Twitter @LisaBolekaja

‘White Bird In A Blizzard’: A Storm of Crime, Carnality, and Coming of Age

For months, Kat idly notes her mother Eve’s increasingly odd behaviour, but is too busy falling in love and losing her virginity to care, until, suddenly, one day, Eve disappears without a trace. Kat assumes she ran away because she didn’t love them, and attempts to go on with her life, but a police investigation slowly begins circling her family. As an audience, we’ve been conditioned to see a movie with thriller or mystery elements in it as a thriller or mystery story. But Gregg Araki’s film, ‘White Bird in a Blizzard,’ is only part mystery, part coming of age story, and part haunted dreamscape, and refuses to be easily categorized as any of the above.

The poster for White Bird in A Blizzard
The poster for White Bird in A Blizzard

 

Spoilers ahead!

As White Bird in a Blizzard opens, Kat Connors (Shailene Woodley) is a teenage girl like any other, just at that point where she’s realizing how the life she wants for herself differs from the one modeled by the adults around her.

It’s 1988 and she’s challenging the limits for what she get away with, stomping out of her suburban home in heavy make-up and short skirts, enjoying loud music and lots of sex, and through all of it, fighting with her disdainful housewife-in-pearls mother, Eve (Eva Green, popping in to play a variation of the cold, elegant woman role she’s perfected).

As she matures, Kat begins to see the cracks in her parents’ 1950s style-American Dream-marriage. Her nebbish father Brock (Christopher Meloni) is flailing in his attempts to understand Eve, who is displaying depressive symptoms and acting jealous and even cruel toward Kat.

For months, Kat idly notes Eve’s increasingly odd behaviour, but is too busy falling in love and losing her virginity to care, until, suddenly, one day, Eve disappears without a trace. Kat assumes she ran away because she didn’t love them, and attempts to go on with her life, but a police investigation slowly begins circling her family.

As an audience, we’ve been conditioned to see a movie with thriller or mystery elements in it as a thriller or mystery story. But Gregg Araki’s film, White Bird in a Blizzard, is only part mystery, part coming of age story, and part haunted dreamscape, and refuses to be easily categorized as any of the above. The atmosphere, steamed up with Kat’s barely contained lust and Eve’s frosty shadow, dominates.

The real mystery is not who killed Eve or where she disappeared to. In fact, these answers are hinted at early on and are clear to the audience long before Kat even cares to investigate for herself. If a mystery is at important, it’s the mystery of what kind of person Kat will end up being and how her memories of her difficult, often unlovable mother, will shape her in her adulthood.

 

Eve feels stifled by her role as a housewife
Eve feels stifled by her role as a housewife

 

The film follow Kat through two years pivotal years, as she finishes high school and begins college, punctuated with voiceover narration, flashbacks to her earlier relationship with her mother and introspection delivered in appointments with her psychiatrist. For most of this time, Kat is unmotivated to solve the mystery and this plot is sidelined by her burgeoning sexuality.

Things drag a bit in this section, as the film becomes merely a teenager’s sexual odyssey with hints of something darker just offscreen, just outside of her experience. We watch Kat get tired of her dumb and shiny first boyfriend, Phil, the boy next door (Shiloh Fernandez), and move on to the macho cop in charge of her mother’s case (Thomas Jane). Kat is unapologetically sexual. She admits that she is “horny” and excited to have sex again and again, complaining to Phil that it has been too long since they’d last done it. For Kat, this was not true love and she knows it. Her desire is sex itself, not sex with him specifically. In her conscious attempt to seduce of the detective, assuring him she is already 18 and already sexuality active, she is not a lost little girl manipulated by an older man, attempting to use this relationship to make an official move into adulthood. However, besides sex, there is little at stake until the final act.

 

Kat is overcome by lust and explores her sexual desires
Kat is overcome by lust and explores her sexual desires

 

Kat enjoys sex and admires her body, rare things for a teenage girl to be allowed in either movies or in real life. She has reason to be proud, as she has carved and shaped out her body, from beneath the prepubescent baby fat her mother always teased her about. Eve was the kind of mother who tsk-ed at every bite her daughter took, constantly reminding her of how much thinner and more appealing she was at her age. But as Kat relates, her mother only became crueler toward her as she came into her own.

Their dynamic is a Grimm’s fairy tale, the beautiful daughter sucking the life out of her once beautiful mother, slowly killing her and then replacing her as an object of lust. In Eve’s mind, they appear to be in competition. After noticing Kat’s new body, she appears in revealing clothes in front of Phil and flirts with him. She watches Kat dress and do her make-up, hidden in the shadows, and lingers too long to watch her fooling around with Phil. In one harrowing scene, she comes into Kat’s room at night and attempts to physically assault her.

 

Eve is consumed by jealousy while observing her daughter’s youth
Eve is consumed by jealousy while observing her daughter’s youth

 

One possible flaw in the otherwise skilled depiction of their difficult relationship is the casting of Eva Green as the mother of Shailene Woodley’s character when she is only 12 years older than her. By casting an actress who is not old enough to be Kat’s mother, the idea of the sexual identity crisis and aging Eve is experiencing is skewed. This is not how she should look at this age, because the actress is not of the right age.

The disappearance of Kat’s mother echoes the conflict between a mother and her daughter as she comes of age. Kat must reject her mother’s influence and ideals in favor of forming her own. Here, Kat’s mother services as a destructive influence on her life, but this influence is pervasive and unshakeable. Kat cannot reject her mother, even when she is sure her mother has rejected her, even that her mother never loved her.  Even as she tries to, Eve haunts her memories and she has recurring dream of her naked in the snow and calling out for her.

 

Kat dreams of her mother vulnerable and in need of her help
Kat dreams of her mother vulnerable and in need of her help

 

Because of their troubled relationship, Kat feels little pain or sadness at her mother’s disappearance. She blames all her and her father’s unhappiness on Eve and encourages him to move on and find a woman who deserves him.

Still, the film resists the temptation to make Eve into a monster. Though Kat struggles to find something redeemable about her mother, some humanity in her that she can love, she never doubts Eve’s essential humanity and that the rational behind her actions. Kat speaks of Eve’s history like a biographer, dissecting her thoughts and motives as if she was there to hear them

As viewers used to suspense plots, we expect from the beginning that something sinister has happened to Eve. With this in mind, Kat’s attempts to reconstruct her mother are shadowed by our idea of Eve as a victim.

This presents a challenge to viewers: Can Eve be both villain and victim? And which is a crueler – the physical violence visited on Eve or the psychological destruction Eve imposes on her daughter?

From Kat’s narration, the viewer is compelled to sympathize for Brock and share her hatred of Eve, a strange position for the narrative as it becomes clear to the viewer that Brock had a hand in Eve’s disappearance. The eventual reveal, that Brock murdered Eve, is not subtle, as viewers we expect this, as we are used to stories where the good-guy husband is revealed to be a killer. Kat, from her biased perceptive as his child, perhaps willfully blind to his true character, is more naive than us as an audience and than other characters.

 

Kat’s milquetoast father seems broken by Eve’s disappearance
Kat’s milquetoast father seems broken by Eve’s disappearance

 

In fact, every one around her, from her cop boyfriend to her two friends, tell her father has long been the chief suspect in Eve’s disappearance. At this point, it has never been in the least implied by Kat’s narration, by the story steered by her point of view. We never see hints of her father’s jealousy or his fits of rage, which Kat is told until the last act, instead we make these realizations along with her. For most of the film, Brock seems like a harmless milquetoast harangued by his dissatisfied wife. This is the view Kat uses to introduce us to her father and to contextualize her parents’ relationship, thus it catches the viewer off guard, and even scares us, when he reveals hidden stores of anger and turns them on his daughter, his long-time supporter

Though the voiceover is relayed in Woodley’s voice with infrequent teenager vernacular, Kat’s view on the events, is cold and distanced, full of beautiful prose (most straight from Laura Kasischke’s source novel) and bloodless dissection of her mother’s motives. The wounds of her mother’s disappearance and her complicated adolescence do not seem at all fresh (note that Kat begins her narration with a suggestion of time passing, “I was 17 when my mother disappeared”). Her narration is composed, even going as far to recall her mother’s prim, patrician energy. The blossoming girl Kat has become a jaded woman, still fighting to care about her mother.

Yet, she seems unaware of events until there are revealed and gives no foreshadowing of Eve’s eventual fate. Eve is posed as the villain and Brock is the victim, even though Kat should know how these roles are reversed. While she struggles to see her mother as sympathetic, she seems to make no effort to rectify the two sides of her father.

The real surprise of the film is the ending twist, which is the sort of twist that seems calculated to give viewers something to talk about as they leave the theater. Instead of revealing that Brock discovered Eve was sleeping with Phil and killed her out of jealousy, as most of the film seemed to imply (and is the ending of the book the film is based on), Eve discovers Brock was sleeping with Phil and he explodes in rage when she laughs at him.

 

Eve sees Kat as her rival and flirts with her boyfriend, hinting at a possibly affair
Eve sees Kat as her rival and flirts with her boyfriend, hinting at a possibly affair

 

If you believe in auteur theory, this is a clear example of director Araki putting his own stamp on the material, as he is primarily known for the Queer themes of his films. Though a unique twist, this ending feels tacked on for shock value, rather than organic to material. There are no hints at this twist to look back on, and in fact it seems as if it was just made up on the spot after the rest of the film was shot with the original ending in mind. Much of Eva Green’s performance and the importance of her dynamic with Kat no longer make sense in light of this ending.

Still, as a coming of age film, White Bird in a Blizzard is a success at depicting Kat as a real teenage girl, hovering in that confusing stage of adolescence where she is neither fully grown up but is certainly not a child. It is a quiet, often very beautiful film about growing up and coming to terms with the sins of your parents, figuring out how you will use their lessons and to form your own identity. In the end, Kat has lost both her parents and has reasons to hate both of them, yet she still has to live in the world and try to figure out how she can understand who they were and what they made her.

_______________________________________________________________________________________-

Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.

Angelina Jolie Wins Over Manhattan Press to Promote ‘Unbroken’

Angelina Jolie: “I thought often in making this film about my children, my sons, who are of the age appropriate to see it – the older sons – and it’s a movie for everybody but I think it’s one you think about this great generation and the values they had and how they were as men and I think it’s one that we want to raise our children and remind this generation of their sense of family and community and honor and pay respect to them.”

Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie

 

This is a guest post by Paula Schwartz

Angelina Jolie swept into Manhattan last week for some serious Oscar politicking for Unbroken, her second time at the helm as a feature film director. She attended a dizzying round of luncheons, receptions, press conferences, and Q&As to promote the film and for some needed sizzle to propel it in the awards race. Treated like royalty – a week before those other Royals arrived – and even with more anticipation, the Maleficient star dazzled even the most jaded entertainment reporters.

Based on the best-selling book about Louis Zamperini by Laura Hillenbrand, the movie chronicles his life as Olympian runner, World War II bombardier, ocean castaway on a raft surrounded by sharks, and enslaved prisoner brutalized by sadistic guards. After the war, Zamperini struggled with alcohol addiction and PTSD but finally found redemption through faith and forgiveness. Jolie’s main concern is that the film honor Zamperini’s life and struggle and that it inspire audiences.

Oscar prognosticators hint Unbroken could bring Jolie a Best Director Oscar nomination and Universal has pulled out all stops to make that possible. With Ava DuVernay a shoo-in for her brilliant film Selma, an epic about another great man, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., this could be the first year two women are nominated in this category. (Even more historic would be Ms. DuVernay’s nomination because shamefully no African-American woman director has ever received this honor.)

unnamed-1

 

Unbroken received an awards boast earlier in the week when the American Film Institute picked it as one of the outstanding 11 films of the year. (Selma is also on the list.) But two days later the Screen Actors Guild and the Hollywood Foreign Press left Unbroken off their list. This is especially surprising since the Hollywood Foreign Press loves glittery movie stars at their Golden Globe celebration.

In 2011 Jolie, who wrote and directed In the Land of Blood and Honey, a controversial film about a love affair between Bosnian woman and a Serbian solder, received a Golden Globe nomination for best foreign film. I spoke to her by telephone to get her reaction for the New York Times. She told me she knew the subject matter was a hard sell but it was a story she had to tell. “I didn’t want to be a director,” she told me, “I’ll just only do it if there’s something that I feel so compelling it must be told.” She also told me she never reads press about her or Brad Pitt. “It’s better not to know,” she said.

Both director and cast members, Jack O’Connell (Zamperini), Takamasa Ishihara (sadistic prison guard, Watanable), Garrett Hedlund and Finn Wittrock participated in a press conference last Friday at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. Jolie choked up several times when she spoke about the subject of her film, with whom she became very close. Six hours later she teared up again at a Bafta screening when she discussed how she visited Zamperini in the hospital to show him the film and seek his approval. He died several weeks later in July of this year at age 97.

Jolie materialized at the press conference surrounded by her supporting and admiring cast, but she was the star attraction. Slender and fine boned, with her high cheekbones and saucer eyes, she is as spectacular in person as her pictures lead you to expect.

She was in New York a week before the leaked Sony e-mails in which producer Scott Rudin insulted her and the film.  She has chosen so far not to comment.

The cast of Unbroken
The cast of Unbroken

 

Here are selected quotes from the press conference last week featuring Angelina Jolie.


Why it was so important to you to make the film:

I thought often in making this film about my children, my sons, who are of the age appropriate to see it – the older sons – and it’s a movie for everybody but I think it’s one you think about this great generation and the values they had and how they were as men and I think it’s one that we want to raise our children and remind this generation of their sense of family and community and honor and pay respect to them. And I want my children to know about men like Louis so when they feel bad about themselves and they think all is lost, they know they’ve got something inside of them because that’s what this story speaks to. It’s what’s inside all of us. You don’t have to be a perfect person or a saint or a hero. Louis was very flawed, very human, but made great choices and in the end a great man.

I came into this because I felt it was an important story. I was drawn to the message of the story. If you’d asked me a few years ago what kind of a film do you want to make? I never would have assumed to make a film that included shark attacks and plane crashes. I would never have thought of myself handling that kind of cinematic filmmaking. I wouldn’t think I could do that or should do that (laughs).


What was it specifically about this book that made you so passionate about bringing it to the screen? Was there one specific thing abut this story that said to you, this is it, this is my next movie?

I think what it was, like everybody, we wake up, we read the news, we see the events that go on around the world and we live in our community and we’re disheartened by so much. We feel overwhelmed and we don’t what’s possible and we don’t know where… We want something to hold onto and something to give us strength. And I was halfway through this book and I found myself inspired and on fire and feeling better and being reminded of the strength of the human spirit and the strength of having a brother like Pete and what that is and to remind us to be that for each other and how important that is to have that in your life… I realized if this was having this effect on me and I knew it had this effect on so many people, isn’t this what we needed to put forward into the world at this time? And I believe it is and I’m very happy also it’s coming out during the holidays. I think it’s an important time. It’s the right time.


unnamed


Transforming the book into the film:

The Coen brothers (the screenplay writers) said something to me that helped me completely. They said when you put the book down you have a certain feeling and a certain understanding. That’s what they need to feel when they walk out of the theater. That’s your job. To literally put this book on film you won’t make a good movie and you’ll do no service to anyone. So know the themes and to us these themes, so then we would go back to the film and so for example, faith, faith is so important to him, instead of it being a specific chapter and how to put it all in, and all the experiences of his life, faith was represented from the beginning, from the little boy and represented all through the film in other characters but also in the sunrise and the darkness and the light and the struggle between them and him coming into the light. But it wasn’t literally, technically as it was in the book, but the things are the same, so that’s what we tried to do. But I think a lot of our favorite stories aren’t in the film.

It was tough. I’d be carrying the book, before we were doing the film, and a lot of people would say that’s my favorite book. You know what my favorite scene is?  And I started to say don’t tell me.


Your next movie is with Brad Pitt, By the Sea. Is that sort of an antidote to this epic?

By the Sea was emotionally difficult acting in it but it was logistically a walk in the park in comparison to Unbroken. It was a nice break.


On Zamperini  watching Unbroken in his hospital room:

Louis was 97 (when he died). He began skateboarding in his 80s. He was still living alone taking care of himself. He was very full of joy and love of life and very sharp. And he was doing speaking engagements for about two weeks prior to the day I got the call and he went into the hospital. So I put the film on my laptop – it was missing some of the special effects and music – (but it was) pretty much wrapped, and I went over to the hospital and I sat beside his bed and I held it over him and he watched the film and I watched him watch the film. I thought I would get some review, he would say good shot… and in reality I found myself in this extraordinary moment where I was watching this man at the end of his life reliving the moments of his life, remembering his mother, remembering his brother and all the friends he’d lost. He was the last alive, and preparing himself, as a man of faith… watching him cross the finish line while he was in this hospital bed and smiling…When it (the film) was over, he just looked at me and smiled. And then he told me a really inappropriate joke.


 

Paula Schwartz is a veteran journalist who worked at the New York Times for three decades. For five years she was the Baguette for the New York Times movie awards blog Carpetbaggers. Before that she worked on the New York Times night life column, Boldface, where she covered the celebrity beat. She endured a poke in the ribs by Elijah Wood’s publicist, was ejected from a party by Michael Douglas’s flak after he didn’t appreciate what she wrote, and endured numerous other indignities to get a story. More happily she interviewed major actors and directors–all of whom were good company and extremely kind–including Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Clint Eastwood, Christopher Plummer, Dustin Hoffman and the hammy pooch “Uggie” from The Artist. Her idea of heaven is watching at least three movies in a row with an appreciative audience that’s not texting. Her work has appeared in Moviemaker, more.com, showbiz411 and reelifewithjane.com.

 

 

 

‘The Babadook’: Jennifer Kent on Her Savage Domestic Fairy Tale

Jennifer Kent: “I didn’t start with motherhood being the primary focus, but it is a very important part of the film, and I’m very adamant not to make this woman the evil mother. That’s why I placed the film very much inside her experience.”

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This is a guest post by Josh Ralske

Australian writer-director Jennifer Kent’s feature debut The Babadook is the surprise hit horror film of the year. (Read Sarah Smyth’s review here.) With no stars and a limited budget, Kent cannily tells the story of Amelia (Essie Davis), a widow still wracked with grief over the death of her husband six years earlier, and Amelia’s troubled young son Samuel (Noah Wiseman), whose obsessive fear of monsters verges on the manic. One night, Samuel pulls an unfamiliar book from the shelf for his mother to read to him, Mr. Babadook. Amelia reads the book, unleashing the titular monster into their home. The mother and son, and the movie, increasingly retreat into their own horrific private world, terrorized by a fairy tale-like creature that seems intent on driving Amelia into madness.

The narrative is simple, and pointedly familiar, but The Babadook is notable for the complexity of its two main characters, and the remarkable performances that bring them to such vivid life.

We spoke with Kent on the phone about the film’s creation and its success.

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Bitch Flicks: Congratulations on all the acclaim that the film is getting.

Jennifer Kent: Thank you. It’s been a real trip. It’s been a long and fantastic journey for this film. It’s been amazing.

BF: How did you get the idea for the film? Are you a parent yourself?

JK: No. No, I’m not. Obviously the mother/child relationship is really important in the film, but what i was really focused on was her, on this woman and her suppression of something she found impossible to face. That was the starting point for me. I feel if you suppress things in life, you don’t just affect yourself; you affect everyone around you. So then the choice to have that little boy in the picture, and to make him a kind of mirror to her was how it worked out. But it wasn’t, for me, entirely a story about motherhood, although that is a really important factor in the film.

BF: I understand what you’re saying about it being a very personal story, and starting with Amelia’s character, and what’s refreshing about it is how complex her character is. She isn’t just one thing. She’s not the type of female protagonist that you see in a typical horror film.

JK: I didn’t start with motherhood being the primary focus, but it is a very important part of the film, and I’m very adamant not to make this woman the evil mother. That’s why I placed the film very much inside her experience. Even when the shit hits the fan later in the film, we’re still experiencing it largely from her perspective, and I wanted her to be complex. She’s trying so hard. She’s a loving person. She’s drowning. She’s a drowning woman in this situation, but she wants to do the right thing, and I was interested in exploring that. I’m the type of person, when I read or hear about these parents killing or harming their kids… Of course it’s a tragedy, and the act of those parents is abominable, but they’re not monsters. They’re human beings. And my empathy and my sensitivity around these things made me curious. How does one get to that place where they become this monstrous mother? How does that happen? And so that’s why, I guess, I feel proud of that character, of Amelia. No one’s saying that she’s a one note character.

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BF: Your empathy for the character really comes through. Could you talk a little bit about casting Samuel, and your conception of that character, because again, it’s not a child character that I’ve seen in any other film. He’s a very unique movie kid.

JK: Yeah. If you met [Noah], you’d be shocked, because he’s the opposite of Sam. He’s very quiet and sweet. That’s all acting. And he is an empathetic kid. He really loved Sam. He really felt sorry for Sam, because his mom wouldn’t listen to him. And he was right. And I think the quality that I was looking for in the little boy who would play Sam was that empathy. And of course, Sam’s a strange kid, and very annoying at times, but ultimately, he loves his mom and he wants to protect her. So I needed a child who could embody all those qualities. And someone who could be directed. A lot of kids that come into these auditions, they’re like machines. But they can’t necessarily change and give you a subtle performance. But Noah could, and the key to that for me was improvisation. So we played games and we imagined things with the boys who got down to the final short list. And Noah was a standout in that way: vivid imagination, very emotionally intelligent. And robust. You know, I didn’t want a kid that was going to collapse on the second day of shooting, saying “I wanna go home.” He was there for the six weeks of shooting, day in and day out, and when I think about what he did, it’s an extraordinary thing for a 6-year-old to achieve.

BF: Yeah, that’s amazing. I didn’t know if you’d found a kid who was just sort of like that, or if you’d found someone capable of bringing that character to life without necessarily being that way. That’s interesting.

JK: Yeah, he was really fun and sweet. And in fact, one interesting thing about that process is that kids don’t want to be disobedient, so it was really hard to get him to be that way in rehearsals. I had to give him permission to be naughty, because yeah, kids are socialized — unless they’re brought up badly — to be well-behaved. So yeah, it was a real process for him.

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BF: Did you set out to make a horror film? Is that a genre that you’re interested in generally? I noticed the clips from Black Sabbath and House of Exorcism and of course, all those great George Méliès clips that Amelia sees on TV. Is that the type of work that drew you to this type of story?

JK: Yeah. I mean, I love horror. I love it! I even will see most of the modern stuff, and I always hope it’s gonna be good. But I definitely have watched a lot of Italian horror, lot of everything. So it’s in me. It’s in my DNA, but it isn’t the thing that rules me. And I have to say… I can’t speak for other filmmakers, but I imagine it wasn’t something that ruled them either. They start with an idea and a story and that’s what happens. I think there’s a danger in becoming subservient to a genre, going “Oh, I’m going to make a movie that’s going to scare everyone.” I needed to look deeper than that, and that’s why… It’s such an interesting thing, how bad horror can be, and I think when it’s really bad, it’s just made by people who don’t get it. Who don’t understand how powerful it is. You can really discuss deep issues with horror, in a way you can’t through drama. It’s one of the most cinematic genres as well, because it’s very closely linked with dreams. So yeah, I’m a fan.

BF: I agree with you that you can touch on these deep human issue through the genre. It doesn’t just have to be about saying “boo.” Amelia’s grief in the film is such a powerful thing that seems to be the genesis…

JK: Yeah. How would you discover that in drama? It would be very hard to not make it melodramatic. To put it in this realm actually makes people feel what Amelia’s feeling, on some level, and have empathy with her. I’ve noticed that the film doesn’t work with people who have low empathy [laughs] as human beings. It’s not a film for them. The people who it scares have more of that going on in their systems.

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BF: Well, I liked it. I thought it was scary. So, I guess I check out on the empathy scale.

JK: So you’re a decent human being. [laughs]

BF: Yeah, I guess. If that’s your barometer for that. It’s really interesting to me. It has these very classical elements to it with the sense of isolation and the darkness and the way the Babadook himself is portrayed. There’s an old-fashioned quality to it. Could you talk about how you decided to visualize this monster?

JK: It was something that just felt right, this kind of childlike world. I’m really drawn to myths, and I guess I wanted to create a new myth in a domestic setting. Old children’s books, old fairy tales — you know, the brutal ones, the real ones — they touch on something very primal. They look childlike and innocuous, but deep down, there’s something really savage and sinister there. So that was my starting point for the world of the film. The book is obviously a very important part of it, so I wanted the Babadook to spring from the book, in terms of its style as well. And there’s something about the old horror that is very childlike, because it’s done in what we would consider now a very simple way, all in-camera techniques, but there’s something still very powerful about that, I think. Sometimes even more powerful than CGI and a lot of complicated post-production work. When something happens in camera, and you’re seeing it with the naked eye, you feel — I feel, anyway — differently. It feels like it’s happening there and it’s more real to me.

BF: I think it’s very effective, and it is an extension of the book in a way that works really well. Could you talk about the book itself? It was great. Very memorable, very vivid work that Alex Juhasz did.

JK: We looked for ages for an artist. We looked at lots of Australian illustrators, and we even worked with a couple in developing the Babadook look, but Alex was unique in that he’s actually an American artist. I saw his work and it was beautiful but really strange. I was drawn to him and his work. He has this thing of being able to keep his work original, but also took direction. So we were able to develop the look of the creature according to how I needed it to operate. So it wasn’t just finding an illustrator to make these beautiful pictures. He really understood the need for it to support the story. He was a good storyteller. And he also had a lot of work in stop motion animation. He designed the opening credits for United States of Tara, and he’d worked a lot with Jamie Caliri, the stop motion animator who did Lemony Snicket‘s end credits. He had a lot of experience that proved invaluable when it came to animating the book. He’s a bit of a genius, Alex.

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BF: The illustrations themselves really set the tone for what’s to come.

JK: They come to life, so they needed to be energetic and have an ambitiousness to them.

BF: For women filmmakers, in the states at least, it can be particularly challenging to get a first film made and shown. Is that something you want to address?

JK: I’m not so much aware. I don’t think of myself — I know I’m a woman, of course, but I don’t feel ruled by it. I think a film is hard to make, full stop. I think a person’s first feature is a real trial by fire, no matter if you’re male, female, or otherwise, and it’s not something that I feel really informed me. It certainly didn’t hinder me. Not in Australia, anyway. And I must say, I’ve had a lot of meetings with various people in America since Babadook premiered in Sundance, and admittedly, I haven’t done any work there yet, but I’ve never felt encumbered or restrained by my gender in that context. I’m not saying sexism doesn’t exist, but I don’t give it much time. I’ve got too much to do.

BF: Do you think, though, that — I don’t know, that scene where Amelia is using the vibrator… I’m not sure there are many male filmmakers that would’ve thought to include a scene like that, but it’s an important scene in terms of understanding who Amelia is and what she’s dealing with.

JK: My gaze and my way of looking at the world is inherently feminine, from a feminine perspective, and there are things in that film that probably wouldn’t be written by a male writer. But I don’t know. Isn’t that the way with all films? They come from the person who makes them. I understand what you’re saying, Josh, I’m just trying to… it’s a complex issue. Yes, there’s sexism in the world and there’s an incredible imbalance of males to females represented in all films. Most films are about male stories. So yeah, maybe I just put a female story out there, and the fact that it’s unique says that we still have a long way to go in terms of making more female stories come to life. I hope I can put a few more out there. Female stories with women at their core.

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BF: Me, too. Congratulations on this film. It’s very effective and well done. Do you know what your next project is going to be yet?

JK: I’ve got two films I’m working on, and I’ve come back from America with about 25 scripts to read, so I’ll be plowing through them. And it looks like I’m going to jump onto a TV series, to write and direct in America. A miniseries, but that hasn’t been announced, so I’m hesitant to talk about it. A lot of opportunities have come up. I’m in a very fortunate position at the moment, and hopefully we’ll be making something sooner rather than later.

BF: I’m looking forward to seeing what you do next. Thanks a lot for taking the time to speak with me.

 


Josh Ralske is a freelance film writer based in New York. He has written for MovieMaker Magazine and All Movie Guide.

“Crazy” Women Run in the Family in ‘Rocks in My Pockets’

We have had few if any first-person accounts from “crazy” women filmmakers about how they see their own lives and minds. Animator and artist Signe Baumane’s first feature, ‘Rocks in My Pockets,’ seeks to change that situation. Baumane focuses on five women’s stories of mental illness in two different generations of her Latvian family: her grandmother, Anna; and three of her cousins–Miranda, the artist; beautiful, studious Linda; music teacher Irbe; and finally, Baumane herself.

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The “crazy” woman character has been a staple of literature going as far back as Jane Eyre and a staple of films going as far back as Olivia de Havilland in The Snake Pit.  Not coincidentally, “crazy” is the adjective most often used to dismiss a woman who disagrees with the opinions or the recounting of events of a man or group of men either online or elsewhere (the second most popular term of dismissal is “angry”). In recent years women writers like Kay Redfield Jamison have documented their own struggles with diagnosed mental illness, and an Australian TV series (on Pivot in the US), Please Like Me,  has used the experience of the star and creator, Josh Thomas’s, own mother as a model for the sympathetic and nuanced portrait of  the “Josh” character’s mother on the show: she has attempted suicide more than once and spent much of the last season as an inpatient at a mental hospital.

We have had few if any first-person accounts from “crazy” women filmmakers about how they see their own lives and minds.  Animator and artist Signe Baumane’s first feature, Rocks in My Pockets, seeks to change that situation. Baumane (who also wrote the screenplay) focuses on five women’s stories of mental illness in two different generations of her Latvian family: her grandmother, Anna; and three of her cousins–Miranda, the artist; beautiful, studious Linda;  music teacher Irbe; and finally, Baumane herself.

Early in the film, Baumane alludes to a longer history of mental illness in the family than the one she details. Her grandmother marries an older man who divorces his first wife so he can have another larger family (he wants 10 more children but ends up with eight) so more little Latvians can inherit what he thinks are his superior qualities. The grandfather’s ego was far greater than his accomplishments; his children in some scenes momentarily transform into DNA double helixes to remind us of how he sees them. But Baumane tells us he didn’t take into account his new wife’s family history, never asking about the members of her family who “died early” and “didn’t live up to their potential.”

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Anna and her children

 

Anna’s depression doesn’t manifest until after she starts having children, one after another, in an isolated town with a jealous husband who makes sure his young, pretty wife is far from any male neighbors. The family live on top of a sandy hill, so they cannot dig a well for water. Instead Anna has to travel back and forth up the hill to bring water in buckets from the river below, not just for the family, but also for the two cows and a horse.  The animals alone needed 40 buckets every day.

The family goes through much hardship as the country is first annexed by the Soviets and then by the Nazis and then the Soviets again. During her many trips to the river Anna sees in the water a creature that looks like a cross between an oversized teddy bear and a sea monster beckoning her to come in. One day she does, but a poacher spots and rescues her. She had forgotten to put rocks in her pockets to sink.

Anna later sends her children to boarding school, since she can barely provide for them (her husband continues to live at home but we see him literally turn his back on the rest of the family). Sometime after he dies, she overdoses on Valium, the go-to drug of the country’s Soviet era, prescribed for everything from heart problems to the “mental deficiency” the regime considered mental illness to be.

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Miranda and her husband

 

Baumane’s slightly older cousin Miranda has no desire to get married, but a nice man pursues her and she relents. As she gathers wild orchids with a 16-year-old Baumane she tells her that this will be her last summer. Baumane thinks that Miranda means her last summer as a single woman and urges her to cancel the wedding. Miranda tells her she feels obligated to do the things that make the people who love her happy, and marries and has a child within the year. After her son is born, she tries to strangle herself, but her husband comes home early and saves her. “She never forgave him,” Baumane tells us. After spending much time in Soviet-era mental hospitals under heavy medication Miranda succeeds in killing herself when her children are older.

“You can’t learn from anyone else’s mistakes,” Baumane narrates. “You have to make your own.” Because Baumane becomes pregnant, her parents pressure her, when she is still young, to marry a man who seems to be descending into alcoholism. After her son is born she visits a psychiatrist and then she too is sent to a mental hospital, but is somewhat reassured when, just before she goes, she looks in a mirror and sees Miranda, who tells her to just drink a lot of water to dilute the medication she is forced to take. After Baumane is discharged from the hospital and divorces her husband, Baumane’s mother decides she is unfit to take care of her own son and raises him herself instead.

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Baumane combines traditional hand-drawn animation (she at one time worked with Bill Plympton and some of the film evokes his distinctive style) with sets and some other elements made of paper maché. The exaggerated expressions of the human characters (who are sometimes hard to tell apart), along with Baumane’s narration–which at times, sounds a bit too much like an adult reading a story to a child–can be jarring. Waltz With Bashir and Sita Sings The Blues are two films that had better success in combining conventional animation with complex stories meant for grown-ups (which, like Baumane’s, have elements of autobiography), probably because both had tighter scripts than Baumane does. Baumane’s family history starts with her grandmother’s early suicide attempt in the river, backtracks to Baumane’s own suicidal ideation (she’d make sure to rub with soap the rope she’d hang herself with, so it wouldn’t catch on any edges and would wear adult diapers, so whoever found her wouldn’t have to clean up any urine and feces expelled from her dying body), then goes to the very beginning of the grandmother’s story, a runaround that both exhausts and confuses the audience.

But a lot of the imagery Baumane uses, in both the paper maché (the misshapen human characters and the houses with eyes are standouts) and the animation that has the look of illustrations for children’s books (work that Baumane has also done) like the teddy bear/sea monster, huge bottles of pills invaded by equally huge, long tongues and the psychiatrist’s giant legs bursting from under her desk under her immobile, sedated face, are unforgettable.

The creature who embodies mental illness in all of the women’s lives doesn’t look threatening. In fact, the creature is kind of a solace to several of the women–it dances with a delusional Linda while she wears a wedding dress for a groom who doesn’t exist. The creature’s appearance fits how the women see it themselves; Irbe describes the voices she hears as comforting, because they once warned her off a road before a vehicle came crashing through it.

Baumane, like some mental health activists who have been diagnosed themselves, doesn’t see medication as the answer (at least two of the women in her family were taking prescribed medication when they committed suicide). Her solution: to not withdraw into herself and her own pain when it threatens to overtake her and instead spend time in the company of others, waiting out her worst suicidal impulses seems like an anticlimax. But the method has apparently worked for her–keeping her alive and well long enough to make this vivid and beautiful film she labels a “quest for sanity.”

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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing. besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender

‘She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry’: An Incomplete Portrait of The Women’s Movement

When the young, hippie-ish movie star Shailene Woodley said in an interview that she wasn’t a feminist, many women pointed out that she didn’t seem to know what feminism was. Perhaps Woodley and other women of her generation (she is 22) don’t know what feminism is for the same reason fish don’t know what water is–because it’s all around them and has been for the entirety of their lives.

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The following is a slightly modified repost.

When the young, hippie-ish movie star Shailene Woodley said in an interview that she wasn’t a feminist, many women pointed out that she didn’t seem to know what feminism was. Perhaps Woodley and other women of her generation (she is 22) don’t know what feminism is for the same reason fish don’t know what water is–because it’s all around them and has been for the entirety of their lives.

But looking at contemporary movies and television series (especially those written by men) that take place in the 1960s and early 70s when “the women’s movement,” as it was then called, flourished, one would be hard-pressed to see any evidence of feminist thought, protest or even the untenable circumstances that led women of the era to become feminists. On Mad Men, two women in the late 1960s work in top positions in a not particularly progressive advertising firm. Sexual harassment there is barely a factor: Joan’s “date” with the guy from Jaguar was just a one-time thing–and she became a partner because of it, so in this alternate universe of the 1960s powerful men exploiting the women they work with for sex is unusual and for the women, choosing to acquiesce is a really great career move. Also women in these positions get substantial raises without even asking for them, when in reality women had to sue (or threaten legal action) both to be able to work in a “man’s job” and then to take home anything that resembled a man’s salary (women’s salaries for the same work are lower, even to this day).

Mary Dore’s Kickstarter-funded She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry looks to correct this revisionist history in one of the first documentaries (along with PBS’s Makers which aired last year) to try to offer a comprehensive view of  the early days of the women’s movement using archival footage and interviewing the women who were on the frontlines. We don’t see Gloria Steinem, but we do see and hear from an array of (mostly white) other women with varying degrees of fame, from Kate Millett (who along with Steinem was all over the media as a spokesperson for feminism in the  early 70s)  to less well-known names like Village Voice writer Ellen Willis, former SNCC organizer Fran Beal  and early reproductive rights activist Heather Booth. Seeing footage of the women from 40 years ago and then seeing them comment today (or sometime in the 2000s as Willis does, since she died in 2006), we see that the women have, in some ways, broken away from the strict feminist hard-line (which they may never have fully subscribed to, but was very much at the forefront of the early 70s feminism) of no makeup, no hair dye, and no plastic surgery. At least one of the talking heads (Against Our Will writer Susan Brownmiller) has written at length about these personal choices (remember: one of the catchphrases of the movement was “The personal is political”) and the film could use more women talking about themselves and their ideologies shifting through the years, underneath their identity as principled feminists.

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We hear very little, beyond the familiar narrative of how-I-discovered-I-needed-feminism, of the ways in which the women’s goals and ideals have changed from their 20s to their 60s or 70s (and beyond), when those of us (especially activists) who are no longer in our 20s know such change is, for most people, inevitable. The closest the film comes to exploring these issues is when Willis tells us that without the feminist movement she doesn’t think she would have been able to both have her career (which, from an early age, she was determined to make happen) and her daughter–and she considers choosing to be a parent one of the best decisions of her life.

Although it’s similar in its conventional structure (the film makes a few passes at experimentalism–actresses reciting feminist writing in front of archival backdrops–which fall flat), Angry is more thorough and less forgettable than Makers (just a few months after seeing it, the only image from the PBS series that sticks with me is a woman in a construction hat), but still seems to put the same, big happy-face sticker–perfectly acceptable to the most middle-of-the-road feminists of today–on what was, like The Black Power Movement, The Young Lords, AIM, and the original Stonewall uprising a revolutionary movement. Popular feminist writers of the time like Shulamith Firestone (whom we see and hear briefly in archival footage) weren’t early prototypes of Sheryl Sandberg offering tips on how to combine a corporate career with raising a family, but true radicals, who called for the destruction of both the nuclear family and capitalism.

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Ellen Willis

The aftermath, when the revolution didn’t come (as it also didn’t for Black, Latino, Indian, and queer radicals), left many activists devastated and depressed: women in feminist groups turned to “trashing” each other (a phenomenon briefly touched on in the film, but more thoroughly explored in this essay by Susan Faludi) and less well-known activists denounced (and even forcibly ejected) some of the early feminist “leaders” (like the Occupy movement, feminism was supposed to be “leaderless”).

While some women, like Marilyn Webb, are philosophical about being “trashed,”  Shulamith Firestone (and undoubtedly many other less well-known women) never recovered from  her “sisters'” betrayal. Firestone didn’t participate in feminist activism again (though she lived to be in her 60s), eventually developed severe mental illness, spent much time in psychiatric hospitals (documented in her novel Airless Spaces)  and died alone and, for many days, undiscovered, in her cluttered apartment.

Rita Mae Brown (right)
Rita Mae Brown (right)

Angry makes us think that, except for a few isolated incidents like the one that Webb describes, and generational differences (which are mentioned only in passing), along with the tensions between queer women and straight ones in the movement (queer, white feminist activists Karla Jay and Rita Mae Brown narrate that conflict), feminism was one, big, happy family. In fact, even straight, white women who were bestselling superstars like Betty Friedan (The Feminine Mystique) and Germaine Greer (The Female Eunuch) (though she is mainly known today as a transphobe, Greer was, at one time, a fascinating and provocative writer and thinker) had conflicts both in personality (dishily recorded in Greer’s later writing) and in their approach to feminism. In the film’s archival footage of the infamous Town Hall debate with literary blowhard and unrepentant anti-feminist Norman Mailer, Greer gets a laugh when, asked about “the sexual revolution,”  she references the quote Gandhi gave when asked his thoughts on Western civilization: “‘I think it would be a good idea’.”

Also largely unexplored are tensions between women of color and white women in the movement, even though (or maybe because) those tensions still exist today. Although a few women of color are interviewed and featured in archival footage in Angry, their inclusion seems perfunctory. In the Q and A after the screening I attended the filmmakers were careful to emphasize that they could tell only so much of the story of early days of feminism (and that they wanted to mostly focus on the work of organizers), but the film seems to go out of its way not to mention prominent women of color of the time: Shirley Chisholm, the first woman, Black or white, to seek the Democratic nomination for US presidency (in 1972, right in the middle of other actions noted in the film); Angela Davis, then a leader in the Black Power movement; Dolores Huerta, leader (and organizer) of the mostly Latino farm workers union; and Alice Walker, one of the first women (of any color) to write bestselling and acclaimed works of fiction that were unapologetically womanist/feminist. Even if the filmmakers were trying to avoid material more thoroughly covered in other documentaries, the omission of these women–along with that of civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer at the beginning, when white women speak about their own experiences in the civil rights movement and how “inspiring” they found the Black women within it–risks flinging this film into irrelevance. Keeping these women out of the discussion is as careless and puzzling as omitting mention of bell hooks, Roxane Gay, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and even Beyoncé in an overview of feminism today.

She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry won an audience award for “Best Documentary” at The Independent Film Festival of Boston (where I saw it), but for the standing ovation I kept my butt in the seat. Although I see the importance of the film, and understand that we need many more films about second-wave feminism (what we really need is a detailed and multi-part series which covers these events, like the great Eyes on the Prize covered the civil rights movement), I was also a little bored and sleepy in parts, even though I’m interested–to the point of obsession–in the subject matter. The filmmakers said in the Q and A that they wanted to show, among other things, how to organize around issues, but we could learn as much about activism and organizing from the failures of the women’s movement as we can from its successes: a film with a less sunny outlook would have been a better one. “This is what a feminist looks like,” a crowd chants as we see examples of many different kinds of feminists in a present-day march. Next to those women, She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry’s portrait of “This is what feminism looked like,” seems lacking.

She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry opened in New York on Dec.5, will open in Los Angeles on Dec. 12  and will be open in other US cities from the rest of December through March. See http://www.shesbeautifulwhenshesangry.com/findascreening/ for more info.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJYXmyrjlac”]

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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing. besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender

‘Birdman’ Is ‘Black Swan’ for Boys

‘Birdman’ bears striking similarities to ‘Black Swan,’ both in the broad strokes—each follow their protagonist’s slipping grip on sanity in the days before a high pressure stage debut—and in a strange number of superficial details—hallucinations of menacing black winged creatures, “surprise” lesbian scenes, and ambiguous suicides at least partially showcased on stage.

This review contains spoilers for both Birdman and Black Swan.

Michael Keaton in 'Birdman'
Michael Keaton in Birdman

 

Alejandro González Iñárritu’s new film Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) bears striking similarities to Darren Aronofsky’s 2010 film Black Swan, both in the broad strokes—each follow their protagonist’s slipping grip on sanity in the days before a high pressure stage debut—and in a strange number of superficial details—hallucinations of menacing black winged creatures, “surprise” lesbian scenes, and ambiguous suicides at least partially showcased on stage. Of course, these two films differ in many ways, most significantly in tone (Birdman is a black comedy, Black Swan is a chilling psychodrama if not an outright horror movie). It is in these departures that we see the significance of gender in stories about identity, art, and mental illness.

1. Phase of life

Riggan in front of his dressing room mirror in 'Birdman'
Riggan in front of his dressing room mirror in Birdman

 

Birdman‘s Riggan Thomson is a fading movie star, years after playing the title character in a series of superhero blockbusters (casting Michael Keaton in the role deepens the character tenfold). The play at the center of the film is his own adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, which he is also directing and starring in. This vanity project is Riggan’s hope to change his legacy, to transform from the kind of has-been actor who gets attention from tourists to the kind of eternally relevant artist who gets respect from theatre critics.

Nina in front of a mirror in 'Black Swan'
Nina in front of a mirror in Black Swan

Where Riggan is in the twilight of his career, Black Swan shows Nina Sayers is at the dawn of hers, as she ascends from the corps to play the Swan Queen in Swan Lake.  Nina’s transformation over the course of the film is partially a metaphor for her belated sexual awakening and maturation from girl to woman. This becoming is the crucial moment in Nina’s life; she will never face Riggan’s struggle to stay relevant. As we see from the prima ballerina Nina replaces, Winona Ryder’s Beth Turner, there is no option to age gracefully. This is why, even as Nina apparently dies at the end of the film, it is “perfect.”

 

2. Perfection vs. Superpowers

Riggan's first appears in Birdman impossibly levitating
Riggan’s first appears in Birdman, impossibly levitating

It is the pressure to be perfect that pulls Nina apart in Black Swan. Not only the physical rigors and intense competition of professional ballet, but the paradoxical obligations of womanhood as represented through her dual role as the Swan Queen and Black Swan.  But Riggan doesn’t want to be perfect, he wants to be exceptional. His delusions of his superhuman abilities are his way of reassuring himself that his existence is noteworthy, that he matters, that he deserves to be remembered.

Nina finds herself sprouting feathers
Nina finds herself sprouting feathers

Nina hallucinates body horrors and birdlike transformations reminding her of the separation between her human self and the perfection required for her role. Riggan has easily incorporated superhuman abilities into his sense of self. As a man, he is entitled to do so. Nina’s are horrific transformations as she loses her sense of self.

 

3. Rivals

Mila Kunis as Lily in 'Black Swan'
Mila Kunis as Lily in Black Swan

 

Although early marketing for Black Swan played up the “rivalry” between Nina and Mila Kunis’s Lily, Lily is not so important to the plot as she is a character foil for Nina. Lily represents the raw sexuality and effortless grace that Nina’s drive for perfection precludes her from acheiving. Lily is the Natural Beauty, the girl who can eat hamburgers and stay ballerina slim, party all night and still be perky and gorgeous in the morning, who you’ll never see touching up her lipstick but she’ll always have a perfect glossy pout. No matter how hard Nina works, she’ll never best Lily, because she’s less than her just by having to work for it at all.

Ed Norton as the difficult Method actor Mike Shiner in 'Birdman'
Edward Norton as the difficult Method actor Mike Shiner in Birdman

 

In Birdman, Riggan’s “rival” is a hotshot actor named Mike Shiner (Edward Norton), even though he is known to be difficult to work with. Mike, a rigorous method actor, is the opposite of Lily: his talent comes from his dedication to his craft. And it is Mike’s well-honed skills that make him threatening to Riggan, who landed his career through charisma, good looks, and luck. That’s not the fame Riggan wants. It is the fame of a woman, and he knows he cannot carry it into old age and beyond (see Beth Turner). As a man, Riggan is not only allowed to “work for” his success, he even more respectable for doing so.

Just before opening night, Riggan faces off with theatre critic Tabitha Dickinson (Lindsay Duncan), who resents a movie star for taking up Broadway stage space that could go to a real artist. Riggan throws back the usual barbs against critics labeling art without making it: “None of it costs you anything. You risk nothing.” Putting on the airs of the hardworking artist he knows he is not, Riggan sounds just like someone denying their male privilege played any role in their success. Because achieved greatness is the highest virtue for a man.

 

4. Conclusions (the films’, and mine)

Both Birdman and Black Swan end ambiguously, with their protagonists appearing to die by suicide. In Black Swan, we see Nina’s apparent murder of Lily was not real, and that Nina rather stabbed herself. At that point in the film we’re neck deep in duality symbolism and pretty much all accept Nina attacking herself with a shard of mirror glass is a metaphor for killing the innocent side of herself, especially because girlfriend is one heck of a dancer for a stab victim.  But in the final moments first Lily, then director Thomas and the other dancers also see the wound and the audience is left thinking Nina’s suicide must have been real. Because, as I mentioned before, dying after a brilliant debut performance is actually perfect for Nina, because she has nowhere higher to go from there.

 

Nina's apparent suicide in 'Black Swan'
Nina’s apparent suicide in Black Swan

 

In Birdman, Riggan first attempts suicide by replacing a prop gun with a loaded pistol on stage. Apparently, he only shoots off his nose (earning him a superhero’s face mask of bandages). Then, after hearing Tabitha gave him a glowing review and finding personal resolution with his estranged ex-wife, his best friend, and his troubled daughter, he leaps from his hospital room window. When his daughter Sam (Emma Stone) returns to his empty hospital room with an open window, we see her horrified realization that her father probably jumped. But when she looks down to the street level, she appears confused. Then she looks up, to the sky, and her face fills with wonderment.  There’s ambiguous hope where Black Swan offers only ambiguous despair. Even in the darkest interpretation, that Riggan actually killed himself on stage and these final scenes aren’t real, we see that Riggan has successfully circumvented his fade to mediocrity. He “wins” in a way that Nina never could.

The more hopefully ambiguous final moment of 'Birdman'
The more hopefully ambiguous final moment of Birdman

 

Looking at Birdman and Black Swan as two versions of the same story highlight the immense differences men and women face in life and in art, in expectation and in reality.  It is in large part the significance of gender that makes these two movies that seem to have so much in common ultimately turn out to be quite different.

 


Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town who cannot fly nor grow feathers.

‘Zero Motivation’: A Female Slacker Comedy Set in the Israeli Army

Despite having familiar themes of disaffected youth in dead-end jobs, ‘Zero Motivation’ is one of those rare, uniquely positioned films that couldn’t have been made by anybody else. Writer and director Tayla Lavie draws on her own experience in the Israeli military to tell a dryly funny and sometimes shocking story about female conscripts who have neither the skill nor the will to serve in the army.

Written by Katherine Murray.

Despite having familiar themes of disaffected youth in dead-end jobs, Zero Motivation is one of those rare, uniquely positioned films that couldn’t have been made by anybody else. Writer and director Tayla Lavie draws on her own experience in the Israeli military to tell a dryly funny and sometimes shocking story about female conscripts who have neither the skill nor the will to serve in the army.

The cast of Zero Motivation
Negative-five motivation

Israel is currently the only country (other than Eritrea, whose conscription practices may be considered a human rights abuse) where women over the age of 18 are required to serve in the military. Norway is making plans to include women in its mandatory service, but it hasn’t happened yet.

The characters of Zero Motivation are, then, 18-20-year-old female conscripts who’ve completed basic training and been assigned to a remote base where they work in “Human Resources” as secretaries. Daffi, who still wears jelly bracelets and writes letters to headquarters begging to be reassigned, has been given the job of office paper shredder. Her best friend, Zohar, sorts the mail.

The characters in this movie (for the most part) are just marking time until their two years are up – although their superiors allude to Israel’s conflict with its neighbours, and to soldiers who’ve been killed in action, we see that lower-level support staff are not particularly involved or invested in what’s happening. For them, this is more like Office Space or Clerks than Full Metal Jacket or The Thin Red Line.

That contrast, while not the focal point of the movie, adds another layer of interest to the already familiar situation of seeing disaffected youth in dead-end jobs. There are two scenes in particular where the secretaries’ commanding officer – also a woman – attends an important meeting about military strategy, and then leaves during the most interesting part of the discussion because she has to find out why the coffee isn’t ready.

There’s another scene where the same commanding officer is about to give a speech that she’s clearly worked hard on preparing and, during the only moment that her male superiors are paying attention to her, they’re all called away to an emergency. She never gets to say what she’d planned and, poignantly, she seems resigned to being unimportant.

It’s hard to say how much a role gender plays in the situation depicted in Zero Motivation, but I’ve had the experience of working in organizations where the departments perceived as least important somehow filled up with women, who were then ignored. I’ve also seen firsthand how support staff – who also tend to be women – are sometimes treated as a necessary evil rather than a vital part of the team.

The situation in Zero Motivation is unique to Israel in that the characters are conscripted for two years after turning eighteen, but, in more broad and general terms, it’s an experience that many young people and women have, around the world, of being pushed into jobs with low levels of responsibility, where they’re treated with low levels of respect.

Dana Ivgy and Nelly Tagar star in Zero Motivation
Zohar and Daffi resolve their Minesweeper disputes with violence (as you do)

 

Zero Motivation is primarily a comedy that’s based on watching Zohar rebel against any suggestion that she should try to do a good job in the army. As with any slacker comedy, we understand why she’s not interested in serving a system that tells her all she’s capable of is sorting mail (and then looks down on her for sorting it), and we cheer for her when she finds ways to get out of doing work.

The primary conflict – which starts simmering in the first of the movie’s three chapters, and explodes in chapter three – comes from the fact that Daffi, motivated by the desire to transfer to a better post in Tel-Aviv, sells out to the man by becoming an officer.

Suddenly, she and Zohar are at odds over whether they should take their dumb jobs seriously, and Daffi is placed in the same kill-joy position as the secretaries’ commanding officer. In order to advance her own career, she needs the group not to be total screw-ups, and she’s frustrated that there’s no way to convince them to try.

As the ringleader of the screw-ups, Zohar is resentful that Daffi chose to buy into the system at the expense of their friendship, and refuses to accept that she has any authority after she’s commissioned.

Together, they act out the age-old struggle between trying to fight the system, and trying to work within it. And, while it could be taking place in any Western workplace, the fact that it’s taking place in the army sends an extra message – that this is what you get when you fill the ranks with people who don’t want to be there and treat them like crap. You get the same thing as you get at the McDonalds counter.

Tamara Klingon stars in Zero Motivation
This is what happens when you get possessed by random spirits

 

The middle section of the movie, which takes place while Zohar’s left to fend for herself, and Daffi’s away at officer training, is the one that veers the farthest from the through line, but also includes the most direct discussion of gender.

The middle section is about Zohar trying to lose her virginity, on the advice of her Russian co-worker, Irena. The story takes a surprising (and surreal) turn, however, when Irena becomes possessed by the spirit of another girl who killed herself after a boy was mean to her. Spirit-possessed Irena follows Zohar around in a trance, ruining her date with a male paratrooper, and – in one of the movie’s darker turns – saving her from an attempted rape.

The spirit possession is never explained in non-supernatural terms, but it makes sense on a metaphorical level – that, after giving Zohar bad advice to hook up with any random dude she can find, Irena remembers what happened to the last girl who did that, and undoes her bad advice by protecting Zohar from getting hurt.

The entire middle sequence is more a coming-of-age story than a workplace comedy, and it serves the purpose of making Zohar more sympathetic due to showing us her vulnerability, while also driving home the point that these are teenagers, who are still figuring out things like sex and relationships. They did not magically become mature, worldly adults when someone put a rifle in their hands.

What’s interesting about Zero Motivation, from a foreigner’s perspective, is that military service is taken for granted as part of the same right of passage – something that follows secondary school, the way freshman year of college follows secondary school in the USA. The army is a place where young people go when they’re still trying to figure out who they are and what they want to do with their lives.

While that’s true of many young people in countries other than Israel, Israel’s unique conscription policies have created the backdrop for a story that has a singular point of view, and a voice that’s not often heard in cinema.

Zero Motivation is worth seeing on its merits as an entertaining comedy, but it’s also worth seeing as something that adds to the cultural conversation by contributing something we don’t usually hear.


Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies and TV on her blog.

‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part I’ and What Makes Katniss Everdeen a Compelling Heroine

While watching ‘Mockingjay Part I,’ I had an epiphany. I asked myself why Katniss Everdeen is such a compelling heroine to audiences and why other heroines modeled after her are popping up all over the place? There’s no denying that audiences (especially young women) are hungry for strong female representation on screen. We love to see Katniss use her wits and her bow to save the day, but in ‘Mockingjay Part I,’ there is very little action (Katniss uses her bow only once), and Jennifer Lawrence’s performance is still riveting. Why, do you think, that is?

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part I

Written by Amanda Rodriguez.

Mild Spoilers Ahead

First off, let’s get the unpleasant part out of the way. Serious fans of The Hunger Games series will likely hate me, but we’ve all got to face the truth. The third installment in the series, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part I should not have been made. Splitting movies into two parts is an ever-growing trend in Hollywood’s never-ending quest for more money. Over the course of the two-hour film, not enough happens to warrant its existence. There is little moving the plot forward, and the ending itself is anticlimactic as our heroine Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) isn’t even involved in the ultimately uneventful final showdown mission to rescue the captive tributes. The vital events that do happen in Part I could have easily been condensed into the first 20 minutes of the finale of a legitimate trilogy.

Katniss in her one action scene in Mockingjay Part I

 

With that out of the way, let’s talk about what does work in Mockingjay Part I. There are a lot of women involved in the film itself, from the writer of the novels, Suzanne Collins, who adapted her books for the screen, to Nina Jacobson, the producer of the entire series, to our tenacious heroine Katniss, played by the increasingly popular, amazing performer and feminist Jennifer Lawrence.

The ever talented Julianne Moore as President Coin

 

I particularly liked that Mockingjay Part I also sets up the opposition between patriarchy and matriarchy with the introduction of Julianne Moore as President Coin of District 13. Under the patriarchal tyranny of President Snow (Donald Sutherland), the districts of Panem suffer as the people are used for their labor and their districts’ resources while fear and capital punishment are the norm. His Capitol, however, is rich, fashion-obsessed, and completely self-serving. The matriarchal President Coin, on the other hand, represents revolution with a strict focus on democracy and a socialist emphasis on the sharing of resources. District 13 is a militaristic, utilitarian underground compound that eschews fashion in favor of function (as evinced by the monotone uniforms all residents wear). Those of us who have read the books know that a lot will shift before the series concludes, but for now, this embodiment of a nontraditional representation of matriarchy in Coin is refreshing. She is decisive, smart, calm when under attack, and always thinking about the greater good of the people.

Katniss visits a hospital in District 8

While watching Mockingjay Part I, I had an epiphany. I asked myself why Katniss Everdeen is such a compelling heroine to audiences and why other heroines modeled after her are popping up all over the place? There’s no denying that audiences (especially young women) are hungry for strong female representation on screen. We love to see Katniss use her wits and her bow to save the day, but in Mockingjay Part I, there is very little action (Katniss uses her bow only once), and Jennifer Lawrence’s performance is still riveting. Why, do you think, that is?

Katniss stares in horror at President Snow's gift to her

 

Two words for you: emotional range. While there are a plethora of limitations and stereotypes by which female characters are plagued, audiences are getting tired of the limited range of emotion that male heroes are allowed to exhibit due to the strictness of masculinity within our culture. Women are increasingly allowed to showcase a greater range of emotions without it damaging their perception as a strong, good leader.

Katniss is overcome by gut-wrenching grief

 

In Mockingjay Part I, Katniss is suffering from intense PTSD. She has flashbacks, night terrors, uncontrollable bouts of crying, and dissociates from her surroundings. Throughout the film, she is an emotional wreck, as she should be after what she’s gone through, from being hunted and forced to kill for sport, to having her home of District 12 genocided as a result of her actions.

Katniss is overcome by fear in her 2nd participation in The Hunger Games

 

We watch Katniss go through an emotional roller coaster as she experiences shock, horror, terror, guilt, sadness, loss, anger, grief, and devastation. She is overcome with love for her family, Gale, and Peta, and, at her core, we are the most compelled by Katniss’ compassion and her instinctual drive to protect others. Katniss is sometimes wrong and often rash in her actions. In truth, it is her vulnerability displayed on screen like a raw wound from which we cannot look away.

Katniss weeps at the devastation of her home, District 12

 

This is the stuff of heroes. We see her experiences nearly break her time and time again, but she won’t give up. Carrying on is so hard that it nearly destroys her, but her sense of what is right is so strong that she cannot turn her back on her fellow oppressed district dwellers.

Like Katniss is the symbol of revolution as the mockingjay, she’s also the symbol of a movement that values women as nonsexualized leads with rich, complex characterization. We’re increasingly bored with the stoic male hero and instead crave the strength and vulnerability of the growing number of female sci-fi action heroines that are emerging thanks to the success of Katniss Everdeen and The Hunger Games.

Aside: The United States IS the Capitol. The storyline of The Hunger Games is so popular in the US, but we’re missing the point if we don’t confess that we are the oppressive world superpower that tyrannizes the rest of the word, exploiting the labor and resources of others so that most of us can live in relative wealth and comfort. End rant.


Bitch Flicks writer and editor Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. Her short story “The Woman Who Fell in Love with a Mermaid” was published in Germ Magazine. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.

‘Beyond the Lights’ Premiere: Interviews with Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Gina Prince-Bythewood

Gina Price-Bythewood: “It’s a love story first, but for me as a filmmaker, I never just want to make a movie that entertains. It should entertain first, but I think it should say something and this was an issue that was important to me, the way woman are objectified. The way that women don’t have a voice. As an artist I was able to put that into the film as well as someone who has something to say and sometimes it’s a struggle to get the chance, to just inspire women, also men, to have their own voice.”

New+York+Premiere+Relativity+Media+Beyond+JSRkDgZtCe6l
Gugu Mbatha-Raw, left, and Gina Prince-Bythewood

This is a guest post by Paula Schwartz.

Read ahead for interviews with Beyond the Lights star, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and director, Gina Prince-Bythewood.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw, so good earlier this year in Amma Asante’s Belle as a biracial woman raised in aristocracy in slave-era England, is just as impressive in Gina Prince-Bythewood’s Beyond the Lights as Noni, a pop singer who yearns for her identity and authenticity even as she’s pushed to perform sexy numbers in skimpy costumes. Mbatha-Raw’s fiery performance, which showcases her talent as a singer and dancer, just earned her a Gotham nomination for best actress to include her in the company of Julianne Moore and Scarlett Johansson.

As for the talented director, Prince-Bythewood, it’s been way too long between movies; her last feature film was The Secret Life of Bees in 2008, and before that, the critically acclaimed Love & Basketball, back in 2000.

I chatted with Mbatha-Raw and Prince-Bythewood on the red carpet at the New York premiere of Beyond the Lights last week.

Co-stars Nate Parker, who plays the security guard who becomes her love interest after he saves her from a suicide attempt, and rapper Colson “Machine Gun Kelly” Baker,  who told me he writes lyrics that respect women, joined Mbatha-Raw on the red carpet, along with writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood and her producer husband, Reggie Rock Bythewood. (Minnie Driver, who gives a powerhouse performance as Noni’s manipulative “momager,” and in one of the best scenes in the movie has a blow-out argument with Noni over the direction of her career, was sadly not at the premiere.)

First I got to speak to Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who went from the film’s pop diva vixen in the film to an elegant 1940s-style Hollywood glamour queen on the red carpet.
Bitch Flicks: How did the musical scenes come together?

Mbatha-Raw: It’s been such a gift of a role. I grew up singing and dancing as a child, but more sort of musical theater style and classical dancing, so for me to be able to embrace this hip-hop style, you know I had a lot of help. Gina surrounded me with some wonderful people in the industry, not just herself, who’s had a background researching a lot of the hip-hop world, but also Laurieann Gibson, the choreographer (Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry), The Dream (Kanye West, Beyonce, Jay-Z), who wrote all the original music (Rihanna, Kanye West, Beyoncé) and also Machine Gun Kelly, who’s here, who really is a rapper in the industry and brings so much charisma and authenticity cause he really is from that world, so really I sort of had a lot of things to draw upon and felt very well-supported by the research cause we knew about the movie, or I knew about the movie, for almost two years before we got to shoot it.

BF: Were you uncomfortable performing the sexually suggestive numbers?

Mbatha-Raw: I felt very supported by the choreography. We rehearsed it; Laurieann Gibson as I mentioned, created that whole routine and that was something we rehearsed in the studio in front of a mirror for many hours, you know, and adding the elements of the hair, the makeup, the wigs, the amazing hair designs by Kim Kimble (Beyoncé), and the costumes of course, so we really were building this character on so many levels and then it was just really down to kind of doing it and singing the song and projecting that energy into the lens, which was a new experience for me, because usually as an actress you’re pretending the camera isn’t there but obviously for a music video in that style you have to look directly into the camera. And that was scary initially, but I had to get over it.

BF: Talk about your upcoming projects, including Jupiter Ascending, the Wachowski siblings sci-fi film. (It co-stars Eddie Redmayne, Mila Kunis and Channing Tatum.)

Mbatha-Raw: I just have a small role in that, but it’s a really exciting movie. I’m looking forward to seeing it because I haven’t seen it yet. It’s sort of an epic space adventure and I play a character’s who’s half human, half deer.

I also shot a movie in the summer called The Whole Truth with another female director called Courtney Hunt. I don’t know when that’s coming out yet (Renee Zellweger, Keanu Reeves), and I’ve just started work on another project that’s called Compassion with Will Smith about brain injuries in the NFL.
BF: (To director Gina Prince-Bythewood about her search for an actress to play Noni.)

Prince-Bythewood: I thought I wanted a real musical artist in the lead when I first wrote it (2007) and then realized for this character I needed an actor because this character goes into some pretty deep depths. And I found Gugu two years ago and it was an amazing thing to find a woman who had incredible chops, could sing, and was brave enough to go there. And she really is brave.

BF: How did Gugu prepare for the musical numbers?

Prince-Bythewood: She put in so much work. She has a background in musical theater, which I didn’t know originally. But she worked with Debra Byrd, a vocal coach, one of the most renowned, and then the Dream; he did all the original music, and for her it was hours in the studio singing to his demos the way that Noni would, where they tell you exactly how to sing a word, how to breathe, how to sing a note. There’s no control and that’s what I wanted for Gugu the actress to have to experience, because that’s what Noni would experience.

BF: Your movie besides being entertainment has a message. How important was that to you as a filmmaker?

Prince-Bythewood: It’s a love story first, but for me as a filmmaker, I never just want to make a movie that entertains. It should entertain first, but I think it should say something and this was an issue that was important to me, the way woman are objectified. The way that women don’t have a voice. As an artist I was able to put that into the film as well as someone who has something to say and sometimes it’s a struggle to get the chance, to just inspire women, also men, to have their own voice.

BF: You talk about how women are sexually objectified in pop culture, but how do you avoid that trap in your portrayal of Noni doing those sexy moves?

Prince-Bythewood: It starts with the message of the film and Gugu and I talked a lot about why we were doing this film and it was really to talk to young girls who are only emulating what they see right now. Can we give them something else to aspire to? So going in we knew for the character of Noni, the less she wears the less you see of her, that was the mantra, so we had to make a big jump from her as little girl and that sweetness and innocence about her, to the jump to what she is 15 years later. It has to be dramatic so that you wonder what damage happened in between. Trust me, I’m a female filmmaker, it’s a little tough sometimes to shoot things like that, but we had to compete with what the videos are out today and honestly, we could have gone further. If you see what’s out now, so we had to be authentic so that we could take the character on a journey and bring her back to an authentic place and the place that she wants to be.

BF: What’s your next movie?

Prince-Bythewood: It will take me about a year to write. It focuses more on female friendship and the way it changes through the years.

 


Paula Schwartz is a veteran journalist who worked at the New York Times for three decades. For five years she was the Baguette for the New York Times movie awards blog Carpetbaggers. Before that she worked on the New York Times night life column, Boldface, where she covered the celebrity beat. She endured a poke in the ribs by Elijah Wood’s publicist, was ejected from a party by Michael Douglas’s flak after he didn’t appreciate what she wrote, and endured numerous other indignities to get a story. More happily she interviewed major actors and directors–all of whom were good company and extremely kind–including Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Clint Eastwood, Christopher Plummer, Dustin Hoffman and the hammy pooch “Uggie” from The Artist. Her idea of heaven is watching at least three movies in a row with an appreciative audience that’s not texting. Her work has appeared in Moviemaker, more.com, showbiz411 and reelifewithjane.com.

 

Gugu Mbatha-Raw is a Superstar in ‘Beyond The Lights’

I thought of Beyoncé often while watching writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s (‘Love and Basketball’) new film ‘Beyond The Lights.’ The main character, pop star Noni (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is supposed to remind us of Beyoncé, as well as Rihanna, with bits of Nicki Minaj, Lauren Hill, Britney Spears, and Lindsay Lohan thrown in. In early scenes we see her in elaborate videos wearing hardly any clothes, her skimpy outfits often incorporating glittering chains. She has first blonde, then purple, long flowing hair.

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About a decade ago, the powers that be were trying to make Beyoncé a movie star in films like Dreamgirls and that Austin Powers sequel where she wore a huge afro. But instead of going the way of Diana Ross (Beyoncé’s part in Dreamgirls was based on her life) with a film career fizzling after she was cast in roles that used fewer and fewer of the qualities that made her so compelling in her Lady Sings the Blues debut, Beyoncé abruptly cut back on film roles to concentrate on her music career. Her videos and award show performances have become increasingly cinematic–culminating in the stunning black and white video for “Drunk in Love” and her performance at the Video Music awards lit from behind with huge blazing letters that spelled out “Feminist.” She didn’t need to be cast in some white guy’s film to be a star in front of the camera.

I thought of Beyoncé often while watching writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood’s (Love and Basketball) new film Beyond The Lights. The main character, pop star Noni (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is supposed to remind us of Beyoncé, as well as Rihanna, with bits of Nicki Minaj, Lauren Hill, Britney Spears, and Lindsay Lohan thrown in. In early scenes we see her in elaborate videos wearing hardly any clothes, her skimpy outfits often incorporating glittering chains. She has first blonde, then purple, long flowing hair. We see her sing alongside a tattooed white rapper, Kid Culprit (Richard Colson Baker aka Machine Gun Kelly, who is like a taller, more current version of Eminem) while she wears shoes with heels so high it’s a marvel that she–or anyone–can walk in them, let alone dance. She wins an award and chugs champagne as she passes screaming, adoring crowds on the way to her limo. She tells the paid detail cop, Kaz (Nate Parker), outside of her hotel room not to let anyone disturb her, so he shuts out two of her hangers-on but relents to let in her controlling mother, Macy (Minnie Driver). When he hears Macy scream, he goes into the room himself where he sees that Noni is seated on the railing of her hotel balcony, many stories up, ready to jump.

This film is the second one this year in which a Black woman director (with a script from a Black woman screenwriter) has cast Mbatha-Raw as the essential center of a film (the art house hit Belle was the first), and she rewards their faith by giving her all. In contrast to the Jane-Austen-like romantic intrigue in Belle, in Lights she’s a powerhouse, utterly convincing as Noni (if she had faltered for even a moment the film would devolve into camp) whether she’s dancing in a tightly choreographed award show performance, singing (Mbatha-Raw’s voice is the one we hear during all of Noni’s songs: the film has been billed as a love story but doubles as a musical), interacting with other characters, or doing all three: during the award show appearance we see her expressive face send clear messages to both Kaz, who is in the wings and Kid Culprit, who is performing onstage with her. Prince-Bythewood  also seamlessly and sometimes wittily incorporates into the film the modern media landscape: music videos, award shows, talk shows (we see two appearances from famous chastiser of his fellow Black people, Don Lemon), Youtube and Twitter, which perhaps shouldn’t be an unusual achievement, but is.

After a summer marked by the incidents in which white police officers killed unarmed Black people, having a Black police officer as the hero may not be the best fit. But Parker is believable and likeable in the role–and like Mbatha-Raw embodies the character with touching sincerity. He does so even in scenes like the one in which he wraps Noni’s cut hand in the shirt off his back, a flimsy excuse for us to ogle his flawlessly muscled chest, abs, and arms. When this moment came the audience I saw the film with laughed–so did I–but none of us did so in a derisive way.

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Noni (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and Kaz (Nate Parker)

Minnie Driver as Macy, Noni’s hard-driving manager-mother gets a big speech near the end (the big speeches in this film, like contractions in labor come closer together as it speeds toward its conclusion) in which she explains the desperation behind her ambition for her daughter, but we in the audience never manage to see that desperation ourselves, just the steely mask of Driver’s face. She never really softens, not even in a scene when she asks Noni, “When did you ever tell me that you didn’t want this?”

And Noni answers, “When I was on that balcony.”

While watching most films and TV shows–especially those that take place in Los Angeles and New York–I’ve wondered if anyone associated with the production ever looked up and noticed they were surrounded by Black and brown people–who were neither homeless nor worked in cleaning or wait staff positions. Beyond The Lights is one of the few recent films I’ve seen (besides Dear White People) which takes for granted that Black people, especially Black women, are everywhere; they’re not just entertainers but also political consultants and hairdressers. When Kaz is saving Noni he chants, “I see you. I see you. I see you.” Apparently a Black woman director is one of the few people who can see all the Black women in real life who aren’t “the help.”

I should confess that I dislike most mainstream films. I hated The Devil Wears Prada, which marks the last time I ever believed critics’ raving about a multiplex hit with a woman protagonist. But at Beyond The Lights,  I had almost as much fun as I did watching Snowpiercer.  Lights reminded me of the old ’80s TV series Dynasty (although the story has a somewhat different setting) with better acting and a bigger budget: a compilation of confrontations between beautiful people in (and out of) beautiful clothes: the film even has a scene in which one woman slaps another, echoing Dynasty’s famous fights between women. Parker and Mbatha-Raw have great chemistry together, shown most memorably in a love scene that has Beyoncé’s “Drunk In Love” playing on the soundtrack. Beyond The Lights gives the audience many other simple pleasures and, at least for its duration, makes us wonder what else we could ever want from the movies.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfcfZn8nq3w”]

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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing. besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender

The Stronger ‘Vessel’

While the virgin-in-chains turned abortion-activist was my favorite image in the film, the most emotional moment was during an email exchange with a woman from Nairobi. She kisses the pills when she gets them, and a raw, personal email exchange follows as she goes through the process.

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Written by Leigh Kolb.

 

Dear Women on Waves,

I’m not married and am pregnant. I cannot have a baby.

I heard you can drink bleach, but I’m scared it will kill me.

My sister told me about your ship. Can you help me?

– Amina, Morocco

This plea opens Vessel, the documentary about the abortion-rights organization Women on Waves (and Women on Web), led by Dutch doctor Rebecca Gomperts. Women on Waves was launched in 1999, when Gomperts realized that if a Dutch ship sailed to international waters adjacent to countries with abortion restrictions, she could legally help women to have a safe abortion.

Directed by Diana Whitten, Vessel examines how, as Whitten says, “a woman had to leave one realm of sovereignty to reclaim her own.” Gomperts—who has been an artist, Greenpeace activist, doctor, and mother, all roles that inspire her work with Women on Waves—is dynamic on camera. The scenes of her deftly dealing with protesters and pundits show us the power and strength necessary to do the work that she’s doing—providing safe abortions and reproductive education to the women in places least likely to receive those services.

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Rebecca Gomperts

 

The original aim of Women on Waves was to sail their mobile clinic (contained in a shipping container) to countries where women most needed their services. They would get the women on board, sail 12 miles off-shore, and administer the medical abortion. Their maiden voyage was to Ireland, where they were met with harsh press, angry protesters, and legal setbacks.

When a journalist presses Gomperts and asks if she’s had an abortion, she shoots back:

“It’s a frequent medical procedure. Just because it’s women, because it’s invisible… no one fucking knows. Are you going to ask someone who works with Amnesty International if they’ve been tortured?”

One of the most powerful aspects of the documentary is the inclusion of the actual women’s words (and women in need call and email constantly). Gomperts is right: abortion is frequent and necessary. The fact that it is about women’s autonomy and choice makes it invisible, and in countries where abortion is restricted, this is incredibly dangerous. The words and voices of these women drive the documentary forward.

When they arrive in Poland, Women on Waves is contacted by a desperate young woman. She was raped, and is seven weeks pregnant. “Welcome Nazis,” male protesters scream at them as they dock their ship. This juxtaposition—the desperate woman, the vicious protestors—underscores the larger issues at play in activism surrounding abortion rights. It’s about male control.

The Portuguese government sends warships to stop their ship from sailing into international waters. The masculine image of a warship up against a small, feminine vessel built to liberate women, is dramatic. The ocean—so often symbolizing femininity—is full of possibility, and full of limitations. Through all of the gorgeous shots of the water, it’s hard to not think about Virginia Woolf or Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. The femininity of the water is liberating and stifling, and Gomperts and her amazing crew feel that when faced with each new obstacle.  “I’m sure we’ll come up with something,” she says.

“We decided if women couldn’t get to the ship, we could help the women get the pills,” Gomperts says, and she announces on air on a Portuguese talk show exactly how women can self-medicate with just Misoprostol to give themselves abortion. She quickly and aggressively gives the prescription as the host nods and the smug male pundit looks stunned.

Immediately afterward, she announces her pregnancy. “If it’s wanted, it’s delicious,” she says. She stresses that she wants to show that side—that you can be pregnant, a mother, and be supportive of abortion rights. This evolution of her ethos goes hand in hand with the evolution of her activism.

A volunteer says that they get more and more emails from women who want to get the pill. There’s a plea for help from a woman in the US military in Afghanistan. “Every story of the women who write is different,” the volunteer says. “It’s hard to generalize because abortions are so common.”

The power of the Internet gives the women a new wave to ride on. They field emails and calls, and created their sister organization, the website Women on Web. It may be illegal to give women the pills, but giving information on how and when to take the pills isn’t illegal. So education—via trainings and hotlines—became their new voyage.

The power of female solidarity in Vessel is overwhelming. These women seem tireless in their goals of empowering women all over the globe—from educational workshops in Tanzania to draping “Tu Decision” with their phone number on the La Virgin del Panecillo in Quito, Ecuador (my favorite scene).

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“Your Decision,” “Safe Abortion” at the feet of the Virgin at El Panecillo in Ecuador

 

In 2012, Women on Web responded to more than 100,000 emails from 135 countries requesting information about abortion with pills. They point out that in some countries, abortion may be legal, but not accessible to women. The United States of America is one of those countries.

We are often so focused on changing laws that we don’t realize the power in giving women the right tools and education to empower themselves “despite the laws.” Through their campaigns—across the sea and across the web—Women on Waves and Women on Web do it all, effecting change in legislation and in women’s personal lives.

The documentary is understated and beautiful, and we are left with a sense of hope. The images of women celebrating in spite of men screaming and yelling, and the images of a fearless older woman with bruises on her arms from fighting with police who ransacked their ship remind us what power we truly have.

While the virgin-in-chains turned abortion-activist was my favorite image in the film, the most emotional moment was during an email exchange with a woman from Nairobi. She kisses the pills when she gets them, and a raw, personal email exchange follows as she goes through the process. When it’s over, she requests the name of the volunteer who was emailing her. A Women on Web volunteer responds that they are a collective, working as a team, so she couldn’t give the specific name—a beautiful and poignant reminder of the power of both individual stories and collective support.

“Women will make it happen.”

 

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Vessel, Diana Whitten’s first feature film, won the Audience Award in the Documentary Competition and the Special Jury Award for Political Courage at South by Southwest.

Vessel will be shown during DOC NYC on Saturday, Nov. 15.

 

Recommended Reading: “When Women Take to the Sea to Provide Safe Abortions,” by Jessica Luther at Bitch Media

 

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Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature, and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.