Tag: Crime

Fast Five Trailer

Hey, so Fast Five is coming out soon. With Vin Diesel and The Rock! Naturally, I thought we’d take a look at its potential awesomeness. See, it’s a movie about a bunch of guys and cars, so we can certainly count on testosterone-fueled action sequences and all sorts of My Dick Is Bigger Than Your Dick moments, including Hot Babes used as trophies and sex objects. Because nothing says Masculinity Manhood Penis Manliest Masculine Man’s Man Big Penis like walking around with partially-clothed women on your arm who don’t say much:

Okay, okay, I’m being unfair. As you can see from the trailer, there are only, like, 25 camera close-ups of women’s asses and bikini-clad bodies–which is very important to include in trailers, so we can know in advance what the movie’s about. But all that objectification of women is clearly balanced out by a shot of a woman jumping off a building and a shot of women sitting around a table. Oh yeah, and the clip of the scared and abused women in the underground dungeon who watch the money go up in flames. 
So, going by the trailer alone, the film’s target audience appears to be young, heterosexual men. Or just heterosexual men regardless. Score! We honestly don’t get to see many films geared toward pleasing the heterosexual men in the audience, especially during summer blockbuster season. End sarcasm. Because the best thing, truly, about movies like this is the occasional flashes of 80s action movie homoeroticism. If by occasional I mean a nonstop orgy of Masculinity Manhood Penis Manliest Masculine Man’s Man Big Penis.     
For those who see the film, please report back to us. Because Vin Diesel. And The Rock. You know?

Guest Writer Wednesday: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest

Enemy of the State: Heroine Lisbeth Salander Fights Back in The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest

This is a cross post from Opinioness of the World.

I am usually not a fan of trilogies; the third film often pales in comparison to the crescendo of emotion and suspense built in a series. And while the occasional exception exists (Return of the King), most (Godfather 3, Alien 3, Terminator 3) are substandard when you compare them to their phenomenal predecessors. Would The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, the third installment in one of the best-selling trilogies, suffer the same fate? Perhaps. But how could I resist the lure of Lisbeth Salander, arguably one of the most interesting, unique and feminist heroines that has ever graced the page or screen?

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest is the final film in the Millennium Trilogy, which also includes The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire. GWKTHN picks up right where the second film leaves off. Punk hacker and researcher Lisbeth Salander is in critical condition after surviving a gunshot wound to the head, shoulder and hip. In the same hospital two doors down, her mortal enemy, the sinister Zalachenko, also recovers from life-threatening wounds. While Salander fights for her life physically, she must also prepare for an emotional battle of wits as she must stand trial for crimes committed as well as prove her mental competency. Salander’s friend, journalist and magazine publisher Mikael Blomkvist, continues his unwavering support. He races to prove her innocence, uncovering a treacherous government conspiracy to silence Salander.
I’ve been engrossed by the movies and books written by the late Swedish author Stieg Larsson. So I couldn’t wait to see how the story ends.  My mother used to always say that a sequel was only good if you could watch it without seeing the other movie(s) in the series. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest would be difficult to watch without seeing the first two or reading the books. This is truly a film belonging to fans of the trilogy. With a different director, Daniel Alfredson, at the helm, it doesn’t stand alone as well as the first or even the second film. The movie suffers from a choppy pace. But the action scenes, such as the shootout in Samir’s restaurant and a police raid, are choreographed effectively. It’s the powerful performances by Noomi Rapace as the tattooed sullen survivor and Michael Nyqvist as the obstinate and passionate Mikael Blomkvist that elevate the material.

Michael Nyqvist stars as Mikael Blomkvist

Not surprisingly, there are differences between the book and its movie adaptation. Annika Gianinni, Salander’s lawyer, is made to seem less competent. In the book, she kicks ass during the trial in her flawless cross-examination of Salander’s childhood psychiatrist, slimy Peter Teleborian, who claims she needs to be institutionalized. But in the movie, she portrays far less resolve. Also, it’s never mentioned that Gianinni specializes in domestic violence and sexual assault cases, which spurred Blomkvist, her brother, to ask her to represent Salander. To my delight, the film retains the strong female police officers Monica Figueroa and Sonja Modig. Thankfully, the film cuts some extraneous storylines like Blomkvist and Figueroa as lovers. The subplot involving Erika Berger, Blomkvist’s best friend and editor of their magazine Millennium, concerns her taking a job at another publication and receiving sexually explicit emails from a possible stalker. In the film, Berger never leaves Millennium and doesn’t support Blomkvist’s stubborn investigation when it jeopardizes the safety of the other journalists. She still receives threatening emails but the film removes the whole premise of sexual harassment in the workplace, slightly diminishing Larsson’s theme of misogyny, preferring to focus on the government corruption.

In the U.S., the first book entitled The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, altered from its original Swedish title Men Who Hate Women. The Swedish name conveys the theme of misogyny Larsson carries throughout the entire trilogy. The first book contends with sexual assault, rape and domestic violence. The second book confronts sexual trafficking. The third book shows sexual harassment in the workplace. The trilogy depicts all of the different manifestations of men’s hatred towards women. To me, that was one of the things I enjoyed most about Larsson’s books: his ability to seamlessly fuse social justice with compelling characters and an interesting plot. Removing it somehow neuters the book’s message. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet‘s Nest’s original title is The Air Castle that Blew Up, with “air castle” referring to a “pipe dream.” It’s interesting to note Larsson’s original titles because only in the second one does he reference “girl” and in that particular book, he’s referencing Salander as a child. In the U.S., while they infantilize her in the titles, sadly reducing her to a “girl” rather than a “woman,” publishers shrewdly put Lisbeth Salander front and center, for she is the primary reason to read the books and watch the films.

Salander endured rape, assault and institutionalization; her rights throughout the trilogy have been violated. Yet she refuses to be a victim. Salander steels herself, always ready to fight back. For her trial, she dons a “costume” of garish goth make-up, mohawk hair and ripped clothes in court. She wasn’t going to pretend to be something she wasn’t; she had nothing to hide. This speaks to Salander’s strategy, a point not fully conveyed in the film. While Blomkvist, lawyer Gianinni, and her friends Plague, Holger Palmgren, and Dragan Armansky come to Salander’s aid and rally around her, she is an equal participant in her defense. Asphyxia is the program she designs to infiltrate people’s computers, which hacker Plague uses to uncover information on a trial witness. But if you hadn’t seen the other films or read the book, you’d never know that Salander’s brilliant mind invented the program. The last scene of the movie ends differently from the book too, detracting from Lisbeth’s emotional growth in learning to allow people into her life.

Annika Gianini (played by Annika Hallin) with Lisbeth Salandar (Noomi Rapace)

Actor Noomi Rapace brings the kick-ass heroine to life, imbuing her with strength and complexity. Despite a bedridden Salander for half the film, a complaint some reviewers have expressed, Rapace captivates. Beyond her dedication to the role (she trained for 7 months in preparation), she has a knack for conveying a range of emotions with a tilt of her chin or a narrowing of her eyes. Yet she’s underutilized here. I kept craving more Lisbeth, more Rapace…for me the two have become inextricably intertwined. I can’t imagine anyone else in the role, particularly as Hollywood gears up for Lisbeth Salander mania as actor Rooney Mara will attempt to fill Rapace’s shoes in the U.S. version.
My fave blogger Melissa Silverstein at Women and Hollywood had the opportunity to chat with the indomitable Rapace (so jealous!). When Silverstein asked Rapace why she thinks women relate to Lisbeth Salander, Rapace replied
She does not complain and she doesn’t accept being a victim. Almost everybody has treated her so badly and has done horrible things to her but she doesn’t accept it and won’t become the victim they have tried to force her to be. She wants to live and will never give up. I find that so liberating. Her battle is for a better life and to be free and I think everybody experiences that at some point in their life. They say OK, I’m not going to take this anymore. This is the point of no return. I’m going to stand up and say no.  I’m going to be true to myself and even if you don’t like me that’s fine. I don’t want to play the game of the charming nice sexy girl anymore, I’m me. I think everybody can relate to that.

It was interesting watching this film and juxtaposing it with For Colored Girls which I saw the same weekend. Both convey the pain men can inflict on women; both show women struggling to not just survive but thrive. What continues to fascinate me about Lisbeth Salander is her defiance to yield, living life on her own terms. She doesn’t wait for justice to come from the authorities; she’s a warrior wielding her own vindication. Salander continually challenges categorization, refusing to be defined by her looks, her sexuality or her gender. She defines herself; a powerful message that we as women and as a society don’t hear often enough. I’m going to miss Lisbeth Salander.



Megan Kearns is a blogger, freelance writer and activist. A feminist vegan, Megan blogs at The Opinioness of the World. She earned her B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology and a Graduate Certificate in Women and Politics and Public Policy. She lives in Boston. She has previously contributed reviews of The Kids Are All Right, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and The Girl Who Played with Fire to Bitch Flicks.

Guest Writer Wednesday: The Girl Who Played with Fire

Good Girl Gone Bad: Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander Burns Up the Screen in The Girl Who Played with Fire
This is a cross post from Opinioness of the World.
I’ve been utterly consumed by Swedish author Stieg Larsson’s gripping Millennium Trilogy (I’ll be reading the third book soon…so excited!).  I loved the first film, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, entranced by the burning intensity of the controversial heroine, Lisbeth Salander.  So I eagerly watched the second film in the series, The Girl Who Played with Fire.
Picking up one year after the first film ends, a young journalist and a doctoral student are researching the sex trafficking trade in Sweden.  Publisher and journalist Mikael Blomkvist’s magazine Millennium decides to publish the controversial work, essentially exposing the identities of the men who purchased young women for sex.  As they are about to go to print with the story, three violent murders are committed.  When the police suspect brilliant hacker Lisbeth Salander’s involvement, Blomkvist is determined to clear her name.  But Salander plots her own vengeful agenda against her enemies, plunging the audience even deeper into the mysterious heroine’s troubled and painful past.
I enjoyed the gritty, tense film.  With a different screenwriter and director at the helm, the movie surprisingly retains the same mood as the first film yet not the same depth.  Director Daniel Alfredson provides some visually stunning camera shots.  The ominous and eerie score perfectly sets the suspenseful tone.  Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t live up to the riveting novel.  So much of what I loved about the book is missing as an exorbitant amount of the plot and dialogue are cut from the movie.
The beauty of Larsson’s books lies in his fusion of societal analysis with compelling characters and gripping suspenseful plots.  In The Girl Who Played with Fire, he focuses his commentary on human trafficking, mental health care, espionage, LGBT discrimination and domestic violence.  Regarding the central theme of trafficking in the book, the young journalist Dag Svensson goes into great detail about the johns and researcher Mia Bergman provides the point of views of the women trafficked as she relays their harrowing tales.  According to Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn in their book Half the Sky, 3 million women and girls are forced into prostitution, as many traffickers coerce, beat and rape women into submission.  As with sexual assault in the first novel, Larsson gives you a sense of the horrors these women face.  But this and other vital themes are completely glossed over in the film.
Part of what makes the book so captivating is that it’s a whodunit; you feel as if you’ve stepped into an episode of Law and Order: SVU (I kept waiting for Mariska Hargitay and Chris Meloni to leap out and bust the perps).  The police investigation into the murders comprises a huge component of the story.  The plot twists and turns and you don’t know the identity of the killer or killers.  Salander’s involvement is ambiguous, as the book doesn’t follow her whereabouts for roughly 100 pages following the murders.  But the film basically tells you right up front, forgoing most of the mystery.
By its end, the movie (and book too) spirals into a violent frenzy, reminiscent of a slasher film with SPOILER ALERT!! characters wielding axes and chainsaws, along with numerous dead bodies buried outside a warehouse and someone buried alive.  Ending on a cliff hanger, it leaves us yearning to know the characters’ fate.
Anything lacking in the film, is made up for by the outstanding performances of the two powerful leads.  While he gave a solid performance in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I kept yearning for more emotion from actor Michael Nyqvist as the impassioned journalist Mikael Blomkvist.  In The Girl Who Played with Fire, he delivers, bringing Blomkvist’s obstinate and obsessive compulsion to solve the murders to life.  Devoted to Salander, his former research partner and lover, Blomkvist races to piece together the puzzle of the murders.  Nyqvist captures the essence of Blomkvist’s stubborn optimism and charisma.
But the spotlight still belongs to actor Noomi Rapace.  While she blew me (and numerous other critics) away with her performance in the first film, I am even more impressed with Rapace as the tattooed researcher Lisbeth Salander this time around.  She stepped into the role through physical training, 7 facial piercings and obtaining her motorcycle license.  Yet she also emotionally transformed herself.  In an interview, Rapace said that she would sit alone, away from the cast and crew, channeling Salander’s anger. Rapace effortlessly evokes Salander’s shrewd intellect, stubbornness and wrath.  We also get to see Salander’s tenderness in her scenes with her trusted former guardian Holmer Palmgren and her lover Miriam “Mimmi” Wu.  She doesn’t have a lot of dialogue, a challenge for an actor, yet Rapace lets us into the wounded character’s world through her subtle yet stellar portrayal.
Lisbeth Salander has generated an enormous amount of press.  It’s unusual to see a female character exude such ferocity.  Usually when we see violence from women in films, they are subordinate to a male counterpart or lover, re-articulating gendered stereotypes. But not Lisbeth.  An unlikely feminist, she despises misogyny, yearning for fair and equal treatment of women.  Salander refuses to be a victim after her own sexual assault.  Despite her pained and troubled childhood, she never wallows in self-pity.  Salander follows her own moral code, wreaking vengeance on those who have abused her with little regard to the law.  She takes responsibility and accepts the consequences of her actions.  Some may argue that she’s not feminine enough, acting like a male disguised in a female form.  But I think that ignores what makes Salander so refreshing.  Self-reliant and clever, she’s a resilient survivor, never backing down from a fight.  A fascinating and fearless character, she is defined neither by her gender nor her fluid sexuality.
While not living up to the book or the first film, it’s still worthwhile to watch for the phenomenal performances by Rapace and Nyqvist.  Each of them truly embodies their alter egos.  Rapace in particular mesmerizes with a smoldering strength.   I cannot wait to see (and read) what happens next in the third installment, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.

Megan Kearns is a blogger, freelance writer and activist. A feminist vegan, Megan blogs at The Opinioness of the World. She earned her B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology and a Graduate Certificate in Women and Politics and Public Policy. She lives in Boston. She has previously contributed reviews of The Kids Are All Right and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to Bitch Flicks.

Guest Writer Wednesday: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Rebel with a Cause: A Feminist Heroine Emerges in film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

This is a cross post from Opinioness of the World.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year, you’ve undoubtedly heard about the international phenomenon that is Swedish author Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. As I often lament the lack of strong female characters in books and film, I was intrigued to descend into the world where one of the most exciting and controversial heroines resides. I’ve been voraciously reading the books in the Millennium Trilogy (I’m currently reading the 2nd). Having thoroughly enjoyed the book, I was curious how the film adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, directed by Swedish filmmaker Niels Arden Oplev, would measure up.

The story revolves around the disappearance of Harriet Vanger, the niece of a wealthy business tycoon, who vanished without a trace 40 years earlier. Harriet’s uncle has been tortured by her absence all these years. Journalist Mikael Blomkvist, who’s been convicted of libel, and Lisbeth Salander, an introverted punk who’s a brilliant researcher and hacker, seek to solve the baffling mystery. The book is a riveting twisting thriller with numerous suspects.

Blomkvist is an interesting character. A charming and passionate journalist championing for the truth, he vacillates between cynicism and naïveté. Dejected after his conviction, he yearns to clear his name. He also frequently bed hops yet has enormous respect for women, often befriending them. While acclaimed Swedish actor Michael Nyqvist gives a valiant effort, he does not imbue the character with enough charisma.

But the sole reason to go see the movie (and read the book too) is for Lisbeth Salander. Noomi Rapace, who won a Guldbagge Award (the Swedish Oscars) for her portrayal, plays her perfectly. She stepped into the role by training for 7 months through Thai boxing and kickboxing (in the books Lisbeth boxes too) as well as piercing her eyebrow and nose, emulating Lisbeth’s punk look. A nuanced performance, Rapace plays the tattooed warrior with the right blend of sullen introvert, keen intellect and fierce survivor instincts. Salander is a ferocious feminist, crusading for women’s empowerment. Facing a tortured and troubled past, Salander is resourceful and resilient, avenging injustices following her own moral compass. An adept actor, Rapace conveys emotions through her eyes, never needing to utter a word. Yet she can also invoke Salander’s visceral rage when warranted.

 

While not quite living up to the book, the film is fantastic. It’s a very stripped down, gritty portrayal, particularly when compared to slick stylized American movies (which is I’m sure how it will be produced in the American re-make). Seeing all of the Swedish locales described in the book on-screen plunged me even further into the story. While the film stays fairly faithful to the book regarding the plot and the protagonists Blomkvist and Salander, there are notable differences between the book and film. As the movie condenses the book (even as it clocks in at 2 hours and 32 minutes), it lacks the same suspense. However Oplev does a superior job streamlining the story’s flow and evoking the tense mood.
But there are a few missteps. The score is distracting at times (the 80s called and they want their synthesizer back) and the end following the murder mystery portion, feels rushed and thrown together. The biggest complaint from viewers has been that the film lacks character development. Female characters, such as Erika Berger, Millennium’s editor and Blomkvist’s best friend/lover, and Cecilia Vanger, a suspect in Harriet’s disappearance, have their roles drastically reduced; interesting for a story that focuses so prominently on women. Yet Oplev diminishes other characters in order to put the two sleuths front and center.

Also, if you’re like me and reading each book before you see the film and you haven’t read the second book yet, be prepared for spoilers as there are scenes NOT in the first book that are taken from the second book and integrated into the film, such as Lisbeth’s flashbacks and the topic of her conversation with her mother.

 

In the book, Larsson makes social commentaries on fiscal corporate corruption, ethics in journalism, and the role of upbringing on criminal behavior. Larsson also provides an interesting commentary on gender roles with his two protagonists. Despite Blomkvist’s social nature and Salander’s private behavior, they both stubbornly follow their own moral code. Both also possess overt sexualities. Yet society views Blomkvist as socially acceptable and perceives Salander as an outcast. These themes are absent from the movie adaptation.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has received an exorbitant amount of attention for Larsson’s controversial central theme of violence against women. It’s true that both the book and film portray graphic violence. The movie does not shy away from the uncomfortable subject matter. In the book, women fall prey to being assaulted, murdered, and violently raped. A pivotal rape scene disturbs and haunts the viewer. But sexual assault is a reality women face, albeit an ugly truth that we as a society may not want to see. Yet Larsson in the book and Oplev in the film never made me feel as if women were victimized. On the contrary, women, particularly in the form of Salander, are powerful survivors. She fights back, not merely accepting her circumstances.

As Melissa Silverstein of Women & Hollywood wrote in Forbes,

As my friend playwright Theresa Rebeck says, “The world looks at women who fight back as crazy.” We constantly see movies, TV shows and plays where men commit violence against women. That’s our norm. Here we have a woman who is saying no more and exacts revenge. Larsson is very clearly saying what we all know and believe. Lisbeth is not crazy. She is a feminist hero of our time.

Violence against women is a pervasive issue. According to the anti-sexual assault organization RAINN, “every 2 minutes in the U.S., someone is sexually assaulted; nearly half of these victims are under the age of 18, and 80 percent are under 30.” And in Sweden, the problem is just as pervasive. Larsson states that “46 percent of the women in Sweden have been subjected to violence by a man.” We must not continue to brush these crimes aside. The original Swedish title of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (both the book and the film) is Män Som Hatar Kvinnor, which translates to “Men Who Hate Women.” I’m glad that Larsson devoted his books to shedding light on misogyny in society.

A provocative and haunting film, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is worthy of watching for Rapace’s subtle yet powerful performance. It’s rare for an audience to see a strong, self-sufficient woman on-screen. It’s even more unusual for a movie to address the stigma of sexual assault as well as the complexity of gender roles. Watch the movie and read the book. Get acquainted with Lisbeth Salander; she may be the most exhilarating, unconventional and surprising character you will ever encounter.





Megan Kearns is a blogger, freelance writer and activist. A feminist vegan, Megan blogs at The Opinioness of the World. She earned her B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology and a Graduate Certificate in Women and Politics and Public Policy. She lives in Boston. She previously contributed a review of The Kids Are All Right to Bitch Flicks.
 


Best Picture Nominee Review Series: Inception

This review of Inception originally appeared on Bitch Flicks in August 2010, when the film was in theatres.
The plot of Inception is deceptively simple: a tale of corporate espionage sidetracked by a man’s obsession with his dead wife and complicated by groovy special effects and dream technology. As far as summer blockbusters and action/heist/corporate espionage movies go, it’s not bad. Once you get beyond the genuinely beautiful camera work and dizzying special effects, however, you’re not left with much.

One thing that really bothers me about the film–aside from its dull, lifeless, stereotypical, and utterly useless female characters (which I’ll get to in a moment)–is that nothing is at stake. Dom Cobb (Leo DiCaprio) and his team take on a big new job: one seemingly powerful businessman, Saito (Ken Watanabe), wants an idea planted into the mind of another powerful businessman, Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy). Specifically, Saito wants Fischer to believe that dear old dad’s dying wish was for him to break up the family business, so that, we assume, Saito wins the game of capitalism. Should the team go through with the profitable job? We aren’t supposed to care about the answer to this question or what is at stake in the plot.

It’s assumed that, of course we want Cobb to win because he’s really Leo, and, you see, Leo is talented but Troubled. What troubles him? You guessed it: a woman. A woman whose very name–Mal (played by Marion Cotillard, an immensely talented actress who’s wasted in this role)–literally means “bad.” Who or what will rescue Cobb/Leo from his troubles? You guessed it again: a woman. This time, it’s a woman whose very name–Ariadne (played by Ellen Page in a way that demands absolutely no commentary)–means “utterly pure,” and who is younger, asexual (a counter to Mal’s dangerous French sexuality) and without any backstory or past of her own to smudge the movie’s–and her own–focus on Cobb/Leo. So, it’s not a stretch here to say that Cobb needs a pure woman to escape the bad one. Virgin/whore stereotype, anyone?

SPOILER ALERT

So, what makes Mal so bad? In life, she was his faithful wife (for all we know) and mother of his two children. In the film, she’s not even a real woman, but a figment of Cobb’s imagination, haunting him with her suicide. (Note: For a better version of this story, see Tarkovsky’s Solaris, or the crappy Soderbergh adaptation starring George Clooney.) Her constant appearances threaten Cobb’s inception task, and while we can imagine a suicide haunting this hard-working man, we learn the much uglier truth later: while developing his theory of “inception,” Cobb used Mal as his first test subject–planting the idea in her mind that reality was not what she believed it to be. Now we have a main character who exacted extreme emotional violence on his wife, driving her kill herself–yet she’s the evil one.

What makes Ariadne so pure? It’s simple, really. We know she was a brilliant student of architecture, and…and…and…that’s it. The film needed an architectural dream space that wouldn’t be marred by trauma, or memory, or the like, so the natural choice would be for a computer program to design it, right? But a computer program couldn’t also counsel Cobb through the trauma of his wife’s suicide and, ultimately, coach him through killing her apparition. She is invested in getting through the job, as her life depends on it, but why does she give a damn about Cobb? Because she’s a woman architect, and women are nurturing creatures, right? So, we have a main character who exacted extreme emotional violence on his wife and threatens to kill his entire team through self-sabotage over guilt, but luckily he has one good woman to pull him through.

Is it possible to look differently at these two characters? Even if you read the movie as an allegory of filmmaking/storytelling, we’re still left with women who are sidekicks, and who serve merely as plot devices. Maria of The Hathor Legacy writes
In other words, even if you refute the realism of the film and its characters, you’re still left with some major gender trouble. Is Cobb a sympathetic character? No. Do we want his big inception job to work? Don’t care. What I care about, for the purposes of this review, is that we have–yet again–a successful mainstream movie that relies on tired tropes of female characters.

Other interesting takes on Inception:

Guest Writer Wednesday: Boardwalk Empire

With its first season complete and two Golden Globes under its belt (Best TV Drama and Best Actor in a TV Drama), Boardwalk Empire, HBO’s prohibition-era Sopranos/Mad Men hybrid, has gotten plenty of attention. And it’s something feminists should be paying attention to as well. Like Mad Men, the show doesn’t gloss over the sexist elements of the era, but instead exposes them in both stark contrast and comparison to how we view women in our society today.
The Peggy Olsen of the series is found in Margaret Schroeder (played brilliantly by Kelly Macdonald), who is wise beyond her era, yet remains limited by her gender. At the start of the series, we see her suffer physical abuse by her husband (so much so that she miscarries, and not for the first time). When she appeals to a wealthy politician (our protagonist Nucky Thompson, played by Steve Buscemi) to find work for her husband, he takes her under his wing, eliminating her abusive husband and setting her up with a job in a fancy dress shop. It is here that we encounter the division of class between the clientele and Margaret, an Irish immigrant whose boss assumes is uneducated and dirty (other ethnic and religious tensions abound in the turf wars between the Irish, Italian, and Greek mobs throughout the season). Soon Nucky takes a romantic interest in Margaret and offers to put her and her children up, though he won’t marry her. Margaret must weigh the costs/benefits of this situation (security for her and her children versus her neighbors thinking she’s a whore), but in the end she doesn’t have much of a choice, like most women in this show and of this era. But despite the boundaries around her, Margaret remains well-read, involved in local politics and with the Women’s Temperance Movement, and takes control of her sexuality (in the 1920s, birth control meant douching with Lysol). It is her struggle for both mere survival and to retain her honor in a time when the odds are against her that make her journey and triumphs so satisfying and enjoyable to watch.
The other female characters are similarly dependent on men, and either try to escape this grip or find power within it. Angela (played by Aleska Palladino), who has a baby with Nucky’s protege Jimmy, dreams of running off to Paris with her lesbian lover, but she feels trapped by Jimmy, who overpowers her in every way. Jimmy’s mother, Gillian (Gretchen Mol), who had Jimmy young by a much older man, offers to take care of Angela’s son for her so that she can have a life of her own. Perhaps Gillian wished someone had offered her the same.
Though Gillian is a grandmother, she is still very young and works as a showgirl (this is an age where the only jobs for women seemed to be as dancers, prostitutes, or nannies – they either worked in childcare or for the pleasure of men). When Jimmy gets into trouble, Gretchen helps the only way she knows how – by seducing his enemy for information. Nucky’s old mistress similarly uses pregnancy as power against a prohibition agent she sleeps with. One could argue that all the women on the show use their sexuality as a type of currency, as there was little other option at the time.
There also remains the notion that women’s reproductive choices were not theirs to control. Nucky chides Margaret for using the Lysol like “any common whore,” the prohibition agent tells his barren wife to pray instead of considering an invasive medical procedure, and Jimmy decides without consulting Angela that they should have more children. This backwards thinking, however, is not far from the discussions happening today in which restrictive laws prohibit women from freely controlling their own bodies. 
NYMag had argued that aside from Margaret’s character, all the other women appear to be nude decoration for the HBO premium. Upon further reflection, I’ve realized that the show doesn’t quite yet pass the Bechdel test. For those unfamiliar, to pass the test a show must 1. Have two women, 2. Who talk to each other, 3. About something other than a man. All of Margaret’s conversations are about Nucky. She speaks with Nucky’s mistress about how they’re fighting over Nucky; she speaks with a fellow “concubine” about how to keep Nucky; she even speaks with her temperance leader about whether she should accept Nucky’s offer. Even in a scene with Angela and her lover the two women talk about how they couldn’t be seen together or Nucky would cut off their money. On the one hand, this proves how so very dependent women were forced to be in this time period. On the other hand, the show’s writers could do a better job developing their female characters.
As for me (and the Golden Globes), I think this show has plenty of potential, especially when it comes to its women. What do you think? Do you watch the show? Do you root for Margaret like you do for Peggy and Joan? Leave your comments below! 
Amanda ReCupido is a writer and arts publicist living in New York City. She is the author of the blog The Undomestic Goddess and can be found on Twitter at TheUndomestic.

Ripley’s Pick: The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency
We’ve all seen the business signs with their unintentionally humorous misspellings, typos, and improper use of that dreaded apostrophe. You don’t, however, need to be a grammar nerd to understand the significance of a single apostrophe in The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. It signals that our main character knows something about autonomy, naming, and owning her work as a new detective–as Botswana’s only female detective, in fact. There is a moment, early in the two-hour pilot episode, when viewers must know the episodes to come will be smart, feminist, and funny. Watch this clip, which introduces the show’s cast and Precious Ramotswe’s (played by singer and actress Jill Scott) efforts at naming:

Her fix–painting in the apostrophe–and the group’s reciting of the new name of the business (“The number one ladies apostrophe detective agency!”) tells viewers that this new enterprise isn’t merely an agency of ladies, or for ladies, but that the women of the agency are the agency. You also can’t miss the bit of humor in there–that this detective agency isn’t number one because it’s necessarily the best, but because it’s the first, and only, woman-owned detective agency in Botswana.
This may seem like a lot of attention to a very small point in the show, but it sets a light and funny tone with an undercurrent of seriousness and thoughtfulness for the rest of the series. 
In terms of basic plot structure, there isn’t a lot of groundbreaking material here: each episode brings a series of mysteries that Mme Ramotswe and her quirky secretary and assistant, Grace Makutsi (played by Tony-Award-winning actress Anika Noni Rose), use clues, intellect, intuition, and good, old-fashioned pluck to solve. However, unlike most detective shows out there, the women don’t rely on any high-tech crime-fighting devices, and the show’s deployment of justice typically doesn’t involve police, brutality, and/or imprisonment.
This point is, in fact, the most significant deviation from standard whodunit material: the show’s definition of justice just might be a model for what feminist justice looks like. Rather than throwing criminals in the slammer, the women of the show are interested in righting wrongs, in bringing people in broken relationships together to resolve their problems, and, most of all, in revealing truth to those in search of it. In other words, justice without all the violence, vengeance, and sick pleasure of domination. While some of the crimes are more serious than others in the show, the resolutions genuinely address the crime committed.
The show’s setting–and location of its filming–in Gaborone, Botswana cannot be glossed over. Not only is the setting beautiful, not only does it lend authenticity to the show and its characters, but it allows us a window on a society different from the United States (and Britain, where the show originally aired)–but also shows the way we struggle with the same kinds of things. While the show maintains a tone of lightness and comedy throughout, there isn’t an episode that doesn’t nod to a serious topic: Grace cares for her brother, who suffers from AIDS; there are no shortage of orphaned children hanging about; there is constant struggle between tradition and modernity, rural and urban values; Precious struggles with a former abusive relationship; and so on. Western audiences rarely see depictions of African countries that don’t center around war, illness, and extreme poverty. While I would never argue that No. 1 Ladies’ is a flawless series, it’s pretty damn good and definitely worth your time.
Also check out Latoya Peterson’s review of the pilot episode (and the comments section) on Racialicious.

Movie Review: Inception

The plot of Inception is deceptively simple: a tale of corporate espionage sidetracked by a man’s obsession with his dead wife and complicated by groovy special effects and dream technology. As far as summer blockbusters and action/heist/corporate espionage movies go, it’s not bad. Once you get beyond the genuinely beautiful camera work and dizzying special effects, however, you’re not left with much.

One thing that really bothers me about the film–aside from its dull, lifeless, stereotypical, and utterly useless female characters (which I’ll get to in a moment)–is that nothing is at stake. Dom Cobb (Leo DiCaprio) and his team take on a big new job: one seemingly powerful businessman, Saito (Ken Watanabe), wants an idea planted into the mind of another powerful businessman, Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy). Specifically, Saito wants Fischer to believe that dear old dad’s dying wish was for him to break up the family business, so that, we assume, Saito wins the game of capitalism. Should the team go through with the profitable job? We aren’t supposed to care about the answer to this question or what is at stake in the plot.

It’s assumed that, of course we want Cobb to win because he’s really Leo, and, you see, Leo is talented but Troubled. What troubles him? You guessed it: a woman. A woman whose very name–Mal (played by Marion Cotillard, an immensely talented actress who’s wasted in this role)–literally means “bad.” Who or what will rescue Cobb/Leo from his troubles? You guessed it again: a woman. This time, it’s a woman whose very name–Ariadne (played by Ellen Page in a way that demands absolutely no commentary)–means “utterly pure,” and who is younger, asexual (a counter to Mal’s dangerous French sexuality) and without any backstory or past of her own to smudge the movie’s–and her own–focus on Cobb/Leo. So, it’s not a stretch here to say that Cobb needs a pure woman to escape the bad one. Virgin/whore stereotype, anyone?

SPOILER ALERT

So, what makes Mal so bad? In life, she was his faithful wife (for all we know) and mother of his two children. In the film, she’s not even a real woman, but a figment of Cobb’s imagination, haunting him with her suicide. (Note: For a better version of this story, see Tarkovsky’s Solaris, or the crappy Soderbergh adaptation starring George Clooney.) Her constant appearances threaten Cobb’s inception task, and while we can imagine a suicide haunting this hard-working man, we learn the much uglier truth later: while developing his theory of “inception,” Cobb used Mal as his first test subject–planting the idea in her mind that reality was not what she believed it to be. Now we have a main character who exacted extreme emotional violence on his wife, driving her kill herself–yet she’s the evil one.

What makes Ariadne so pure? It’s simple, really. We know she was a brilliant student of architecture, and…and…and…that’s it. The film needed an architectural dream space that wouldn’t be marred by trauma, or memory, or the like, so the natural choice would be for a computer program to design it, right? But a computer program couldn’t also counsel Cobb through the trauma of his wife’s suicide and, ultimately, coach him through killing her apparition. She is invested in getting through the job, as her life depends on it, but why does she give a damn about Cobb? Because she’s a woman architect, and women are nurturing creatures, right? So, we have a main character who exacted extreme emotional violence on his wife and threatens to kill his entire team through self-sabotage over guilt, but luckily he has one good woman to pull him through.

Is it possible to look differently at these two characters? Even if you read the movie as an allegory of filmmaking/storytelling, we’re still left with women who are sidekicks, and who serve merely as plot devices. Maria of The Hathor Legacy writes

Both Mal and Ariadne are symbols, not real characters, and I think this is reflected in the kinds of lines and characterization each is offered. In a movie where businessmen are dryly humorous, several million dollars are devoted to a man’s daddy-issues, and Dom’s nostalgic love for family is symbolized through a honey-heavy shot of golden light haloing his young moppets’ heads, the wooden-ness and flatness of the lines offered these characters is startlingly noticeable.

In other words, even if you refute the realism of the film and its characters, you’re still left with some major gender trouble. Is Cobb a sympathetic character? No. Do we want his big inception job to work? Don’t care. What I care about, for the purposes of this review, is that we have–yet again–a successful mainstream movie that relies on tired tropes of female characters.

Other interesting takes on Inception:

Flick-Off: Taken

So I decided to watch one of those mind-numbingly mediocre action films, assuming I’d walk away from the experience merely mind-numbed and ready to move forward with more serious cinema. The exact opposite happened. Not only is Taken a terribly made film in terms of its pacing, plot points, character development, and dialogue, it’s one of the most offensive, misogynistic films I’ve seen in a long time.
imdb summary: Seventeen year-old Kim is the pride and joy of her father Bryan Mills. Bryan is a retired agent who left the Secret Service to be near Kim in California. Kim lives with her mother Lenore and her wealthy stepfather Stuart. Kim manages to convince her reluctant father to allow her to travel to Paris with her friend Amanda. When the girls arrive in Paris they share a cab with a stranger named Peter, and Amanda lets it slip that they are alone in Paris. Using this information an Albanese gang of human traffickers kidnaps the girls. Kim barely has time to call her father and give him information. Her father gets to speak briefly to one of the kidnappers and he promises to kill the kidnappers if they do not let his daughter go free. The kidnapper wishes him “good luck,” so Bryan Mills travels to Paris to search for his daughter and her friend.

First, the tortured relationship between Kim and her father exists solely to set up the mother as a careless, liberal, money-grubbing asshole. While he gets to be the oh-it’s-too-dangerous-for-my-17-year-old-daughter-to-go-to-Paris-alone “good parent,” the mother gets relegated to the role of oh-just-let-her-go-I-mean-what-could-possibly-go-wrong “bad parent.” Of course, shit goes terribly wrong, and the audience can’t help but be all, “that horrible mother should’ve known better!” Then, as is usually the case, Daddy gets to rush to the rescue while Mommy stays at home sobbing into the arms of her new, rich, conveniently helpless husband.

To make matters worse, the Albanese gang deals in sex trafficking, which is an actual, serious issue in the world, an issue that this film exploits to serve the ultimate, final plot point: Daddy gets to save Kim from the evil Albanese sex traffickers in the moments just before she loses her virginity and remains forever “impure.” The most offensive aspect of all this rests on the fact that Bryan’s (and the film’s) focus never veers from his daughter. So, while we see countless drugged-up young women tied to bed posts, waiting to be raped again, the film treats them and their situation as entirely insignificant; the focus always remains on Daddy’s ass-kicking, murdering attempts to save his daughter’s virginity.

After he finds her friend Amanda dead and tied to a bedpost, he moves on to the next young woman who might help him, a girl who happens to have his daughter’s jacket. He runs from room to room, finding women unconscious, enslaved, raped repeatedly, and he saves that particular girl, not because he’s appalled by what’s happened to her, but because she might lead him to his daughter. He nurses her back to health, and as soon as she can speak full sentences, he interrogates her about where she got the jacket. Basically, the film makes absolutely no attempt whatsoever to comment on the atrocity of sex trafficking—it serves only as a plot device to help Bryan redeem his broken relationship with his virginal daughter.

I hated this film.

Movie Review: Duplicity

Duplicity (2009). Written and directed by Tony Gilroy. Starring Julia Roberts and Clive Owen. Excellent supporting roles by Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti.

Duplicity has dropped out of the top box-office earners since its March 20th release; though it has earned a total of over $40 million domestically, that’s not enough to cover its budget of $60 million.

I saw Duplicity in the theaters last month in part because of the positive reviews paired with skeptical press and questions about whether Julia Roberts could still open a movie. (Questions that angered me enough to express my opinion with my wallet, an action I believe is important.) A recent story clip on MSN compelled me to revisit the movie. The headline “Moneymakers” beside a picture of Julia Roberts, with the byline “Hollywood’s most bankable actresses” links to an article that discusses which actresses can currently be counted on to bring in the bucks. “Moneymaker”, of course, is a term most commonly associated with pornography, prostitution, and the objectification of the female ass, in particular.

The actress-as-commodity isn’t anything unusual in the sexist institution of mainstream filmmaking, but describing a popular actress as a “moneymaker” creates a serious problem. While box office numbers (and particularly opening weekend numbers) determine a film’s success and influence executives in terms of which movies are greenlighted, I have to wonder if it’s the actress’ ass alone bringing people into theaters.

Anyhow, on to the movie.

Duplicity expects level of sophistication and intelligence from its audience, which includes the ability to follow a story that jerks viewers from location to location, and from time to time. It’s a romantic comedy, but it makes you think. Maybe this is a problem for box-office bucks, but a little mental effort makes a movie much more enjoyable–for adults, at least.

Thinking about Ripley’s Rule as a litmus test, this movie actually barely passes–if at all. This fact ordinarily is a big problem for me, but in Duplicity it feels like an afterthought. It’s a romantic comedy, but not the kind we’ve become accustomed to. As a number of reviewers have previously mentioned, this film hearkens back to the screwball comedies of the 1940s, when wit was king, and the women generally matched the men in smarts (that’s not to say that the gender politics were a mess in those movies). What makes the movie good–and so different from other romantic comedies–is that the man and woman are on an even keel. Domination of one or the other sex isn’t the issue. These characters have bigger fish to fry–namely, their bosses in the world of corporate espionage. It’s as if Michael Clayton were remade into a romantic comedy.

If you aren’t convinced that the movie is worth seeing, the opening credits present the strangest and most hilarious fight scene in recent memory.

Here’s the trailer:

Observe and Report Roundup

April is National Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

An odd coincidence is that Jody Hill’s Observe and Report is currently in theaters, and getting all kinds of attention for a rape scene that’s played as comedy. Worst of all, many out there are defending the movie as an edgy, dark comedy, and arguing that the scene doesn’t depict rape at all.

I’ve hesitated writing about the film; movies this noxious don’t deserve whatever free press a site like ours provides (assuming that all press is, in some way, good press). With no plans to ever see OaR, I don’t know that I could contribute a whole lot to the discussion personally, but thought I’d compile a list of what other smart people are saying, and give you a glimpse of the R-rated trailer–with hopes that it shows you as much of the movie as you’ll ever want to see.

A lot of the discussions center around the question of whether or not the sexual encounter shown in the final seconds of the trailer is actually rape. Stupid question; yes, it is. Period. The more interesting debate, which not many are taking up (according to my reading) is why a film like this is being made at this time. I’m all for dark comedy, though this doesn’t really seem like one (MaryAnn Johanson asks whether the movie is a comedy at all in her weekly column at AWFJ), and what worries me is the kind of cultural work being done. All those people who like to shout about how movies are just entertainment and say people like us have no sense of humor, or take things too seriously, are underestimating the power of representation–of the arts in general, film-making included. Although the movie has an R rating, we must ask who the intended audience of such a movie is. Clearly, it’s male, and the movie has a ring of adolescence about it (an epidemic of our time), with its “jokes” about sex, drug use, alcoholism, violence, and whatever else I’ll miss by refusing to see it, which clues us into the fact that it is for people who are still in a phase of their lives when they figure out their own values.

People are seeing OaR, too. It finished fourth in the holiday weekend box office, selling over $11 million worth of tickets. There’s a desire for this sort of thing, and the interesting question is: Why?

Here are some highlights (and lowlights) from the blogosphere:

And some mainstream reviews:

  • Observe and Report by Michael Phillips @ The Chicago Tribune (In a review that otherwise seems fair, writer Micheal Phillips seriously drops the ball–to say the least–when he claims: “The best, riskiest bit in Observe and Report involves Faris, with wee vomitous spillage drying on the pillow by her slack jaw, underneath Rogen, who cannot believe the dolt of his fondest desires is trashed enough to give him a toss.”)
  • Mall Crisis? Call Security. Then Again, Maybe Not by Manhola Darghis for The New York Times (Darghis can be counted on as a female voice in the NYT, but she often–and this is no exception–offers more respect than is due.)
  • Observe and Report by Peter Travers for Rolling Stone (The most appalling of all the “official” reviews I’ve read, which should be no great surprise, considering the source. Here’s a sample: “Props to Hill and Rogen for believing you can play anything for a hoot, including R-rated sex and violence.” Yeah–props. That’s what I was going to say.)

Other sickery:

  • Writer Jody Hill describes his latest movie as “a dark, crazy, awesome journey” in “An Auteur of Awkward Strikes Again” in the NYT
  • An apologist for the rape scene, in a column from New York Magazine, says:


But, given all the horrible things Ronnie does later in the movie — out of spite, or stupidity, or flat-out psychosis — this scene winds up seeming a lot less awful as the movie goes on. For one thing, as horribly misdirected as it becomes, his “courtship” of Brandi is the only thing in Ronnie’s life that comes partly from a place of sweetness rather than entirely from a place of darkness.

Audiences are happy when Ronnie ends up with shy coffee girl Nell, someone who he’s built up a narrative-long relationship of openness and trust. When Brandi tries to get back in his good graces, Ronnie gives her a public kiss-off that centers on her sleeping around.

and, best of all

So which is it? Rape, or the reality of dating circa 2009? As with anything Hill has to say, the meaning is not clear. Feminists have the right to be angry, especially when a mainstream Hollywood movie offers such a backward vision of male/female fornication. But is Observe and Report really saying anything new? In this Girls Gone Wild dynamic of brazen openness and complete lack of shame, should a drunken slut bear any of the blame? It’s not a question of that horrid old excuse “she had it coming.” It’s more of a mirror on where society has sunk since women were empowered to ‘take back the night.’ Clearly, had Hill meant the scene to be something akin to pure sexual assault, Brandi would have been treated like a piece of dead meat.