Like waves lapping persistently against the shore, the film is a succession of small, understated moments. Images of water and the sea are trickled throughout while the power of persistence functions on various symbolic levels.
This guest post by Natalie Wilson previously appeared at Ms. blog and is cross-posted with permission.
Love is forged in small moments. Like ragged bits of bottles polished into sea glass, Freeheld‘s lead characters, Laurel Hester (Julianne Moore) and Stacie Andree (Ellen Page), are rugged and tough, tumbled unwittingly by societal pressures and personal illness into gems fighting for LGBTQ equality.
In one early scene in the film—which is based on the true story of Laurel and Stacie’s landmark legal battle—the couple walks on the beach. They find a piece of sea glass, joking about wether or not it is an item worth keeping. Later, after Laurel’s death from lung cancer, Stacie lovingly puts this gem from the sea into a box of remembrances.
Like waves lapping persistently against the shore, the film is a succession of small, understated moments. Images of water and the sea are trickled throughout while the power of persistence functions on various symbolic levels.
Though the word feminism is never used, the film drips with feminist undercurrents. As a detective, Laurel must fight to be valued on the police force and hopes to become the first woman lieutenant in New Jersey, while Stacie has to prove she can rotate tires better than a man to get a job as a mechanic.
At one point, Laurel references the white male privilege of her detective partner, Dane Wells. Though he’s an ally to the couple through the film, such privilege is shown to shape the political landscape as well as the law—the five “Freeholders” that make up the county’s governing body are an “old boys network” using their white and male privilege to block Laurel’s attempts to ensure her pension will go to her domestic partner, Stacie.
In addition to documenting how Laurel’s battle with cancer became a battle for marriage equality, the film shows the small daily micro-aggressions one must endure as queer person in a heteronormative society, such as when Laurel’s police colleagues take swipes at her same-sex relationship, or when a group of men attempt to rob the couple while they’re out together in public.
The film has not garnered rave reviews—in fact, it has been written off for having cardboard characters and by-the-numbers drama that “undermine its noble intentions.” I disagree. True, the film is not brimming with action scenes or pulsing with dramatic soundscapes—it builds slowly and ends rather quietly. It is, in fact, far more like life and death than most of the movies that try to capture such stories; life is often slow and undramatic, death is often unexpected and quiet. Freeheld is not a crashing wave of drama—it is, rather, characterized by ebb and flow and captures the change of tide towards justice for LGBTQ people.
Like feminism, which is often characterized as coming in waves, Freeheld depicts the slow build of a changing tide; right now, U.S. culture is experiencing such a change in the tide regarding LGBTQ justice. Women like Laurel and Stacie are part of the wellspring that made this wave possible; part of the multitudes of people trying to live their lives and love who they love, despite living in a culture that uses religion, government and the law to keep the tide turned against them. Freeheld may not shine like a diamond, but it certainly offers us a beautiful piece of history—one that has tumbled and turned lives made jagged by injustice into beautiful, unbreakable bits of sea glass.
Natalie Wilsonteaches women’s studies and literature at California State University, San Marcos. She is theauthor ofSeduced by Twilightand blogs for Ms., Girl with Pen and Bitch Flicks.
“Why do you want to see a movie that looks depressing?” I asked, trying to persuade her to watch something more entertaining. In reality, what I wanted to say was “Look, I don’t want to re-live Aunt Grace onscreen.” I eventually did say that out loud as we walked into a theater full of people that looked my mother’s age and older. I did a double take. I could not believe there was no one else there my age or younger inside the theater.
Julianne Moore as Alice, a performance that earned her a Best Actress Academy Award.
I was the youngest person in the theater. And I’m grown.
Still Alice was not a movie on my radar. I heard that Julianne Moore put in an Oscar-worthy performance prior to her actually winning the award. It looked like one of those small art-house films that I normally adore, however the subject matter was not up my alley.
Four years ago I helped care for an older Aunt who suffered from dementia after living a remarkable life as one of the first Black nurses in the U.S. Navy. We had talked for years about me writing her life story. Her mind was sharp, she was proudly independent in her own home, and liked to take drives around town on her own and still traveled the world. She was proof that an unmarried, child-free, financially independent woman could live a full life despite what a sexist and racist society from her generation deemed socially acceptable. My Aunt Grace was in her 80s when she died. I endured her shockingly fast deterioration with my mother and sister. It was literally experiencing the invasion of a body snatcher who stole my amazing Aunt’s mind. Robbed her of all agency. So nah, watching a movie about a woman who suffers early onset Alzheimer’s was not on my list of Must-See-Movies.
My mother saw the trailer and was really curious. She is retired and often takes classes for retired persons to keep them active and to gain access to information to help them live full lives during retirement. Lately, she had been reading up on dementia and Alzheimer’s. She wanted to see the movie with me.
“Why do you want to see a movie that looks depressing?” I asked, trying to persuade her to watch something more entertaining. In reality, what I wanted to say was “Look, I don’t want to re-live Aunt Grace onscreen.” I eventually did say that out loud as we walked into a theater full of people that looked my mother’s age and older. I did a double take. I could not believe there was no one else there my age or younger inside the theater. I got the distinct impression that everyone wasn’t there just to be impressed with a tour de force performance or a brilliant plot. I listened to the whispers in the crowd before the preview trailers. Most of them I imagined (like my mother) were here to see what could happen to them. I felt like they were here to learn the warning signs. The anxiety in the room was that visceral.
Alice and her husband John Howland (Alec Baldwin). Their normal life about to be disrupted.
Because of that energy, my experience watching Still Alice was akin to viewing a horror movie. Going in we knew a horrible event awaited Alice Howland (Julianne Moore) before she did. And we, the audience, waited with bated breath for signs of the coming terror. Every minor occurrence in her life within the first 10 minutes was cause for anxiety. Every fumble of a word, every physical action Alice made that looked like a mistake caused my stress level to rise as the movie continued. I wondered if my stressful viewing would’ve been different if I hadn’t experienced the same drama that the Howland family goes through in the film. I wasn’t alone in my stress. My viewing audience gasped when Alice reintroduces herself to her youngest son’s girlfriend after meeting her five minutes previous. When Alice momentarily forgets where she is on her regular jogging route, a woman behind me said out loud, “Oh! She doesn’t know where she is already! Oh, no!”
Alice reintroduces herself to her son’s new girlfriend after meeting her minutes before.
Still Alice unfolds in an episodic fashion. It is not interested in subplots, or melodramatic movie moments. It is a quiet film that builds on the rapid downward spiral of a successful linguist who has spent her entire life studying language and how the mind works with words, only to find herself losing the power of those words herself. In screenwriting circles this means she is the perfect character in which to explore this sudden change of events in her life with this disease. The film quickly runs through the basic plot drill of learning about the disease, disclosing this tragic news to her family and job, and then making the necessary lifestyle changes to prepare for the inevitable. Going in, it is obvious there will be no happy ending, nor even a satisfying resolution. Like real life, shit happens, and depending on where you are on the socioeconomic scale, your life choices can be limited or better than most.
In this case, Alice Howland has sufficient income from her own work as a linguist (she has seminal books written, she goes on speaking tours, etc.), as well as the income of her doctor husband John Howland (Alec Baldwin). Unlike most people, this upper income family has the best health insurance to see a specialist right away. They have the disposable income to survive without Alice’s salary after she leaves the career she loves, and they also have access to an in-home caretaker without changing any of their spending habits. There are no worries about losing their home, or even their second home near the beach. In fact, John is up for a prestigious new job with the Mayo Clinic, and the only downside is that they will have to move, which is a real concern for Alice’s condition. With Alzheimer’s, routine is very important. Familiar surroundings help people maintain security. Alec Baldwin is really good at conveying with his eyes alone the desire to thrive in his dream career, but also the pain of coping with and caring for his ailing wife, a woman who was an equal to his own brilliant mind. He wants to be there for her, but he doesn’t want his life circling around the drain too. To most, this might seem selfish, but it is a pressing issue and cause for real overwhelming angst.
Alice teaching linguistics, trying her best to maintain her normal life.
Until the end, Alice and John’s own adult children really don’t have to change their lives or routines because there is money to handle that. How different this story would be if there was no abundance of income. For average Americans, a serious illness ruins families forever. Jobs are lost, homes are foreclosed, and people become homeless or slip into poverty that they can’t escape from. Despite the horrible circumstances the Howland family finds themselves in, they have a safety net that can keep them together. Even with devastating pain, certain privileges will help certain families overcome challenges better than others.
John and Alice during a consultation with a specialist. Higher incomes have access to better medical treatment.
There is a poignant moment in the film where Alice, still in control of her mental faculties, makes a video for herself to watch when the time comes that she can no longer remember her name, her children’s names or even where she lives. In a rational and loving voice she tells her future self to swallow a bottle of pills and never tell anyone. She plans to kill herself when her mind betrays her. And there is a harrowing and quite dark comedic moment when the ailing Alice stumbles across the video and attempts to follow her own directions.
Alice tries her best to hide her condition. She is terrified of the stigma. She goes so far as to tell her husband that she wishes she had cancer instead, because people knew how to deal with cancer, and she would still have her mind. Her attempts to hide her illness at work backfires when her annual job evaluation reveals that her university students have raked her over the coals for being a terrible professor. Then and only then does she confide in her boss that she has Alzheimer’s. The look on her face as her boss comforts her says it all: this is the end of her life, the one anchor outside of her immediate family that held her in the fold of “regular Alice.” And let’s be honest, she’s right about the stigma. Our society still does not know how to deal with individuals whose minds seem to be turning against them. People struggling with mental health often feel like unwelcome pariahs around family and even close friends. When Alice’s youngest daughter Lydia (Kristen Stewart) asks her point blank, “What’s it like?” we can see Alice visibly relaxing as she tries to explain this frightening change to her sense of self. She thanks her daughter for not being too afraid to talk openly about it. Lydia appears to be the only person in the family dealing with Alice in the here and now. The rest of the family walk around on eggshells thinking of the old Alice and how she used to be, and also thinking about the problems they will deal with in the future, but always in the context of how it affects their personal lives.
Lydia (Kristen Stewart) showing great compassion and support for her mother.
The parting shots show Alice nearly a year later, sitting on her couch, oblivious to her family making plans for her future. John is moving for the new job. Once settled, he may or may not send for her. We hope so. There is reconciliation with Lydia who wants to be an actress in Hollywood which is the only real hiccup in Alice’s life before the progression of her disease. Alice has three happy, healthy, unbothered adult children. The fact that Lydia wants to be an actress and is pursuing her dream is such a petty thing for Alice to be concerned about. But appearances seem to be what she and her ice queen older daughter Anna (Kate Bosworth–with the best resting bitch face ever), live for. I guess everyone in this family is supposed to be a big impressive SOMEBODY in Alice’s eyes (Anna’s too). Lydia leaves L.A. to live at home for the sake of the rest of the family, (who continue to thrive unencumbered.) It is the free-spirit daughter who copes the best, and is the better person out of all the Howland clan to help Alice transition into this new life.
Sadly, writer/director Richard Glatzer died from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) on March 10, 2015, a month after Julianne Moore won her Oscar under his direction. I will miss his creative voice after being first introduced to his work with his spouse and collaborative film partner Wash Westmoreland through the film Quinceañera. He and Westmoreland have a body of work to be proud of.
Still Alice was not an easy film to watch and process. The audience (and my mother) didn’t seem pleased with the ending. I heard people murmuring “That was it?” as we left. “I thought there would be more,” my mother said. There was nowhere for it to go really. And that was the point. Enjoy and love your family while they are still capable of knowing you. Then love and enjoy them when they forget. They are still themselves, trapped inside their minds, doing their best to not be frightened of the changes. It taught me to be thankful that my own mother, also named Alice, is still here with me, pushing her own mind to keep learning and growing.
Writer/Director Richard Glatzer (pictured in wheelchair) died recently under the loving care of his partner.
Professional raconteur and pop culture agitator, Lisa Bolekaja can be found on Twitter @LisaBolekaja or co-hosting on Hilliard Guess’ Screenwriters Rant Room (Stitcher and Itunes). Her latest short story can be found in the SF anthology How to Survive on Other Planets: A Guide For Aspiring Aliens from Upper Rubber Boot Publications.
I had been curious to see what the filmmakers would do with this adaptation of the Lisa Genova novel. The writer-directors are a married gay male couple (Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer) who not only made the underrated ‘Quinceañera’ (the rare film about Chicanos that doesn’t have a white savior or even a white main character), but also live with the relatively recent ALS diagnosis of Glatzer (whose disease has progressed enough that he can’t speak or eat without assistance). While ALS is not the same as the Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease the title character has in ‘Alice,’ I thought Glatzer’s experience might give the film more insight than the usual able-bodied writer and director’s view of disability. What I didn’t expect from this film was how mild and polite it is about the challenges and loss Alice (Moore) faces.
Like apparently many others, I was avoiding this year’s blindingly white “boy” and “man”-centered Academy Awards, so I missed seeing Julianne Moore win the Oscar as Best Actress for her performance in Still Alice. Instead, at the suggestion of Indiewire’s Women and Hollywood I was on my way to see a film with a woman protagonist: Still Alice. I didn’t have a lot of choices. I’d already seen Wild, Two Days, One Night, and Idaand had no desire to see Gone Girl; the only other films about women nominated for major awards. I ended up going right back home: the theater was closed for emergency roof repair. When I saw the film the next Sunday, I thought maybe I should have taken the previous week’s circumstances as a sign.
I had been curious to see what the filmmakers would do with this adaptation of the Lisa Genova novel. The writer-directors are a married gay male couple (Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer) who not only made the underrated Quinceañera(the rare film about Chicanos that doesn’t have a white savior or even a white main character), but also live with the relatively recent ALS diagnosis of Glatzer (whose disease has progressed enough that he can’t speak or eat without assistance). While ALS is not the same as the Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease the title character has in Alice I thought Glatzer’s experience might give the film more insight than the usual able-bodied writer and director’s view of disability. What I didn’t expect from this film was how mild and polite it is about the challenges and loss Alice (Moore) faces.
As an expert on dementia writes, we should feel a lot more tension in the final diagnostic test Alice takes (and fails) because the stakes are so high. Similarly when one of Alice’s children is found to have the gene that means a 100 percent chance of developing the disease as well, we hear a phone call and then… nothing else, not even a hint, in later scenes, of how this information would affect the way an adult child would see and react to the deterioration of a parent.
Lydia and Alice
The only fire in this film are the interactions between Alice and her youngest daughter Lydia (played by Kristen Stewart in a performance that reminded me of her meaty roles in Adventureland and The Runaways). In a family of over-achieving professionals (brother Charlie is in med school, sister Anna is a lawyer), Lydia is a struggling actress who has always had a prickly relationship with her Type-A, college professor mother (even after she is diagnosed, Alice continues to teach at Columbia and prepares, alone, the entire Christmas dinner, from scratch, for the whole family).
After Alice has to leave her job, she tells Lydia all the things she wants to see while she can still take them in, ending with, ” I want you to go to college.”
Exasperated, Lydia tells her, “You can’t just use your situation to get everything you want.”
As anyone who has had family members who need care can attest, sometimes the people who step up and help can be as surprising as the ones who are suddenly “too busy” to stop by. Lydia is the one who asks her mother (as Alice again prepares food for the whole family–even moderately advanced Alzheimer’s can’t save women from doing all the work in the household) to describe what she is experiencing. Alice wears a “memory impaired” medical bracelet but also has moments of clarity. She answers, “I can see the words hanging in front of me and I can’t reach them.” Then she adds, “Thanks for asking.” If the film had made these two characters its main focus it could have been a worthy successor to Quinceañera and the unlikely, symbiotic duo at its core: a pregnant teenager and her macho, closeted, gay cousin.
Equally disappointing is Queen and Country, the latest–and what is being billed as the “final”–film, from 82-year-old writer-director John Boorman, whose long career includes Excalibur (probably due for a revival since its medieval setting is so much like Game of Thrones–and it features a young Helen Mirren) and the film to which Queen is a belated sequel, 1987’s great, autobiographical comedy, set in World War II London, Hope and Glory.
Queen begins with one of the closing scenes of Glory in which 9-year-old Bill, the director’s stand-in, finds, after an idyllic summer in his Grandfather’s house on the Thames, his friends dancing around the school building, on fire after the Germans bombed it. The opening day of school is postponed. “Thank you, Adolph,” says one of Bill’s friends as he smiles and looks to the sky.
Sophie and Bill
Queen jumps to a decade later, when Bill is conscripted into the British Army to serve what was then the requirement of two years duty. Although Callum Turner (Glue) as Bill is physically believable as a grown-up version of Sebastian Rice-Edwards, who played Bill in Glory, he lacks the earlier Bill’s watchfulness: seeing his older sister let her boyfriend into her bedroom through her window or overhearing his mother and friend-of-the-family Mac talk about their romance (which predates and overlaps both their marriages). The earlier film was through young Bill’s eyes but we saw clearly into the lives of the other characters, especially the women and girls in the family.
This time around we are, for most of the action, stuck with just Bill and his erratic, “immoral” army friend Percy (Caleb Landry Jones, grating in a poorly conceived role) as they try, in small ways, to sabotage the small-mindedness and tedium of non-combat army life. They teach typing to fellow conscripts but stray from the official lesson plan, dictating to the class “Arses. a-r-s-e-s.” They conspire with Redmond (Pat Shortt playing the role of the funny Irish friend, which, in British productions has historically been the equivalent of the funny Black friend in American movies and TV) to get back at the officers who constantly malign them.
They also try to pick up women. After a double date with two nurses, Percy and Bill try to peep, Animal House-style, into the nurses’ dorm. Percy on the shoulders of Bill sees a more realistic scene than Animal House’s topless pillow fight: women in curlers and practical bathrobes but tells Bill he’s seeing “20 student nurses in various states of undress.” When Bill gets on Percy’s shoulders one of the nurses they went out with, Sophie (Aimee-Ffion Edwards) sees him and slides down her dress to press her bare breast to the window pane.
Bill pursues an upper-class older woman (of 24!) “Ophelia” (Tamsin Egerton playing a badly written role in the woman-with-psychological-problems mold) while Percy makes a connection with Bill’s married sister Dawn (Vanessa Kirby, every bit as irritating as Jones. She’s no match for the original Dawn, the sublime Sammi Davis). Bill’s other sister never appears or is mentioned. In the mother’s big scene she and Bill have a conversation about her affair that is two sentences long–as if Boorman wanted to remind us of her infidelity, but wasn’t quite sure why. After two long hours the film comes to its conclusion just as Alice does, not with a bang but a whimper.
This year’s Oscars lacked racial diversity with all 20 acting nominees being white. The overwhelming whiteness of the Oscars, which hasn’t been this egregious in nominating people of color since 1998, spurred a Twitter boycott and the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite created by April Reign. In addition to racial diversity, once again the Oscars lacked gender diversity. No women were nominated for director, screenplay (adapted or original), original score or cinematography. The snub of Ava DuVernay especially stung.
I usually eagerly anticipate the Oscars. As a huge cinephile, I love seeing films, actors, and filmmakers celebrated. But this year, I dreaded them.
This year’s Oscars lacked racial diversity with all 20 acting nominees being white. The overwhelming whiteness of the Oscars, which hasn’t been this egregious in nominating people of color since 1998, spurred a Twitter boycott and the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite created by April Reign. In addition to racial diversity, once again the Oscars lacked gender diversity. No women were nominated for director, screenplay (adapted or original), original score or cinematography. The snub of Ava DuVernay especially stung.
The Oscars may be the most visible celebration of filmmaking in the U.S. and possibly the world. This is why they matter. Whether we agree or not, they signify what films are collectively deemed important in our society.
The Oscars often overlook female filmmakers — only four women (no women of color) have ever been nominated for Best Director, only one has won (Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker) — and women-centric films. It was disappointing to see that all eight of the Best Picture nominees were written and directed by men, except for Selma, which was directed and co-written by Ava DuVernay, a woman of color. Each of the films revolves around men as the protagonists. However, Selma is a notable exception for spotlighting not only Martin Luther King Jr. but the vigilance and dedication of Black women and Black men in the fight for equality.
Lack of diversity amongst the nominations disappointed, and racism and sexism often tainted the evening. Yet powerful moments emerged during the awards ceremony.
Labeled as “the most feminist moment” of the night by many writers and those on Twitter, Patricia Arquette advocated for equal pay and women’s rights during her acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actress for Boyhood:
“To every woman who give birth to a taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else’s rights. It’s our time to have wage equality, once and for all. And equal rights for women in the United States of America.”
Yes, yes, a thousand times YES. Patricia Arquette’s speech was a powerful feminist declaration condemning the gender pay gap and the need for wage equality. Women earn 78 percent less than men for the same job. But women of color earn far less. Black women earn 64 percent less, Indigenous women earn 59 percent less and Latina women earn 54 percent less than white men. Hearing the words “wage equality” and “women’s rights” uttered on a national broadcast delights me. Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lopez excitedly cheering in the audience was the icing on the cake.
Arquette elaborated backstage, mentioning the ageism comingled with sexism that women actors face: “The truth of it is the older an actress gets, the less money she makes.” She is absolutely right. Male actors earn more than women. After the age of 34, women actors earn far less than their male colleagues. But unfortunately, here’s where Arquette’s speech unravels:
“It’s time for all the women in America and all the men who love women and all the gay people and all the people of color that we’ve fought for, to fight for us now.”
Sigh. Why couldn’t she have just stopped? My initial excitement faded to disappointment, irritation, and anger.
Her statement implies that LGBT people and people of color have achieved equality. They haven’t. LGBT justice and racial justice still have far to go. It blatantly ignores coalition building that has happened across movements. Arquette excludes women of color and queer women with her statement. Women have multiple, intersecting identities. To ignore that fact erases many women’s existence. When feminists talk about women’s rights, we should not be claiming, either overtly or covertly, “women” equals straight, white, cis women. We white women need to do a much better job to make feminism an intersectional, inclusive movement.
Julianne Moore and Eddie Redmayne won Best Actress and Best Actor for playing people with disabilities. Each actor mention ALS and Alzheimer’s in their acceptance speeches. Moore said: “I’m thrilled we were able to shine a light on this disease. … “Movies make us feel seen and not alone.” However, The Theory of Everything has been accused of being guilty of “inspiration porn” and using a person with a disability as “Oscar bait.”
Julianne Moore was absolutely outstanding in Still Alice. A chameleon, she melted into the complex, nuanced role. It was also great to see a woman win for a film revolving around a female protagonist. Considering the ageism of Hollywood and the Oscars, I appreciated seeing a woman over the age of 50 win. We need more roles for women in general but particularly women of color, queer women, older women, and women with disabilities.
Suicide was discussed in two acceptance speeches. Dana Perry, the co-director of Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1 which won for Best Documentary Short, shared the tragedy about her son who committed suicide:“We should talk about suicide out loud.” Best Screenplay winner Graham Moore (The Imitation Game) revealed his own suicide attempt:
“When I was 16 years old, I tried to kill myself because I felt weird, and I felt different, and I felt like I did not belong. … So I would like for this moment to be for that kid out there who feels she’s weird, or she’s different or she doesn’t fit in anywhere. Yes, you do. I promise you do. Stay weird, stay different.”
Not only did these two heartbreaking speeches illuminate suicide, but they ultimately gave a positive message, that for people suffering, you are not alone.
Selma may not have been honored with all the awards it deserved. But a tribute to the film and to racial justice was depicted in Common and John Legend’s powerful performance of “Glory” from Selma. Accompanying the uplifting yet searing lyrics, they visually recreated the march in Selma onstage. In their passionate acceptance speech for Best Song, Common spoke about the historic bridge in Selma where the civil rights march took place.
“This bridge was once a landmark of a divided nation. But now it’s a symbol for change. The spirit of this bridge transcends race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, social status. … This bridge was built on hope, welded with compassion, and elevated by love for all human beings.”
John Legend highlighted institutional racism, incarceration of Black men and the prison industrial complex.
“Nina Simone said it’s an artist’s duty to reflect the times in which we live. … Selma is now because the struggle for justice is right now. We live in the most incarcerated country in the world. There are more Black men under correctional control today than were under slavery in 1850.”
Selma may be a biopic of an iconic civil rights leader. Yet as legend says, it remains extremely relevant, a reflection of the racism and white supremacy happening currently with the harrowing murders of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, and the activism in Ferguson and with #BlackLivesMatter. It was crucial to hear Legend discuss the pernicious racism of our criminal justice system. Sadly, the lack of applause for his statements by an audience often deemed liberal was extremely disconcerting.
But perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised at the audience’s reaction, especially as many in Hollywood look the other way when it comes to racism and abuse of women. I cannot fully express my disgust at seeing Sean Penn, an abuser of women, as a presenter onstage. He made a racist joke when announcing Birdman, directed by Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu, as the Best Picture winner: “Who gave this son of a bitch his green card?” How lovely to see racism and xenophobia at the end of the Oscars. Sigh. Unfortunately the racism didn’t stop there.
Within the first few minutes of the show, Neil Patrick Harris said, “Tonight we celebrate tonight’s best and whitest, oh I mean brightest.” Here’s the thing: I love when a celebrity shines a light on inequality or injustice. But the “joke” felt more like a way to acknowledge the Academy’s glaring racism rather than actually calling them out and holding them accountable. It lets Hollywood off the hook for not taking measures to increase diversity. Harris also tokenized accents, did a “joke” where Black actor David Oyelowo read a denouncement of the Annie remake starring Quvenzhané Wallis and had Octavia Spencer “watch” his ballot predictions box as if she was his servant.
Thankfully, Iñárritu took the opportunity in his acceptance speech to counter Penn’s racism advocating for immigrant justice. He dedicated his Oscar for Best Picture to his “fellow Mexicans” and Mexican immigrants. He is the second Latino to win Best Director and the first Latino to win as producer for Best Picture. Iñárritu spoke of the need to build a new government in Mexico and for the need for rights for immigrants:
“…I just pray they can be treated with the same dignity and respect of the ones who came before and built this incredible immigrant nation.”
What this disjointed awards show accentuated to me is the need for an intersectional lens in everything we do: our daily lives, activism, making media and consuming media. We can’t truly claim a milestone a victory if it only benefits wealthy, white, straight, cis, able-bodied women. We can’t call truly call ourselves feminists if we ignore the plight of those more marginalized or oppressed than ourselves.
Equal pay for women (along with highlighting the need for intersectional feminism), racial justice, mass incarceration, suicide, rights for people with disabilities and immigrant rights – all of these took center stage. Now if only the Academy had been so radical and the Oscar nominees had reflected such diversity.
What works beyond a shadow of a doubt is Moore herself. For a long time now, she has demonstrated an uncanny range and power without ever subjecting us to a shred of vanity. Here, she outdoes herself, channeling Alice’s physical, mental, and emotional devolution with an alchemy that is as thrilling as it is harrowing. Her luminous features slacken, her cadences falter, her life force fades. Scenes with Stewart are especially heartbreaking.
This guest post by Lisa Rosman originally appeared at Word and Film, as well as on her website Signs and Sirens. Cross-posted with permission.
Without Julianne Moore, Still Alice might not be much of a film. This is not to say the adaptation of Lisa Genova’s 2007 novel about a 50-year-old woman stricken with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease is otherwise mediocre, although it is so unobtrusively constructed that its virtues may be overlooked. But because it focuses on the perspective of a person with Alzheimer’s rather than on the perspective of her caregivers, a uniquely gifted actor is required in the titular role. Who but Moore, with her radiant fusion of fortitude and empathy, could soldier us through a narrative whose unhappy ending is as inevitable as that of the Titanic?
Initially, Alice Howland seems like she has it all. A celebrated Columbia University linguistics professor, she is happily married to fellow academic John (an unusually muted Alec Baldwin), and the couple enjoys their three grown children as well as their well-appointed Long Island beach house and NYC brownstone. If she is a tad thorny when things don’t go her way – her youngest daughter, Lydia (Kristen Stewart), an aspiring actor, bears the brunt of her mother’s tenacity – it’s nothing extraordinary in a modern Type A woman. But when Alice can no longer write off her memory loss and growing confusion as mere middle-aged malaise (read: menopause side effects), her worst fears are outstripped: She is diagnosed with a rare strain of Alzheimer’s that is inherited and can be transmitted. “I wish I had cancer,” she weeps, and although some might take umbrage with her disease comparison-shopping, we understand what she means. Especially in her line of work, she does not know who she will be without her formidable brain.
Although this film is unwaveringly linear, we are quickly discombobulated. The film’s progression mirrors Alice’s decline so that time itself seems to dissolve, like all the rituals and goals to which she clings with a devastating inefficacy. Daily runs become impossible; soon she can no longer remember regular appointments without the aid of her smartphone. Sooner still she forgets the layout of her own house. One afternoon, she soils herself before she can find the bathroom. Every time Alice finds a way to manage a new set of limitations, the ground beneath her feet crumbles again, and we live right inside her growing panic and sorrow. As her ability to perceive her surroundings deteriorates, even the film’s clean lines grow fuzzy.
Because of Alice’s high intelligence, her Alzheimer’s has likely gone undiagnosed longer than it would have had she possessed fewer compensatory resources (ways to remember what she did not remember). The irony is she and her family possess very few “compensatory resources” once her now-rapid degeneration becomes evident; as cerebral people, they are especially ill-equipped to navigate her ever-increasing mental challenges. John, in particular, proves disappointing. “You are the smartest woman I know,” he tells her early on, and when their shared value of independence proves no longer possible, we learn that objectifying a woman for her brain is as problematic as objectifying her for her beauty. Marriage on any contingency plan is precarious.
It can be argued that Still Alice is too Lifetime-for-TV neat, that its secondary characters are too two-dimensional. While I’d never claim this film was avant-garde, I admire directors and screenwriters Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland’s resistance to “fake stakes,” the peaks and valleys that normally shape a film narrative. Instead, the hurdles that Alice clears – an instance in which she successfully collects herself after dropping her notes during a speech, an aborted suicide attempt – only pave the way for our growing acceptance that there is no way to subvert her ultimate obstacle. Similarly, it makes sense that Alice’s family and friends don’t feel quite real; long before she actually forgets their names, her ability to distinguish personality nuance has been compromised. We’re there with her. Of course, this doesn’t excuse everything: a linguistics professor who loses her words is admittedly a smack on the nose, as is the discovery of Alice’s genetic disorder just as her eldest daughter (Kate Bosworth) is attempting to get pregnant.
What works beyond a shadow of a doubt is Moore herself. For a long time now, she has demonstrated an uncanny range and power without ever subjecting us to a shred of vanity. Here, she outdoes herself, channeling Alice’s physical, mental, and emotional devolution with an alchemy that is as thrilling as it is harrowing. Her luminous features slacken, her cadences falter, her life force fades. Scenes with Stewart are especially heartbreaking. The younger actor is finally returning to form after all that mucking about with vampires, and the careful attentiveness she displays as Alice’s daughter is key to the one hope that this film offers us: By definition, true love never changes form.
A former labor organizer, Lisa Rosman has reviewed film for such outlets as Time Out New York, Salon, Us Magazine, Flavorwire, LA Weekly, RogerEbert.com, and CBS News. She appears weekly on the NY1 film review show Talking Pictures and writes on film, feminism, and eavesdropping for SignsandSirens.com. Most notably, she once served as an assistant for Elmo on Sesame Street.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is not an article that will chronicle empty mother characters. This is for all the badass mamas out there—the honest mother roles that women have nailed. Hopefully this will present a case for why we need a million more. Here’s to the female characters who have outlived the digital revolution and will continue to. Characters that live with us and remain faulted heroes. And here’s to the women who made them so electric.
Women have been speaking the hell up about gender in Hollywood this year and it’s been an awesome uprising to see. There has been an outpouring of voices across multiple demographics in media getting aggressive about the lack of opportunities available in all of its platforms.
What I find challenging, though, is the near constant focus on scarcity—the highlighting of women missing chances to shape film and media.
Rather than dive into the dark abyss of what feels a regression of women’s roles in the world, I decided to focus this article on what is working. On our successes. It’s much easier to model our creative designs and ourselves after things that we can see. So, if I had a beer right now, I’d pour it all out for my female homies who have trail blazed contemporary cinema. Here’s to the women who are “crushing it” in complex roles, who take every opportunity on screen to serve as their own victory of what can be done.
Last week I went to see this summer’s hot blockbuster Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Now I will fully admit that this black and white, Italian Neorealism nerd fully enjoyed the ride. Much to my surprise, the film actually had me thinking of Shakespeare and Greek tragedy because— in terms of technicalities of story and character structure— they pulled some classic tricks out of the bag and that’s always cool with me. But during the movie there was one note that kept hitting the wrong key. Can someone, anyone, please explain why Keri Russell had only a one line backstory (that she lost her child as the Simian Flu spread) but then was never touched on again in the film? She was prescribed the role of mother, lone survivor, who clings to others and is a surprisingly talented nurse on a whim. But where in the film did she represent what a woman who has lost her child in a bleak new world might actually be like? There was a human being missing in her character.
(Also brief aside, ladies we’re not really going to survive the apocalypse based on the ratio presented in the film. Because, uterus.)
Keri Russell in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes after walking into ape territory
This article is not one that will chronicle those empty characters. This is for all the badass mamas out there—the honest mother roles that women have nailed. Hopefully this will present a case for why we need a million more. Here’s to the female characters who have outlived the digital revolution and will continue to. Characters that live with us and remain faulted heroes. And here’s to the women who made them so electric.
Boyhood is, by logline and poster art, a film about a boy. But I was not alone in walking out of the theater thinking, “Patricia Arquette, you are a baller.” She is undoubtedly the silent hero of the film. From the start, she’s energetic, imperfect, driven, smart (but not genius) and loves her kids even though she wants nothing more from them than to go the hell to bed. She was a single mom who worked hard, got tired, got things moving in her life, and kept on. We’ve seen the foundations of her role a thousand times. (I will hold my comments about any Tyler Perry rendering of real life.) As the film evolved, she made mistakes; her body changed; at times she was involved with her kids and at times she was distant. What to me makes this a successful female role is that if you were to remove the rest of the cast from her, she still has an identity. Motherhood is a part of what she does in the same way that being married or single is a part of what she does. But stripped of supporting cast, she remains a real person with ambitions that grow internally and thoughts that are driven by her own needs and wants.
You see, there was always a storyline that belonged privately to her. She was the master of her own life and the force behind her children’s. When they grew, she grew too. She was very much a mother character AND an individual. It’s roles like these that are needed time and time again in the process of redefining the women we want to see on screen. She is multidimensional and therefore, truthful. (And, yes, I realize the film spans a very real 12 years in the world but even so. ) Kudos to Arquette for rocking the mom jeans like a warrior for 12 years.
Mother and individual: Patricia Arquette in Boyhood
Definitely more overbearing but equally complex was Melissa Leo’s character in The Fighter. She was so nuanced. She got violent, volatile, and was packed with emotion. While she was unpleasant at many points in the story and her motivations were often outwardly selfish, she was honest. It was a straightforward portrayal of a mother not wanting to be outdone, even by her own children. She channels her own life through them and while this may not be a method condoned by any parenting books, she was very much alive and outspoken—faulted and capable of deep love. Again, if robbed of the other characters in the story, she was still a complete human being. There was nothing sexy added to her and yet her ferocious state of mind made her enigmatic and inescapable. (We need not bare tons of boob to get people to watch.) Her dynamic portrayal of a woman in a particular region and socioeconomic position, coupled with the hyper masculine surrounding pulls from her a wealth of complex emotions and decisions. And, let us not forget, unlikeable characters can still serve as outstanding representations of the depth of the female mind, soul, and existence. One of the elements ignored by women’s press this year is crowdpleasing. We want more opportunities. In every way. But I don’t care about crowd-pleasing characters. I go to the movies in search of truth. Give me that.
The pistol Melissa Leo in The Fighter
Taking it even farther into the realm of complex is Julianne Moore in her disturbingly on point performance as Amber Waves in Boogie Nights. Apart from the fact that the movie itself is genius, much of its success is brought out by the powerful performances of its all-star cast. Moore’s character is particularly wild to follow. She has the softness and natural nurturing quality of a mother who has always wanted to be a mother. She is a soothing source of support but this, in the world of Boogie Nights, of course becomes complicated and perverted by the fact that she is also sexually drawn to the very young Mark Wahlberg. Her attraction to him, their on camera sexploits, and her simultaneous motherly qualities make her immediately full of wonder, questions, and provocations.
Adding to that, she’s an exciting hot mess. The woman likes her cocaine as she proves when doing hearty lines with Heather Graham in the bedroom one fateful afternoon. While in this heightened state, if you will, her inner life comes bubbling out and she emotionally confesses about how much she misses her son. She may be all over the place and her nose miiiiight be white at the end of it but she’s given fair treatment by the filmmaker and audience alike. She is trapped by her history, moves in certain ways because of it and, like any fully formed human being, when in a vulnerable position (or totally f***ed up), her inner demons come out into the world. She misses motherhood and longs for her child. It’s a part of her wiring and yet she continues to live outside of it. A hot mess with a real history—it’s a beautiful, vital performance. She embodies multiple elements of a woman in the world in this time and place and she won’t let you look away from it.
Julianne Moore before the infamous coke binge in Boogie Nights
Compared to the Hollywood backup female roles we usually passively sit through, not one of these roles and not one of these women has created as a silent, flat, disturbingly calm character. That is an untruthful portrayal in this spectator’s opinion. They came out screaming. Their exuberance breathed into these will written roles the fiery heat of a person with a true life, true purpose and fluid identity. These are the kinds of roles that make more room for women to prove that we thrive in the complex—that we are complex and that we want truth on screen.
Examples of female roles that kick ass exist. Women who will not let their roles become secondary exist. It’s been done since the beginnings of film. Alice Guy Blache’ didn’t take any shit and that was at the turn of the 20th century. She directed, produced and wrote more than 700 films. She was doing it then, and women behind and in front of the camera have done it ever since. It’s our job now, in 2014, to recreate what we can accomplish based on our current industry model and find ways to make sure that truthful performances enter the marketplace. Hollywood films have always had plenty of fluff roles. But they’ve always had standouts. We are still in this position. We have model characters who broke ceilings once before in storytelling and will again. So…carry the torch and rock on.
In case you need further encouragement: Eva Khatchadourian in We Need to Talk About Kevin, Ofelia from Pan’s Labrynth, Kym from Rachel Getting Married, Nina Sayer from Black Swan. Marnie, Briony Tallis, Thelma Dickinson, Kate “Ma” Barker, Marge Gunderson, Bonnie Parker, Shoshanna Dreyfus, Nikita. Judy Barton/Madeleine Elster, Amelie, Evelyn Mulwray, Blanche Dubois, Betty Elms/Diane Selwyn, Coffy, Mia Wallace, Lisbeth Salander, Jackie Brown, The Bride, Hermione Granger, Clementine Kruczynski and Annie Hall.
Like Costner said in The Untouchables, “Let’s take the fight to them, gentlemen.” (ladies)
Mara Gasbarro Tasker is a filmmaker based in Los Angeles. She’s currently working as an Associate Producer at Vice Media and has co-created the Chattanooga Film Festival, launching later this spring. She holds a BFA in Film Production from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is directing a grindhouse short in April and is still mourning the end of Breaking Bad.
I want to give ‘Non-Stop’ the benefit of the doubt, because I truly enjoyed it, certainly more than any of the other films in the Grizzled Action Hero phase of Liam Neeson’s career. It deftly plays with audience expectations and genre-savvy to yield more red herrings than a Lenten Fish Fry to keep the whodunit simmering for most of its tight 106-minute runtime.
Liam Neeson in Grizzled Action Hero mode in Non-Stop
I want to give Non-Stop the benefit of the doubt, because I truly enjoyed it, certainly more than any of the other films in the Grizzled Action Hero phase of Liam Neeson’s career. It deftly plays with audience expectations and genre-savvy to yield more red herrings than a Lenten Fish Fry to keep the whodunit simmering for most of its tight 106-minute runtime.
Julianne Moore in Non-Stop
An example of how Non-Stop plays with tropes is its use of lead actress Julianne Moore. “The Most Famous Person Did It” is such a classic problem with mystery film and television I remember noticing it in reruns of Murder She Wrote when I was in grade school. Non-Stop knows you are wondering if Julianne Moore is slumming it here because she wants that juicy villain monologue at the end. So she gets lots of opportunities to do suspiciously weird things, but also plenty of opportunities to be vulnerable and likable, so we don’t just assume she’s the bad guy and decide to just watch Air Force One again. At some point we wonder… could she possibly be an age-appropriate love-interest for Liam Neeson? It’s almost inconceivable!
“You do know she’s ONLY eight years younger than him, right?”
Then there’s a half-dozen or so recognizable character actors taking turns being potentially sinister and/or mean enough we want to see Liam Neeson punch them, even if they might not be the terrorist in question. (Liam Neeson will ultimately punch nearly all of them). Is it the shifty businessman? The genteel captain? The John McClane wannabe who is already making fists with his toes because he’s got so much anger? The squirrelly oversharer played by that guy named Skeet or Street or Poot or something? The brown guy in the kufi (please don’t be the brown guy in the kufi)?
Maybe it is Lupita!!!
Lupita Nyong’o in Non-Stop
Spoiler alert: it is not Lupita. In fact, one of the most precious things about this movie is that it clearly got a last-minute Lupita-heavy re-edit to reflect her It Girl status. Her character is named (Gwen) but she’s really just an extra (Flight Attendant #2), with no significant dialogue (the film would even pass the Bechdel Test without her!) and zero characterization. But there are so many pointless cuts to Lupita B-Roll. Liam Neeson sneaks around the galley. But what is Lupita doing? (Checking the latch on an overhead bin.) Liam Neeson defies his superiors at DHS. But what is Lupita doing? (Picking a piece of lint off her uniform.) Liam Neeson punches a guy. BUT WHAT. IS. LUPITA. DOING!? (Making a “who is this punch-happy jackass?” face.)
Lupita ruefully thinks, “Get off my plane.”
But I digress. Everyone’s a suspect (I seriously entertained the notion that the shy unaccompanied minor would be an accessory to the terrorist plot somehow), and that’s a big part of why Non-Stop works. But scratch that seemingly clever surface and Non-Stop has a quintessential Idiot Plot, as defined by Roger Ebert: “a plot containing problems that would be solved instantly if all the characters were not idiots.” It’s cat and mouse between a villain doing asinine things for incomprehensible reasons and a hero who responds irrationally, which could all be avoided if the pilot would just make an unscheduled landing (I know from long-haul flights, and you’re not “in the Middle of the Atlantic!” When Halifax is 45 minutes behind you).
Even the characters are confused.
Often the most plausible explanation for the main character’s strange behaviors is “because that’s the way a man’s man would do it.” Liam Neeson doesn’t tell anyone he was [minor spoiler] just forced to kill his partner in self-defense because… that makes him all the more tragically guarded with his emotional pain? (He’s got the requisite dead daughter backstory and surprisingly not-inconvenient drinking problem.) I don’t really understand why being tragically guarded with emotional pain is on the Action Hero Checklist to begin with. Look, I’ve got dead family and stunted emotions too, and I’m decidedly not a badass.
Non-Stop is usually gripping enough to distract you from its various weaknesses, but it’s got no choice but to tear open its nonsensical underbelly when the villain (or villains!?!) are revealed, and no, there isn’t some hidden agenda that makes all the ridiculous stuff that’s happened make any more sense. Fortunately the movie is almost over then.
Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town. Her feelings about Lupita Nyong’o are comparable to Key & Peele’s valets’ regarding “Liam Neesons.”
‘What Maisie Knew’ might have made a pretty good romcom to watch on an airplane or catch cable on a Sunday morning while you sort your junk mail or something. But it has aspirations of seriousness, despite building to a far-fetched frilly bow tie of a resolution (which, was, admittedly, tempting to my id that totally loves watching romcoms on airplanes and Sunday mornings). Ultimately, ‘What Maisie Knew’ wants to have its Tastykake and deliver a strongly-worded lecture about the dangers of high fructose corn syrup and trans fats too.
Julianne Moore, Onata Aprile, and Alexander Skarsgård in What Maisie Knew
What Maisie Knew might have made a pretty good romcom to watch on an airplane or catch on cable on a Sunday morning while you sort your junk mail or something. But it has aspirations of seriousness, despite building to a far-fetched, frilly bow tie of a resolution (which, was, admittedly, tempting to my id that totally loves watching romcoms on airplanes and Sunday mornings). Ultimately, What Maisie Knew wants to have its Tastykake and deliver a strongly-worded lecture about the dangers of high fructose corn syrup and trans fats,+ too.
The excessively ominous title is just meant to indicate that this movie is told from the perspective of its six-year-old protagonist, Maisie Beale (Onata Aprile). I was worried for the entire first act that someone was going to be murdered or assaulted because of the title and the generally bleak tone of the film. But it’s not about a child witnessing a violent crime; it’s about a child witnessing the fallout of a bitter custody battle between her parents, neither of whom are all that interested in parenting her.
Maisie and her warring biological parents
Her mother, Susanna, is a self-centered past-her-prime rockstar (played by Julianne Moore), who seemingly wants Maisie around mainly because she’s a source of unconditional love. Her father (Steve Coogan) is a smug art dealer who wants to “rescue” Maisie from her “unfit” mother, but he can’t be bothered to actually care for her because he’s constantly on the phone with important clients and jets off to Europe on the regular.
So Dad marries Maisie’s nanny, Margo (Joanna Vanderham), who is conveniently over-the-moon for him even though he’s decades older and looks like Steve Coogan. Susanna revenge-marries a seemingly dim, young bartender named Lincoln (Alexander Skarsgård), not only to stick it to her ex and Margo, but to help her chances in court with the custody decision. There are countless scenes where Maisie is dumped by one of her four caregivers to be with another, only to be left waiting on a bench for hours because no one is there. Lincoln and Margo are clearly the only people giving Maisie the attention and love she needs even as she’s bounced between her generally disinterested and frequently absent parents.
Maisie gets a lot of alone time
So there’s a solid hour of watching Maisie suffering mild neglect and repeated appearances of the caption “(muffled quarreling)” as we watch Maisie play with her toys while the grownups fight in the next room. Then Maisie’s father takes an extended trip to Europe at the same time Maisie’s mother goes on tour, and her step-parents Margo and Lincoln find themselves awkwardly sharing custody of the girl. And spoiler alert, they fall in love.
And maybe it’s because I was so desperate for a break from the gloomy proceedings or because Vanderham and Skarsgård actually have chemistry or because under Margo and Lincoln’s loving and attentive care, Maisie went from sullen to bubbly, but I bought into this shift toward a more pleasant narrative.
Maisie’s step-parents Lincoln and Margo flirting
After an hour of harsh realism, I couldn’t help but notice all the holes in this happy ending. Margo essentially kidnaps Maisie and takes her to her cousin’s conveniently unoccupied beach house (and context clues suggest it is roundabout Virginia not Far Rockaway or something). Lincoln presumably quits his job to follow. Who knows how they have money for food or where Maisie’s going to go to school? Susanna gives them her out-of-character and hardly legally binding blessing and rolls away in her tour bus. Maisie’s dad is in England for the foreseeable future and has firmly rejected the idea of taking Maisie with him, so I guess we’re meant to think he just doesn’t care where she ends up. Maisie’s free to literally sail off into the sunset with Margo and Lincoln.
The audience knows this can’t and won’t last. Aside from the practicalities and the likelihood that Maisie’s biological parents may eventually want to take back their child abandonment, there’s the nagging concern that Margo and Lincoln are conflating their shared love of Maisie for love of each other. We already watched their marriages to Maisie’s parents quickly fall apart. Who’s to say these two will last much longer just because they’re closer in age and both good parents?
An implausible happy ending with a new and fragile happy family
I’d still give What Maisie Knew my qualified recommendation. Its fairly original framing is actually quite successful, in large part because Onata Aprile is such a gifted child actress that I didn’t even think to remark upon her talent until just now; she’s so natural her work never even reads as a performance. The adult actors are all game as well, even though their characters aren’t always the most pleasant. And while I don’t think the shift into romcom territory worked, I’m guessing that without it, the movie might have been too much of a downer. It’s only about an hour and a half long, and it’s streaming on Netflix, so you might want to give What Maisie Knew a go.
Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town, South Africa.
Most feminist criticism of Stephen King’s Carrie has focused on the male fear of powerful women that the author said inspired the film, with the anti-Carrie camp finding her death at the end to signify the defeat of the “monstrous feminine” and therefore a triumph of sexism. But Stephen King’s honesty about what inspired his 1973 book notwithstanding, Carrie is as much an articulation of a feminist nightmare as it is of a patriarchal one, with neither party coming out on top.
Carrie movie poster
This guest post by Holly Derr previously appeared at Ms. Magazine and is cross-posted with permission as part of our theme week on Cult Films and B Movies.
Carrie is largely about how women find their own channels of power, but also what men fear about women and women’s sexuality. Writing the book in 1973 and only three years out of college, I was fully aware of what Women’s Liberation implied for me and others of my sex. Carrie is woman feeling her powers for the first time and, like Samson, pulling down the temple on everyone in sight at the end of the book. —Stephen King, Danse Macabre
Most feminist criticism of Stephen King’s Carrie has focused on the male fear of powerful women that the author said inspired the film, with the anti-Carrie camp finding her death at the end to signify the defeat of the “monstrous feminine” and therefore a triumph of sexism. But Stephen King’s honesty about what inspired his 1973 book notwithstanding, Carrie is as much an articulation of a feminist nightmare as it is of a patriarchal one, with neither party coming out on top.
The rise of Second Wave feminism in the ’70s posed serious threats to the patriarchal order–as well it should have. But even for those who think change is not only necessary but good, change can be pretty scary. This, with a hat tip to the universality of being bullied, is one of the reasons Carrie scares everyone.
Carrie (Chloe Grace Moretz) and Margaret White (Julianne Moore)
While men in the ’70s felt threatened by the unprecedented numbers of women standing up for themselves and attempting such radical social changes as being recognized as equal under the law, women themselves must have felt some anxiety that the obstacles to fully realizing themselves might be too big to conquer. The story therefore resonates with men in terms of the fear of (metaphorical) castration prompted by changing gender roles, and with women in terms of the fear that no matter how powerful we become, social forces are still so aligned against us that fighting back might destroy not just the patriarchy but ourselves.
Feminism was not the only thing on the rise in the ’70s: so was Christian fundamentalism. In 1976, the year that the original movie debuted, 34 percent of Protestant Americans told the Gallup Poll that they had had born-again experiences, leading George Gallup himself to declare 1976 the Year of the Evangelical. In fact evangelism, then as now–when 41 percent of Americans report being born again–was one of feminism’s more formidable foes, one of those very social forces that would rather destroy women than see them powerful.
Carrie and her mother pray
The triggering event of Carrie–the infamous shower scene–is a product of the meeting of these two forces. Because of a fundamentalist Christian worldview in which menstruation is not simply a biological process but rather evidence of Eve’s original sin being visited upon her daughters, Carrie‘s mother does nothing to prepare her for getting her period. When she starts bleeding at school, Carrie naturally panics, and as a result faces the scorn of her peers–who laugh at her for not knowing what’s happening–and the scorn of her mother, who believes that “After the blood the boys come. Like sniffing dogs, grinning and slobbering, trying to find out where that smell is.”
I can’t believe I’m about to go all Freudian here, but for the male viewer the shock of seeing unexpected blood between one’s legs clearly represents a fear of castration–a literal embodiment of King’s anxieties about feminism. From the woman’s perspective, the menstrual blood obviously signifies Carrie’s maturation–coming into her power–which has been marred by fundamentalism.
The new Carrie and the old Carrie (Sissy Spacek)
Without making the new remake of the movie any more violent, director Kimberly Peirce emphasizes the imagery of this inciting event by adding waaaaay more blood to her Carrie. When Carrie gets her period in the shower, there’s more blood than in Brian De Palma’s film. When Carrie gets some of that blood on her gym teacher, which happens in both films, Peirce adds more of it, and the camera lingers on it longer and returns to it more often.
When Carrie’smother locks her in the closet, Peirce has the crucifix bleed–something that doesn’t happen in the first movie. The blood of the crucifix connects Carrie’s first period to the suffering of Christ, deepening the relationship between debased femininity and religion.
Carrie gets ready for the dance
Then, when Carrie gets pig blood dumped on her head at the prom, there’s not just more of it in the second film: Pierce shows the blood landing on her in slow motion three times. This final deluge of blood echoes a scene that Pierce added to the beginning of the movie, in which Carrie’s mother endures the bloody birth of her daughter. Carrie, then, is essentially born again at the prom, and the devastation she wreaks can be read as a result not of her feminine power but of the corruption of it by religion.
Peirce told Women and Hollywood that her goal was to make Carrie as sympathetic as possible. She removes the male gaze aspect of the original shower scene, in which many of the girls are naked and the long, slow shots of Carrie’s body are rather pornified. She makes sympathy for Carrie’s primary nemesis at school pretty much impossible by changing her from an angry girl in an abusive relationship to a sociopath without a conscience. In the new film, Carrie even has the strength to challenge her mother’s theology. Her prom date is more likeable and Peirce uses his death–something De Palma doesn’t reveal until the end–as further motivation for Carrie’s rampage.
Carrie’s rampage
None of this changes the fact that Carrie dies at the end, but it does foreground the idea that the message doesn’t have to be that powerful women are indeed dangerous. It can be that fundamentalism is dangerous to women.
If you’re a feminist, I say go see Carrie. Watching her be destroyed–but not without taking out a lot of the patriarchy with her–and then, as a viewer, emerging again into the sunlight unscathed, allows feminists to process some of our deepest fears about what we’re up against. Then we can get on with making the world a place where religious beliefs don’t corrupt our sexuality, where women don’t have to destroy themselves to be powerful and where women’s equality doesn’t trigger men’s fear of their own doom.
Holly L. Derr is a feminist media critic who writes about theater, film, television, video games and comics. Follow her @hld6oddblend and on her tumblr, Feminist Fandom. For more of the Feminist Guide to Horror Movies, check out Parts One, Two, Three, and Four.
Populated by mostly male characters, The Big Lebowski is, to some extent, a tale of male friendship. Nevertheless, the cult comedy should never be interpreted and celebrated as exclusively a guy’s film. The Big Lebowski offers an amusing, subversive portrait of masculinity and features an excellent comic performance by one of the most gifted actresses working today. What’s more, it suggests that the future is matriarchal.
A poster of The Big Lebowski
Written by Rachael Johnson as part of our theme week on Cult Films and B Movies.
Stuffed with unique characters and superb comic performances, The Big Lebowski is an insanely enjoyable crime caper about mistaken identity, fake kidnapping and fraud. Set in LA in the early 90s, its cast of characters includes zealous bowlers, avant-garde artists and Malibu pornographers. Perfectly played by Jeff Bridges, the hero is Jeff Lebowski, an ageing hippie and contemporary slacker who prefers to be called “The Dude.” Referencing The Big Sleep and the screwball comedy, TheBig Lebowski has scenes of surreal visual wit and a wonderfully funny script. The movie was, bizarrely enough, neither a great commercial or critical success when it was released in 1998. Nonetheless, affection for it has grown and the pot-smoking, White Russian-drinking Dude has become a beloved icon of contemporary American cinema. There are now academic conferences and festivals dedicated to The Big Lebowski as well as a faith. Yes, Dudeism is truly a cult.
I will not go into the mad plot in detail but the central premise of the tale is that the Dude is mistaken for a pompous, paraplegic, elderly tycoon (David Huddleston) who shares his name. I am more interested in the brothers’ comic characterizations of the two Mr. Lebowskis, the older man’s adult daughter, Maude, and his young ‘trophy wife’, Bunny. I will draw particular attention to their portraits of the Dude and the tycoon’s daughter. As with the men, the women of the film could not be more different. Maude (Julianne Moore) is a somewhat snooty feminist artist who has decided to have a child and Bunny (Tara Reid) is a nymphomaniac with links to the porn industry. I will not only look at the Coens’ representation of women in the comedy but will also examine their ideas about masculinity. Let us first consider the Dude.
Feminist artist Maude Lebowski (Julianne Moore)
We first see the Dude wandering through a supermarket late at night, being contemptuously eyed by the sales clerk. When he finally goes to the counter, the Dude casts a look at George Bush Senior giving a statement on the store’s television. This is around the time of the first US-Iraq War and the President is issuing a warning: “This will not stand, this aggression against Kuwait.” As not a few Lebowski scholars have rightly noted, the movie’s hero does not conform to capitalist and militarist models of American masculinity. We do not really know how he does it but the Dude survives quite happily outside the world of work. A man without ambition is still considered atypical or odd in society. He is, to a considerable extent, a subversive being. The Dude’s laid-back, pleasure-loving ways are both amusing and appealing to both male and female viewers. It is no accident that we first see the Dude in a supermarket. His relaxed lifestyle, modest apartment and endearingly scruffy appearance all give the finger to the consumerist ethos. The Dude is also a pacifist with a radical past. He claims that he was an author of the original Port Huron statement as well as one of the Seattle Seven. The dominant placing in his home of the iconic photo of Nixon bowling is also a tongue in cheek expression of his anti-establishment politics. The Dude’s personality and progressive values are at odds with the military-industrial complex. Frankly, I think the film’s great cult appeal in both the US and around the world is due, in considerable part, to his peace-loving personality and progressive principles. The Dude appears to be the antithesis of macho American militarism. The cowboy narrator (Sam Elliot) who begins and finishes the tale may be a charming, dreamy character but he is intended as a send-up of a mythic figure of American masculinity. The characterization of the Dude’s buddy Walter Sobchak (John Goodman) as a ham-fisted, egotistical, Vietnam-obsessed nut also serves as a parody of American power. The old-fashioned, obsolete storyteller introduces us to a different kind of man.
The Dude (Jeff Bridges)
The Dude also displays pretty feminist leanings in his recognition of society’s commodification of the female body. A desiring heterosexual man, he openly flirts with Bunny and happily beds Maude. Pornography, however, does not seem to play a significant part of his single sex life. “Mr. Treehorn treats objects like women,” the Dude cries at one point about a certain Malibu-based pornographer named Jackie Treehorn. His upside down observation points to a certain progressive awareness. When Maude shows him a clip of Logjammin’, a film directed by Treehorn and starring her stepmother, his response is droll and sardonic. In the film, a cable man appears at the apartment of two young women. Bunny is semi-dressed and her roommate is topless. Maude notes how “ludicrous” the story is and the Dude responds with a somewhat unexpected sharpness.
Maude: Lord. You can imagine where it goes from here.
Dude: He fixes the cable?
When the Dude encounters Treehorn himself, he is impressed by the man’s pad but not his ambitions. He is not convinced by the director’s promises of technological advancements in the industry and sees through his artistic pretensions. The following snippet amusingly illustrates his skepticism:
Jackie Treehorn: I deal in publishing, entertainment, political advocacy.
The Dude: Which one’s Logjammin’?
“Real-life” incidents and hallucinatory sequences indicate that the Dude manifests classic Freudian fears of castration but I suspect that it is the Dude’s mostly uncomplicated, easy masculinity–as well as laid-back ways and good nature–that make him an unsuspecting (initially at least) sperm donor for Maude.
A different kind of man and hero
The Dude’s first proper meeting with the feminist artist is at her loft. Maude’s eye-catching entrance is literally over the top. Passing directly over him, she sails through the air on ropes before spraying paint on the canvas below. When she descends and frees herself from the harness, we see that she performs her conceptual art in the nude. She dresses and approaches the Dude. With her geometric bob and green velvet robe, the pale, red-haired Maude has a markedly Bohemian look. In a composed though dramatic voice, she fires questions about sex at the Dude. “Does the female form make you uncomfortable, Mr Lebowski?” she asks. The Dude does not seem at all uncomfortable. Maude explains, “My art has been commended as being strongly vaginal which bothers some men. The word itself makes some men uncomfortable. Vagina.” The Dude remains unfazed. Maude seems to have a mid-Atlantic accent. Her crystal-clear enunciation of “vagina” is, in any case, quite special. The Dude is primarily interested in his missing carpet–watch the film!–but Maude continues to ask him if he likes sex. Before he has the chance to answer, she tells him, “The male myth about feminists is that we hate sex. It can be a natural, zesty enterprise…” She then defines satyriasis and nymphomania for him before informing him that Bunny suffers from the latter. What is comic is incongruous, of course, and the interplay between the two is both very funny and well-observed.
In their portrait of Maude, the Coens appear to paint the conceptual artist as pretentious. Their characterization parodies so-called self-regarding aesthetic styles and artsy affectations. In another scene set in her studio, Maude laughs eccentrically on the phone to Italy. Her male colleague in the room giggles along with her. Their laughter is shown to be smug and silly. It is a pointed critique but–as with all satirical portraits–the intention is to shame human–male and female–vanity. The target of the Coens’ satire here is, also, the narcissism of the affluent artist. What is potentially more problematic is their parody of a female, feminist artist. The references to self-referential portraits and nudity are intended to allude to feminist artistic traditions. However, the mocking is not nasty but knowing, and these references could also be meant to ironically refer to popular notions of feminism. Although crafty and patronizing, Maude is not a hateful, misogynistic projection. She is, rather, a richly singular, strong and amusing comic character. Moreover, her theatrical, over-the-top nature actually functions to upset such readings. Julianne Moore’s interpretation of Maude is both vivid and clever and should always be highlighted in pop culture discussions of the comedy.
In bed with The Dude
The Dude and Maude have sex when she later appears without warning at his home. She opens her robe and simply says, “Love me, Jeffrey.” Cut to the Dude smoking a post-coital jay while Maude asks questions about his background and lifestyle. Her face remains impassive as he tells of his radical days and love of bowling but you can tell that she is not impressed. A brief hope that he may have had musical talents is swiftly extinguished when he tells her that he used to a roadie for Metallica. The Dude is initially unaware that Maude has chosen him as a sperm donor and is, quite naturally, taken back by her desire to have a child with him. Quite hilariously, she responds by scolding him for his superficiality: “Well yes, what did you think this was all about–fun and games? I want a child.” However, the Dude does not seem bothered by his purely reproductive role when Maude tells him: “Look Jeffrey, I don’t want a partner. In fact, I don’t want the partner to be someone that I have to see socially or have any interest in raising the child himself.” Maude’s unabashed self-interest and imperious air amuse the viewer. The Dude’s castration anxieties may ironically refer to his lack of sway over Maude and misogynist fears of castrating feminists but the Dude is fundamentally quite happy to provide for his feminist “lady friend” and do what she wants. In a celebrated hallucinatory sequence, a film within a film, Maude plays a commanding Valkyrie.
What is, of course, arguably more predictable and disappointing about The Big Lebowski is the small number of female characters. There is only one other female character of note in the comedy: Bunny Lebowski. Bunny is a Californian stereotype: a tanned, party-loving blonde. The Coens do, in a way, sabotage the stereotype through exaggeration: Bunny is not portrayed as a victim but as an outrageously self-assertive, promiscuous young woman. When the Dude first encounters her relaxing by the pool, she makes him the following offer: “I’ll suck your cock for a thousand dollars.” There is also, it is true, no female solidarity shown by the main female characters in the film. Maude does not like or approve of her stepmother. Although a feminist, she seems to have no problem calling a Bunny a slut. It is not surprising, however, that there is no love lost between them. Seemingly loyal to the memory of her late mother, Maude is, quite understandably, not overjoyed at her father’s marriage to a much younger “trophy wife.” As a feminist, she also cannot commend Bunny’s pornographic experiences.
Bunny Lebowski (Tara Reid)
There is, also, perhaps, a less progressive side to the Coens’ portrait of Maude. Is she not yet another female character in a Coen Brothers movie pregnant or craving a child? Think Fargo or Raising Arizona. What to make of this tendency? Is it pro-natalist or merely life-affirming? Does it reflect male awe of fertility and indicate an endorsement of matriarchy? What makes The Big Lebowski more subversive, however, than Raising Arizona is that the female character is a single mother who does not want a father for her child and has no need for a male provider. Maude is a fundamentally anti-patriarchal cult heroine. She should, therefore, be celebrated by feminist dudettes or dudes everywhere.
It is Maude who sheds light on the real state of the Big Lebowski’s wealth and power. She explains to the Dude that her father does not have money in his own right and that her mother was the wealthy one. We also learn that Lebowski’s role in the company is actually inconsequential. He helps oversee the charities and is given “a reasonable allowance” by Maude. The old man was, moreover, not a great professional success in the past. “We did let him run one of the companies briefly but he didn’t do very well at it,” his daughter explains. The Dude responds with initial wonder but Maude convinces him that this is the case: “I know how he likes to present himself. Father’s weakness is vanity, hence the slut.” Maude not only helps The Dude get a handle on the schemes surrounding him but she also punctures masculine vanity and shines a light on the pretensions of fathers. Personified by Maude’s father, patriarchy is shown to be fraudulent in the Big Lebowski. The dominant placing of Dude’s iconic poster of Nixon in his home, of course, serves as a knowing comment on fallen, deceitful fathers.
Valkyrie
At the end of the movie, the cowboy narrator assures us, “I happen to know there’s a little Lebowski on the way.” The Coens’ zany Valentine to Californian eccentricity does not end in marriage or even cohabitation. This ending is amusingly intended as a satisfying resolution for both genders. It may not be romantic but both the hero and his “lady friend” get what they want: Maude is blessed with a little Lebowski and the Dude contentedly returns to his old life. The Big Lebowski simultaneously salutes the freedoms of unconventional men as well as female reproductive agency and power. Populated by mostly male characters, The Big Lebowski is, to some extent, a tale of male friendship. Nevertheless, the cult comedy should never be interpreted and celebrated as exclusively a guy’s film. The Big Lebowski offers an amusing, subversive portrait of masculinity and features an excellent comic performance by one of the most gifted actresses working today. What’s more, it suggests that the future is matriarchal.
Barbara retains her mystique as long as she continues to refuse to sleep with Jon, meaning that he actually has to put effort into courting her. Upon discovering her fascination with romantic comedies, Jon playfully gripes in the voiceover about how she’s delusional and those things never happen in real life. From that point onward, like any good self-deprecating genre film, the same swelling music plays any time Jon and Barbara share a romantic moment. Additionally, the same thumping club music pops up whenever Jon sizes up a new conquest. Jon and Barbara both use media as a crutch to validate fantasies about relationships, yet are comically incapable of recognizing their shared escapism because they insist that the other’s pastime is a bastardization of social dynamics, which neither of them actually understand. Oh, you two!
I’m a big Joseph Gordon-Levitt fan, so needless to say I’ve been eagerly awaiting the arrival of Don Jon, which he wrote, directed, and starred in. From its premise, Don Jon sounds like an edgy deconstruction of the typical Hollywood love story: Jon (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a porn addict, falls for Barbara (Scarlett Johansson), who is obsessed with romantic comedies. Naturally, both of them claim that the other’s fixation is unhealthy and fake. I was curious to see which genre would ultimately end up condemned, since these types of romances usually only work if one person “reforms” the other. The result is unexpected, but the film manages to pole vault over the stereotypical trappings of both the narrative and the genre.
Jon attends church with Barbara and his family.
First and foremost, Jon is a Jersey boy to the core. His family is strictly Italian Catholic and almost never shown outside of church or having family dinner over pasta in the living room. In particular, the presence of the church is ubiquitous throughout the film. Jon diligently attends confession every week, despite having no intention or desire to change his porn habits. His punishment is always the same – reciting 20 prayers. Later on, he even expresses disappointment that the consequence remains unchanged even after he truthfully admits that he hasn’t masturbated all week. The faceless, monotone priest allegedly giving him moral guidance on the other side of the sliding grate is a clear commentary on the apathy of religious institutions in terms of the lack of investment in the individual. For all his swagger, Jon is a man who craves structure and validation. His disillusionment with the church is the catalyst to his realization that maybe he isn’t the only one who sees what they want to see.
Jon wastes no time with seducing Barbara.
Jon’s porn addiction represents a merger between the instant gratification of the digital age with masculine entitlement, spawning his sexual existentialist crisis. He confesses to the audience he can’t understand why he doesn’t find real sex as satisfying as porn, even though he regularly gets laid. While he rationalizes this compulsion as a commonplace marker of manliness, his inability to get total pleasure from anything other than Internet clips also creates a distinct anxiety around his masculinity. As a result, Jon and his friends are predictably and almost methodically misogynistic as they routinely comb the clubs for the next conquest, rating women on a scale of one to the mythical perfect 10, which they call a “dime.” Barbara enters and captures Jon’s attention. She acts coquettish but resists Jon’s attempts to close the deal, leaving him intrigued. Of course, not immediately sleeping with someone signals a female character’s potential for exceptionalism to both the protagonist and the viewer, especially in a film where sex objects and exploitation are (excuse the pun) a dime a dozen. While the objectification of women rages unchecked, homophobia remains surprisingly absent or unmentioned, relegated to an offhand comment by Jon about how it’s annoying to accidentally climax right when the camera pans to the man.
Jon enjoys some “personal time.”
As a brief side note, while the film is primarily a critique on society’s relationship to women, sex, and pornography, I do admire Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s consistent examination of male objectification in film. I fell in love with his dorky charm in (500) Days of Summer (more on that phenomenon in a minute) and his understated suaveness in Inception. For someone who is so damn attractive, the man sure has a knack for making moments of supposed erotic titillation consciously unsexy. He turns the cinematic gaze back on itself. While we get plenty of cleavage, short dresses, and backside shots from the women, the voyeurism of Jon only goes as far as repeatedly watching him masturbate. It’s true that you could chalk this up to typical Hollywood gender conventions, but it’s worth noting that Joseph Gordon-Levitt implicates the viewer in Jon’s passive absorption of porn. There’s something more than a little intrusive about being forced to watch his blank faced expression until he ejaculates without emotion. It has none of the intimacy or romance of idealized sex in Hollywood. Perhaps Joseph Gordon-Levitt is suggesting that the general moviegoing experience is somewhat masturbatory in that many of us watch movies to escape reality and disconnect our brains, just as Jon uses porn to fuel unrealistic expectations of women and avoid emotional vulnerability.
Cue cheesy music.
Barbara retains her mystique as long as she continues to refuse to sleep with Jon, meaning that he actually has to put effort into courting her. Upon discovering her fascination with romantic comedies, Jon playfully gripes in the voiceover about how she’s delusional and those things never happen in real life. From that point onward, like any good self-deprecating genre film, the same swelling music plays any time Jon and Barbara share a romantic moment. Additionally, the same thumping club music pops up whenever Jon sizes up a new conquest. Jon and Barbara both use media as a crutch to validate fantasies about relationships, yet are comically incapable of recognizing their shared escapism because they insist that the other’s pastime is a bastardization of social dynamics, which neither of them actually understand. Oh, you two!
Never has a college discussion been this raunchy.
Their relationship progresses quickly, with Jon even introducing Barbara to his family. A great Don Jon drinking game would be to take a shot every time Joseph Gordon-Levitt or especially Scarlett Johansson call each other “baby”. Mother of God, these two drop the B-word more than a Justin Bieber music video. For a while, the plot veers toward your typical “good woman reforms troubled man” fanfare as she compels him to alter his way of life through subtle encouragements. Some of them seem a bit controlling, like her insistence that Jon can’t clean his own apartment anymore and must hire a maid. Others point towards Barbara acting as cheerleading girlfriend wanting her boyfriend to better himself. She convinces Jon to take a night class to further his education during a steamy dry humping session in the hallway outside her apartment, working him up until he agrees and then rewarding him by deliberately causing him to jizz his pants. Barbara exposes the hypocrisy in Jon’s perception of the Madonna/whore dichotomy. She might withhold sex, but that doesn’t mean that she’s above using seduction to manipulate people into getting what she wants. I just like the idea that rushing into sex isn’t classy, but intentionally making your boyfriend ejaculate in public is totally okay with them. What is this, a middle school dance?
Esther introduces herself to Jon.
Jon tries to hide his porn from Barbara even after they start sleeping together, knowing that she disapproves. She ultimately catches him in the act and dumps him. At the night class, Jon meets Esther (Julianne Moore), who mocks him for struggling to watch porn in secret on his phone. She gives him a classic German stag film in an attempt to broaden his horizons and increase his taste level. Given Esther’s aging flower child demeanor, I thought that she was just going to act as Jon’s porn Yoda until she rehabilitated him enough to send him running back to Barbara. Jon and Esther begin an unusual courtship that contains all of the physical spark and emotional intimacy that he was trying to convince himself he had with Barbara. Esther reminds him that sex is a two-way street and reveals that her husband and son recently died in a car accident. This confession leads into the most poignant sex scene of the film, signifying Jon finally “losing” himself and appreciating his partner. I can honestly say that I never thought I would see Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Julianne Moore in bed together, but they have excellent chemistry. It’s weird that Esther is the “true” love interest when the trailers largely never mentioned Moore.
Esther bonds with Jon.
What’s really peculiar is the flat resolution of Barbara’s character. Don Jon almost feels like two different films sutured together because of the complete mood shift between leading ladies. Rather than Esther serving as an introspective fling or love triangle fodder, she helps Jon realize that he wants nothing to do with Barbara. The exes have a brief conversation for closure at a café, during which Barbara appears vapid and callous. Jon scolds her for expecting her partner to sacrifice everything and do whatever she wants, a criticism she brushes off with pouting indifference before vanishing for good. It is disappointing that Barbara’s infatuation with romantic comedies was only used to create a zany opposites attract vibe with Jon’s porn addiction. I was anticipating a story about a couple working through their misunderstood idiosyncrasies together. We don’t really see Barbara’s perspective at all and in fact she is vilified as the delusional, overly controlling girlfriend while Jon is vindicated and gets the girl, albeit a different one than he expected.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the ending because I genuinely didn’t see it coming (no pun intended). Pigeonholing Barbara felt a little lazy and unnecessarily misogynistic, but Jon’s romance with Esther is refreshing and endearing. The parallels in Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s creative career choices are an interesting commentary on the spectrum of cultural misinterpretations of relationships. Just as Tom believes he’s fallen in love with Summer in (500) Days of Summer, Jon believes he’s fallen in love with Barbara. Viewers sympathize endlessly with Tom as the lovelorn nice guy and it would be easy to write Jon off as a sleazy womanizer. However, the two characters might have more in common than we’d like to admit. The flaw in the logic of both men is that they’re allowing women to stand in for projections of a given ideal (Summer for love and Barbara for sex) instead of actually falling in love with the women themselves. We shouldn’t go into relationships expecting other people to function as mere extensions of ourselves and our desires. If boy meets girl, it doesn’t necessarily mandate that they stay together, even on the silver screen. Sometimes, as Jon and Barbara suggest, they’re better off growing apart.
