Women Film Writers speak out about Women in Film

Though it’s framed as a survey of reactions to recent nominations for female filmmakers, today’s round table discussion at womenandhollywood serves as a comprehensive look back at a year of iconic lodestones and significant milestones for women in the industry.

Golden Globe Nominations: Reactions from Women Film Writers and Critics poses to following topics as springboards for reflection:

• Meryl vs Meryl
• Kathryn Bigelow
• The return of Sandra Bullock
• Nora (Ephron) vs. Nancy (Meyers)
• Women over 40 rule acting nods
• Bright Star missing
• An Education, no best picture

The participants:

• Sasha Stone, Awards Daily
• Thelma Adams, Us Weekly
• Anne Thompson, Thompson on Hollywood
• Monika Bartyzel, Cinematical
• Caryn James, film critic Marie Claire
• Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer
• Ella Taylor, LA Weekly
• Katey Rich, Cinemablend
• Jan Lisa Huttner, The Hot Pink Pen
• Susan Wloszczyna, USA Today
• Jenni Miller, Cinematical

Toss thought-provoking topics in front of such an articulate panel and you’d expect to see them tear into it like Mr Fox and his family at the dinner table — and your expectations would be fulfilled:

Sasha Stone:

I’m a bit horrified that Jane Campion’s Bright Star was ignored. On the other hand, it is an extremely competitive year for women and in that way, be careful what you wish for. The one woman who is playing in the big leagues, Kathryn Bigelow, didn’t direct a gender-based film at all; in fact, her film, like most of her films, is all about the men.

But who’s to say a woman shouldn’t feel free to direct a film about anyone? Men, women, aliens, politicians – women should have an open playing field.

Thelma Adams:

Here’s another [rivalry]: Vera versus Anna. Don’t you wish Anna would gracefully bow out so that this terrific veteran actress who really soars in Up in the Air has a chance at best supporting actress?

Anne Thompson:

I don’t have a sense that Hollywood is jumping up and down to create more projects for women. What may be going on is that they have to learn that lesson over and over again with the audience thirsty and starving for good women’s fare. In some ways Manohla (Dargis) is right. Even though it looks like they are doing well, the studios are not supportive. They don’t count on women to show up on opening weekend unless it’s a branded entertainment like Twilight, Sex and the City or Mamma Mia.

Monika Bartyzel

Women Over 40 — It’s great, but the cynic in me wonders if this is only because these women are aging so slowly that no one believes their real ages — that Hollywood can forget that they are, indeed, over 40.

Caryn James

It’s true that awards rarely honor subtlety, male or female, and that has hurt Bright Star. But it’s also true that the many nominations for Bigelow play into the old idea that women get ahead by behaving like men, in this case making a movie voters might expect a man to have made. I’m glad Bigelow made the film she wanted to make, but real progress will come when we stop looking at poetic films as if they exist in some lesser, female category.

Carrie Rickey

I think the Cameron/Bigelow noms are an excellent illustration of the dif between studio epic and intimate indie and the weirdness of comparing apples to mangoes when it comes to awards. My principal thought at looking at the Streep, Ephron and Meyers nods is that we’re seeing an illustration of the creative second wind of women of a certain age — what anthropologist Margaret Mead called “post-menopausal zest.”

Ella Taylor

My only comment (as a Brit) is that An Education, a perfectly presentable, perfectly unremarkable film that would do nicely as a television drama, didn’t remotely deserve best picture. But Rosamund Pike, relatively unsung as the blond ditz, certainly deserves a nomination for best supporting actress.

Katey Rich

Kathryn Bigelow– You go girl. She swept the critic’s awards over the weekend and is very much poised as a Best Director frontrunner. The more people who talk up her chances to be the first-ever female Best Director winner, the more it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that she’ll win. And it’s not like it’s just some token “time for a woman to win” award– that would never have gotten her so far. She made an amazing film and is getting rightly rewarded for it. It’s ridiculous that it’s taken this long for it to happen, but I’ll take it!

Bright Star‚Äì It‚Äôs a shame that this movie has utterly fallen off the radar, since Abbie Cornish really was remarkable in it, and Jane Campion at least deserves to be part of the conversation. I think it will be back in the Cinematography department come Oscar time…

Jan Lisa Huttner

Bright Star missing: As I told you back in July, Melissa, men do NOT get this film & they’re actively pissed that it’s told from Fanny’s POV (that is, that is it NOT told from Keats’ POV). Did you see that execrable “review” in recent NY Review of Books?!? Oy!!!

Susan Wloszczyna

I root for Jane Campion since she is one of a kind and a true artist. That butterfly scene alone is worth an Oscar. But I think it was the wrong kind of movie at the wrong time, as good as Abbie Cornish was.

It is interesting about An Education being left out because it is such a smart, savvy film with a fine ensemble cast that outshines most crappy female-driven romcooms. But Carey seems to be the only story there now.

Jenni Miller:

I cannot believe that Bright Star didn’t get any nominations. Abbie Cornish, Jane Campion’s direction, the cinematography, the way she wove his poetry into the music — Bright Star was dazzling. Emily Blunt was good in The Young Victoria, but I thought the movie itself was fairly mediocre.

Meryl is amazing, of course. I haven’t seen It’s Complicated (although I would certainly like to!), so I can’t comment on that, and I did think she was great in Julie and Julia, but were 2009 comedies really that dry for actresses? What about Rachel Weisz in The Brothers Bloom, one of my favorite movies? What about any of the women in Whip It?

And back to our Sasha, to wrap things up with my favorite pithy quote of the whole piece:

Campion, however, is an auteur. Her films will last long after many of the films in play today are merely footnotes. She in uncompromising and that makes her a powerful force in filmmaking in general, not just in “women’s filmmaking.”

Finally, it’s a mistake to confuse quality of filmmaking with success in the awards race. One is a game, the other is art.

o-o-o-o-o

How refreshing was that? While a lot of boys’ club blogsketeers have lately laid claim to the territories of gossipy hen-clucking, mean-girl swipes, and moony man-crushes, it’s especially gratifying to see women movie writers step up with a clear-eyed command of complex issues, seizing the reins of meaningful debate and galloping off with ballsy authority.