How Awards Season Invariably Finds a Way to Limit Female-Driven Movies (Commentary)

I always try to remind people that hope springs eternal until the shit rains down. Remember how it seemed too good to be true that female-driven movies like The Shape of Water, Battle of the Sexes, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, along with Lady Bird, The Florida Project, and The Post were astonishing in terms of how many women were driving the race? Remember how it was a great year for films directed by women — Dee Rees and Patty Jenkins and Kathryn Bigelow and Sofia Coppola, to name a few? Hope. Hope is a dangerous thing, Red tells us in Shawshank. Hope is the thing with feathers, says Emily Dickinson. The audacity of hope, says Obama. Was that just a dream?

I know that many will feel triumphant that Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird earned a Best Director win from the NBR, along with a top ten mention and a prize for Laurie Metcalf. Some might be grateful that Patty Jenkins and Gal Gadot got one of three “Spotlight” awards or that they gave Angelina Jolie the Freedom Award. In the end, though, their films were not named in the top ten, nor in the foreign language category.

But Guillermo Del Toro won Best Director at Venice, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri won the audience award in Toronto — that still ought to mean something in the clusterfuck of awards season. Or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe the Trump effect has infected all facets of the culture so that far too many people still duck and run for cover at the sight of a potentially changing America.

It feels like something about the psychology of the race wants to bend towards the male narrative. No matter how many talented filmmakers try to reshape it, no matter how many movies with women in the lead rise up to compete, things snaps back to the status quo. It is great to see Lady Bird and The Post doing so well. But come on, man. Is this really how it’s going to go? Even in a year with so much potential for better balance?

If we use today’s announcement by the National Board of Review to gauge how the race might go down, we will end up with perhaps only two films in the Best Picture race that feature lead actress nominees, The Post and Lady Bird. After months of believing that at last there would be so many more. Just two, unless by some miracle Vicky Krieps gets in for Phantom Thread or Brooklynn Prince for The Florida Project.

We have the AFI’s Ten Films of the Year coming up, then the Producers Guild nominees. And SAG. Can the direction we’re headed towards be altered? Here’s hoping.