Moolaadé
2004/DVD 2008
Director: Ousmane Sembene
Cast: Fatoumata Coulibaly, Maimouna Hélène Diarra, Théophile Sowié
Review by Nancy Keefe Rhodes
Many thundering, indignant tirades have rained upon another’s head already by the time Ciré Bathily’s first wife Kharjatou (Maimouna Hélène Diarra) finally loses her temper with his middle wife Collé (Fatoumata Coulibaly), whom she cherishes, lies for sometimes and secretly agrees with. Stopping the second wife dead in her tracks with an icy glare and pointed finger, Kharjatou commands Collé never to raise her voice again and banishes the younger woman to her quarters. And Collé meekly goes.
When this startling exchange occurs, Collé has the entire contemporary West African village of Djerisso in an uproar. In their husband’s absence, she’s allowed four runaway girls to seek refuge in the Bathily family compound, avoiding the purification rite of female circumcision that their local custom requires. (Two other little girls who also ran away threw themselves down the village well rather than submit to cutting.) Oumy, Diatou, Awa and Nafi – who look to be somewhere between the ages of five and maybe eight – tell Collé they sought her out because they’d heard that seven years ago Collé refused her own daughter’s purification. Then, Ciré (Rasmane Ouedraogo) and Kharjatou both let that defiance pass.
Now, with the simple act of tying a rope across the outer gate to their compound – so low that toddlers, chickens and baby goats routinely step right over it – Collé invokes the indigenous, ancient protection of “moolaadé” that only she can lift by uttering a single word aloud. Moolaadé alone trumps the relative new-comer Islam and leaves the red-robed Salindana – dour women who perform the circumcisions – thwarted, fuming, cooling their heels beyond the rope.
Worse, this all coincides with the triumphant return from Paris of Ibrahima Doucouré (Théophile Sowié), who passes out currency, pays his prominent father’s debts to the peddler Mercenaire (Dominique Zeïda) and expects to marry Collé’s daughter Amsatou (Salimata Traoré). He is undeterred that she is “bilakora” (uncut). His father initially let that pass too, despite several brief, wry scenes in which the older men vigorously reassure one another that they would never consider intimacy with such a woman.
More dramatic events follow – a public flogging, Ibrahima’s disinheritance, the forced and fatal cutting of little asylum-seeker Diatou (lured from safety by her mother), the peddler’s murder for interference, the furious confiscation and burning of the women’s radios. Guttenberg’s printing press sparked Europe’s Protestant Reformation by making Holy Scripture available to whoever could read. In remote Djerisso, this analogue of subversive blend of literacy with forbidden knowledge boils over when Collé tells the assembled village that – on the radio – she has heard the Grand Imam himself say that Islam does not require cutting. For good measure, she reports that a million uncut women make the pilgrimage to Mecca themselves every year, to which one elder responds, “You are Satan!”
Set in the West African nation of Burkina Faso and made in 2003, Senegalese writer and director Ousmane Sembene’s final film, honored first at Cannes and many times since, actually came to Syracuse last April, when Jean Jonassaint, liaison for French-language films to the Syracuse International Film Festival, screened it late one afternoon. Long available on DVD in Canada because of Quebec’s robust French-language cinema – indeed, films made in French hail from several continents and the Caribbean – Moolaadé only recently made it to US DVD.
It’s tempting to draw parallels between this film and current headlines on the basis of surface similarities – the seizure of children in Texas from the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day Saints over possible sexual abuse and on-going custody hearings – but that lens can be distorting. Last June we lost Sembene, an old lion’s death overshadowed here by the twin losses in July of Bergman and Antonioni, both – shades of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson – on the same day. Moolaadé is a good place to start if you don’t know Sembene’s work, with its finely calibrated performances and characters torn by the real dilemmas of personal affection competing with rigorous custom. With all the larger furor in their village, Collé earns Kharjatou’s rebuke because she embarrasses the older woman before her adult son with a moment of demanding, insistent inquiries, much as Ciré’s harsh older brother goads him into bullying Collé – his favorite wife – and so on. It’s a lovely and important film, likely to bust your categories.
*******
This review appeared in the 4/24/08 issue of the Syracuse City Eagle weekly in Nancy's column "Make it Snappy," which reviews DVDs of recent films that did not open theatrically in upstate New York & older films of enduring worth. Find Moolaadé as well as Sembene’s Black Girl, Xala, & Mandabi at netflix.com. Jean Jonassaint reports that the Syracuse International Film Festival plans a Sembene retrospective during its 2009 program. SIFF is underway now &ilms by & ill screen a number of films by & about women later in the week; see www.syrfilm.com.
AGORA: Dragged from her chariot by a mob of fanatical vigilante Christian monks, the revered astronomer was stripped naked, skinned to her bones with sharp oyster shells, stoned and burned alive as possibly the first executed witch in history. A kind of purge that was apparently big business back then.
.jpg)
4/28/08
4/24/08
Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden? Morgan Spurlock Shows the Simple Truth: We're in Some Serious Doo-Doo But There's Hope Yet
By Logan Nakyanzi Pollard
Despite its promising message, the reviews of Morgan Spurlock's new film, Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?, opening this week, have not been kind. A.O. Scott, is downright dismissive:
Mr. Spurlock, more so here than in Super Size Me, advances an essentially anti-political view of the world. It's impossible to disagree with much of what he says in Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden, but it's also impossible to learn anything about war, terrorism, religion, oil, democracy or any of the other topics a less glib, less self-absorbed filmmaker might want to tackle. (NYT)
Scott says the film reveals that:
. . . the things we all have in common, like our children and our families and our desire for a better world. So true! But also, and more to the point: So what?
I can see why Scott makes this argument. I just think he's cynical. A film about our common humanity is a big deal, especially at a time, when, as Alex Gibney showed in Taxi to the Dark Side (where US soldiers killed Dilawar, an innocent taxi driver and the film's main character, and where other young men were brutally treated, as in making them masturbate for cameras). Given these incidents, Spurlock's effort to bring us back to the table, to common ground is needed.
I recently heard a clergyperson say "we all know how this is going to end." You know, the higher power will take care of things, bring people around to the good. It's hard to believe that seeing how things go these days, between the wars overseas and the testy democratic campaign. But once you get past the cartoonish stuff at the top of the film, i.e. Spurlock wrestling Osama (yes, I know it's bad) with a mustache and turban... you see something one might overlook: 1) This film points us in the direction of peace, how to wage peace and get us more in the direction of the good. And 2) it shows that Osama bin Laden is no longer a person, but an idea, that cannot be destroyed by a war on terror.
Point number 2 is more complicated to explain than number 1. And maybe it's even beyond the grasp of the film and my ability to explain in this blog. Save that for another day. I suspect if you get number one down, number 2 will flow from it.
How do you get more in the direction of the good? Consider your point of view.
Many excellent documentaries about US intervention in the Arab World and the Middle East are propelled forward by know-it-all policy makers and upper crust ruling elites who explain how things work and why things are the way they are. After all, they should know: some play armchair quarterback, justifying decisions made long ago that "no one could have foreseen." And while these docs have their utility (these folks got us into this mess, they should have a chance to explain themselves and peddle their memoirs) Spurlock's point of view is also valid. He takes his camera to the streets.
He talks with regular people. This type of reportage you're probably familiar with: man-on-the-street, "a bomb just exploded!", extreme close up women crying, a crowd of men shouting, hands in the air, "Down with America!" . . . it typically takes an exploitative view. But what Spurlock does, is he breaks bread with the enemy and in doing so, shows a kind of humility and respect that is a path to resolving conflict.
His openness lacks a kind of prejudice and is actually the stuff of good reporting. Spurlock is criticized for being a self-promoting, naïf who asks charming but stupid questions. But can we fault Spurlock-the-artist for being self-involved -- creatives find themselves fascinating, that's why they make stuff. And as for Spurlock's feigned lack of sophistication, can we really make an argument that the average American would do much better overseas? What's the percentage of Americans who carry passports? Would we be able to find Jordan or Gaza on a map? How well would we be able to talk about the frustrations of the youth in Saudi Arabia? Or to describe how stifling life in Afghanistan has become? What might we gain from seeing a (white) man (because most Americans are white) who looks like us, sitting and eating with people who are not white and we think of as our enemies? These are important things to show.
In one scene, Spurlock points out how popular the WWF has become in some parts of the Arab world. A man from the film explains that he likes the WWF because it is "fair." We Americans, of course know that professional wrestling, at least by reputation is fixed, and the knowledge of this - plus hearing this man's yearning for a fair fight, make for a poignant irony. What do we know about our conflict with the other that is not fair? How funny and sad is it that there is this desire for "fairness" from our enemy? How unfair must this man's life be for him to be so enamored with two men fighting with just their body slams and wrestle moves -- or, how much like us is he? Could it be that we all want fairness and respect? Could a change on our mutual path, be as simple as acknowledging that?
The film closes with outtakes from personalities Spurlock encountered. Some simply gaze into the camera. One of the most anti-American Saudis slowly allows a smile to cross his face. He's tentative at first, like it hurts him. He looks pained and then it's like he's aware of how silly he looks and he gives us a real smile. In that smile, we can see our common lot. Like when you've had an argument with someone, and you just want it to end and there's a moment when you see you're wrong or you don't even care who's right anymore and a smile crosses your face. His smile was like that.
Spurlock is just one man (with a hard working band of producers) who took on trekking to these difficult places in the world, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Egypt, Morocco and (what's often referred to as) Israel/Palestine. He stops short of Pakistan. Recalling Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl's fate there (Pearl, a hard news reporter was on the trail of al Qaeda; his wife was also pregnant at the time) it was probably not an un-wise move, given that Spurlock was a novice in these matters. The film shows how regular people can ferret out simple truths, when our leaders fail to make the effort.
Logan Nakyanzi Pollard
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/logan-nakyanzi-pollard/where-in-the-world-is-osa_b_97496.html
Logan Nakyanzi Pollard is an executive producer at Air America Radio and Go Left TV, and writes for The Huffington Post. Logan is also a member of the Women Film Critics Circle.
Despite its promising message, the reviews of Morgan Spurlock's new film, Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?, opening this week, have not been kind. A.O. Scott, is downright dismissive:
Mr. Spurlock, more so here than in Super Size Me, advances an essentially anti-political view of the world. It's impossible to disagree with much of what he says in Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden, but it's also impossible to learn anything about war, terrorism, religion, oil, democracy or any of the other topics a less glib, less self-absorbed filmmaker might want to tackle. (NYT)
Scott says the film reveals that:
. . . the things we all have in common, like our children and our families and our desire for a better world. So true! But also, and more to the point: So what?
I can see why Scott makes this argument. I just think he's cynical. A film about our common humanity is a big deal, especially at a time, when, as Alex Gibney showed in Taxi to the Dark Side (where US soldiers killed Dilawar, an innocent taxi driver and the film's main character, and where other young men were brutally treated, as in making them masturbate for cameras). Given these incidents, Spurlock's effort to bring us back to the table, to common ground is needed.
I recently heard a clergyperson say "we all know how this is going to end." You know, the higher power will take care of things, bring people around to the good. It's hard to believe that seeing how things go these days, between the wars overseas and the testy democratic campaign. But once you get past the cartoonish stuff at the top of the film, i.e. Spurlock wrestling Osama (yes, I know it's bad) with a mustache and turban... you see something one might overlook: 1) This film points us in the direction of peace, how to wage peace and get us more in the direction of the good. And 2) it shows that Osama bin Laden is no longer a person, but an idea, that cannot be destroyed by a war on terror.
Point number 2 is more complicated to explain than number 1. And maybe it's even beyond the grasp of the film and my ability to explain in this blog. Save that for another day. I suspect if you get number one down, number 2 will flow from it.
How do you get more in the direction of the good? Consider your point of view.
Many excellent documentaries about US intervention in the Arab World and the Middle East are propelled forward by know-it-all policy makers and upper crust ruling elites who explain how things work and why things are the way they are. After all, they should know: some play armchair quarterback, justifying decisions made long ago that "no one could have foreseen." And while these docs have their utility (these folks got us into this mess, they should have a chance to explain themselves and peddle their memoirs) Spurlock's point of view is also valid. He takes his camera to the streets.
He talks with regular people. This type of reportage you're probably familiar with: man-on-the-street, "a bomb just exploded!", extreme close up women crying, a crowd of men shouting, hands in the air, "Down with America!" . . . it typically takes an exploitative view. But what Spurlock does, is he breaks bread with the enemy and in doing so, shows a kind of humility and respect that is a path to resolving conflict.
His openness lacks a kind of prejudice and is actually the stuff of good reporting. Spurlock is criticized for being a self-promoting, naïf who asks charming but stupid questions. But can we fault Spurlock-the-artist for being self-involved -- creatives find themselves fascinating, that's why they make stuff. And as for Spurlock's feigned lack of sophistication, can we really make an argument that the average American would do much better overseas? What's the percentage of Americans who carry passports? Would we be able to find Jordan or Gaza on a map? How well would we be able to talk about the frustrations of the youth in Saudi Arabia? Or to describe how stifling life in Afghanistan has become? What might we gain from seeing a (white) man (because most Americans are white) who looks like us, sitting and eating with people who are not white and we think of as our enemies? These are important things to show.
In one scene, Spurlock points out how popular the WWF has become in some parts of the Arab world. A man from the film explains that he likes the WWF because it is "fair." We Americans, of course know that professional wrestling, at least by reputation is fixed, and the knowledge of this - plus hearing this man's yearning for a fair fight, make for a poignant irony. What do we know about our conflict with the other that is not fair? How funny and sad is it that there is this desire for "fairness" from our enemy? How unfair must this man's life be for him to be so enamored with two men fighting with just their body slams and wrestle moves -- or, how much like us is he? Could it be that we all want fairness and respect? Could a change on our mutual path, be as simple as acknowledging that?
The film closes with outtakes from personalities Spurlock encountered. Some simply gaze into the camera. One of the most anti-American Saudis slowly allows a smile to cross his face. He's tentative at first, like it hurts him. He looks pained and then it's like he's aware of how silly he looks and he gives us a real smile. In that smile, we can see our common lot. Like when you've had an argument with someone, and you just want it to end and there's a moment when you see you're wrong or you don't even care who's right anymore and a smile crosses your face. His smile was like that.
Spurlock is just one man (with a hard working band of producers) who took on trekking to these difficult places in the world, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Egypt, Morocco and (what's often referred to as) Israel/Palestine. He stops short of Pakistan. Recalling Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl's fate there (Pearl, a hard news reporter was on the trail of al Qaeda; his wife was also pregnant at the time) it was probably not an un-wise move, given that Spurlock was a novice in these matters. The film shows how regular people can ferret out simple truths, when our leaders fail to make the effort.
Logan Nakyanzi Pollard
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/logan-nakyanzi-pollard/where-in-the-world-is-osa_b_97496.html
Logan Nakyanzi Pollard is an executive producer at Air America Radio and Go Left TV, and writes for The Huffington Post. Logan is also a member of the Women Film Critics Circle.
Meeting Resistance: In The Brave Tradition of Battle Of Algiers
By Prairie Miller
Sometimes a film serves as a potent weapon of endangered truth, dispelling official lies and giving voice to those whose collective pain has been silenced. Meeting Resistance is that film and more, an act of resistance in its own right to the US war on Iraq.
A powerfully probing and enlightening antidote to the orchestrated news of the US money media that believes there is only one side to every story, Meeting Resistance is a daring documentary that deconstructs the government approved pro-war propaganda of the nightly news. Rather than the distorted depictions of Iraqi fighters as religious fanatics and political extremists, Meeting Resistance in a play on words does just that, in a courageous face-to-face with the everyday people who join these partisans in confrontation with US invasion and occupation.
Filmmakers Steve Connors and Molly Bingham pursued these truths with fearless determination and at great risk. Connors' perspective grew out of very personal experiences, as he became politicized as a young British soldier in the ranks of the bloody UK occupation of Northern Ireland in the early 1980s. And Bingham, a Harvard graduate, has worked as a photojournalist for Human Rights Watch and around the world, including in Afghanistan, Iran and Gaza. She was also held in Abu Ghraib prison during the course of the US invasion.
Connors and Bingham began their investigative filmmaking just prior to the invasion, as they took the subversive route as embedded journalists with the emerging Iraqi resistance rather than with the US military. The filmmakers gained the trust of a number of fighters who agreed to share their stories. What emerges is a portrait of fiercely dedicated, articulate and disciplined individuals from disparate economic classes and religious faiths, but who are all joined together in an idealistic mission to defend the collective dignity and sovereignty of their people against invaders, as one points out, what any American with courage would do if faced with the same situation in their own land.
Meeting Resistance is organized with richly textured and emotionally resonant visuals and music, as these proud fighters speak of embracing the cause as the daily humiliations of the occupiers ignite 'a fire in the heart.' With impassioned women as well included among their ranks, they are given names by the filmmakers like Warrior, Teacher, Fugitive and Wife to protect their identities. And it becomes increasingly apparent through their words that their commitment and actions are in response to the brutality of the US military.
In the brave, defiant and principled tradition of Gillo Pontecorvo's Battle of Algiers, Meeting Resistance is surely a companion piece as well to the semi-fictionalized upcoming release, Brian De Palma's Redacted, in a sense the 'Unredacted' response to the censorship that permeates the commercial media, and which De Palma continues to struggle against as his film does battle with those redacting his movie. Meeting Resistance finally, is both a valiant dissection of the anatomy of collective struggle, and a visionary blueprint for the end to US military madness and reckless foreign invasions and wars.
Meeting Resistance DVD Features: Audio Commentary: Filmmaker Q&A; Text/Photo Galleries; Biographies; Photo Gallery.
More information is online at: Firstrunfeatures.com/home_video_dvd.html and Meetingresistance.com.
Prairie Miller
Sometimes a film serves as a potent weapon of endangered truth, dispelling official lies and giving voice to those whose collective pain has been silenced. Meeting Resistance is that film and more, an act of resistance in its own right to the US war on Iraq.
A powerfully probing and enlightening antidote to the orchestrated news of the US money media that believes there is only one side to every story, Meeting Resistance is a daring documentary that deconstructs the government approved pro-war propaganda of the nightly news. Rather than the distorted depictions of Iraqi fighters as religious fanatics and political extremists, Meeting Resistance in a play on words does just that, in a courageous face-to-face with the everyday people who join these partisans in confrontation with US invasion and occupation.
Filmmakers Steve Connors and Molly Bingham pursued these truths with fearless determination and at great risk. Connors' perspective grew out of very personal experiences, as he became politicized as a young British soldier in the ranks of the bloody UK occupation of Northern Ireland in the early 1980s. And Bingham, a Harvard graduate, has worked as a photojournalist for Human Rights Watch and around the world, including in Afghanistan, Iran and Gaza. She was also held in Abu Ghraib prison during the course of the US invasion.
Connors and Bingham began their investigative filmmaking just prior to the invasion, as they took the subversive route as embedded journalists with the emerging Iraqi resistance rather than with the US military. The filmmakers gained the trust of a number of fighters who agreed to share their stories. What emerges is a portrait of fiercely dedicated, articulate and disciplined individuals from disparate economic classes and religious faiths, but who are all joined together in an idealistic mission to defend the collective dignity and sovereignty of their people against invaders, as one points out, what any American with courage would do if faced with the same situation in their own land.
Meeting Resistance is organized with richly textured and emotionally resonant visuals and music, as these proud fighters speak of embracing the cause as the daily humiliations of the occupiers ignite 'a fire in the heart.' With impassioned women as well included among their ranks, they are given names by the filmmakers like Warrior, Teacher, Fugitive and Wife to protect their identities. And it becomes increasingly apparent through their words that their commitment and actions are in response to the brutality of the US military.
In the brave, defiant and principled tradition of Gillo Pontecorvo's Battle of Algiers, Meeting Resistance is surely a companion piece as well to the semi-fictionalized upcoming release, Brian De Palma's Redacted, in a sense the 'Unredacted' response to the censorship that permeates the commercial media, and which De Palma continues to struggle against as his film does battle with those redacting his movie. Meeting Resistance finally, is both a valiant dissection of the anatomy of collective struggle, and a visionary blueprint for the end to US military madness and reckless foreign invasions and wars.
Meeting Resistance DVD Features: Audio Commentary: Filmmaker Q&A; Text/Photo Galleries; Biographies; Photo Gallery.
More information is online at: Firstrunfeatures.com/home_video_dvd.html and Meetingresistance.com.
Prairie Miller
4/23/08
VIVA Anna Biller
Plot:
Two housewives and their husbands go outside of the marriage dictates to find swingers, orgies and the world of “Sin” that typified the public image of the 1970’s sexual revolution. Brought on by the proliferation of the Pill and the woman’s freedom from that constant worry about “getting pregnant,” this film tries to bring humor and deliberate vacuous intellectual substance into a world full of unrestrained life and imagination, and change; the very qualities Anna Biller attempts to capture in her own artistic endeavor.
Trivia from IMDB
“The Japanese Mae West in the orgy scene who says, "Murray, peel me a grape" is Anna Biller's mother, dubbed by Bridget Brno. The guy at the bar in the brown plaid suit behind Rick is Anna's father. He originally had one line as a drunk”.
:
This is a family driven film that has outstanding use of color and scene and costume design but for me it was empty, almost stupid and certainly did not reflect the world of the sexual revolution it attempted to expose and make fun of.
What happened to the little girls who fell in love with their Barbie dolls and devoted entire toddler plus free time to holding, talking, being with their dolls? Part of the answer is contained in Anna Biller’s recent film Viva.
Anna Biller is the writer, director, film editer, costume designer, set maker, film producer and most importantly, she is the led actor in her own film
This film shows more bosom than any film I have seen outside of the porn industry, and more unattractive body parts in general than I ever want to see. They are the human equipment of these flat one-dimensional actors who are put into a flat, non arched plot with disturbingly simple dialogue and plot
But what stands out is the quality of the Barbie doll, of Anna Biller desire to present herself as a fat Barbie doll with the men faring no better as the Peewee Hermann or the Superman doll type actors. Although she might think this is a funny satire on a life style and time she knows practically nothing about, she is wrong. This movie is, on the surface dull, (except for the colorful imaginative costumes and scene designs) apparently unedited and the subject matter is an insult both to Anna Biller the film maker and to the audience who is not too old to forget what life was like then, even in Hollywood
I am grateful for the American Doll, for allowing girls to play with dolls who look like them and not like the stick figure, boob protruding Barbie dolls that dominated the doll world and unfortunately often still do.
LindaZ
WBAI Women’s Collective
Two housewives and their husbands go outside of the marriage dictates to find swingers, orgies and the world of “Sin” that typified the public image of the 1970’s sexual revolution. Brought on by the proliferation of the Pill and the woman’s freedom from that constant worry about “getting pregnant,” this film tries to bring humor and deliberate vacuous intellectual substance into a world full of unrestrained life and imagination, and change; the very qualities Anna Biller attempts to capture in her own artistic endeavor.
Trivia from IMDB
“The Japanese Mae West in the orgy scene who says, "Murray, peel me a grape" is Anna Biller's mother, dubbed by Bridget Brno. The guy at the bar in the brown plaid suit behind Rick is Anna's father. He originally had one line as a drunk”.
:
This is a family driven film that has outstanding use of color and scene and costume design but for me it was empty, almost stupid and certainly did not reflect the world of the sexual revolution it attempted to expose and make fun of.
What happened to the little girls who fell in love with their Barbie dolls and devoted entire toddler plus free time to holding, talking, being with their dolls? Part of the answer is contained in Anna Biller’s recent film Viva.
Anna Biller is the writer, director, film editer, costume designer, set maker, film producer and most importantly, she is the led actor in her own film
This film shows more bosom than any film I have seen outside of the porn industry, and more unattractive body parts in general than I ever want to see. They are the human equipment of these flat one-dimensional actors who are put into a flat, non arched plot with disturbingly simple dialogue and plot
But what stands out is the quality of the Barbie doll, of Anna Biller desire to present herself as a fat Barbie doll with the men faring no better as the Peewee Hermann or the Superman doll type actors. Although she might think this is a funny satire on a life style and time she knows practically nothing about, she is wrong. This movie is, on the surface dull, (except for the colorful imaginative costumes and scene designs) apparently unedited and the subject matter is an insult both to Anna Biller the film maker and to the audience who is not too old to forget what life was like then, even in Hollywood
I am grateful for the American Doll, for allowing girls to play with dolls who look like them and not like the stick figure, boob protruding Barbie dolls that dominated the doll world and unfortunately often still do.
LindaZ
WBAI Women’s Collective
4/19/08
Hollywood And The War On Women
The Case of The Life Before Her Eyes
By Prairie Miller
While war movies with whatever point of view, seem to be invading theaters at a steady rate, and at a parallel pace with the ever increasing heated debates about Iraq, there's been another kind of war film that's opened up on a perhaps more insidious second front at the plexes. Namely, Hollywood's war against women.
Whether originating from a widespread, lingering resentment against the female gender permeating this culture that just won't go away - or more specifically a kind of virtual retaliation in the male dominated film world against ex-wives and the funds they may be draining through substantial alimony settlements from the coffers of these directors and producers to play around with on the big screen - is really beside the point. The latest post-feminist thrust is that a woman's place is back in the kitchen, in the delivery room, in bed, or behind bars.
So in essence, the gains of the women's movement, which emphatically freed females on screen and otherwise back then from the mandate of defining themselves through men - whatever jerks, scoundrels or losers they might be - are now considered so yesterday. Instead, women are increasingly having their essential identity - or woeful lack of it - defined on screen by making, not careers, but babies. Witness incidentally in the real world the transsexual male in the news boasting his hairy baby bump, and the latest celeb consumer craze of acquiring babies from underdeveloped countries like collectors of exotic house pets.
And the orthodox family values cinematic trend in fake free spirit female clothing, whether natural or artificially induced, began last year with movies like Knocked Up and Juno, and now seems to be accelerating at full speed. There's Baby Mama, Then She Found Me, The Life Before Her Eyes, The Other Boleyn Girl, And Then Came Love, Vivere, and to a lesser extent, Turn The River.
And for those not willing to buy into mandatory motherhood, there are still a few roles left for women here and there, as dragons ladies, sluts and psychos. Not to mention demented chicks with menace on their minds who pack recycled semen along with guns, in a bid to frame men by faking rape of themselves (Red Road) or others (88 Minutes). If anyone has ever heard of this sort of crime in real life, please raise your hand.
So move over, Baby Boomers, to make room for the baby makers. And for those unwilling to toe the maternity line, there's apparently a new kind of female road movie out there, called the guilt trip. Last year the ambivalent teen protagonists with child of Juno and Lost In Beijing fled abortion clinics like they had wandered by mistake on to the sets of horror movies in progress. But now director Vadim Perelman (House Of Sand And Fog) has something far more punitive in mind for his abortion bound, party girl high schooler Diana (Evan Rachel Wood), pregnant by an older sexual predator, in The Life Before Her Eyes.
In the film, Diana is fated to become victim of a copycat Columbine massacre at her school. But she's also made to suffer a bizarre and excruciating kind of collateral damage to her physical wounds, by enduring unrelieved pangs of remorse for her abortion, while writhing in pain. Diana's ordeal is capped off by visions of disapproving nuns and the not unrelated image of an endless field filled with crosses reported to contain the multiple graves of aborted fetuses.
And ironically, such a warped cautionary tale pops up in a society where the rampant hyper-sexualization of female minors on screen is not only condoned and encouraged, but is big business (most recently The Babysitters and Water Lilies). I guess you could label The Life Before her Eyes a product of the school of moviemaking advocating catching more flies with vinegar than honey. Ouch.
What Uma Thurman is doing as the older Diana in this anti-abortion movement propaganda screed masquerading as a teen angst drama, is anybody's guess. All that's missing are the pamphlet tables in the theater lobbies.
The Life Before Her Eyes
Magnolia Pictures
Rated R
0 stars
Prairie Miller
By Prairie Miller
While war movies with whatever point of view, seem to be invading theaters at a steady rate, and at a parallel pace with the ever increasing heated debates about Iraq, there's been another kind of war film that's opened up on a perhaps more insidious second front at the plexes. Namely, Hollywood's war against women.
Whether originating from a widespread, lingering resentment against the female gender permeating this culture that just won't go away - or more specifically a kind of virtual retaliation in the male dominated film world against ex-wives and the funds they may be draining through substantial alimony settlements from the coffers of these directors and producers to play around with on the big screen - is really beside the point. The latest post-feminist thrust is that a woman's place is back in the kitchen, in the delivery room, in bed, or behind bars.
So in essence, the gains of the women's movement, which emphatically freed females on screen and otherwise back then from the mandate of defining themselves through men - whatever jerks, scoundrels or losers they might be - are now considered so yesterday. Instead, women are increasingly having their essential identity - or woeful lack of it - defined on screen by making, not careers, but babies. Witness incidentally in the real world the transsexual male in the news boasting his hairy baby bump, and the latest celeb consumer craze of acquiring babies from underdeveloped countries like collectors of exotic house pets.
And the orthodox family values cinematic trend in fake free spirit female clothing, whether natural or artificially induced, began last year with movies like Knocked Up and Juno, and now seems to be accelerating at full speed. There's Baby Mama, Then She Found Me, The Life Before Her Eyes, The Other Boleyn Girl, And Then Came Love, Vivere, and to a lesser extent, Turn The River.
And for those not willing to buy into mandatory motherhood, there are still a few roles left for women here and there, as dragons ladies, sluts and psychos. Not to mention demented chicks with menace on their minds who pack recycled semen along with guns, in a bid to frame men by faking rape of themselves (Red Road) or others (88 Minutes). If anyone has ever heard of this sort of crime in real life, please raise your hand.
So move over, Baby Boomers, to make room for the baby makers. And for those unwilling to toe the maternity line, there's apparently a new kind of female road movie out there, called the guilt trip. Last year the ambivalent teen protagonists with child of Juno and Lost In Beijing fled abortion clinics like they had wandered by mistake on to the sets of horror movies in progress. But now director Vadim Perelman (House Of Sand And Fog) has something far more punitive in mind for his abortion bound, party girl high schooler Diana (Evan Rachel Wood), pregnant by an older sexual predator, in The Life Before Her Eyes.
In the film, Diana is fated to become victim of a copycat Columbine massacre at her school. But she's also made to suffer a bizarre and excruciating kind of collateral damage to her physical wounds, by enduring unrelieved pangs of remorse for her abortion, while writhing in pain. Diana's ordeal is capped off by visions of disapproving nuns and the not unrelated image of an endless field filled with crosses reported to contain the multiple graves of aborted fetuses.
And ironically, such a warped cautionary tale pops up in a society where the rampant hyper-sexualization of female minors on screen is not only condoned and encouraged, but is big business (most recently The Babysitters and Water Lilies). I guess you could label The Life Before her Eyes a product of the school of moviemaking advocating catching more flies with vinegar than honey. Ouch.
What Uma Thurman is doing as the older Diana in this anti-abortion movement propaganda screed masquerading as a teen angst drama, is anybody's guess. All that's missing are the pamphlet tables in the theater lobbies.
The Life Before Her Eyes
Magnolia Pictures
Rated R
0 stars
Prairie Miller
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
