By K. A. Laity
The biggest revolution this year may be one you didn't even notice.
The year end reviews seem to be having a nerd-gasm over The Social Network, which I figured out finally—thanks to Edgar Wright's roundup for a 'gentleman's magazine'—is all about "geeks as gangsters" and not the merits of a very uneven film with an often choppy script. I realise any film that allow genteel suburban white guys feel a surge of vicarious toughness will be a hit (hence the career of Guy Ritchie). Bond films are just romances for men and let's not even go to the fantasy world that is Apatown.
Women usually get the statues for dying or hooking, so it seems significant that the most stunning—though seemingly little trumpeted—parts went to young women who were not bravely succumbing to a mortal disease or providing eye candy for a male audience who can revel in their eventual downfall because it's all the women's fault for arousing them. No, they were adolescent but no Lolitas. They were suffering, but not in silence. They were victims, but they were not victimized.
Not surprisingly, they did both focus on fathers: filmmakers seem to be stuck in an era of daddy issues that makes me fervently wish that filmmaker would spend their considerable salaries on therapy instead of bromances, but if we must have father-issue films, these two are the best.
Winter's Bone as I've written earlier is a fantastic film and Jennifer Lawrence is a big part of the reason why. Her technique comes across as natural, unassuming; that's why many have found it easy to dismiss the skill involved. Forget the arguments about the "accuracy" of the narrative: I don't care. In a film where every shot could be framed and hung on the wall, yet the narrative grips you every step of the way, she is part of the artistry of that entire production. However, because she's not on display for the male gaze, she's been largely overlooked.
Likewise True Grit. I talk all the time about Movies Without Women™ but here's the equally common phenomenon: Movies with One Woman™ where one female stands in for all of them. Unlike the typical model, e.g. The King's Speech, the one woman isn't just there to give an emotional center to the men, however. You can't imagine a more masculine (and hirsute!) world than the Coens' wild west. But this film hinges completely on Hailie Steinfeld's Mattie who gives a performance the equal of all of her colleagues in the picture and of Lawrence, too.
Mattie offers a strange figure, at once sympathetic (her situation, her age) and unsympathetic (her unbending morality). All the usual accolades go to the Coens and their familiar team (Burwell, Deakins, etc.) for setting up the magnificent cauldron where this performance takes place, but Steinfeld herself embodies the scripture-spouting fourteen year old with a confidence beyond her years and a wealth of subtleties that make her the focus in the midst of all this.
These two performances give me hope that far beyond specious claims for "Years of the Woman" that periodically rise, fall and sink away, the true hope lies in women like Lawrence, Steinfeld and director Granik and her team, who keep digging in and doing good work without enough applause or recognition, but with Mattie Ross' and Ree Dolly's dogged persistence, because that's the only way things finally change.
K. A. Laity writes so much that she had to create some pseudonyms to keep her colleagues from thoughts of murder. A tenured medievalist at a small liberal arts college, she mostly tries to find ways to avoid meetings in order to write more . Find her on Facebook or follow her on Twitter to hear the latest news.