Get Out Your Handkerchiefs — Crying Movies on the Fall Schedule
Posted on September 24, 2016 at 8:00 am
The LA Times reports that there are a number of movies on the fall release schedule that will make you cry, with a dying mother (“A Monster Calls”), a lost child (“Lion”), and a mourning mother (“Arrival”). I’d add “Loving,” based on the true story of the couple whose inter-racial marriage challenged miscegenation laws, “The Dressmaker” (sad deaths), slavery (“Birth of a Nation”) and a documentary about veterans (“Thank You for Your Service”). That means: get ready to be moved.
Angelica Jade Bastién is one of my favorite critics, and her essays on film are always insightful and thought-provoking. For Vulture, she wrote about the increasingly sensitive and authentic portrayal of mental illness on television. And she calls out the still-too-frequent portrayal of mentally ill characters as serial killers, or quirky-but-wise, or even super-smart but flawed figures.
If you live with mental illness, a show like You’re the Worst is downright revelatory. During its first season, the FXX comedy introduced Edgar, a military veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder. In its second season, the show revealed that its lead female character, Gretchen, has clinical depression. And in its third season, which premiered last week, Gretchen actively seeks treatment and begins seeing a therapist.
In a television landscape that often misunderstands and misrepresents mental illness, You’re the Worst isn’t alone. Thanks to shows like BoJack Horseman, Lady Dynamite, and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, it’s now easier than ever to find moving portraits of mental illness on television — but on the whole, most shows still struggle with flawed, careless, and inaccurate depictions….By failing to offer a diagnosis, a show’s writers can cherry-pick a variety of symptoms, which ultimately creates a dishonest portrayal that hinges on plot needs. This often leads to confused characterization, or worse, an exploitative view of mental illness.
It does not have to be a serious drama to be true to the reality of mental illness. Bastién’s good examples include “You’re the Worst” and “Crazy-Ex Girlfriend.”
Though the conversation on inequality in Hollywood is getting more attention than ever, a new report reveals that little has changed on screen or behind the camera.
Authored by Professor Stacy L. Smith and the Media, Diversity & Social Change (MDSC) Initiative at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, the study is the largest intersectional analysis of characters in motion picture content to date. The group examined the 800 top films from 2007 to 2015 (excluding 2011), analyzing 35,205 characters for gender, race/ethnicity, LGBT status and – for the first time – the presence of disability. The results reveal that Hollywood remains resistant to change.
Copyright USC Annenberg 2016
Just 31.4% of all speaking characters across the 100 top films from 2015 were female, a figure that has not changed since 2007. While race/ethnicity has been a major focus of advocacy in the wake of #OscarsSoWhite, characters from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups were 26.3% of all characters. LGBT-identified characters represented less than 1% of all speaking characters. The report includes data on characters with disabilities, who filled a mere 2.4% of all speaking roles.
The report also has extensive and disturbing data on the depictions of minorities, including people with disabilities, and on the sexualization of young woman.
Singer-songwriter-actress Alicia Keys has announced that she is not going to wear make-up any more, even in performance and on television. In the midst of the over-the-top as always VMA awards on MTV Sunday night she looked fresh, natural, and comfortable. Her spontaneous a capella song from the podium matched her unretouched look.
Women are bombarded with a lot of messages about what is wrong with the way they look, mostly from people who want to see us things to make us look and smell “better.” It is great to have a counter-message from Keys that tells us it is possible to feel happy the way we are.
She says she was inspired by showing up for a photo shoot ready to be made up and photographed, and then the photographer asked if he could take her picture without makeup.
“I swear it is the strongest, most empowered, most free, and most honestly beautiful that I have ever felt,” she wrote.
“I hope to God it’s a revolution … ‘Cause I don’t want to cover up anymore. Not my face, not my mind, not my soul, not my thoughts, not my dreams, not my struggles, not my emotional growth. Nothing.”
#8 Nora Charles (Myrna Loy in the “Thin Man” series)
Movies love to tell us stories about falling in love: the rush of emotion, the fear of intimacy, the exquisite romantic thrill. And it is not hard to find a movie about the agony of love, the anguish of betrayal, the pain of loss. But it is very rare to see a movie about being in love, and almost impossible to find a single film, much less a series, where the lead characters are a married couple who do not just love each other and support each other – they get a genuine kick out of each other. They make marriage seem sexy and fun.
Only one couple in movie history fits that category: the witty, glamorous, but down-to-earth Nick and Nora Charles in the “Thin Man” series of six films about a debonair detective and his society wife. Myrna Loy played Nora opposite her 14-time co-star William Powell, and there has never been a better on-screen match for impeccable comic timing and romantic chemistry.
As the first film begins, they are near-newlyweds. After marrying the wealthy Nora, Nick has retired from detecting and they seem to be living a life of champagne and caviar. Nick is asked to help an old friend find her missing father (the “thin man” of the title, not Nick). Nora is a game girl, whatever is up, whether it is matching Nick by downing a half-dozen martinis or hosting an elegant party for low-lifes and crooks. “Oh, Nicky. I love you because you know such lovely people,” she says, and she means it. She is confident in herself and their marriage. When she sees him hugging the girl he is helping, she is not at all jealous – they make faces at each other over the girl’s shoulder, communicating to themselves and to us their instinctive understanding. Their relationship is never in question.
Dashiell Hammett based the character in part on his long-time love, playwright Lillian Hellman. She described Nick and Nora as “maybe one of the few marriages in modern literature where the man and woman like each other and have a fine time together.” And we have a fine time watching them.
#33 Princess Ann (Audrey Hepburn in “Roman Holiday)
Ann (Audrey Hepburn) is the princess of a small, highly civilized country on a diplomatic tour. She is to be unfailingly polite and gracious, promoting trade relations with her always-uncontroversial elegance. Her activities are limited to receptions, photo ops, various ceremonies and speeches like “youth and progress.” “Everything we do is so wholesome,” she sighs.
She is a Cinderella-in-reverse, losing her shoe at the beginning of the story. She has been standing so long in a receiving line, greeting an endless line of dignitaries, that she discreetly takes her sore foot out of her high heel to stretch it, and accidentally knocks it over so she cannot find it again without revealing her indiscretion. That night, she rebels and is given medicine to help her sleep and advice to so “exactly what you wish for a while.” While under the power of the drug, she runs away and ends up falling asleep in the apartment of an American journalist (Gregory Peck).
Ann seems to have everything and so she is an unlikely heroine. But she gets our sympathy because of her wish for the simplest of pleasures – to sleep in pajamas, to get her hair bobbed, to buy an ice cream, to walk around without handlers or photographers, to talk to someone who does not know she is a princess. Hepburn, who would win an Oscar for her first lead role, is enchanting as the princess who longs for the joys of a commoner. Seeing her discover them for the first time makes us rediscover them for ourselves.
#48 Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith in “Working Girl”)
Tess (Melanie Griffith) wants to believe that being smart and working hard will make it possible for her to realize her dream of becoming an investment banker. But the sexist jerks she works for as a secretary will not take her seriously. And her new boss, a woman (Sigourney Weaver), pretends to support her but steals her idea. A boyfriend betrayal and a Valium later, she is stealing her boss’s dress, cutting off her Staten Island poof hairdo (“You want to be taken seriously, you need serious hair”), and pretending to be in the job she wishes she had.
Way too many movie heroines have destiny-changing makeovers. But there is no trying-on-outfits montage here. Yes, she looks ravishing in her boss’s glamorous cocktail dress. But it turns out she has made a mistake. Dress for the event is business attire. She is still out of place.
And yet, looking different brings her to the attention of Jack (Harrison Ford, terrific in a highly unusual supporting role). When they meet in “her” office the next day, he is as won over by her “head for business” as by her “body for sin.”
In a crucial moment, Tess is able to show that the business idea her boss has stolen is hers by owning her intelligence, hard work, judgment – and her roots, acknowledging that it was reading one of the “lower class” newspapers led her to the idea that is going to be worth a great deal of money to her company and its client. She shows us and herself that it is her Staten Island savvy as well as her Wall Street ambition that make her indispensible to Jack, to her new employer, and to us.
Wloszczyna wrote:
*Among the most popular types of characters, based on how they are primarily portrayed onscreen, few are mainly defined by their relationship to a man or a child. There are six action heroes; five journalists/writers/editors; five girls in their teens and younger; four upper-class/socialite/royalty types; two housewives, one mother and one mail-order bride and mother; two office workers; two waitresses; two teachers; two business owners; and two law enforcers.
*18 of the characters resulted in acting Oscars for the actresses who played them, with many more leading to Academy Award nominations. In other words, if you build great female characters, they will likely be noticed and rewarded.
*Only three films that produced worthy Wonder Women had female directors—the 1994 version of “Little Women,” “Whale Rider” and “Winter’s Bone.” However, 18 out of the 55 characters—almost a third—were conceived wholly or in part by women screenwriters and/or authors. “I don’t think men can’t write great parts for women, since we have many on our list,” Ferdinand says. “However, the insight that women can bring to these characters and their lives is self-evident in the results. We know when something feels true and right to us.”
We will let AWFJ’s own Wonder Woman, founder Merin, have the last word. “These characters represent our good friends,” she says. “This is a list of films that every mother will want their daughters (and their sons) to see. It could serve as a primer for a course on women’s images in film through the years.”
Be sure to check out the whole list and watch all the movies! Let me know of any you think we left out. Remember, these are fictional characters — we hope to do a list based on real-life characters like Helen Keller, Tina Turner, and Erin Brockovich next.
