Historian Jill Lepore is one of my favorite writers and I am also a Comic-Con-attending fangirl, so I was thrilled to get a chance to hear Professor Lepore speak at the Smithsonian about her new book, The Secret History of Wonder Woman.
There are only three superheroes who have appeared for decades without any interruptions: Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. But like Superman and Batman, she has taken on many forms and cultural signifiers over the decades. She was way ahead of her time as a feminist symbol. She was from a matriarchal culture and exemplified independence and courage. But she was only permitted to join the Justice Society after a poll of comics readers, and, once she joined, she served as its secretary, sitting primly and taking notes.
Lepore’s focus was less on Wonder Woman as a character, a symbol, or a work of art but as the creation of an historic figure, one who was well known for his scholarship and invention, but who led a life of secrets that were reflected in his most famous creation.
Lepore considers her the “missing link” between feminism in the first half of the 20th century (women’s suffrage to Rosie the Riveter) and the second half (the rise of the women’s movement in the 70’s and the broader opportunities for women following the Equal Rights Act).
Wonder Woman was the creation of William Moulton Marston, a remarkably accomplished man who had both a law degree and a PhD in psychology from Harvard. Lepore described details of his life which were reflected in the Wonder Woman character and storylines. Marston was one of the inventors of the polygraph lie detector test, probably the inspiration for Wonder Woman’s lasso of truth. Those captured by her magic rope cannot lie. Marston was also a committed feminist. While some Wonder Woman fans have have noted the superheroine’s frequent appearance in bondage, Lepore is the first to connect this directly to the images used by early 20th century feminists in their pursuit of the vote, birth control, and other rights for women. Marston also lived with and had children with two women, his wife and a kind of “sister-wife,” who was the niece of birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger. This arrangement allowed his wife to pursue her career while the children were cared for by the “other mother.”
Marston believed that comics had a great power to communicate and explicitly intended Wonder Woman to carry his message of female empowerment. A story published in 1943 had her becoming President — a thousand years in the future.
Hannah Nydahl was dedicated to introducing Buddhism to the western hemisphere. This is her story. Co Director/Producer Marta György Kessler spent 15 years traveling with Hannah Nydahl and some of the most renowned Buddhist Lamas, before her directorial debut with this film. “In creating this film we wanted to make something that was like no other documentary on a Buddhist teacher,”said Kessler. “Hannah and the people who know her best guide audiences through an incredible journey of a life dedicated to helping people understand the limitless potential of what lies within.”
Rated R for language including some crude references, and violent content
Profanity:
Strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:
Drinking
Violence/ Scariness:
Riots and brutal attacks on rioters and rebels, torture
Diversity Issues:
A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:
November 14, 2014
Copyright 2014 Open Road Films
First-time writer/director Jon Stewart has made a remarkably assured film about the imprisonment and torture of Iranian journalist Maziar Bahari It is an absorbing drama that is at the same time the story of a very specific individual and a thoughtful consideration of contemporary geopolitics that avoids stereotypes or jingoism. This not only makes it a better story; it elevates the level of discourse without preachiness.
Bahari (a superb Gael Garcia Bernal) was working for Newsweek when he returned to Iran to cover the election in 2009. He knew the dangers of posing a threat to the government in Iran. His father and sister both died in prison as accused enemies of two different regimes. And now, as he filmed the protests over the disputed election victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the “Dish University” maintained by dissidents, he knows he is putting himself and his subjects and sources at risk. It is possible he does not consider the risks posed by his decision to be interviewed by “The Daily Show,” where he jokes about being a spy.
He is asleep at his mother’s home when officials arrive to take him to prison. It is disturbing and shocking that he is neither disturbed or shocked. While his mother (Shohreh Aghdashloo) bravely snaps at the man who orders her to wear a headscarf, Bahari is calm and polite.
Stewart wants us to understand the pressure that Bahari’s interrogator (Danish actor Kim Bodnia) is under. Stewart shrewdly introduces us to the man who smells of rose water as he is on the phone to his family, and showing us that he is just one link in a chain of oppression and bureaucracy. And he is not afraid to use cinematic touches to show us what is going on in Bahari’s mind. We see a face reflected on the walls as he walks through the streets. Later, in prison, he has conversations with his father and sister. They seem real to us, but they are not hallucinations. They are just visual embodiments of Bahari’s thought processes or fantasies has the weeks in solitary confinement turn into months, with no contact from the outside world. These memories of his family members who were also imprisoned help him stay strong. They even help him briefly outsmart Rosewater, as he fabricates a series of sexual encounters to describe in questioning, his “specialist” (interrogator) listening in horrified fascination, Bahari having, for once, the upper hand.
Stewart wisely also keeps us confined with Bahari, not telling us more than he knows about efforts to get him out of prison. When we finally see archival footage of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton talking about the importance of having him freed, we share his sense of relief that the world knows what is going on and cares about it. The other prisoners have no such support. And yet, Stewart finds a way to end on an image of hope that circles back to origins of the film itself. In moving out from behind the “Daily Show” desk, he is inviting us, as he has and as Bahari has, to shift from observer to participant.
Parents should know that this film includes some mature material: riots, abuse and torture (not graphic), some sexual references, and some strong language.
Family discussion: In what way did Maziar use his imprisoners’ weakness? What were their most effective tactics and what were his?
Interview: A.J. Edwards of the Lincoln Movie “The Better Angels”
Posted on November 16, 2014 at 8:00 am
A. J. Edwards is the writer and director of “The Better Angels,” a lyrical new film about the early years of Abraham Lincoln, when he was a boy growing up in a small log cabin. The title comes from Lincoln’s famous quote:
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
I very much enjoyed talking with him about making this movie.
I’m from Illinois and we take Abraham Lincoln very, very seriously. I have heard about him all my life growing up. I have been to his home in Springfield, the Lincoln Museum, and the Library. But I did not know about this cousin, whose memories of growing up with Lincoln provide the narration for the film. So tell me a little bit about how you learned about the cousin and his story.
Dennis Hanks, Abraham Lincoln’s cousin, is essential to understanding the Indiana years because he provides one of the best and most thorough accounts of that time. And it is all available in a text in the form of an interview conducted by a journalist named Eleanor Atkinson when Dennis was what must have been his late 80s or 90s. He was a very old man sitting by the fire and over a series of nights, Atkinston interviewed him and got all these precious memories of his that give us a full picture of Lincoln as a boy, told by man who was with him. And it’s hilarious and tragic and so it’s just bittersweet and it reads like Mark Twain.
Was it difficult to cast the boys?
The boys and girls were found through a year-long search throughout Kentucky and it was one led by producer Jake DeVito and Casting Director Stephanie Coley. They scoured schools and youth groups, churches, camps for over a year. And we looked at thousands and thousands of kids all from rural Kentucky. Children of coal miners and everything just as Kentucky as we could get. And all for their athleticism, being outdoorsy, thoughtful, ready to engage with the world, young and old people alike. So we didn’t want video gamers and internet kids and kids that may have a little more boredom to them. And also their accents, they have this beautiful Appalachian accents, the same one Lincoln spoke with, and so that was very important to us.
You begin the film with Lincoln’s famous quote about owing everything to his mother. Most people think he was speaking of Nancy Hanks but some people think that was really reference to his stepmother. Which do you think it was?
You’re absolutely right. That’s good research. There is disagreement about it and I think in fact maybe even the majority say that it was his biological mother Nancy, who was very dear to him. But the thesis of the film is how his stepmother was really a light to him in much darkness, the way that she guided him to the end of his life. She was just a positive force for good. And she is the one that really pulled him out of despair and grief when he was 10 years old. And she encouraged him towards education. She had a great amount of humanity. Her compassion, tolerance, gentleness — and their bond was a very special one. She also had a very beautiful interview that you can read when she was quite old. And the stories she tells are just very tender and there also some funny ones about him cutting up.
Where did you do your research?
We went to the Lincoln library in Springfield, went to the Boyhood Memorial in Indiana, went to his home as well in Springfield, the Coles County Cabin there in Lerna, and Thomas and Sarah Lincoln’s Cabin. We tried to travel around a lot and also read a lot over an extended period. Studying him is infectious and it’s a lifelong study. Anyone that picks up books about him you can’t stop, you’re it so fascinated.
Amazingly in a hundred years of cinema no one has ever shown his Indiana years.
Why do you think it’s so important to explore that?
Well, it’s the most mysterious chapter; it’s the one that most people don’t know. They know his birth in Kentucky, they know his lawyer years in Illinois. But the tragic events that befell him in Indiana as well as the hope and joy that he experienced are essential to understanding his character. So much of him was shaped during the decade and a little bit more in Indiana. And it was shaped mainly by the positive influences of his two mothers and his teacher Andrew Crawford, the Catholic and veteran.
And even in just the strength of his father. He’s a disciplinarian, he’s a harsh man but he still has integrity, a strong sense of faith. He built their church, attended it regularly. He was a primitive Baptist to oppose slavery and moved his family from Kentucky to Indiana to get away from the institution of slavery. And Indiana was a free state. It was brought into the union that way. And so all of these people Lincoln were a reflection of, the best in them he absorbed. And certainly a good amount of him was God-given and a miracle, his greatness I mean. But there was definitely so much that he was reflecting. And that is all to say his better angels that he was reflecting.
There are two elements of the look of the film that were very powerful. And one was the beauty of the natural world, living out in the wilderness. And the other is the isolation, the incredible isolation of that world. Both were conveyed visually in the film. So how do you think those really affected him?
Oh yes, it was wild country for sure as Carl Sandburg, the great Illinois poet described. He said it was “land unknown to the plough” in his biography of Lincoln. And so many wild animals. Lincoln and his father would go on bear hunts. And for sure the isolation must have affected him when his father left them during a very brutal winter in order to go find a new wife, which he did in Sarah Lincoln. He brought her home but during that time, during that absence, Lincoln was left to fend for himself with his sister and their 18-year-old cousin, Dennis. They were very lonely times. Dennis recounts them in that interview, they just sound very despairing. And when Sarah returned with Thomas to find these children, her description of them was that they looked hardly human. They were so malnourished and so dirty that it was her first task to feed them, dress them, bathe them which she does in the film. But nature is in the film as more than ornamentation, not just to be pretty but rather because that is their character, that was their life, they moved at the rhythm of nature be it Little Pigeon Creek that they lived beside, their source of water or the Ohio River which separated Indiana from Kentucky that was the main passageway by which all people traveled. There were the ponds and brooks that they enjoyed, the meadows, the fields that they worked. So many people are of a cynical view when they see the film and just talk about being pretty but no, it’s the locale and their entire universe.
Copyright Brothers K Productions 2014
I was very impressed by the way that the texture of the clothing seemed very authentic the way it came across in black and white.
The costume designer is a brilliant woman name Lisa Tomczeszyn and in this film she had quite a task ahead of her not only in the research that’s required and the authenticity that is expected in the costumes but also the fact that it’s a monochromatic palette. And so any film the goal is separation. You need people to separate from the background and in color that can be a lot easier, because blue and red are completely different, blue wall, red shirt, the actor will separate. But in black and white blue and red can be the same shade. And so we had to do many tests to figure out how to get them to stand out from the darkness of the trees or the lightness of the sky or the kind of mid tones that the grass would be when they were out in the meadows. And so she was always having to switch things out to be getting them to separate from the background. She did a beautiful job, she really did her research and one of my favourite costumes in the picture is the dark big coat Sarah Lincoln arrives in, which is very iconic looking. The bonnet that Diane Kruger wears just looks so cinematic.
I also loved the score of the film, which really helped to set the mood.
The music is in part an original score by Hanan Townshend but the majority of it is some classical music by an Armenian-American composer, Alan Hovhaness, and Aaron Copland. That Copland I really loved, it so emotional. It plays over the young boys reuniting after some time and they enjoyed some days together cutting up. Then there is a piece by 19th century Russian composer named Kalinnikov. That’s sort of the theme of the film and usually associated with the mothers. And then also there’s the work of 19th century German composer Bruckner and that’s a sort of grander theme that suggest the ideas of his growth every time its used.
What is it you hope people will take from the film?
One thing I don’t usually get a chance to speak about is a sense of the Calvinistic views of the time, the sense of destiny and faith that they were bound for something. It was not uncommon for families lose three or four siblings to sickness and death, a lot of children not living past three or four years old including Lincoln’s brother. He had a brother that died in infancy. If you lived to be 17, 18 years old that was quite an accomplishment, you had a greater sense of destiny that you were being preserved for something greater than yourself. There were forces in this world that were invisible to you that were guiding you always and sometimes guiding you through others, being the better angels.
But that sense of faith and destiny not only applies to all that Lincoln accomplished, some of the greatest accomplishments in this country’s history, but it applies to all of us that the film should act as a mirror that our circumstances now don’t determine the ones that will come later. Maybe we started in poverty, we started in sickness or we faced a job loss, divorce, death but those things aren’t eternal. And that hope, faith charity, these ideas can guide us to something better. And just as Lincoln pulled himself out of deep grief and loss and suffering, and was also pulled out of those things by his stepmother, a new chapter began for him. A door was opened and he was led further down the road to his great destiny. And so this movie is just a slice of that but you can make it about anyone because we all have these chapters of our lives. And so hopefully it’s a family film that young and old alike can enjoy because of these universal ideas. You know a picture without cynicism and instead it’s one that is hopefully filled with light for people.
Interview: Gina Prince-Bythewood of “Beyond the Lights”
Posted on November 14, 2014 at 9:28 am
It was an honor to speak to one of my favorite filmmakers, Gina Prince-Bythewood, writer/director of one of this year’s best romantic dramas, “Beyond the Lights.” As I spoke to her, she had just received word that Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who stars as Noni in the film, had been nominated for a Gotham award.
Copyright 2014 Relativity Media
You must be so proud of this great recognition for Gugu Mbatha-Raw.
It was a pretty phenomenal morning to wake up to that. Gugu started working on the character really for two years but really hard-core for six months in terms of being in the dance studio for hours, a couple of days a week and then the vocal studio with the vocal coach and the amount of work she put into this character knowing that this character is a hundred and eighty degrees from who Gugu is. You know how bold and brave she had to be to put this out there and to go there and we knew we had to go there given what is happening in the industry now and needing to compete with that and having the knowledge that you have to lead an audience into a world before you can lead them out. So, the fact that she bought into the vision of the piece and really went there — it is just a beautiful thing that she is being recognized and not only for the incredible work she did but in terms of just the preparation. But she gives a really phenomenal performances. I love that it is being recognized.
As a woman who writes and directs, you did a particularly good job of addressing the objectifying elements of what goes on in show business today. Was that an important theme for you to address?
Absolutely. first as a woman who is seeing what happens especially in the music industry and the blueprints that the young artists have to follow to make any sort of noise when they first come out, it really is hypersexualized. But also as a mother of two boys in seeing the trickle-down effect that is happening, the hyper sexualization becoming normal and teen girls and teen boys – and the things that they are doing now are very frightening to me as a mother. And we really are hoping that the film can change the conversation.
I like what you said a moment ago by taking people into the world before you can take them out of it. Tell me a little bit about what that means to you.
Copyright 2014 Relativity Media
For me to put this out there, I mean it was hard shooting the music video as at the beginning of the film and putting that out there in the world and telling an actor to put that energy out. We went there because it was necessary. This is the character that five minutes later is on the edge of a balcony about to jump and we really needed to show the psychological effects on a 10-year-old girl who just wants to sing, who’s probably in front of a mirror singing into a hairbrush and no one dreams about being in an artist and putting that kind of energy out but to make this dramatic jump to that music video and I want the immediate question of how did that happen, how did that little girl become this and what is the psychological effects of that film. So we had to push it and we had to go there because it was important to the story that we were telling.
You have said that you were very glad to be working with Nate Parker again on this film. What makes him one of your favorite actors?
I love Nate as an actor because he has no inhibitions and he would just go for it and that karaoke was a scene that he had to do that. Obviously he is not a singer and he just wanted to do it live and whatever came out of his mouth came out of his mouth. There was a real crowd out there but he just threw himself into it and it is so great the reactions that the audience get when they see it because this character has been so reserved and serious. It was really important to see them thrive in Mexico, both of them letting go and finding their voice and falling in love. And that was a really important aspect to see his character see what Noni brings out in him as well as what he brings out in Noni.
What is next for you?
The next one I am going to write, I’m very excited about it but I can’t talk about it too much. It does deal with female friendships. All my films have a personal aspect and this one is no different, so I’m very excited. And it will be a little more comedic in tone.
You create some of the best love stories that I’ve seen on screen and it is a compliment to say they remind me of the classic romances of the ‘40s with actresses like Bette Davis and Barbara Stanwyck. Are you a fan of that era of movies?
That is a tremendous compliment, thank you. I have to say the great things about film school is being exposed to films that you normally would never see and you get to seei them on the big screen, films like “The Apartment,” which is I think is such a great film influenced on me, “The Rose” is a fantastic film that came out in the ‘70s, “Lady Sings the Blues,” I love that type of romance, to wrecked by movie emotionally and then be built back up and leave inspired. Those are the kinds of films I love to watch and so for me it is writing what I want to see.
