Through Her Lens: 2015 (The 88th Oscars)
Tuesday, January 11, 2022 at 10:06PM A series by Juan Carlos Ojano. Previous Episodes: 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | Introduction / Explanation
The sting of the #OscarsSoWhite movement from the 87th Oscars continued as no people of color were nominated in the acting categories for the second consecutive year. Idris Elba won the SAG for Supporting Actor for Beasts of No Nation, but Netflix was a completely new player at the time and unable to get traction in the Oscar race. Jada Pinkett Smith called for an Oscar boycott after her husband Will Smith missed in Actor, but his film Concussion had disappointed at the box office and received mixed reviews. The tension was high enough that The Hollywood Reporter even felt the need to clarify that “there [were] no minority actresses in genuine contention for an Oscar [that] year”.
The lack of diversity extended to gender in Best Director (the subject of this series) where no female directors were in the conversation with the arguable exception of Angelina Jolie early on before By the Sea began to screen...
Out of the 305 films included in the Reminder List of Eligible Films in 2015 (88th Academy Awards), only 37 (12.1%) were directed/co-directed by women.
OSCAR-NOMINATED FEMALE-DIRECTED FILMS (in alphabetical order): Chau Beyond the Lines*, Fifty Shades of Grey, A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness*, Last Day of Freedom*, Mustang, and What Happened, Miss Simone?*. (*not in the eligibility list for Best Picture)
AN ALTERNATIVE SET OF FIVE
Marielle Heller - Diary of a Teenage Girl
A 15-year-old girl loses her virginity to her mother’s boyfriend. What is going on in her mind in the middle of that awakening? In her feature film debut, Heller explores her protagonist’s colorful inner life with empathetic curiosity as she navigates the tricky years of teenage sexuality. Through her careful observations of character interactions as well as soliloquies, she makes it clear that she is not interested in lewd details but in the minutiae of that time and space that crafts one’s personality. With a highly specific realization of its milieu, the film comes to life in embracing the unpredictable rhythms of the protagonist’s life. Scenes shift between humorous and moving within moments. Heller shows that sometimes, the most cinematically thrilling thing to do is to just commit to honesty, however that may look. Streaming on HBO Max.
Afia Serena Nathaniel - Dukhtar
In this gripping mother-daughter drama, Nathaniel depicts the perilous race to freedom of a mother and her 10-year-old daughter as they try to evade a child from a tribal leader. Nathaniel rests the potency of her storytelling in two aspects. First is the tension between the perspectives of the mother, one of protective instincts and unpacked trauma, and the child, one of innocence. Those two diverge and clash in vivid ways, effectively demonstrating the different layers of patriarchy that these women had to deal with. The second one is the escape itself, depicted with gripping leanness. Nathaniel is not interested in glamorizing the act, but through framing, movement, and pacing, we realize the life-and-death significance of their fight. Available to rent on iTunes, Google Play, and YouTube.
Celine Sciamma - Girlhood
Gender, race, and economic status are the main forces in Sciamma’s complex take on female adolescence. With her 16-year-old protagonist, she makes it clear that her journey is not just of self-discovery but also of survival. The camera is not one to detach from that viewpoint: we see her move within that frame as we see how she negotiates her place. Not only that but also her inability to make such negotiations; oppressive forces either push her aside or hold her in the center like in an intervention. But the film breaks that by also showing her attempts to gain agency. As her gang dances to Rihanna’s “Diamonds”, we witness them try to live aspirations but with our brutal understanding that it would most likely remain to be elusive. Streaming on fuboTV, Showtime, Hoopla, The Criterion Channel, Kanopy, and DirecTV.
Deniz Gamze Ergüven - Mustang
In a small town in Northern Turkey, five young girls are prohibited to go out of their house after they played with boys after class. Since then, they are just waiting until they are married off. Ergüven investigates the cruelty of such circumstances through the lens of their battle for liberation, however small their victories may be. She makes it a point to capture the central characters with vibrant energy, one that pulsates with the simmering penchant for rebellion. Ergüven manages to balance the focus on the five girls with incisive precision. And us, as viewers, feel that continuous build-up until we reach the tumultuous finale. There is no need to embellish the film’s stylistic choices; her decision to just be direct makes for an even more brutally realistic depiction of misogyny. Available to rent on iTunes, Amazon Video, and Google Play.
Crystal Moselle - The Wolfpack
Moselle transports us into an apartment in Manhattan to tell the story of the Angulo family, living in enforced seclusion by their patriarch. While the premise is ripe for exploiting the peculiarity of the subjects’ lifestyle, Moselle focuses on the ecosystem that the family has created inside their apartment. She goes back and forth between archival and present-day footage in her quest to understand the choice the parents made. Moselle does not shoot scenes as an intruder but as a welcomed guest, one that understands the dynamic of being detached but with the sincere desire to grasp their ways. As the brothers recreate scenes from their favorite films, Moselle turns the camera into a kaleidoscope, focusing on the beauty that has come out of a situation without fetishizing the subject matter. Streaming on HBO Max, YouTube, Hoopla, Kanopy, DirecTV, and Pluto TV.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Angelina Jolie - By the Sea
Mia Hansen-Løve - Eden
Veronika Franz & Severin Fiala - Goodnight Mommy
Aren Perdeci & Ela Alyamac - Lost Birds
Ivona Juka - You Carry Me
What would your dream ballot look like?
Reader Comments (7)
Oh I love Eden. So I'll go with Hansen-Love (Eden), and for four more to add to the dream ballot - Miller (Fury Road), Lanthimos (The Lobster), Crowley (Brooklyn), and Corbet (The Childhood of a Leader).
Let's make a 2007 edition. The nominees were perfect, but Polley, Jenkins, Satrapi, Sheridan, Lemmon, Shelly, Lahiri and Delpy were also in the game with very interesting gems.
Jada about to call for boycott again if Will doesn’t win this year LMAO that family needs to go away
George Miller was robbed!
pp92 - Carlos is moving backwards in time so he'll get there!
I’m really not a fan of using words like “privilege” anymore, but imagine being so privileged that when your husband doesn’t get nominated for an Oscar, you call for a boycott of the ceremony 🤣 get a grip, people. You’re not entitled to a shiny gold statue that really means nothing more than you were in a popular movie and played the shake hands and kiss babies game.
It’s like the male artists who boycott the Grammys when they aren’t nominated for Album of the Year, as if they were entitled to it, indicating the Grammys don’t matter, but then show up again two years later bc they’re nominated again and Oop, I guess they really do want it. And female artists never do this bc I bet they would be absolutely crucified if they tried it.
Anyway, I guess some change came out of this, but I still feel like the issue wasn’t really the Academy’s in the first place. They nominate what they nominate. There have to be “diverse” players in the race w backing campaigns to begin with, and even then, there have to be enough to take into account statistical probability.
I digress… I apologize for completely going off topic. 😅
George Miller was totally robbed.
Philip H -- i've been saying those points from the third paragraph for a long time and boy were people mad at me for doing so.
Nathaniel -- Yep. People will always be upset about something tho. *shrug*
Although I'm exhausted by outrage / cancel culture and all the performative measures that come of it, I suppose in hindsight I understand this more.
The Oscars aren't the industry, but they do reflect it, and perhaps this was the easiest / buzziest place to attack and demand change. I guess the Oscars do still carry some weight in this world.