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52 CONTENDERS AWARDS SEASON LAUNCH CLOSET ROMANCE Cate Blanchett leads a double life in Todd Haynes’ “Carol,” set in the 1950s. Dramatizing the Body Politic Pics that deal with selfexpression, gender rights pervade awards landscape By John Anderson Life, liberty and the pursuit of statuettes are among the inalienable rights of those who toil in Hollywood. But it wouldn’t be entirely alien if certain other freedoms — to determine one’s destiny, or assert one’s identity — wind up center stage during the current awards season. The subjects of rights and selves are certainly circulating in the zeitgeist. Transgender actress Laverne Cox (“Orange Is the New Black”) graced the cover of Time; Kardashian-by-association Caitlin Jenner adorned the July issue of Vanity Fair. Jeffrey Tambor earned multiple awards this year for his transsexual turn in “Transparent.” E! has “I am Cait,” TLC has “I am Jazz.” Given the inseparable nature of gender issues and civil rights, there’s been a flurry of films that deal with the feminist and LGBT experience: Roland Emmerich’s “Stonewall,” for instance, which presents a perhaps bowdlerized version of the birth of the gay rights movement, and “Freeheld,” about a New Jersey policewoman battling for samesex partner benefits. Almost uniformly, the way filmmakers get at the issues involved is by looking backward. The historical prism does, on one hand, offer a patina of escape for the viewer. On the other, it often provides a reassuring hug — that these are sins of the past, not of today. “I do think that sometimes a look to the past can be a pat on the back to the present,” says Todd Haynes, whose “Carol” — written by Phyllis Nagy, from the Patricia Highsmith novel “The Price of Salt” — stars Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara as lesbian lovers in 1952 New York. “Setting the story in a period allows us to do things in a more delicate way,” says Nagy. “Today, we want to blurt out a 24-hour expression of ourselves, but there was a different cultural protocol then, a different etiquette.” Much more deliberately political is “Suffragette,” which, like “Carol,” has two awards-friendly performances at its center (Carey Mulligan and Helena Bonham Carter), as well as a cameo of sorts by Meryl Streep as the incendiary suffrage movement leader Emmeline Pankhurst. A dramatized account of the women’s fight for the vote in early 20th Century Britain, “Suffragette” is directed by Sarah Gavron, who says the movie is intended to remind audiences of the sacrifices their great-grandmothers’ generation made. And how the fight for rights crossed boundaries, especially those of class. “We researched the historical events of 1912-13, went through the archives, read the diaries and drew on the stories of a few working women; Maud is a composite,” Gavron says, referring to Mulligan’s character, Maud Watts, who seems to suffer every indignity imaginable in a place and time when women were viewed, legally, as property. “The idea wasn’t to tell the story of wellknown figures like Mrs. Pankhurst or her two daughters,” adds Gavron. “If we went that 1 2 3 Topical turns Civil rights and gender identity play a role in the following pics: › “Suffragette” (1) (Focus) › “The Danish Girl” (2) (Focus) › “Freeheld” (3) (Lionsgate)
CONTENDERS AWARDS SEASON LAUNCH 53 route, it would have been an examination of power rather than contending with problems relevant to today,” which include the continued denial of women’s right to vote in certain countries, economic disparity and sexual harassment. Also among the topical issues touched upon by “Suffragette,” says its director, was the existence of a surveillance state: Archives that were opened only in 2003 showed what are probably the earliest U.K. spy photographs: clandestine pictures of members of the suffrage movement, and one of the original cases of government surveillance. (In the film, Brendan Gleeson plays a detective with covert photography being one of his principal investigative tools). Photographs — of a more salacious nature — play a part in “Carol,” which is based on the work of the same writer who gave us “The Talented Mr. Ripley.” “The only agenda I had when writing ‘Carol’ was to be faithful to the tone of the book and to allow every character to inhabit a real world,” Nagy says. Highsmith wrote much about the criminal mind, and both Nagy and Haynes say people in love think the same way. “The characters may behave in ways you wish they wouldn’t, but they are human and it’s understandable, as long as you create three-dimensional humans,” Nagy says. Regarding the historical aspects of “Carol,” she says, “It doesn’t matter that the film is set in 1952; the actual fight for recognition is still going on.” Director Tom Hooper, whose “The Danish Girl” stars Eddie Redmayne as Lili Elbe, one of the earliest recipients of gender reassignment surgery, says, “History recently tends to be written from the viewpoint of existing prejudices.” In 2008 when he first read the Lucinda Coxon script (which was based on David Ebershoff’s novel), Hooper says he was woefully ignorant of the story. What he could find to read about it turned out to be, for the most part, inaccurate. “It’s as if this story was erased from the record and I thought maybe the fact this kind of story was pushed out of history was a reflection of the closed-mindedness to trans people and trans history,” he says. Part of Hooper’s attraction to “The Danish Girl’ lay partly in its love story, which he describes as “the portrait of a marriage going through profound transformation and how it’s negotiating with such kindness and unconditional love.” But he also hopes the film can play at least a small role in opening people’s minds up, since transgender people are “actively negotiating pretty tough territory right now.” And the record has yet to be written about how they will be viewed by posterity. “One of the things we do with these stories is correct the biases and prejudices in how history is made,” says Hooper. Against All Odds In a handful of high-profile films, characters struggle to survive in extreme conditions By Kristopher Tapley It’s ingrained in us, who we are as human beings, the desire, the will, to survive.” MARY PARENT, PRODUCER ON ‘THE REVENANT’ Just as it was in 2013 when films like “12 Years a Slave,” “Gravity” and “All Is Lost” found themselves in the thick of the Oscar race, survival against seemingly insurmountable odds pops up once again as a theme this season. Whether it’s staying alive in an extraterrestrial world (Ridley Scott’s “The Martian”), weathering unforgiving elements (Baltasar Kormakur’s “Everest”), maintaining a pulse in a hostile environment (Alejandro G. Inarritu’s “The Revenant”) or keeping the human spirit alive while held prisoner (Lenny Abrahamson’s “Room”), it remains a compelling framework on which to attach drama. “I think it’s one of the recurring archetypical stories, and it’s always going to be told in various ways,” Abrahamson says about that most instinctive of human traits that often results in the most extraordinary actions. “It can be told in a very operatic, large-scale way or it can be told in tiny stories.” Each situation is marked by specific, character-defining survival mechanisms as well. In “Room,” for instance, the imprisoned lead character Joy (Brie Larson) must make a life for the 5-year-old son she had while held captive in a small shed. “My working assumption was that having this kid was the best thing that could have happened to this woman,” says novelist and screenwriter Emma Donoghue. Adds Abrahamson, “She says, ‘When Jack came, everything changed.’ He’s her project and her salvation, both in that he’s instrumental in getting them both out, but also he becomes a way that she can make sense of her days. It’s this incredible imperative.” In “The Martian,” screenwriter Drew Goddard felt it important to reflect the novel’s lighthearted quality as astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) maintains his composure with good humor after being marooned on Mars. “It has this optimistic soul to it, which is not something you see a lot in science fiction,” Goddard says. Goddard approached the material almost as a religious film, only the religion happens to be science and problem-solving. “It’s the same idea of being lost alone and you have nothing but faith to get you through it,” he says. “In this case, the faith was in science.” The climbers of “Everest” also find themselves stranded amid life-threatening conditions, albeit on this planet. Kormakur recognizes the existential ramifications of such material. “Novels are a very good way of explaining things like that,” says Kormakur, who used alpine locations in Nepal and Italy, “but in cinema, you have an opportunity to just live it. There’s no other medium that can actually take you through the elements.” Even still, the quality he was after is one he’s felt is missing in most Hollywood films. “Everything is so manicured, even the sets and the environment,” he says. “You have a hard time feeling the reality of the situation. So I wanted to just hook you on a line with a bunch of guys and take you up the mountain and make you understand what these people are doing.” Indeed, such material allows actors to reach a more realistic place with their performances as well. That was important for Kormakur, and for Inarritu, who shot most of “The Revenant” in the frigid conditions of Alberta, Canada, with natural light and precious few creature comforts. “It kind of strips you down in a great way,” says Mary Parent, a producer on the film. “There were times on set when we looked at each other and you felt like you were dropped into another world.” So why, beyond the obvious archetypal notions, does this framework pop up so much in storytelling? “I think it’s primal,” Parent says. “It’s ingrained in us, who we are as human beings, the desire, the will, to survive.” But Scott says it might say something about the metaphysical ticking clock of humanity’s precious time on earth. “I think it’s driven by the fact that, deep down, we are concerned about ‘What if?’” he says. “And indirectly, global politics always have a bearing on what’s on the mind of filmmakers. Like the Chinese talking about reducing their emissions by 30% by the year 2027. You go, ‘What?! Are you f***ing crazy? That’s another 14 years! We can’t do this!.’ I think it’s in everybody’s psyche, this definitive anxiety.” HARSH CONDITIONS ”The Revenant” was shot in the frigid conditions of Alberta, Canada.
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