“You don’t have to do what your mother has done / This is your life, this new life has begun/It’s your day, Woman’s Day” – Lyrics to ‘Shaking The Tree’ by Youssou N’Dour & Peter Gabriel from Youssou N’Dour’s album ‘The Lion’ (1989)
My viewing habits continue to be influenced by Mark Cousins’ exhaustive (and exhausting) Women Make Film which illustrates how ignored, or underrated, women directors have been in recent years.
Among those belatedly recognizing the need for a gender rethink are the Sight and Sound film critics who went full woke and voted Chantal Akerman’s epic ‘Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles’ as the greatest film of all time.. This was a controversial and, frankly, contrary choice but at least makes the case that the late Belgian director is worthy of being regarded alongside auteurs like Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock.
That said, the list itself has many notable omissions. No place for any of the Godfather movies plus nothing by Luis Bunuel or The Coen Brothers while ‘Daisies’, a silly, surreal and horribly dated Czech movie from the 1960s merits inclusion as a bogus ‘Feminist’ classic.
The most recent film in the Sight & Sound list is 2019’s seductive ”Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ directed by Céline Sciamma. I saw this after being hugely impressed by Sciamma’s earlier movies ‘Girlhood’ (2014) and ‘Tomboy’ (2011). Her latest movie ‘Petite Maman’ (2021) is also excellent. If you want to understand the difference between the male and female gaze, any of these movies are essential viewing.
One of my better decisions of the year was to take out a subscription to MUBI, the online streaming site that takes global and independent movies seriously.
I signed up initially to see Andrea Arnold’s ‘Cow’ which, despite all the praise, proved to be a bit of a let down. Perhaps, as a Vegan, I didn’t need to be persuaded that farm animals have feelings too! In compensation Mubi currently hosts three excellent shorts by the English director of which her Oscar winning ‘Wasp’ (2003) is the most powerful (and depressing!)
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Andrea Arnold’s bold debut movie was about a CCTV operator in Glasgow and in a strange way her brilliant follow up ,Fish Tank, is also about surveillance. Yet, while in Red Road the woman was on the outside looking in, the teenage protagonist of Fish Tank is on the inside looking out.
