Feminist Film
Takes
By Laura J.
Weinstock
You know a film is
feminist when you don't have to stretch your
round body into a square peg in order to
identify with the point of view or when most of
the movie's events actually reflect women's
experiences. You know a film is good when you
can talk about it for hours and still find there
is more than one way to look at the meaning of
what transpired. Fortunately, films like A
Map Of The World grace our world. This
wonderful film, based on the novel by Jane
Hamilton, is one of the rare, feminist,
life-affirming films that occasionally manage to
get made. It is complex. It is cathartic.
Amazingly, the story is told from a woman's
point of view. When it ended, I actually felt as
if I, personally, had emerged from an arduous
cleansing that made my body tingle for hours
afterward.
Alice (played artfully
by Sigourney Weaver) is the movie's protagonist.
Tragedy strikes early on when Alice is watching
her own two girls as well as the two daughters
of her only and best friend, Theresa (played by
Julianne Moore). In a brief moment of
distraction (at most 10 minutes and possibly
less), Theresa's two-year-old, Lizzy, wanders
off to the pond and drowns. This occurs while
Alice's husband, Howard, (played by David
Straithairn) is nearby working on his
tractor.
As the movie unfolds,
Alice has a kind of mental breakdown. It turns
out that she and her husband recently moved to
the farm from the city. They are outsiders. It
is Howard's dream to run a dairy farm and Alice,
with no better dream of her own, goes along,
trying to give him his dream, trying to be the
"good farm wife" that she is not. In the opening
segments, Alice is shown at her job as the
school nurse on the last day of school. She is
glib, impatient, sharp, sarcastic. I liked her
feistiness.
After Lizzy's death,
Alice cannot get out of bed. Howard's mother
(who is good farmwife material even though she
doesn't support this "experiment" in farming)
has been taking care of the children, cooking
great quantities of meaty foods, scouring the
house. But she is off to Romania to help
orphaned babies so Howard wants his wife back.
In a particularly striking scene, Howard tries
to make love to an almost comatosely depressed
Alice. The next day, he forces some clothes on
her body so that she can tend the children, cook
and get some food in the empty refrigerator. He
shows no compassion for what Alice is going
through: the guilt, the remorse and the loss of
her friend. Alice only wants to go somewhere to
rest and recuperate. Something many mothers can
relate to.
Ironically, Alice gets
her wish when she is thrown in jail for an act
against one of the school children -- an act
that she did not commit. At first, she is
overjoyed to be left alone. The jail has become
her four-star hotel. She blithely orders her
husband to bring her novels to read and she acts
completely uninterested in the problems he now
faces. She doesn't want to see her kids. Even
her lawyer is stunned at how well she is doing
in prison. No one sees that compared to the
demands of being nurse, wife and mother, jail is
a vacation. No one understands that she feels
like the punishment is just because although she
hasn't committed the crime for which she stands
accused, she has committed another act for which
she cannot forgive herself.
It is in prison that
Alice's transformation occurs. She stops being a
doormat. She doesn't take care of Howard's
emotions or physical needs. Howard has to learn
how hard it is to raise children and run the
house. When the entire community shuns his
family, Howard experiences what his wife had
already lived through (which he hadn't
previously paid any attention to). Howard learns
how to give up his dream that came at too high a
price. Alice learns what all women should
ultimately learn, that being passive and too
self-sacrificing also comes at too high a price.
Alice was trying to
squeeze herself into a life in which she did not
belong. This acquiescence resulted in her mental
exhaustion after the tragedy and was a
significant factor in the tragedy itself. Yet,
it is clear that she is not the only one to
blame. Others contributed. The older girls who
ignored Lizzy. The husband who ignored his wife
and did not see the two year-old walking right
by him toward the pond. And finally, Theresa
herself confides to Alice that she had told
Lizzy that Lizzy was going to go swimming and
that she was a good swimmer. Who is really to
blame? And more important, can there be
forgiveness?
I do have one major
criticism. Weaver's character displays too much
gratuitous nudity. She wears a skimpy bathing
suit on a farm. Her breasts are shown when she
is in the tub, while her husband's body remains
hidden. This nudity serves no purpose. I am not
clear if it was the director's choice or
Weaver's herself. (In another movie she was
recently in, Galaxy Quest, Weaver appears in the
most revealing clothes, also for no purpose
other than to titillate). Maybe Weaver is more
afraid, now that she is older, that she will not
get parts if she doesn't show off her body. This
is tragic and tragically sexist. It is also
sexism that allows women's bodies to be shown
naked while there is never any frontal nudity of
men. (In fact, frontal nudity of men requires an
NC-17 rating.) Hollywood must have parity. No
nudity of either or equal nudity of both. And
breasts do not equal (male) butt cheeks as
Hollywood seems to think.
In the meantime, let it
be known that actresses have managed to create
successful careers without baring their breasts.
Just recently, in a wonderful film called
Anywhere But Here (now available on video),
Natalie Portman was asked to do a nude scene.
She refused on religious grounds and was
supported in her decision by her co-star, Susan
Sarandon. The director acquiesced. Natalie was
not shown naked. Instead, her character's
boyfriend was objectified and shown with most of
his clothes off. Natalie's character was in
control in the scene as well. Actresses take
heed!
A Map Of The
World is at its best when dealing with its
main issue: forgiveness. Not just the husband
forgiving the wife and the wife her husband. Not
just the daughters forgiving the mother. Not
just Alice forgiving herself. In the end, what
most astonishes, is the degree to which the one
who suffered by far the greatest loss, is able
to forgive. And not just forgive, but to be
there when the person she could justifiably
blame and hate forever, truly needs her help.
Sometimes, tragedy pushes us to discover the
powerful goodness residing within. We owe a debt
of gratitude to the makers of this film, for
reminding us so vividly of this
truth.
[Laura Weinstock is
a Bay Area freelance writer. Feminist Film Takes
is a regular feature in Awakened Woman. It also
appears in Sonoma County Women's
Voices]
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