Two Oscar Winner Films 2011 : How women are represented

WOMENWISE, Opinion Page, Mindanao Times
Best Oscar Films in 2011
Written by: Antonio , Isabelita Solamo
Wednesday, 02 March 2011

THE Oscar awarding ceremony is a must see for many of us who regard the cinema as our site of fantasy and imagination. Filming is about the real versus representation. The filmmaker is the author of a story being told on the cinema. But, stories told in cinema are also authored by many spectators through various interpretations.

I wish to review with you two films that caught my fancy in this year’s Oscar season. Let us start with the Black Swan, a film by movie director Darren Aronofsky. The story is told through the world of ballet and dance. Perfection as performed in the world of dance is something that extracts a price. That price is madness, nervous breakdown and loneliness. Nina Sayers, played by Natalie Portman is an ambitious ballerina straining to come to grips with stardom. Nina’s singular obsession as the perfect ballet dancer has led to her imbalanced development as a person. Her mental illness initially manifests as rashes that turn to wounds and eventually she experiences visions. And all these are portrayed as the so called “ price of perfection” in the climb to genius and stardom. The other price is isolation. The ballet dancer has no social skills and has not developed any friendships. Her world devolves around Erika, her smothering mother played by Barbara Hershey who relives her unfulfilled dream of being a ballet dancer through her daughter.

Peter Bradshaw of London’s The Guardian says of the movie, “ It is about fear of penetration, fear of our body, fear of being supplanted in the affections of a powerful man, love of perfection, love of dance….” My own feminist insight is to ask ourselves : Is this what we want women to do? Do we want women to be represented as fearful of success and sexually naïve? Do we want women to be represented as the gender prone to wasting opportunities and gifts?

INCEPTION

The second movie on my list is Inception written by the famousChristopher Nolan of the Knight Rider fame. This movie which is one of the current highest commercial top income earners is also already reputed to be one of the greatest sci-fi films of all time. It is mostly told from the point of view of Domm Cobb played by Leonardo DiCaprio, who is a specialized spy who can access other people’s dreams. In the story, this skill or gift is being used as a weapon of corporate espionage thievery. Cobb involves his wife in this pleasure of staying in a dream site and this led to the wife being hooked in the unreal world of dreams and ultimately led to a point where the wife decides to commit suicide in order to wake up from her dream. Cobb is charged for the death of his wife and so he has to escape as a fugitive.

While in hiding, Cobb is offered an assignment to influence the subconscious of an heir apparent to a large business energy empire. The goal is for the heir to cut his energy empire into small pieces when his old man dies. In the movie, the project is called inception or the introduction of an idea into the subconscious of another through dreams and stealing secrets that are revealed in dreams. All these “ dream stealing” is done on a flight from Sydney to New York through the introduction of a sedative that will make one dream and dream within a dream. The movie ends with Cobb reunited with his two children but it is not clear whether this is still a dream state or reality. This is a very philosophical movie about objective reality and the so – called projections of reality. In this sense, this is the ultimate movie about fantasy and imagination.

In both Black Swan & Inception, women are deployed as dead heroines. So, I am hoping for a change in this genre and how women are represented. Still and all, these two films are wonderful to watch.