Today
Sections
More
Features
True Grit and Winter's Bone: New Female Heroes?
At first glance, it would appear that the two best American movies of 2010--Winter's Bone and True Grit--have next to nothing in common. One is a low-budget starless study of meth cookers in the Ozarks, while the other is a high-profile star-spangled riff on a classic Western novel and an even more classic film.
And yet, the two share remarkable plot points: a teenage girl wanders the exceedingly dangerous and essentially lawless backwoods of Arkansas in hopes of bringing some element of closure to questions about her father. Sure, the films take place over a century apart, and they are not exact mirrors of each other, but they share enough to make a comparison worthwhile. They also might suggest a new kind of female hero.
2010 was an interesting year for female protagonists. Lisbeth Salander from the Stieg Larsson novels emerged as a stealth feminist hero in the uberblockbuster Millennium trilogy. And, in a different but equally lucrative way, Twilight's Bella managed to suffer her way into millions of readers' (and viewers') psyches. Both are intriguing female characters and demonstrate ingenuity, strength, and perseverance.
Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross in True Grit (2010)
But, neither are as intriguing as Winter's Bone's Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) or True Grit's Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld), in part because we are unaccustomed to watching teenage girls make their way through desolate and dangerous patches of forest and swamp with little more than their wits. We have grown used to tough-mined and tough-mouthed girls navigate the nasty waters of urban landscapes. Think of Just Another Girl on the IRT or last year's Fish Tank. But, it's rare to see a girl alone in a rural landscape, which has, for so long, been the territory of men.
We tend to associate women with the precarious and equally unpredictable world of the social minefield where a misstep can lead to moral and cultural calamities. Or, as is the case in Black Swan, a young female is pitted against other women. But a girl left to her own devices in the middle of nowhere, where everyone must be assumed to be an enemy, feels foreign. In the case of these two movies, though, it's fantastic.
Winter's Bone is a better film--it's the best movie of the year--in part because Ree's journey is scarier and more solitary than Mattie's. Mattie's quick wit and smart mouth lends her an air of sophistication and capability that Ree may not possess. In fact, one of the reasons we're so anxious for Ree is because we aren't sure she is capable of making it through the woods without disappearing or dying. Americans tend to endow young men with the survival skills to weather the prairie, Indian Territory, and bad guys (consider Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy or Jack London's Call of the Wild) but not girls.
Jennifer Lawrence as Ree Dolly in Winter's Bone (2010).
Winter's Bone and True Grit defy this paradigm.
The original odyssey--Homer's tale of Odysseus wandering and warring for 20 years before returning home to his loyal wife--is so grounded in male accomplishment, there has never really been a model for the female odyssey. Smilla's Sense of Snow works with this motif, as does Pedro Almadovar's Volver, but few American movies have given women the same opportunity to go inward by way of the journey outward.
These two films challenge classic gender stereotypes as well as the semiotics of the hero's journey. Ree doesn't need no stinkin' man to save her. She's fine on her own. In fact, her odyssey just might save you.
| December 31 2010 at 01:41 PM
Editor's note:
This is an SFGate.com City Brights Blog. These blogs are not written or edited by SFGate or the San Francisco Chronicle. The authors are solely responsible for the content.
advertisement
|
your ad here
