Woman in FIlm

               Erin Brockovich is a film by Steven Soderbergh based on real events surrounding a major lawsuit against PG&E.  The film stars Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovich a unemployed mother of three that seems to have no luck going for even when she rightfully sues a guy for hitting her vehicle.  She gets a job at a law firm and stumbles on what would be a gigantic case.  The film is brilliantly directed by Soderbergh in his ability to make this film look epic and exciting with his ability’s behind the camera even though Soderbergh isn’t credited as the cinematographer for the film if you know his history he was more than just involved as he is a very accomplished cinematographer himself.  Julia Roberts puts in an amazing performance of a violently strong women that has had it with people walking over her.  She is a character that is stubborn to the point that it isn’t helpful at times but will always make sure the right thing gets done.

               The character of Erin Brockovich at the beginning is struggling and is being denied jobs because of lack of experience nobody willing to take a chance on her.  She ends up forcing her way into a law firm.  The major push back that she seems to get in the movie the most is her wardrobe.  She wears very tight clothes and is proud to show of her body.  This leads to most people not taking her seriously in the beginning especially those that feel they are in a position of power.  She even has her boss tell her at one point that her wardrobe should probably change since she has the job there.  She replies that with a shocked look on her face “I think I look good”, This makes her boss just walkout.  She also uses her boobs to get access to the public water records of the area which when asked how she got them and how she can get more records by her boss she responds with “They’re called boobs, Ed”.  This shows that she understands that her good looks and some flirtation can be big advantages to her and has no problem using them.  She also understands that she needs to actually work hard and have results, or the good looks and flirting are useless if she doesn’t have the brains to do the work.

               The film does a great job of showing how difficult this job is on her in that she is way from her kids all the time and has to work when she is with them.  Her boyfriend George who is a wonderful guy but does become overburdened and doesn’t understand what she is doing and why it is very important to her.  He leaves her because she won’t quit her job and he feel trapped taking care of her kids all the time.  She chooses the job over him because it is the right thing to do for her, her kids, and the families she is helping and she is sacrificing her relationships throughout the film to make sure she does the right thing by these people.  She fights for a long time for these people and misses things like her daughter first words and family dinners.  Her son is constantly upset with her because he also doesn’t understand why his mom is always gone and why he can’t do things other kids are doing because she id has to bring her kids to everything even work sometimes.  Julia Roberts does a fantastic job of showing a strong woman also have vulnerability and femininity and her stone clad beliefs.  She also portrays a woman that is multi-dimensional in that she is constantly struggling for her family; she nearly breaks down all the time and struggles to contain her emotions at times because she has so many things going on at once. 

               I had not seen this movie before this and once again I was happy, I finally saw it and was treated to such a great film by a great director.  The performances by all are terrific and leave Erin Brockovich looking like a real-life folk hero.  Just like the great folk singer Woody Guthrie said “Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple.” And I think I can honestly say that at least in this film Erin Brockovich is a genius.

               The shape of Water by Guillermo del Toro is a fantasy romance tale about a deaf and mute woman who falls in love with a reptilian like creature.  This film is a poignant film about how we treat people that are different than ourselves and the difference between power and control.  The character of Richard Strickland is the person that has power and in theory also has control.  Whereas the creature and Elisa Esposito do not have either.

               The character of Richard Strickland is the head military officer that brought in the creature.  He is given the power over the base and the interrogation of the creature.  He is in control of everything at the top-secret base.  He is trying to learn what the creature is and why soviets want it.  He thinks the creature is simply some animal that needs to be taught like a dog but with a cattle prod.  He exudes testosterone and machismo, but this is what eventually is his undoing.  His need to have control and shape things into the narrow and very simple world view that he has is something that destroys him.  We see him even with his wife be very unemotional and treat her like an object to have sex with.  We see his absolute need for power and control with his finger slowly rotting on his hand after it was reattached.  The only emotion he allows himself to express is anger which is a typical emotion ok for men to express.  We also the fact that he is upset he has to interview the janitors of the base that include Elisa and her friend Zelda that he has no respect for anyone below his station in life. 

               The film starts with Elisa doing her normal routine for work that we can assume she has been doing for many years now.  She is deaf and mute and is very shy and squirrely at the start of the film because she doesn’t seem to have been treated great in her life by others and she is very kept to herself outside of Zelda at work and Giles her neighbor.  She eventually becomes transfixed and curious about the creature being stored there.  Which leads her to start interacting with it and eventually falls in love with the creature.  This leads to her slowly gain the courage to take the power and control away from Strickland over this creature.  She devises a plan with Giles and Zelda to get the creature out of the base which when they do, they hide the creature in her bathtub.  They hide the creature their until they are able to release the creature back into the ocean.  We see Elisa gain control and power through her love for this being which is why she wins in the end over Strickland. 

               This film does a great job of showing how love can come from anywhere despite the differences that some people might see between those that love one another.  This shows that love an conquer all even those in power and especially those that abuse power like Strickland in the film.  Guillermo del Toro does what he always does with his movies in telling a fantastical story that hits home hard is filled with shot after shot so beautiful it that could hang on a museum wall.

               Hidden Figures is a film about three African American women that worked at NASA and their involvement in the space program.  As it was the 1960’s the sexism and racism these women, Kathrine G. Johnson, Dorothy Vaughn, and Mary Jackson, had to deal with is in no way surprising with the women’s liberation movement was just starting in the 1960’s.  These women may have been frustrated with the way things worked and were submissive in it to a point, but they still were able to change things ever so slightly but over time were able to cause massive change.  As Dorothy says in the movie when Mary and Kathrine get promotions and she is upset she didn’t get the supervisor job she applied for “Now don’t get me wrong, any upward movement is movement for us all.”.  this shows that they move as a whole but still hurts when you’re the one left behind. 

               The movie also depicts the gracefulness that these women fight for their roles at NASA with. You have Mary Jackson who at first seems like the firecracker among the three but turns to be the most calm of sorts outside of how she gets mad that she can’t apply for the engineering job that is available because she doesn’t meet the knew requirements. She blows up on the white woman because she feels that they keep making it harder since the only schools that teach the newly required courses are in white only schools because Virginia is still segregated despite the ruling on Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.  Mary does find the strength to get a court date and fight for her ability to go to one these schools to get her education to become an engineer at NASA.  Dorothy despite feeling left behind by her friends because she didn’t get a promotion, she finds a new niche in NASA once she finds out about the IBM computer that will replace the “computers” she works with.  She quietly learns everything she can about this new machine and teaches her fellow black “computers” how to use the machine. Eventually leading her to be the supervisor of the women running this computer.  Also, the fact that women were thought of so little in NASA that they were referred to as “computers” only is kind of shocking for a 21^st century audience but also they were treated and expected to act like machined just replaced when “broken”.  Kathrine probably has the biggest arc in the movie as she seems top be the quiet one but ends up being the most aggressive of the three to move up and gain favor in NASA.  She explodes finally when she is being questioned on her work ethic and she spills that she has to run a half mile to use the bathroom and she has to use a separate coffee maker and make her own coffee because they don’t want to share with a person of color.  She also is constantly fighting her next in command Paul Stafford who is a bit of a racist to say the least.  She usually wins by getting Al Harrison to agree with her. 

               The fight these women had to go through to become some of the most important and smartest people to ever work at NASA is unbelievable.  These are still some of the fights that women of all races are going through in the workplace even today.  Women are still fighting for equal pay for equal work and to have protections for pregnancies and sexual harassment.  It is hard to believe these fights are still happening in 2020 but all we can do is support women and make sure that if you have a chance to help you help because in the immortal words of Letterkenny “When a Friend asks for help, you help them”.

“Thelma and Louise” is a film by Ridley Scott about two women that go on the run after Louise kills a guy that was about to rape Thelma.  The film depicts these women in the beginning of the film as your two types of the stereotyped women. Thelma is the stay at home wife that does everything to make her man happy and Louise is the wild waitress that is still dating despite being slightly older.  The overall journey that both these women go on is the crux of the film and how they find a sort of freedom in misbehaving.  The best thing in my opinion is that the women are depicted as real women with deep emotions and fully fledged out characters.  They get mad at each other, show sexuality, show strength, show vulnerability, and by the end are a couple of bad ass females.

               “Thelma and Louise” also has an interesting take on men especially with a male director.  The first male we really meet is Thelma’s husband Daryl.  He is a verbally abusive and demanding man who believes his wife is only there to serve him and his needs.  He is domineering of Thelma and controls her life completely.  This is relevant to the fact that she is terrified to ask him if she can go on a trip with her best friend Louise.  She does show some independence in that she goes on the trip without asking him at all.  The next man in the movie is Jimmy who is Louise’ boyfriend who seems to be caught up in his need to be masculine and full of testosterone all the time.  He seems to have some temper issues but also seems to care for Louise in his own way.  He at least knows all the right things to say to her.  We also meet J.D. who is someone that is very respectful and seems good hearted.  Thelma gets the hots for the cute young guy and eventually hooks up with him which makes her very happy.  He ends up double crossing them by stealing their money.  Then we have Hal he is the one redeeming guy in this film in that he wants nothing more than to help the women and understand why they are running.  He spends the whole film defending the woman and even at the end he wants the officers to put their guns down so he can talk to them and do his best to help them. 

               These four men I think depict four stereotypical traits of men.  Daryl represents the guy that is verbally and mentally abusive but is stuck in adolescence.  Jimmy represents a man that is emotionally stunted and only knows how to love through his massive need to keep his masculinity intact.  He loves in a physical sense if that is through sex or physical violence of someone or something.  J.D. represents the guy that seems to say all the right things and do all the right things but in the end is just using women to get what he wants.  He uses woman as objects and doesn’t care what state he leaves them in as long as he came out ahead.  Finally, we have Hal who is the quote unquote nice guy.  He is looking for nothing more than to help him, but his constant pursuit of women seems aggressive. 

               All in all, this film is a great film about female liberation and female friendship.  It is surprising that a man directed this film and was able to capture such a good representation of women without any bias on his part.  I would have thought this film was done by Penny Marshall as it has that feel and look similar to “A league of their Own” from 1992 also staring Gena Davis.  I had not seen this film until waiting it for this class and I have to say I should have watched it sooner.

I thought Lady Bird was an interesting film and I think it not only showed an authentic Mother daughter relationship but an authentic parent child relationship.  I see this in the way that children almost always rebel especially in the ages of 13-18 right in the age range of Lady Bird.  Kids hate their parents because during this time period in that they don’t know how to process emotions and everything going on with their body’s as they are being bombarded with hormones.  It’s not until later in life or once we get that true escape we want that we realize that what our parents were saying and come to respect and understand them and that continues throughout life. 

                The film oddly also reminded me of Bruce Springsteen music.  In that in his early career he wrote about wanting to leave your hometown and escape the life that is there for you.  He writes lines like “It’s a town full of losers and I’m pulling out of here to win” or in the title “Born to Run”.  Just like how Lady Bird was desperate to leave Sacramento and go to the east coast.  She was leaving her loser town and going off to win in a more cultured environment.  Springsteen then goes on to sing songs about being back in his hometown and how special that place is to us or regretting on never setting things right between parents and children.  IN songs like “My Hometown” a song about loving your town despite the bad things and being able to see the glory of it always and the song “My Father’s House” which is about a man who has a dream about running to his old house he grew up in to see his father and set things right with him finally but when he decides to go there his father doesn’t live there anymore.  This I think relates to the end of the film when lady bird calls her mom and apologizes with truth because she realizes she needs her mom in her life and in the part of how the nun says Lady Bird writes about Sacramento very glowingly.

                Finally, I think this was a great film that focused on the relationship of a mother and daughter during the most trying time of any parent child relationship.  They both say and do things to each other that are terrible and usually in response to the other and only done to hurt one another.  The film as done by a woman has defiantly a stronger perspective of this kind of relationship and coming of age story for a young woman.