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Post by MagdaFR on Dec 29, 2019 19:50:56 GMT
I know I would rather see more diverse filmmakers, as opposed to female or POC shoehorned into existing stories or written by white men, who may not understand them. (Not that LW is written by a man, I just mean in general.) That said, I would have no issue if they chose to make Laurie black, although his family is supposed to be extremely rich (unlike the Marches) and IIRC have homes both in the US and Europe. It's an important part of the story, since he and his grandfather rattle around their big mansion alone, while Laurie envies the four loving sisters next door (even when they only have a baked potato to eat for lunch!) And his stern grandfather overcomes some snobbery toward the girls with time. So it would require some suspension of disbelief for the 1800's, or a serious rewrite. These issues are much more important to the story than how the book describes his hair and coloring. The grandfather had fight with his son because he had married an Italian! Imagine that. When Laurie's parents conveniently die, his gandfather raises him.
Laurie could be just a little Mediterranean, not necessarily black.
Anyway I don't know if it is important to the story. I just wrote about it because with some other people -not GG- many would be speaking of whitewashing.
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Post by onebluestocking on Dec 29, 2019 20:04:01 GMT
Also it might open a can of worms when Jo rejects Laurie's proposal, because she just doesn't like him that way. He eventually ends up with his second-choice sister, the reader suspects at least partially for his money, as Amy is the most materialistic of the characters. Would it then have racist undertones? Changing a character's race starts a ripple effect of subtexts. Not saying they shouldn't do it, but it may not be what this filmmaker wants to address with this particular project. I agree though, that he should look half Italian!
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Post by sgev1977 on Dec 29, 2019 22:18:13 GMT
They choose to do movies about people who have no problems "from the real world" like paying a rent, not have health care, not knowing if they'll have money for food, etc. etc.
The characters in these movies are all artistic people who live for and from the arts, who are in other level that is where the directors live, I guess.
Of course you can empathize with their problems but sometimes is difficult. For instance, the problem with the money in Marriage Story. The guy had won a prize of thousands of dollars. How am I going to think "poor Charlie" because he had to pay for plane tickets. Come on.
I haven't watched Marriage Story yet but I recently watched Frances Ha for the first time. It's directed by Baumbach and written by Gerwig. They are of course very middle high class and artistic oriented people indeed but a good part of the plot is how this probably not THAT talented dancer played by Gerwig can't make enough money for paying the rent in expensive New York city. At certain point she is freely living in her old College campus doing volunteering work so she can still have a place to sleep. Adam Driver appears has a rich boy who doesn't seem to have such "mundane" problems. But I understand what you say. It's a valid criticism. It's just I don't agreed people should demand them to do working class or minorities stuff when we all know it's not their thing. Also I found silly when people repeat phrases without thinking if they have sense in certain particular cases as the "do you believe black people didn't existed in the 19th century?" after a black woman said she understood it would be more complext to just randomly introduce a black character in Little Women when the book explicitly but indirectly talks about slavery and the Civil War. I actually remember an article from ages ago before Millenials and the wokes that accused both Baumbach and Wes Anderson of being over privileged! The case of Anderson is very interesting because it's kind of true but also as I said before his movies are very diverse! I remember the article centered a lot in the Louis Vuitton suitcases in The Darjeeling Limited! But in the same movie you have an Indian working class girl as the romantic interest! Not that the working class thing was relevant to the plot. It's a fantasy as all Anderson films are a fantasy and that's probably why the confusion of randoms on Twitter accusing him of never hiring minorities or being only about rich people. It's not true but still everything is so rich and nice and no one is REALLY suffering for being poor! And it's great. I personally prefer Anderson to Ken Loach myself but it's wonderful that both options exist and that's how it should be.
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Post by mllemass on Dec 29, 2019 22:55:07 GMT
I actually think the men in the audience really do relate to those fantasy characters. Isn’t that why they dress up in costumes and attend those conventions?
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Post by roverpup on Dec 30, 2019 4:25:57 GMT
I empathized quite a lot with Charlie's problem concerning the money. Yes he was an artsy guy who had a certain level of income BUT he was also someone who definitely had to keep working (so not posh upper class). And he had a life long passion with live theatre. That fact was well established right from the beginning of the film and played heavily in the plot later on as pivot of internal and external conflict surrounding the battle with his ex over his other great love - his son and being a father.
As far as the money goes, the fellowship award was earmarked to go totally toward his theatre company (yes I know they made a point of saying he could use it for personal reasons but HE wanted it to be totally used towards the company because he was so dedicated to it). He struggled with this conflict greatly and in the end sacrificed his commitment to the theatre company for the sake of his child. A significant part of his character's story pivoted around the question of his divided feelings.
And he wasn't some rich kid brought up with a privileged life - he was self made and came from a rather gruesome childhood where he got no real love or encouragement.
So I guess I saw a lot of universal themes and struggles on a wide range of emotional levels built into each one of the characters rather than just a story about entitled privileged people. That's what I liked about the film.
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Post by roverpup on Dec 30, 2019 12:08:17 GMT
Not to belabor it, but I was thinking more about Marriage Story.
I guess what struck me is that it was more about how emotional struggles come in many forms.
The story delved into how deep seated resentments can fester and also shape our actions later in life. It looked at how a person can be torn apart when confronted by choices that ripple out to others around them (at work, at home, with their children, with their partners).
To me these are universal themes that can take place in many different contexts. This film explored just one of those contexts.
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Post by Hannah Lee on Dec 30, 2019 14:32:43 GMT
I actually think the men in the audience really do relate to those fantasy characters. Isn’t that why they dress up in costumes and attend those conventions?
As far as identifying with an elf or a hobbit or an orc, IIRC most of all those characters were portrayed as men, at least the ones who were directly involved in the action (as opposed to Rosie the hobbit who is the object of Samwise's affections). Sure there was Galadriel, Eowyn and Arwen, but that's just 3 compared to all the male characters. There seem to be more female elves, but do we ever even hear from a female dwarf? And remember the brouhaha that got stirred up when Peter Jackson created a female elf in his film version of The Hobbit (the Hobbit only had one named female character, mentioned in passing) ? There is a default it seems that male characters, male stories, male perspectives are "standard" and anything else has to be debated about or justified.
This made me think of two things: #1 - I recently saw Sideways for the first time, which I enjoyed, partially for it's views of California Wine Country, and because the main actors are all fantastic, plus it was an interesting story. I happened to mention it to a friend of mine who considers himself a movie buff and we chatted about it a bit. I said that I would love to see a film with the same characters and setting, but centered on Virginia Madsen's and Sandra Oh's characters, because I found those characters very interesting and I'd be curious to see their own stories explored more. My friend completely freaked out, as though I said a completely outlandish thing. "No no! The movie is the movie! YOU don't get to change it! Why would anyone do that?!" It was if my mere mention that a film focused on those two female characters would interest me was equal to me somehow destroying the other movie or threatened the film focused on the journey of two sort-of-loser guys in some crazy way. Even though I was clear in what I said, he wouldn't listen, or understand I wanted TWO movies, a movie centered on the 2 women in addition to Sideways. Judging from on-line ranting when any female-centric film is made, or someone dares to put a prominent female character in previously male-centered universe, I think his "womenz movies threaten the existence of menz movies" response is not unusual even if it makes no logical sense.
#2 This blog post from a few years back, where Linda Holmes, a pop-culture host / blogger for NPR, considers the balance of men's films and women's films available at the movie theater. Of the 600+ showings of movies about near her Washington DC, 90% were films about men/groups of men, a handful balanced about men and women, and a handful about women. DC is a pretty big cultural center in the US, so it had many more offerings than what might be found in many other places in the country.
"In many, many parts of the country right now, if you want to go to see a movie in the theater and see a current movie about a woman — any story about any woman that isn't a documentary or a cartoon — you can't. You cannot. There are not any. You cannot take yourself to one, take your friend to one, take your daughter to one.
There are not any."
It's gotten a bit better, maybe? But considering that woman are at least half of the human population, it is still way out of whack.
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Post by roverpup on Dec 30, 2019 15:55:53 GMT
I happen to think it's gotten a lot better. I can think of at least a dozen movies I have seen in recent years (either in the theatre or on Netflix, etc.) that centred around women, told female based stories and/or had strong female leads. Wild, Hidden Figures, Gravity, Zero Dark Thirty, The Suffragette, Belle, The Secret Life of Bees, Queen of Katwe, Frida, The Beguiled, The Help, The Favourite... and that's just off the top of my head.
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Post by mllemass on Dec 30, 2019 16:42:48 GMT
That reminds me . , . when I first went to see Hidden Figures, I thought it would be interesting. Most of the audience were women or older couples. It did very well since then, but to me it’s still so underrated! As I watched it, I kept wondering “Where was this movie when I was growing up?” I’d seen plenty of movies about astronauts and space travel and scientists, but I don’t remember seeing any women in them, unless they were answering phones or typing. That might be the reason I always responded “secretary” whenever I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. Of course, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being a secretary! But I’d watch movie after movie about these exciting workplaces, and the only way I could be part of them was to take dictation?
We got a glimpse of it in The Imitation Game with Keira Knightley’s character, but Hidden Figures was such an eye-opener for me. I had no idea that these amazing women existed - and I’ll bet most other people didn’t know about them, either. I kept wondering how my life might have taken a different turn if I’d seen the movie back then. I loved math! It runs in my family - my whole family is really good at math - but for me it was much more. I found it fun and exciting - like figuring out puzzles. And I did really well at it. When I was 12, my math teacher jokingly announced to our class that he had contacted the local university about getting me an early enrolment. In high school, my math teacher recommended me for the Enriched math class. I attended only two classes before asking to go back to my regular class. In the Enriched class, we had the same work and assignments and tests, but we could work at our own speedier rate. That was fine, but I was the only girl with a dozen math-obsessed boys. I thought they were yucky and it just wasn’t fun for me! I preferred being back in the class where doing math was enjoyable. I graduated high school with 99% in math - but I didn’t win the math award. The winner was one of the Enriched boys, with 100%. So math was great, but I didn’t know that there were math-based careers - other than teaching math. So I studied Art and Languages in university instead.
I should point out that during all this time, I kept hearing that girls weren’t good at math. I heard it from news reports, tv shows and even toys (remember the Barbie doll that said something about math being hard?). Experts even tried to explain it as biological - women’s brains just weren’t cut out to do math! So here I was, an impressionable young girl, being told by experts that there was something weird and ungirly about me! (Thankfully, I have an older (girl) cousin as a role-model who became a doctor and wasn’t concerned about being one of the few girls in medical school.)
Years later, seeing that woman in Hidden Figures climb on the ladder to work out a problem on the giant blackboard was absolutely thrilling! What other jobs were women doing back then that were hidden from us??
So yes, there should be more movies about girls in women in interesting and exciting careers! And we need to see girls onscreen having the same adventures as the boys.
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Post by ellie on Jan 14, 2020 21:53:40 GMT
Just been to see Little Women. Just in terms of the movie itself, I really liked it. The only thing that didn’t work for me was Timothee Chalmet as Laurie. He is an excellent actor but just looked too young. I know he’s 24 in real life but he looks about 16 and therefore I couldn’t really believe in him as the world weary socialite or as Amy’s husband. He looked more like he should be her little brother.
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