Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema.
Directed by Mark Cousins.
Featuring Tilda Swinton, Jane Fonda, Kerry Fox, Adjoa Andoh, Thandie Newton, Sharmila Tagore and Debra Winger. Streaming in five parts on BFI Player. Or a Four-disc Blu-ray set. 848 mins.
There are precious few mercies offered by this 14-hour exploration of the work of women filmmakers, but one is that writer/director Mark "The Whispering Death" Cousins doesn't provide the narration. In his place, a selection of women actors and directors do the voiceover, which seems only right. It's their voices; reading His words, giving His views, His interpretations of His selection of scenes from the work of 183 female directors. Mansplaining is avoided; instead 13 decades of female filmmaking is Marksplained to us.
You can't doubt the man's enthusiasm but, right from his time as Moviedrome presenter, through the various film documenataries he's made since (including a 15-hour Story of Film), there has been something about his passion that is off-putting rather than engaging. He is like a children's TV presenter: come on let's see what's happening on the rectangular-shaped screen. Typically his narration will be made up of short/ explanatory sentences: a noun followed by an adjective / abrupt/ a description/ loving/ of a camera movement,/ sometimes a rhetorical question,/ maybe a simile. Mostly though - like the punditry of Trevor Francis on 90s TV football coverage - it is describing what you yourself can see happening in front of your very own eyes. Occasionally, his observations will illustrate the film maker's methodology, but mostly it's the obvious, bleeding.
These 14 hours are basically nothing more than a selection of clips, randomly allotted into categories. Road movies are arguably the most masculine of film genres but the subtitle's only influence on the film is the occasional shot of some empty highway from somewhere around the world. I don't think the film offers any insight into what women specifically have contributed or added to films, other than showing bits from films that women have made, some of which are pretty good. What it does illustrate, quite forcibly, is how insular the range of cinema we have access to is, and how much more world cinema has to offer. But, whenever you're introduced to a film that perks your interest, Cousins is usually done with it in less than a minute. Still I was grateful for the nudge towards Ildiko Enyedi's My 20th Century, so cheers for that.
Mercifully the BFI have broken it up into five parts (or four if you want to invest in having it in disc form.) This week we're up to part four which covers chapters 26 – 34, (there are 40 overall) Melodrama, sci-fi, Hell, Tension, Stasis, Leave out, Reveal, Memory and Time. Thandie Newton does the bulk of the narration and gets to orate some of Cousins' dumbest lines. Controversially he decides to include the Wachowskis' Matrix in the science fiction section even though Lana and Tilly were both in possession of some measure of penis when they made it. Of their later Jupiter Ascending, he has Newton say it is “a feast of design and movement; one of the reasons why it got bad reviews perhaps?” Does that make sense on any level? I can't speak for other critics, but I know that I got into reviewing to rail against the barrage of design and movement that blights modern-day movies and impairs my appreciation of cliched stories, tired action and abysmal acting.
Directed by Mark Cousins.
Featuring Tilda Swinton, Jane Fonda, Kerry Fox, Adjoa Andoh, Thandie Newton, Sharmila Tagore and Debra Winger. Streaming in five parts on BFI Player. Or a Four-disc Blu-ray set. 848 mins.
There are precious few mercies offered by this 14-hour exploration of the work of women filmmakers, but one is that writer/director Mark "The Whispering Death" Cousins doesn't provide the narration. In his place, a selection of women actors and directors do the voiceover, which seems only right. It's their voices; reading His words, giving His views, His interpretations of His selection of scenes from the work of 183 female directors. Mansplaining is avoided; instead 13 decades of female filmmaking is Marksplained to us.
You can't doubt the man's enthusiasm but, right from his time as Moviedrome presenter, through the various film documenataries he's made since (including a 15-hour Story of Film), there has been something about his passion that is off-putting rather than engaging. He is like a children's TV presenter: come on let's see what's happening on the rectangular-shaped screen. Typically his narration will be made up of short/ explanatory sentences: a noun followed by an adjective / abrupt/ a description/ loving/ of a camera movement,/ sometimes a rhetorical question,/ maybe a simile. Mostly though - like the punditry of Trevor Francis on 90s TV football coverage - it is describing what you yourself can see happening in front of your very own eyes. Occasionally, his observations will illustrate the film maker's methodology, but mostly it's the obvious, bleeding.
These 14 hours are basically nothing more than a selection of clips, randomly allotted into categories. Road movies are arguably the most masculine of film genres but the subtitle's only influence on the film is the occasional shot of some empty highway from somewhere around the world. I don't think the film offers any insight into what women specifically have contributed or added to films, other than showing bits from films that women have made, some of which are pretty good. What it does illustrate, quite forcibly, is how insular the range of cinema we have access to is, and how much more world cinema has to offer. But, whenever you're introduced to a film that perks your interest, Cousins is usually done with it in less than a minute. Still I was grateful for the nudge towards Ildiko Enyedi's My 20th Century, so cheers for that.
Mercifully the BFI have broken it up into five parts (or four if you want to invest in having it in disc form.) This week we're up to part four which covers chapters 26 – 34, (there are 40 overall) Melodrama, sci-fi, Hell, Tension, Stasis, Leave out, Reveal, Memory and Time. Thandie Newton does the bulk of the narration and gets to orate some of Cousins' dumbest lines. Controversially he decides to include the Wachowskis' Matrix in the science fiction section even though Lana and Tilly were both in possession of some measure of penis when they made it. Of their later Jupiter Ascending, he has Newton say it is “a feast of design and movement; one of the reasons why it got bad reviews perhaps?” Does that make sense on any level? I can't speak for other critics, but I know that I got into reviewing to rail against the barrage of design and movement that blights modern-day movies and impairs my appreciation of cliched stories, tired action and abysmal acting.
