Despite recent claims that the Academy Awards excluded women from coveted categories — claims made by none other than #Hillary Barbie — the nominations suggest an unprecedented appreciation of films made by or for women.
Sure, Barbie’s Greta Gerwig is missing from Best Director, but four out of ten Best Picture nominees are female-centric films. The one topping nominations, director Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, is a subject of fascination. By nominating Poor Things for 11 awards, the Academy has implicitly endorsed the vision of womanhood in a film true to Mary Shelley’s source material. In grafting the Sexual Revolution onto Victorian England, Poor Things, like Frankenstein, creates a frightening amalgam.
Read Full Article »