Arrival (2016). It is one of my very favorite #movies. It's got so much going for it, but one big thing is its treatment of #GenderRoles. If you saw it and didn't notice that, then the director and actors succeeded. It's all about Amy Adams' character, one of the most amazing #feminist performances I've ever seen, though I didn't notice this until my second or third viewing.
Adams' performance is off-the-charts solid, the kind that draws little attention, will cause some men in the audience to make sour faces, and will (I think?) make some women feel other things. OK, yes, she's hot, but other other things. Things about women and how they might be and sometimes are.
As you can see, I'm not explaining well. Trying again: Adams' performance is of an academic who knows what her skills are and also has a bit of bluster, but a quiet kind. She just knows she is smarter, in specific ways, than anyone else around her; she has expertise and is comfortable with it. Other people in her lane can fuck off without her specifically telling them to, and maybe without even noticing they're getting out of her way. She's the interpersonal/academic equivalent of the guy who never moves an inch from his path in the sidewalk, confident that everyone else will move.
This kind of deep confidence is, in my experience, a predominantly masculine thing in movies, and apparently--from Hollywood's track record--difficult to pull off. Time and again I see "strong female characters" who are overly aggressive, defensively empowered, spewing their vulnerability over the audience, or something like that; I don't have the words. They and their directors are trying, and succeeding at some things, but not at this. Another excellent portrayal is Gal Godot's Wonder Woman, but that one almost cheats with a protagonist who can kick all the ass all the time (something that has also been done badly or kind-of-OK many times).
Adams simply is all the unthinking, deep-down assumptions and confidence that some men have. She shows no conflict about making her students stay in class when a disaster is happening. She is unapologetic in her negotiations with Forest Whitaker early in the movie. She takes action when she thinks it is warranted, rules or no, and even tells lies when she thinks it necessary. No apology in verbal, paraverbal, nonverbal, or even contextual cues. As I watch I am struck again with the realization: This is what men do.
Adams is not masculinized. She's not "trying to be like a man," much less a thin stereotype of a man--she shows fear and vulnerability often, for instance, though that doesn't steal the show or define her character; it seems perfectly in keeping with it, possibly because of how she displays it, again a thing we allow male protagonists then pretend we didn't see it or something. Adams simply inhabits some spaces that should be non-gendered, but which are mostly occupied by men. She steps into that space, she doesn't stomp into it. She steps in and doesn't step past it into someone's sociopolitical treatise. She does all this implicitly, as if she were unaware--though of course she, the actress, is deeply aware. She makes the impossible look effortless.
Jeremy Renner is in the movie, and he's more or less a support romantic type, a foil for some of the main character's words and actions, a necessary if unimportant piece in the plot. They put Hawkeye in a big movie and it wasn't remotely about him; he filled a space in Amy Adams' narrative the way women frequently do in men's narratives.
Forest Whitaker is amazing as the military colonel (? I don't know military ranks). Adams' character is not defined by contrast or comparison with him or anyone else; she doesn't "take him down a peg" or "show that women are just as strong as soldiers" or any such bullshit, because she doesn't need to. She simply exists as a person who knows what they have to offer and what they don't. Sometimes he's in the way.
When I write or talk about this I'm aware I don't have the language, or maybe even the concepts, to do it well, so I ramble (even more than usual). I'll stop. Of course I think everyone should go watch the movie, but I already said it's one of my favorites, so you knew I would say that.
