Women behaving badly

This year’s Academy Award nominees, at least in one category, were a happy surprise: All of 2014’s best actress nominees played difficult women.

Maybe it’s Sheryl Sandberg’s message about women advocating for themselves or the so-called ending of men or the noisome miasma of Hannah Horvath on “Girls” in the zeitgeist. Perhaps it is simply the fact that it’s 2014 already. But forget leaning in. These characters were busy lunging at their daughters (Meryl Streep in “August: Osage County”), clawing their way back onto the social register (Cate Blanchett in “Blue Jasmine”), manipulating cons within cons (Amy Adams in “American Hustle”), searching to reunite a shattered family (Judi Dench in “Philomena”) and hurtling through outer space (Sandra Bullock in “Gravity”). 

This isn’t entirely surprising. Difficult women make for good characters and historically have done well at the Academy Awards. Consider Elizabeth Taylor as Martha in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Louise Fletcher’s Nurse Ratched in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and Kathy Bates in “Misery.” But this year difficult women are the rule rather than the exception. They shimmer with multifaceted complexity — especially compared with their male counterparts, such as Leonardo DiCaprio’s unrelentingly repellent robber baron and Christian Bale’s lovelorn Long Island con man, who come off as caricatures. This year’s contenders are also a departure from last year’s best actress nominees, which had few perturbing qualities. Granted, 2013 winner Jennifer Lawrence’s Tiffany Maxwell in “Silver Linings Playbook” had her darkness, but she still danced her way out of depression.

Expanding the range of personalities that women portray in films is enormously important, for both men and for women, because it shines a light on the less than pleasant parts of the human experience. It lets us all catch a glimpse of the qualities we keep shielded from the world and reminds us that we’re all difficult sometimes. On a purely human level, it’s heartening to see the more irksome and unflattering aspects of life celebrated.

Cate Blanchett’s character in “Blue Jasmine” is in many ways the quintessential difficult woman of the silver screen. Jasmine is outspoken and brazen and immaculately turned out; she’s also deeply insecure and hides her fears behind her snobbish, high-class demeanor — a modern-day Blanche Dubois from “A Streetcar Named Desire.” It’s not surprising that critics have drawn parallels between Blanchett’s portrayal of Jasmine and Tennessee Williams’ antiheroine, (whom Blanchett played in a theater production a few years back). But unlike the backlit Blanche, Jasmine seems constitutionally incapable of accepting the kindness of strangers, and it comes at her own peril. Instead, she alienates anyone who might be able to lift her out of shame and poverty, including her dentist employer, her generous sister and her would-be benefactor husband. Blanchett described her character to Vogue as “a woman without any agency, without any autonomy. She’s given that to her husband, and that’s what makes her current today — even in this postfeminist world.”

Amy Adams’ Sydney Prosser in “American Hustle” attaches herself to men too, but less like a barnacle and more like a black widow spider. Her character doubles and divides throughout the film. With Machiavellian sangfroid, Sydney plays both sides of every con. Her power is nestled within her Charlie girl sensuality, but it’s a fleeting power at best. Because at her center, even she is unclear about who she is. One can be beholden only to oneself when clawing out of obscurity. Manola Dhargis wrote in her New York Times review, “Mr. Russell is one of the few American male directors working today who is as interested in women as he is in men.”

Alfonso Cuaron’s choice to write the untethered astronaut in “Gravity” as a woman — Ryan Stone, in name and in demeanor — adds Cuaron to that tiny club of male directors concerned with developing compelling female characters. It’s one small step for moviegoing kind, because up until a few decades ago, there had been more dogs in space than women. And it’s an accurate reflection of the times: For the first time since its inception, the 2013 NASA astronaut cohort boasts an equal gender ratio. Cady Coleman, an astronaut who lived on the International Space Station, thinks Cuaron’s creation is “enormous for girls and women.” Sandra Bullock’s performance is measured, and her character is withdrawn, especially in contrast to co-star George Clooney’s chatterbox. Bullock’s last Oscar win was for a more predictable role as a blond matriarch adopting a poor African-American boy in “The Blind Side,” which could have been a Hallmark original movie. Her steely rocket scientist in orbit is hardly as soft or safe.

While Bullock’s character in “Gravity” might inspire a future generation of girls to pursue science, “Philomena” is actually changing women’s lives today. The true story chronicles one Irish teen mother’s story of her baby being forcibly removed and sold to the highest bidder in the 1960s. In part because of the film’s breakaway success, a United Nations human rights committee is holding the Vatican responsible for such forced adoptions, arranged by unwed Catholic mothers and baby houses, and is urging investigation of those institutions and compensation to women like Philomena Lee. While Judi Dench’s sweet Irish lady isn’t exactly difficult in a “Real Housewives” mood-disorder sort of way, she has become a real thorn in the side of the Catholic Church. The real-life Philomena and the Irish organization Adoption Rights Alliance are pressing their government to release the files of an estimated 60,000 women whose children were put up for adoption as late as the 1990s and to help these families reunite. For the church and the government, Philomena is a difficult lady indeed.

The Dench character excavates a sordid practice that had been buried, and on the other end of the spectrum is Meryl Streep’s Violet Weston in “August: Osage County.” She is sound and fury signifying not much, playing a mother who is not especially maternal or apologetic about that fact. Streep has often portrayed toughies — Miranda Priestly in “The Devil Wears Prada” and her Oscar-winning Margaret Thatcher come to mind — but this character torments her own offspring rather than publishing peons and Labour lackies. Refinery 29 published an interview with Streep under the headline “Meryl Streep on playing her most evil character yet.” “I’m just truth-tellin,’” she slurs, in a pill-induced diatribe at the family dinner table. Co-star Ewan McGregor’s describes Violet as “shrill insanity.” While the film never totally congeals and often feels like a series of stitched-together scenes to showcase capital-A Ahcting, Streep is at once repellent and commanding.

Streep initially hesitated to take the role. “I didn’t want to play this woman who is afflicted by her past and by cancer and by her own worst self,” she said. “She is detested by her children and quite rightly so.” She expressed envy of co-star Chris Cooper and his affable character, commenting, “He would imbue (his character) with such humanity and compassion. And I knew the audience would love him. And I knew they would hate me in equal measure.” Even Streep felt apprehensive about playing such a loathsome woman. It’s hard to imagine DiCaprio hesitating to play Jordan Belfort in “The Wolf of Wall Street.” We expect men to behave badly yet feel jarred when women do the same. 

To be sure, this isn’t the first time at the rodeo for any of the best actress nominees. This is both Adams’ and Blanchett’s fifth nomination, Bullock’s second, Dench’s seventh and Streep’s record breaking 18th. They may all be playing unsympathetic characters this time around, but these actresses resonate with audiences and in box office power because they are brands. Adams, for instance, is stepping away from her princess roles, but she’s established herself as safe — and perhaps that translates to a more sympathetic viewer. Had an unknown actress or a woman of color played any of these difficult roles, perhaps the academy would not be as quick to celebrate. Familiar white women still dominate, no matter how treacherous.

It also bears mentioning that all of the films in which this year’s best actress nominees appeared were both written and directed by men. Perhaps at next year’s Oscars, we will see the industry making room for more female writers and directors. While it's worthy of applause to see difficult lady characters dominating in 2014, working on the other side of the camera is still a steep hurdle for women in Hollywood to clear.