Today I have heard the sad news that Bob Hoskins is retiring from acting, having been diagnosed with Parkinsons Disease.
I have loved Bob Hoskins's work for a long time, and remember first seeing him as Mr Smee in Spielberg's awesome little movie Hook (1991). I believe Hoskins's portrayal was much more in-depth, charming and humorous than Disney's could ever have hoped for. He was just perfect.
Then of course, came the great Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988), which is considered a classic by just about everybody I know, and gets dedicated viewing time every Christmas.
As I matured, I began to take in his famous gangster movies, my favourite being Mona Lisa (1986). This flick, which just about everybody I know has never even heard of, boasts a Great British cast, including Michael Caine and Robbie Coltrane, and studies the dark, heart-wrenching truths of prostitution. It also features a monumental bit of rough-house from pint-sized Hoskins who, while jumping 3 feet in the air, headbutts a huge bad guy right in the face. It's really neat!
Bob's other peak is The Long Good Friday, alongside Helen Mirren. It's a detailed insight into the crazed Thatcher's Britain and its subsequent underworld. Considered his breakthrough role, he became THE actor of the British Gangster genre.
Oh, I do love Bob Hoskins! He's so sweet and charming, and could be your uncle, but he packs a mean punch, so he's definitely the uncle you'd want by your side if you happened across any London gangsters (pray you don't!). While absolutely captivating in serious, sinister roles, he is equally entrancing with his comedy, and absolutely glows with allure. He is so perfectly polar in his craft, and it is this presence that I am going to miss in the future. I truly hope his life is long and enjoyable after his retirement, and at least we can all take joy from his classic characters, ever immortalised on our screens.
I came across Lars von Trier's twisted horror 'Antichrist' on some list of Most Controversial Films, and came around to watching it, somewhat intrigued. I read about it a lot first, and read various discussion boards, to find that both audiences and critics slated the film for supposedly being misogynist.
Let me give a brief synopsis: a husband and wife lose their infant son when he falls out of a window. The couple were making love during the incident, and so a racked with guilt over their baby's death. The husband, a therapist, comes to terms with everything, and takes on his still-traumatised wife as his patient. In an effort to confront her fears, they go to their remote cabin in the woods, Eden, where the wife descends into what could be perceived as madness, possession or just plain cruelty.
This state brings around much of the controversial matter- hardcore and violent sex, self-mutilation and torture.
These factors immediately eliminate a proportion of potential audience, and many argued that Antichrist is nothing more than torture porn. But I don't think it takes a great intellectual or 'art fag' to recognise it as a very raw, detailed portrait of a couple on the brink. It is intelligently written, brilliantly acted, and displays some tremendous cinematography. Some scenes are slowed down to almost a stand-still, the kind that makes you itch, as if you were stuck behind someone ridiculously slow in a narrow corridor. It's tricks like this that produce physical reactions in the audience, that makes Antichrist such an intelligent and encompassing film.
But on to my main point- in a film where a woman for 'no apparent reason' turns on her loving husband and tortures him, supposedly because it's in her nature as a woman to be evil, there is a lot of scope for claims of misogyny. Just like when people heard Daniel Radcliffe had sex with a horse in Equus, when in fact his character has a sexual passion for horses, and he has sex with a woman, but these two never meet. There is no bestiality in Equus, just as there is no misogyny in Antichrist. The muddy, misguided two-lined synopsis that is generally heard about any movie provides opportunity for these misguided views.
The point is- who is this woman? Why does she turn on her husband? Is it for 'no apparent reason'? These questions are answered clearly in the movie, but for now, I hereby present A Case Against Misogyny in Antichist.
I have just finished Antichrist, and want to know what all the 'misogyny' fuss is about. I am female, and consider myself Feminist, but I don't see Antichrist as a misogynist film at all. Several points must be highlighted to disprove such ideas.
1) 'She' is writing a thesis about cruelty towards women. She is clearly very ill mentally (understandable), and becomes as her husband says 'obsessed.' Dafoe's line of something like "You've taken all the evil against women and started believing women are evil. Your thesis was about evil against women. Do you know what you're saying?!" This isn't it word for word, but it's the general idea. Her trauma and grief have severely warped her perceptions of...well, everything. The movie, its plot and characters, are not misogynist, but dealing with a deeply traumatised woman, whose mental state is clearly unstable, which brings us to She's thoughts, and how this translates into 'women are evil.'
The scene where she cuts off her clitoris demonstrates it perfectly. Her husband's hand is on her groin, but she feels no pleasure. As shown in the flashbacks, She regards her sexuality, her very womanhood, as the cause of her son's death. Of course she knew the boy could get out, but this is where the "nature" of sexuality comes in. It can be all-encompassing, and for her it was. Nature's most intense physical pleasure (ie her clitoris) clouded her parental judgement, and for this she feels guilty, and ashamed of her femininity. Her traumatised mind makes the link between sex/her genitalia and her failure to save her son. She feels that by shedding her womanhood (cutting off her clitoris), she can be free not only of some guilt, but also of the supposedly 'wicked' sexual instincts that indirectly caused the death of their son.
The ghosts at the end- let's not forget, She was studying women who had been wronged. It was these wronged women who appear at the end. Not evil women, wronged women. Was She evil? No, I don't believe so, and for this reason, I don't believe this movie is misogynist. It depicts a severely ill woman, who I'm sure can be identified with, to some extent, by anyone who has ever suffered from mental illness.
On a closing note, I'd like to point out that this movie exercised the services of a misogyny researcher, two mythology & evil researchers, an anxiety researcher, a horror film researcher, a music researcher, a theology researcher and three therapy specialists. I don't believe Von Trier would have one to such lengths to make a correct and realistic movie if its only objective was misogyny.
