I was watching Molly's Game recently – the new Aaron Sorkin movie opens in Canada on Christmas Day – and was considering why it felt so unusual. It's inspired by the real-life "Princess of Poker" Molly Bloom, who ran high-stakes games frequented by celebrities until she was brought down by the Russian mob and the FBI, and stars Jessica Chastain as an unlikely feminist heroine.
As Molly cleverly lifts an L.A. game from an abusive boss and then moves her business to New York when her biggest player double-crosses her, what struck me most about the character was how utterly alone she was. That's a great source of drama in the film as the cops, mobsters and gamblers circle menacingly and Molly fights back. Sure, she has her often-skeptical lawyer at her side as she tells this story in retrospect; yes, there's an (implausible) reunion with her unpleasant father toward the end, but mainly this film is just about Molly living by her wits in a very hostile world.
And that's why it feels different: Hollywood prefers male protagonists over female at the rate of two to one, and tends to define female characters by their relationships rather than their actions or professions. Think of Tatiana Maslany playing the supportive girlfriend of a man injured by a bomb in Stronger or Emma Watson's Belle uncovering Mr. Right in Beauty and the Beast. A lone she-wolf, on the other hand, is hardly a Hollywood trope.
But that may be changing, because Chastain's Molly was just one of many strong female protagonists at the movies this year. From Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham to a recalcitrant teen named Lady Bird, 2017 was the year of the wonder women.
Most obviously, it was the year of Wonder Woman itself. The second-highest-grossing movie of 2017, it proved that audiences will embrace female superheroes if they are placed in smart scripts that are directed well. In a slow summer at the box office, Wonder Woman earned more than $400-million ( U.S.) in North America; according to the Hollywood Reporter, director Patty Jenkins is going to be paid between $7-million and $9-million to direct Gal Gadot in the sequel, a record-breaking amount for a female director.
And, in another part of the cinematic forest, Greta Gerwig's critically acclaimed Lady Bird is proving notably hardy for a small coming-of-age drama about a teenage girl's relationship with her mother. The Oscars beckon. Another critical favourite is Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water, a supernatural romance driven by the pluck of its female protagonist: Sally Hawkins plays a mute cleaner who stages the escape of an aquatic creature stuck in a government lab. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was also much praised: It's a film about misdirected grief, starring Frances McDormand as a woman who tackles the local police chief when her daughter's murder remains unsolved.
Meanwhile in The Post (which won't open in Canada until January), Steven Spielberg decides that the political story of the Pentagon Papers really belongs to Graham, the female publisher of the Washington Post. Meryl Streep gets top billing – over Tom Hanks.
That's an unusual decision in Hollywood, where stories driven by men are generally considered more marketable. According to researchers at the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University, women were the sole protagonists in 29 per cent of the top-100 grossing movies of 2016, while men were featured in 54 per cent. Those numbers are a long way from gender equity – and of course Asians, blacks and Latinos of both sexes are underrepresented, too – but it was actually a 7-per-cent improvement over 2015.
Is it just coincidence that things seem to be shifting at the same time as women in the film and television industry have started to denounce the grotesque sexual harassment they have routinely experienced? Maybe not. Both trends reflect a gradual awakening to a history of sexism; if studios can increasingly countenance a forceful female character or a powerful female director, they can no longer shrug their shoulders over harassment complaints.
There's a direct link between the presence of women behind the camera and the decision to tell women-centred stories. Female writers and directors are still a rarity in the industry – in 2016, only 7 per cent of directors and 13 per cent of writers on the top 250 films were female, according to the San Diego researchers – but they are also the ones more likely to be writing and directing films that feature female characters. So improving gender equity behind the camera should produce a virtuous cycle that audiences will see reflected on the screen, just as serial harassers have produced a vicious cycle that has driven women and their stories out of the industry.
The Mexican actress and producer Salma Hayek is the latest woman to accuse producer Harvey Weinstein, detailing in the New York Times this week how he took revenge against Frida, her 2002 Frida Kahlo biopic, after she spurned his aggressive sexual advances. Who knows how many more movies about how many more women Hayek might have made if a harasser had not undercut her career? She and all her courageous whistle-blowing sisters are wonder women, too.
Kate Taylor