Jane Campion, we’ve missed you! 
It’s been six long years since the director of The Piano, Portrait of a Lady, and Angel at My Table (right, with actor Ben Wishaw) has made a feature, and even longer since her name has popped up as a contender in the Oscar race. (She won a Best Original Screenplay Oscar in 1994 for The Piano and remains one of just three women to be nominated for Best Director.) But the New Zealand-born filmmaker is back in top creative form with Bright Star, a lyrical film about the passionate and ultimately tragic romance of poet John Keats and his great love, Fanny Brawne. The movie is in theaters this Friday.
I had the honor of talking with Campion during the Toronto film festival, where Bright Star enjoyed a loving reception. Here are some highlights.
On why she’s been absent from feature filmmaking since 2003’s In the Cut
“I did decide to take a sabbatical of four years at least. I have a daughter who was 9 at the time, and I was just watching her, thinking, ‘I’m not around enough.’ Filmmaking is so consuming. When you’re directing, it takes everything you’ve got — plus more! And I wanted to spend time with her. I didn’t even know if I was going to want to continue making movies. I thought maybe I’d done what I needed to do. But the break was really refreshing for me and I feel I’ve come back with a lot more clarity.”
On casting Australian actress Abbie Cornish to play a 19th century English woman, Fanny Brawne
“I was aware of Abbie’s work and I thought she was incredible. But I did think, ‘Hang on. This is an English story, we’ve got to have an English girl.’ But when Abbie focuses on something, it’s powerful. And she had read the script and I remember her saying to me it’s like it was alive. She could feel it breathing. She’s quite poetic herself and is an independent thinking person who sees the world and takes it in for herself. You need that quality for Fanny Brawne because she has to be a kind of love rebel. She needed to be independent and strong and girlish and a little crazy and vivacious without being irritating — and also have the depth to go through the tragedy at the end. Which was amazing, watching her. It’s just completely heartbreaking.”
On why there aren’t more women directing movies in Hollywood.
“Well, it’s about time [the Academy] gave one of them the best director! I’ve thought about it and I’ve thought about it and this is the best way I can explain it. I think we have to come to accept that this is a man’s world. Every anecdotal piece of evidence leads us to think about that and see it that way, especially in the arts. I’m not moaning or complaining, cause I love being a woman. But it’s a bit like Father Christmas. When you grow up, it’s all equal-equal, girls and boys. You go to film school — still equal number of boys and girls, and the girls do very well. But as soon as they graduate, it’s like, ‘Okay, and by the way, Father Christmas doesn’t exist! [laughs] That equality you enjoyed? It’s over — it’s over.’ It’s not even spoken, but that’s what you come to realize because you hit the boys’ club. And it’s impenetrable.
“I don’t know how I get to do what I do. What I focus on is my love for my projects — I just love them and do them and find that as an empowerment. And I think the strange misstep of it all is, in terms of an audience, women are so passionate about what they love and men [i.e. studio execs and the guys making the big decisions in Hollywood] don’t always judge very well what that might be. [laughs] So there’s half the world that is not very well served by the entertainment industry. And whenever people like Nora Ephron, who seems to have a finger on that pulse, come through and deliver a really female film, or Mamma Mia or Sex and the City — okay, they may be female fantasies, but they’re as real for women and as valid entertainment as the Marvel Comics.”
So there you have it, PopWatchers. Check out the Bright Star trailer below. If you’re as hopeless a romantic as I am, you might just feel your knees buckling at sight of such gorgeous, fearless, innocent true love. Swoon.
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This looks lovely and heartbreaking! I’m really looking forward to seeing it. – I think what she says about women directors has been true, but we are slow to change. I’ve noticed many more women’s names as directors of television shows, where a lot of great stories are being told (e.g. Mad Men); perhaps this trend will soon bleed over into film. I love great drama (neither Mamma Mia nor SATC particularly appealed to me, though I wish for comedies that aren’t of the adolescent-boy genre), and would love to see more stories told by women.
Hollywood will espouse the values of equality but if you look at the top of studios or in the director chairs, there are few industries that practice equality less.
It’s sad, because movies with female leads like Mamma Mia do extremely well – and it’s not because Mamma Mia is really a “great” movie but because female filmgoers are so starved for movies which feature interesting female characters that we’ll see anything. Of course, then that gives studios an excuse to either pump out more junk or dismiss these movies as flukes. We need more female filmmakers who tell stories about women.
I was always a tomboy. I’m far more entertained by the Marvel comics than by SATC. I suspect a large reason for there being so few known female filmmakers may be that so many female writers, directors etc. are too focused on the lack of “just for women” entertainment, and so tend to turn out stuff with distinct agendas for distinct female audiences – i.e. the ‘empowerment’ Campion spoke of – instead of just focusing on making a good product. I see it all the time in books – I rarely read sci-fi or fantasy by female authors, because the story is usually just there as a weak afterthought to help move the rant along, the real point of the book being to obsess over what patriarchal pigs men can be. Case in point: Margaret Atwood.
Funny thing is, there ARE ladies in the entertainment industry playing major roles in quality stuff that isn’t confined to being made and marketed for women alone. Alyssa Finley is the project lead on the extraordinary BioShock game series (I assume #2 will be extraordinary). Naomi Novik, who got her start working for BioWare writing modules for the wildly popular Neverwinter Nights (PC), recently turned to novels and wrote some great historical fantasy. And why does a woman have to be in *charge* behind the camera before other women in the industry recognize her contribution? Academy Award-winner Thelma Schoonmaker has been editing Martin Scorsese’s films since before ‘Taxi Driver’! She’s behind the camera doing fantastic work on films a wide audience can appreciate.
Making good art anyyone can enjoy, regardless of gender, without worrying about whether or not it’s sufficiently feminine? Now THAT’s empowering.