Women's Roles in Hollywood

I have to say I haven't seen as many films this last year as I usually do, and even fewer of the heavily nominated films. I don't really get much into Oscars. I know what I like, and great films don't always get the acclaim, and ridiculously overrated films sometimes get all the glory (Leaving Las Vegas or English Patient, anyone).

But there is one consistent truth in the Oscars: the mundane quality of the nominated performances for best supporting actress show just how shallow the pool is for actresses. There may be enough quality roles out there to fill out the best actress category (not always true), but after those five roles, women are about tapped out. After that, it's totally ordinary, uninteresting roles for the second tier, followed by the truly bad roles for everyone else.

Rachel Weisz, last night's winner for supporting actress, proves the point. I saw The Constant Gardener. It was so uninteresting it wasn't even worth a review posting. What a disappointment. Weisz's character was bland and poorly put together. Do you think the woman might have had just a little emotion mere hours after miscarrying late in her pregnancy, or having a still born child (the film never really explains what happened, just that in some way they lost the baby)? Nope, the loss is totally brushed aside. The character was, at best, a 2-D sketch of a human being.

It's not that Weisz did a bad job. It's that the role was so poorly written that there's not much anyone could have done with it. Regardless of whose fault it is, the performance is hardly the stuff of legend, but it is apparently one of the best of the year for women. Compare that to the male performances. The worst supporting actor nominee usually did a vastly superior job than the best supporting actress.

While we live in a supposedly enlightened age with equality for women and all that, women were much better off in film back in the 40's. Women then had access to a steady stream of strong characters to play. Today they have access to a steady stream of characters who look good and often doff their clothes to emphasize the point, not to mention to compensate for poor writing. (Sorry, but nudity is lazy film making that almost always is used to make up for the other shortcomings of the film. Can't write a decent relationship between two characters? Strip the actress, and no one will notice. Picture dragging in the middle? Throw in some nudity to keep people interested.)