When the Oscar nominations were announced last month, many people were surprised–and angry–over the lack of female directors among the names read aloud that morning. Marielle Heller was not one them–either of the nominated directors or those surprised by the absence of women in the category. In Kate Erbland’s insightful interview on Indiewire, the “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” director and fellow 2018 standout Debra Granik share their thoughts on female filmmakers and this year’s awards season where they’ve almost entirely missed on out nominations.
“People are like, ‘Don’t you feel bad? You were snubbed,'” said Heller, “I was like, I never expected to be nominated. That is the difference.” Meanwhile, Granik, who was highly praised for the quiet sensitivity of “Leave No Trace” last year, addresses the larger systemic issues that are keeping women out of the awards conversations year after year.
“I felt that women were snubbed, though,” she said. “Snub, forget that word. Snub makes it sound like it’s a personal, excluded. Snub is a dumb word, that’s a word out of old Hollywood. It’s a word that can only be associated, I think, with vanity. I think empirical exclusion is more of, I think, what we’re talking about.”
Last year should’ve been the perfect year for a woman–or even women plural–to get an Oscar nomination for Best Director, an honor that’s only gone to five female filmmakers in almost a century of Academy Awards history. In addition to Heller and Granik, other women earned praise for their diverse films in 2018, including Lynne Ramsey‘s “You Were Never Really Here,” Tamara Jenkins‘ “Private Life” and Chloé Zhao‘s “The Rider.” Though various awards, most notably the Spirit Awards, recognized the women and their films, they were largely overlooked at the Oscars in all categories.
“This was an incredible year for women filmmakers,” Marielle Heller said. “A lot of us made really worthy movies. But that was our undoing. There were too many of us, and the world doesn’t know how to handle more than one good female director at a time.”
“Social change works like a rubber band,” Granik said. “You stretch it, and then it snaps back, because it got uncomfortable stretched. Stretching is uncomfortable. I don’t know, all of a sudden, society was in downward dog and the hamstrings are stretching, and then you crumble back into child’s pose.”
READ MORE: Jane Campion Campaigns For Director Debra Granik To Get An Oscar Nom For ‘Leave No Trace’
Only “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” was noticed during the Oscar nominations period. But even while the Academy gave nods to the performances by Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant as well as the script from Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty, it ignored the film in both the Best Picture and Best Director categories. Marielle Heller describes the lack of knowledge and attribution for director’s work, particularly in a film like hers:
“I had a reporter ask me recently if the actors had consulted me on their performances at all. And I saw red for the only time in this press tour, because I felt like, ‘Oh, I didn’t realize that our understanding of what I do is actually so low.’ … I think that there is a very clear understanding from the public about these super muscular, technical films, and how that’s directing. If there’s an explosion, someone directed that. Or a big fight scene. Or some big crane shot, or something.”
With a film that gets nominated in three major categories, it’s surprising that neither a Best Picture or a Best Director nomination happened for “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” as though Holofcener and Whitty’s script and McCarthy and Grant’s performances simply happened without any outside…direction. Heller went on to say:
READ MORE: ‘Can You Ever Forgive Me?’ Is An Unexpected Little Gem Of A Movie [Telluride Review]
“I got separated from my film, which I worked so hard on. If I had gone into this awards campaign going, ‘I made this movie. I did this. I created these performances, I created this chemistry, I brought them together, I cast Richard E. Grant, I cast Melissa McCarthy. I brought them together. I did this. I found all of these things. This was what I did, this was what I did, this was what I did,’ maybe I wouldn’t have been separated from the story of movie in the way that I have been. But how would I have slept at night?”
Be sure to check out the interview with Marielle Heller and Debra Granik in its entirety on Indiewire.