Feminist Rating: P for Patriarchal
MPA Rating: PG-13
Bechdel-Wallace Test: Fail
Female/feminist director: No – Christopher Nolan
Where to watch: Local move theater or drive-in (I safely watched this film from my car at South Bay Drive-in in San Diego, CA).
Writer and director Christopher Nolan once again dazzles audiences with this film – an unconventional and, at times, a confusing time-bendy film whose highlights stem from its highly original storyline and beautiful cinematography. While he exceeded expectations in these respects, per usual, I think it’s time we expect more from Nolan’s writing in terms of female character development. His previous successes and works of art include Inception, Interstellar, Dunkirk, and The Dark Knight Trilogy, and, like Tenet, all of these films feature strong, independent female characters. However, the female characters’ stories essentially exist in a vacuum with their successes used mostly as backstory, while the male characters’ decisions are the ultimate drivers of the plots of these films.
This film does not pass the Bechdel-Wallace Test, which is a low bar to set when assessing female character representation and development in films. There are three named female characters – a scientist named Barbara (Clémence Poésy), an arms dealer named Priya (Dimple Kapadia), and an art expert named Kat (Elizabeth Debicki) – none of whom ever speak to each other or to any other women in the film. The three women are secondary characters from whom The Protagonist (John David Washington) receives information and whom he occasionally uses as pawns in his strategy for saving the world, but they do not display much depth or character development (beyond the now cliché femme fatale-style vengeance theme).
One way Nolan could have improved the female character development and representation in this film would have been to swap Elizabeth Debicki’s and Robert Pattinson’s characters. It would have been a progressive choice to have a male-female duo (who aren’t romantically involved, just as Washington and Pattinson’s characters are not) carrying the film. Seeing Debicki on screen as the highly-skilled agent with a Master’s degree in physics who explains some of the most confusing paradoxes of the time-bending nature of the film, instead of Pattinson’s character Neil, would have been an easy switch to do in the script. Pattinson could have then taken on the role of husband to Andrei (Kenneth Branagh), which would have been an opportunity for queer representation.
An aspect of representation that is an improvement from Nolan’s other films is the casting director’s decision to cast people of color for large parts, including John David Washington as the leading man, Dimple Kapadia as a female arms dealer, and Himesh Patel as Mahir, another skilled agent (although he could have had more speaking parts).
When choosing a rating for this film, I was stuck between P for Patriarchal and M for Misogynistic. The film’s main plot and themes revolve mostly around (presumably) cis, straight males and their struggles, and there are alarming depictions of emotional and physical spousal abuse. The abuse is firmly deemed evil and done by an evil character, which ultimately led me to give this film a rating of P because the film did not glorify the abuse or excuse it in a good guy’s path to glory.
I do not want anyone to think I did not enjoy the film – quite the opposite actually. I was on the edge of my seat from the very start and the way the story unfolded was fun to experience. As always, Nolan does not disappoint in the art of entertaining his audiences with cerebral and new ideas, and this is especially refreshing in the context of all the remakes happening in Hollywood lately. But he missed an opportunity with this film to tell his story with a woman as one of the more developed protagonists. His track record of including strong yet underdeveloped female characters in his films needs to change for the better. Perhaps he will do better on his next film.
If you like this film, you might also like:
Inception
Interstellar
Dunkirk
Edge of Tomorrow
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