See Photos: Geena Davis, Female YouTubers Unite for Gender Equality in Mediaįor instance, while the film rightly confronts the misogyny and male gaze that impact how women are presented on screen and how that in turn influences young female audiences (who are compellingly seen enraptured by a movie screen at various points in the conversation, thanks to editor Jasmin Way), “This Changes Everything” fails to delve into other egregious Hollywood missteps, like parity in journalism.
This is perhaps why the bulk of “This Changes Everything” is problem-identifying, but in doing so, it exposes blind spots in the conversation. Going back even further in time, the documentary pays respect to ’80s activists like directors Joelle Dobrow and Susan Bay Nimoy (“Eve”) and gives films like “Thelma and Louise,” “The Joy Luck Club,” “Twilight,” and “Daughters of the Dust” their due for passing the Bechdel test and for reflecting the documentary’s optimistic title.Īs said in the film, however, the title “This Changes Everything” is ironic considering that, as notable as these milestones have been, they haven’t managed to shift the archaic, straight-white-cisgender-male Hollywood paradigm or to topple the dim statistics. Shonda Rhimes, also featured in the film, and her empire Shondaland are lauded for employing diverse casts and crew. Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine production company gets a well-deserved shout-out for creating opportunities for women in front of and behind the camera. Davis talks about her eponymous Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Media, founded in 2004, along with the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, both of which are vigilant about baring the disheartening statistics for all to be held responsible. “This Changes Everything” spends the least amount of time on that last part, problem-solving, but it’s the most interesting aspect of the film because it shows some forward movement in the conversation. Ultimately, it’s about blowing the lid off the problem, highlighting the journey of how we got to this point, and what the industry is doing to fix it.Īlso Read: David Lynch, Geena Davis Named Honorary Oscar Recipients The short answer seems to be, to quote one of the film’s interviews, to build a community around the outspoken supporters –going beyond actors and directors to writers, casting agents, and showrunners - who have often been siloed to deal with their individual grievances alone. Then the question becomes, What is the point of this film?
That concern is intensified as we see interviews with women who have been at the forefront of the #TimesUp movement - actors Reese Witherspoon and Rosario Dawson, producers Geena Davis and Tracee Ellis Ross, and directors Julie Dash (“Daughters of the Dust”) and Kimberly Peirce - because none of them really add anything new. So when director Tom Donahue (“Casting By”) begins to echo these statistics early on in “This Changes Everything,” you think it’s going to be another fruitless conversation about the lack of equality in Hollywood. Then the enraging discussion inevitably reaches a dead end because, despite decades of case studies and reporting, these numbers have barely budged. Not to mention, 92% of directors of 2018’s top-grossing domestic releases were male, even though 2017 proved that the top 100 films with female leads made 38% more money. Those include: only 11 women of color had lead roles in films last year, and only one female filmmaker (Kathryn Bigelow, “The Hurt Locker”) has ever won an Oscar for Best Director. It seems like every time the subject of gender parity in Hollywood comes up, the conversation immediately becomes about sharing and dissecting the dismal stats we’ve already seen countless times before.
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