Charlotte Wells and the Magnificent Seven

Charlotte Wells and the Magnificent Seven

By Carly Burton

To cry during a movie is, for me, a sacred act reserved for that which truly makes me feel something. Whether it be the nostalgic euphoria I felt watching Avengers: Endgame opening night or the bittersweet heartache brought on by La La Land, the swell of emotions rising up over the course of two hours will move me to tears. This isn’t necessarily an indication of a good film; Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice made me cry because of how infuriating those 152 minutes were, my tears a battle-cry for Zack Synder to fear. Whether it be pure anger bubbling in the depths of my soul or a deep appreciation of a job well done, my body will find a way to free these emotions. A hitch of my breath. Foggy vision. A moment of wetness sliding from my brown eyes, past the dark circles resulting from my borderline nocturnal habits, down my warm cheeks to disappear in my skin. Inhale. Exhale. Relief.

However, it’s very rare for me to react the way I did to Charlotte Wells’ 2022 debut feature Aftersun. The heavy feeling in my chest sat there for the nearly 90 minute film and weighed heavily on my psyche as the credits rolled. My mom and I sat together in silence. We then shared a couple of short words about enjoying it. She told me goodnight. She left to go to bed. I sat there motionless. Then my body acted before my mind could catch up, grabbing the remote and rewinding to the final five minutes of the film. Watching a polaroid of 11-year-old Sophie and her father Calum slowly fade into existence as they talk and laugh together off-screen about not wanting their vacation to end, I felt something inside me start to burn. Then came the “Under Pressure” scene – the final moments of Sophie and Calum’s last vacation together. Their joyful movement to the Queen-David Bowie classic on a hotel dance floor is intercut with shots of a grown Sophie trying to hold onto her father in a disorientingly strobe-lit room, embracing him as she did when she was a child only for him to slip from her grasp.

Like a tea kettle left on the stove for too long, my emotions bubbled over in a hot, burning wave and my sobs felt like a deafening whistle to my own ears. If there ever was a film to clear my sinuses, I’ve found it, and I have the disgusting Snapchat memories to prove it. This is a film that felt uniquely and absurdly personal. It feels rare for me, a 19-year-old Queer Wasian woman, to feel represented. It was absurd that I saw myself most in this violently Scottish film where I had to turn the captions on to understand what they were saying.

My dad passed only months prior to me watching Aftersun. As a person who had been reflecting on the summer vacations spent with my father and who he was as a man outside of his parental role in my life while trying to get my hands on any recording left of him to help me do so, it’s no wonder why I connected to this movie. It’d be a marvel if I didn’t. It also helps that Charlotte Wells simply did a fantastic job at depicting this final holiday through the lens of a memory long gone by use of the disrupted shots, the jumps in time, the switches between the normal camera and Sophie’s MiniDV camera, and the very specific framing that had me in awe – the kinds of directorial choices that felt far more ambitious and riveting than quite a few other films I saw in 2022. And yet, despite all this, despite the fact that this film shook me to my core and managed to turn me into the Mucinex monster in the process, I didn’t for a moment think it would get a major award nomination.

Then it did. Aftersun is officially an Academy Award Nominated film since Paul Mescal, who played the titular role of Sophie’s father Calum, was nominated for Actor in a Leading Role. It was an absolute shock to me as he hadn’t been nominated at the Golden Globes or even the SAG Awards. I thought the Academy would fully glaze over Aftersun, making it just another indie classic that would remain unrewarded. (I’ll never forget you Frank). Yet, they did take a look at Aftersun. They just ignored the woman who made it all happen.

This seems to be a theme at the Academy. After 95 years, seven women have been nominated and only three have won. Now, yet another year of female directors receiving little to no nominations for their amazing work has gone by, even with the female-led and female-directed film Women Talking being nominated for Adapted Screenplay and, the biggest category of all, Best Picture. With fantastic films like Causeway, Till, and The Eternal Daughter being released this year, there was no shortage of female directors to be considered for this honor. Hell, this year had six male directors nominated with only five nominations total. I love the Daniels dearly, but isn’t that hilarious? Perhaps a bit painful? Was that this year’s Oscars slap – a slap in the face of female directors everywhere?

Okay, the 95th Academy Awards is not without its merits in terms of progress for the industry. I’m just as excited as everyone else, if not more, for the win of the Daniels and their absolute sweep with Everything Everywhere All At Once, yet another 2022 film that had me falling apart at the seams. It’s rare that a female-character driven story of queerness, immigrant roots, Asianness, generational trauma, and absolute absurdity gets rewarded so heavily at the Oscars; it’s a film that goes so deeply against the norm of what an “Oscar winning” film usually is. While I acknowledge and celebrate how amazing these accomplishments are, though, I still wonder… is it enough? Will it ever be when the women who helm the ship of their incredible films get ignored and the men who they bring aboard are the only ones rewarded?

The Academy Awards are not just a golden statue to collect dust on a director’s shelf. For women who claw their way into this industry and become one of  few women who even get nominated, it’s a huge platform to take their career to the next level and bring as many other women with them as possible. It’s not only a way to push forward in a profession that seems fragile, especially as a woman in a male-dominated industry, but a way to inspire aspiring female filmmakers to take the next step towards telling their stories.

The first time I felt like I could possibly take that step was seeing Greta Gerwig become one of the magnificent seven, nominated for her first feature Lady Bird. I know quite a few other aspiring female filmmakers felt the same based on the amount of women I met during my first week in film school who said their favorite director was Gerwig despite her only having directed two films total. Lady Bird is yet another film I deem personal, and to see it rewarded with even a nomination at the Academy Awards motivated me enough to take a chance for what I’m truly passionate about. You can imagine my pain when Aftersun wasn’t treated the same way. I can’t begin to imagine how many potential aspiring female directors this has stopped, but I do have hope that soon it won’t be such a rarity for a woman director to get a nod of acknowledgment from the Academy, or that women won’t have to stand in a room full of men and seem brave or inspirational for doing so. Here’s to double digits!