Women in Film Blogathon

John over at Hitchcock's World has been running a blogathon about strong female characters in film. Here are the rules.


1) The female character in question should have qualities that make her strong. That doesn't necessarily mean better than the guys, just well-written; we're trying to promote equality here, not reverse misogyny.

2) Unlike my previous blogathon, I'm going to be a bit stricter here and say that each entry should only focus on one character. However, if you like you can write multiple entries examining different characters.

3) If you can, do try to find less obvious choices. There are a few that I can expect are likely to get picked: Ellen Ripley, Sarah Connor, etc. If you decide to write about any the "obvious" choices, I encourage you to at least try and find something new to say about them.


4) You are allowed to pick characters from any film from genre or time period you like.


There's so many strong female characters to pick one, but I decided to go for one whose strength may have seen more subtle at first glance: Anna in Eastern Promises


Anna is a meek midwife that's just gotten out of a long term relationship and had recently suffered a miscarriage. But let's think about what she did here.

She finds the diary of a Russian teenager that dies giving birth on her shift. She does a little detective work, and makes her way to a restaurant where she thinks the girl may have worked. After speaking with the owner, she realizes something more complicated is at play. But she doesn't back down.



Anna was in the position where these men could've easily intimidated her, but she didn't let that happen. Sure, she befriends Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen) but it isn't because she's afraid, she just wants to get to the bottom of this and he's the decent one.



She stands up to Kirill (Vincent Cassel) and calls him and his father out on their insane bullshit. She isn't afraid of what he might do. When they threaten her family, or come to her place of work, she still doesn't back down.

Spoilers ahead! Then after all of this, she saves the orphaned baby from Kirill and raises it as her own. How sweet is that?


When people see Eastern Promises, it's easy to see why they leave transfixed with Nikolai and how badass he was, but so was Anna. Just in a different way. 

Comments

  1. Nice entry! Anna really is a backbone to the whole movie. Cool to see an entry of female strength in a different genre than sci-fi or action. :)

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    1. Thanks! :) She is definitely the backbone. I'm glad she got a happy ending too.

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  2. Ah yes, this was an interesting movie with lots of intrigue and I do remember Anna was a pretty cool character. She even got to ride around on a motorcycle.

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    1. I love this movie so much. Thanks again for hosting this!

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  3. Lovely! I hope I'll get the chance to see this film one of these days.

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    1. It's so good! I hope you get to see it soon as well.

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  4. That is a great character and certainly one of the most underrated of all of David Cronenberg's films though he has written some great female characters but I think this is his best.

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    1. He has, but I agree. This one is my favorite too.

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  5. I wish I could say how great a choice this was, but sadly, I haven't seen Eastern Promises, yet. Shame on me.

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  6. Great choice! i love the two main characters in the movie and the relationship between them was very unique - it wasn't a typical romance, it was two as you put it decent people in indecent world

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    1. Thanks! So did I. This movie is high on my favorites list.

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  7. Another film I need to see, and I don't know why it's taking me so long because that cast is perfection: Cassel, Mortensen AND Watts? I should be all over it.

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    1. It's one of my all time favorites! I hope you see it and love it.

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  8. Your kicker is so spot on. Love that you picked Anna for this post. She really is one of Watts' great and somewhat overlooked performances. I need to watch this movie again, actually. I love the hell out of it.

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  9. Yay! Watts plays a great character that's unfairly overlooked for Mortensen's Nikolai. Great choice!

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    1. Thank you :) She is. Nikolai was great, but so was she.

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