Director Gina Prince-Bythewood and screenwriter Dana Stevens teamed for a magnificent film last year, but you would barely know it at this point based on the way the entertainment press and Hollywood have mostly (with a few exceptions) moved on from it to focused on a set of mostly very white films. However, Prince-Bythewood’s The Woman King should be the frontrunner for 2022’s Oscar for Best Picture.
Viola Davis and John Boyega star in “The Woman King”
The treatment of The Woman King as an also-ran contender is surprising and hard to understand, unless you consider the fact it’s an almost entirely Black cast and the other supposed/most-discussed frontrunners Best Picture are all productions with mostly-white casts and filmmakers (The Banshees of Inisherin, Top Gun: Maverick, Triangle of Sadness, Tár, Living, Elvis, All Quiet on the Western Front, Women Talking, Aftersun, Babylon, The Whale, The Fabelmans, plus the slightly less white Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery and Avatar: The Way of Water).
The standout examples of diverse contenders among the most talked about and mostly white top contenders, based on the current rankings and conversations among most media and pundits, are Everything Everywhere All At Once and Black Panther. And if we’re desperate to find examples of more inclusivity, we could also look to Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (which at least has a somewhat more diverse ensemble cast), Avatar: The Way of Water (again, at least a somewhat diverse ensemble cast).
But the rest are primarily white-directed white-lead mostly-white-cast pictures (and the point here is to draw attention to and criticize the press and awards focus, not those films themselves, so don’t take this as specifically critiquing those individual films, though some certainly could’ve chosen to better diversify their casts).
That’s sixteen main contenders, based on most media’s and awards groups’ rankings and nominees, with fourteen being entirely or overwhelmingly white in their casts and filmmakers.
Also usually absent from the Best Picture predictions and discussions (again, with some notable exceptions), despite being powerful cinematic accomplishments far more deserving of some “major contender” status talk, are the films Till, Decision to Leave, and of course The Woman King. Those are in addition to actual strong valid contenders Everything Everywhere All At Once and Wakanda Forever.
Looking at that diverse set of films, it’s fair to ask why such a large percentage of the films dominating award season discussion, media coverage, and awards group attention are mostly devoid of racial diversity. 87%, to be precise, unless we include Glass Onion and Avatar 2 as diverse enough ensembles to count, in which case the percentage is still a too-high 75%.
I named The Woman King my choice as the best film of 2023 in my full countdown of the top 20 films of the year. That’s because it’s a spectacular film, emotionally gripping with resonant themes and compelling characterizations, filled with award-worthy performances and visually thrilling realistic action and glorious cinematography. It makes you want to stand up and cheer, grab your chest in painful sorrow, and tell everyone else they need to see it right away.
Upon release, The Woman King generated record-setting audience scores and enjoyed universal praise and acclaim. It was instantly a frontrunner for the crown of 2022’s greatest movie. But as months passed, attention not only wained but seemed to forget about it as award season set in.
I realize plenty more great films have released and are worthy of praise and attention. But there’s something consistently frustrating and frankly sinister about the ways in which, year after year, major Black entertainment that in a fair society would easily win major awards and at least get sustained attention as deserving frontrunners become ghosted and excluded. Indeed, frequently the acclaim around award-season Black films will actually focus around acting awards while directing and other major awards are reserved for the parade of whiter pictures.
The same is frankly true in occasional all-time best film lists, including Sight and Sound. Yes, many folks rushed to aggressively defend Sight and Sound from complaints by the unwashed masses who had bones to pick, and the towers of predominantly white western cinema were once again defended by self-proclaimed champions of true art. So we wind up with something like 50 of the top 60 films on Sight and Sound coming primarily from white western nations, and Black films in particular seemingly added toward the bottom quarter of the list to make up for its glaring omission from the top tiers of declared cinematic greatness.
If you’re mad at me for criticizing the racism underlying such lists and rankings, take it up with the folks guilty of it — but don’t try to sell me a tired list of arguments about how it’s all based on merit and how dare I question the integrity of the film critics who voted or the artistic value of the (mostly white western) filmmakers they handed the vast majority of space as defining what great cinema really is.
Yes, yes, I’ve seen a large number of the films on the list, including many so-called obscure, indie, or arthouse features. It doesn’t matter. Like it or not, the list is lacking in representation for world cinema and in particular is heavily slanted against Black cinema. Meanwhile, filmmakers known for their abusiveness, their racism, their misogyny, and all manner of other manifestations of white western chauvinism are represented in many places on the list, as they are also among the most praised filmmakers and held up as innovators and auteurs who must not be questioned for their simple human faults. Similar excuses and defenses are rarely on display for certain other filmmakers or certain other genres of film, of course.
Hollywood hasn’t really confronted its history and modern institutionalized racism and sexism, and tends to get angry and hostile when it’s brought up. But the only way to overcome it is to directly confront it, including when you’re uncomfortable doing so — that’s probably when it’s most important, and especially during award season where occasionally displays of progress and diversity are made if too much criticism is around, quickly followed by a return to business as usual as soon as the attention dies down again (which it inevitably does, to all of our great shame).
The Woman King is a fantastic, brilliant film deserving your viewing, deserving award season attention and discussion, deserving frontrunner status, and deserving the Oscar for Best Picture. That it’s rarely discussed anymore, and that it has low odds of actually making it onto the final list of Oscar nominees for Best Picture, is sad to behold.
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