The “trailblazing” director Nicole Kidman said changed cinema: “She paved the way”
Nicole Kidman is a truly one-of-a-kind artist, establishing a creative philosophy that has been replicated by very few people. Where there is power, there should be responsibility, something that Kidman has recognised in her efforts to leverage her power for good and level the playing field, working with women directors to address the gender imbalance within this role.
But this is a sentiment that is ignored by most people in the industry, with some of the most powerful actors making no effort to include people typically excluded. Leonardo DiCaprio has consistently worked with male directors for his entire career, and even someone like Emma Stone has only worked with one woman director. In a world full of people like this, Kidman is truly playing a different ball game, something that stemmed from one collaboration during her early career.
In recent years, Kidman has worked with everyone from Sofia Coppola to Susanne Bier and Halina Reijn. Her focus on women’s experiences has led to a selection of nuanced, moving, and eye-opening stories. But while she has been involved with many tales of this ilk, her early film with Jane Campion was one that sparked her future gender-equality mission and cemented her admiration for Campion, describing her as a true trailblazer of this movement.
At a time when so few women were allowed behind the camera, the likes of Claire Denis, Celine Sciamma and Jane Campion were pivotal in bringing in a new wave of female directors, with Campion’s early film The Piano being regarded as a once-in-a-lifetime masterpiece. The director later won the Academy Award for ‘Best Director’, making history as just the second woman to win this award.
When discussing this, Kidman expressed her admiration for Campion’s work and impact on cinema as a whole, saying, “There are very few trailblazers like Jane. She paved the way. There are not many females in her generation that are her equivalent. Which is sad, because you can think of many, many men with that powerful and visionary language. That’s what we’re looking to change now. It has to happen.”
While so few women have been allowed into this club of visionaries, Campion is one who has been widely heralded as a genius of her time. However, her body of work is still pretty sparse compared to her male counterparts. The Piano is largely heralded as one of the greatest films of all time, yet her projects were fairly few and far between after its release.
But Campion undeniably paved the way for other women in this role, with the likes of Greta Gerwig, Sofia Coppola and Kelly Reichardt slowly rising up and making the industry a slightly less unequal place. Without these women, who knows how long it would have taken for similar opportunities to reach these women, opportunities that still don’t reach so many.
For someone like Cheryl Dunye, this opportunity never truly came, despite the fact that The Watermelon Woman remains one of the most influential queer movies of all time, with its approach to intersectional feminism being something that hasn’t been seen since. Work has been done to address the imbalance in the industry, but there is still far more that needs to be done, a movement that Campion was involved with from the beginning.
