Photo by Alex Bailey for Focus Features
By Jennifer K. Stuller
Hanna’s trailer screened at WonderCon features a seemingly feral teenage girl. She is trained in combat to be an assassin, and is sent on a mission that may or may not serve as a metaphor for growing up and moving out into the world. It’s all set to a Chemical Brothers score, and marketed as an action flick cum modern fairy tale cum . . . female empowerment movie?
Perhaps it’s all those things: Director Joe Wright (Pride and Prejudice, Atonement) claims the film is layered, and while addressing social, gender, and metaphysical issues, it can be enjoyed on multiple levels, or, if you prefer it, as a pure action film.
“I certainly set out to make a film where one could take this film on a purely action/adventure level and hopefully enjoy it, get a little out of it, and come away having had a good experience.”
To be honest, when I first saw the trailer my reaction was of the “been there, done that” variety. Female warriors, assassins, and heroes are almost always trained by fathers and father figures.* In fact, just last year we watched as the very thrilling Hit-Girl from Kick-Ass was manipulated by her father for similar purpose.
What maybe makes Hanna different is her upbringing outside of the pressures of modern society that other teenage girls face such as celebrity, pop culture – even romantic crushes. Wright wanted to create a “strong female character” who grew up outside of “gender sexual politics, who had never met another woman, never seen advertising, not had a clue what lip gloss was.”
Photo by Jasin Boland for Focus Features
Saoirse Ronan (Atonement, The Lovely Bones), the Academy Award nominated actress who stars as Hanna, sees her character as a role model. “I think it’s important that we have strong female characters now that can really make an impression on people — on young people — and that aren’t sexy or cool.”
“I don’t mean this to be corny,” she added later, “But once in a while I think, ‘What would Hanna do?’”
In fact, the director’s concerns about the continued sexual objectification of young women were something he wanted to address with Hanna. Referencing Zack Snyder’s recent hyper-sexualized and infantilized girl heroes of Sucker Punch, Wright said that “‘Girl Power’ is bullshit,” noting that “female empowerment is not about sex.”**
Though one might interpret this to mean the film is feminist in its intent, Wright claims that a “feminist manifesto” was not his mission. “I was really just asking questions,” he said. “Of myself, and of the world around me – and therefore, hopefully of the audience too. But I don’t think that she’s a feminist character, or, that it’s a feminist film.”
“I don’t believe in messages, and I have no placards to hold up,” said Wright, “But I do want to ask questions. And I do have a mirror; which I shine back at the world as I see it.”
“Feminism was supposed to change the fucking world,” he said. (Pssst. It did, and it does.) He remarked that feminists have children that grow up to consume celebrity culture and false empowerment – a statement I personally felt bordered on blaming women for the current state of feminism, but maybe I misinterpreted. Maybe.
But really, does a woman really need to be raised by a man in the woods as a blank slate in order to be empowered? Or does the film itself take Hanna on a journey towards personal agency – asking valuable questions about women’s place in western society along the way?
Hanna’s a “Once upon a time” tale and fairy tale elements are expressed in both the narrative and the production design. Hanna grows up in a cabin in a forest. She is schooled by her father (Eric Bana). Her training and the only books she knows – an encyclopedia and a copy of Grimm’s fairy tales – are all that inform her world view. I’d been ready to go into this film with the idea that it was another problematic tale of female empowerment – which may still be the case – but my wariness is tempered by my intrigue at its fairy tale roots.
Without having yet seen the film in full, my guess is that the narrative tension arises when Hanna’s formation in the surreal, fairy tale world – her reality – clashes with the real world she is forced to encounter. Here lies the real potential for female strength, because perhaps empowerment will come not from Hanna’s impressive physical ability, training, or lethal skill, but from her ability to adjust – to grow. The film’s tagline after all is “Adapt or Die.”
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*See my book, Ink-Stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors for a whole chapter about this!
** A more complicated discussion for another day – though I think he meant something along the lines that the male gaze compromises female empowerment.
I’m now extremely curious about this film.
Wright seems awfully confident in understanding feminism and female empowerment. He statement, “I don’t believe in messages, and I have no placards to hold up,” said Wright, “But I do want to ask questions. And I do have a mirror; which I shine back at the world as I see it.” is a fluff argument. For one, it sounds pretentious, a way to preach without preaching, and two, asking questions is a statement.
It is interesting that there was a comparison between this movie and Sucker Punch. What is female empowerment? There is no such thing as a blank slate and so all persons are influenced by social pressures and messages. Though the idea of raising a child in the woods is an intriguing way to play around with the concept of tabula rasa, yet ultimately, women are constantly influenced by men in their lives. So where does that leave women? For me, empowerment comes from recognizing those influences and making choices.
I am looking forward to the movie. For me, teaching my daughter super-spy stuff sounds really cool. I just hope she wants to.
Eric, I couldn’t agree more, and I actually think the last statement you made really hit the nail on the head when you said “I just hope she wants to.” In my mind, raising your daughter to be an assassin is no more empowering than raising her to be a homemaker if you don’t give her the opportunity to explore the world.
In some ways, being raised in the woods away from all of that is a freedom, but I think Wright fails to understand that these external things don’t necessarily have to de-power a woman. If a man chooses to wear lip gloss, does that make him any more or less empowered?
And it’s a pretty uneducated statement on his part to say that feminism has raised “children that grow up to consume celebrity culture and false empowerment.” That couldn’t have anything to do with the rise of Hollywood in the early twentieth century? Or maybe people have been worshiping celebrities for, I don’t know, maybe all of civilization? How about Greek gods and goddesses? They didn’t have People magazine, but they did have marble statues (which take a hell of a lot more time). One might even argue (to the offense of anyone religious) that worshiping a god or gods is its own form of celebrity culture, and if you were to make that argument, then you’d be talking about something that has been a part of culture throughout many, many patriarchies.
I still want to see Hanna, but Wright is showing his privilege saying that sex does not enter into female empowerment. That’s not ALL female empowerment is about, but it is a huge part of it, because sex is a huge part of life. Feminists have fought so hard for the rights of women to say yes to sex or to say no to sex and have both decisions respected by society and the law; for the right to decide when and if they will have children; for female sexual desire to not just be acknowledged, but satisfied as well; for the demystification of virginity; for the sexual education of both girls and boys; for the safety and protection of sex workers; even queer rights have their roots in lesbian feminism, that the “choice” of one’s lovers, the choice to pursue one’s true desires, is nobody else’s business.
So, you know, kudos for him wanting to make an empowering story and hooray for making it about something other than sex, but his assessment on female sexuality is misguided to say the least.
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I’m extremely confused how you can discern the movie by just watching the trailer? Trailer’s aren’t a full representation of a film.
I’m pretty sure Jennifer saw the whole movie before writing this, she also did quite a bit of research and talked with the creators, etc. at Wondercon.
To be clear, I did not see the movie before I wrote this – nor did I base the whole piece on the trailer, as a closer read might reveal.
My comments here are based on how the film was marketed via the trailer, as well as from the Wondercon panel and roundtable interviews with both Wright and Ronan (both of whom I was able to ask direct questions of).
I have yet to write a review of the film, but here are some thoughts I wrote immediately after seeing it:
“I was totally surprised by how much I enjoyed, Hanna. It’s not a feminist movie, nor a female empowerment film. (It’s also not a movie about a child assassin.) It *is* a thoroughly gripping surreal, sci-fi, action/adventure film – albeit with some pretty major plot holes. Women fill lead roles and men are peripheral characters – a rare turn, but it’s not about gender. And that’s pretty cool.”
Of course, none of this negates Wright’s confused, or misinformed, ideas about feminism. Nor, that the production notes tried to push the film as one about female empowerment. Nor does it negate the impressions that the trailer left – especially, for me, considering some of the content I’d addressed in my book. Trailers are structured to sell a film in a certain way – one that either sells an audience on a film or doesn’t. I went into the film with the impressions discussed here: Wright’s statements about feminism, a trailer that appeared to be a “been there, done that,” and production notes that tried to sell a child assassin as a feminist icon. So with all that in mind, I tried to share my impression, and perhaps provide some material to consider while other audiences engaged with the film.
Ah thanks so much for clarifying I really appreciate it.