“Right now, we’re in a really special moment,” says Jane Campion in a new interview with The Guardian. Thanks to movements including #MeToo and #TimesUp, the entertainment industry seems to be entering a new era. And Campion is “so excited about it.” “It’s like the Berlin Wall coming down, like the end of apartheid,” she observes. “I think we have lived in one of the more ferocious patriarchal periods of our time, the ’80s, ’90s, and noughties. Capitalism is such a macho force. I felt run over.”
Campion was the first — and remains the only — woman director to win Cannes’ highest honor, the Palme d’Or. “The Piano” took home the prize 25 years ago. “I hadn’t ever really thought about the numbers of women and men that had won the Palme d’Or,” she acknowledges. “I still really hadn’t taken it in.” Her feelings changed at the 2017 edition of the fest. To celebrate its 70th anniversary, Cannes assembled the Palme d’Or winners — all men, save for Campion. “That was the most shocking thing I’d ever been involved in,” she recalls.
“Rewatching my films is like digging up buried bones,” says Campion. She recently revisited “The Piano,” her drama about a mute woman and her daughter who move to New Zealand. “I really felt excited by it. I thought, my God, this is a film told from a female point of view and nowadays that’s still so rare. Even when a story appears to be from a female point of view, it’s often an apology for it,” she explains.
The “Top of the Lake” creator discusses why she gravitates towards stories about miscarriages, surrogacy, and loss. “This whole area of female experience is so unknown, but it’s like the equivalent of going to war, except no one makes movies about it,” she says. “Hero stories are wearing thin. We have lived a male life, we have lived within the patriarchy. It’s something else to take ownership of your own story.”
Campion is one of just five women to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Director. She was honored for “The Piano.” Campion’s other credits include “Bright Star,” “Holy Smoke,” and “Sweetie.”
