It is no secret that the cinema canon has historically skewed toward lionizing the white, male auteur. Beyond the Canon is a monthly series that seeks to question that history and broaden horizons by pairing one much-loved, highly regarded, canonized classic with a thematically or stylistically-related—and equally brilliant—work by a filmmaker traditionally excluded from that discussion. This month’s double feature pairs Jane Campion’s In the Cut (2003) with Alan J. Pakula’s Klute (1971).
By Caden Mark Gardner
At the 70th Cannes Film Festival in 2017, directors of past Palme d’Or winners were invited back to celebrate the Festival’s history. At the center of one photo for this occasion was Jane Campion surrounded by an overwhelmingly male swath of contemporaries—a damning visual of the festival’s historic gender inequality. Sharing the top prize for The Piano in 1993 with Chen Kaige (Farewell My Concubine), Campion remains the only female director to win the award. The Piano went on to achieve world cinema renown, winning three Oscars, and reaping $140 million in global box office. That type of success is seldom replicated. Since The Piano, Campion’s works have been predominantly female-focused and specifically concerned with portraying femininity in relation to toxic masculinity and patriarchy, an impulse most recently realized in her limited run series Top of the Lake (2013—17).
