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Sexism still real, says Charlize
13/09/2005 10:49 - (SA)
Toronto - Sexist attitudes in workplaces depicted in Niki Caro's latest film North Country, which premiered on Monday in Toronto, persist despite legal and personal struggles of the past decades, according to actor Charlize Theron.
The movie is based on the story of a monumental class-action lawsuit in 1989 that aimed to reshape gender politics in American industry.
"This goes on everywhere. This is not like something that happened in the 1960s. It's in our near past," said Theron. She plays Josey Aimes, a mother of two who returns home to northern Minnesota to rebuild her life after fleeing an abusive husband.
"You can change the law or have a landmark case like this, but at the end of the day, you can't just change people's ideas overnight," Theron said. "I think that it's something that is going to take time."
Aimes sought financial independence in a job at a local iron mine where fathers, husbands and sons toiled for generations.
But, the few female workers are intimidated and abused by the men in this harsh, rugged world with its gritty, jagged landscapes.
'Take your top off'
Many people who saw the film felt it depicted another time and place and believed that workplaces had improved, but women in the audience from throughout North America were unequivocal in proclaiming otherwise.
"I think (my hometown) changes slower than the rest of the world," said one viewer from Minnesota who lives near the mine.
The movie stars Academy Award winners Theron (Monster), Frances McDormand (with the US Midwestern accent she made famous in the cop thriller Fargo) and Sissy Spacek (Coal Miner's Daughter), as well as Woody Harrelson (The People vs Larry Flint) and Sean Bean (The Lord of the Rings).
Its filming on location at the Minnesota mine sparked "trepidation" among locals eager to forget their past, Caro said. It depicts real cases of women who were insulted, assaulted, their lockers smeared with faeces and clothes sullied with semen.
Some 300 local men who played miners in a union hall scene during the first week were "very familiar" with the "generations of attitudes toward women that haven't changed a great deal", making filming "a little intimidating", said Caro, whose second feature film, Whale Rider, won the Toronto International Film Festival's audience award in 2002.
"They would yell everything you saw in the movie and then they'd look back at Woody and go: 'Woody, you're the man. We love you Woody,' and then they'd turn back to me: 'Take your top off,'" Theron added.
- AFP
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South Africa
