During a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times published Thursday, iconic director Martin Scorsese was asked again about his handling of female characters in his films amid criticism that he doesn’t give them big enough roles — a complaint sparked by the nearly silent role played by Anna Paquin in his new film, “The Irishman.” While Scorsese largely shrugged off the larger question, sticking to defending his take on Paquin’s character, the president of his production company, who happens to be a woman, felt compelled to come strongly to the director’s defense.
In the interview, Scorsese addresses a variety of topics, including his public feud with Marvel and his decision to turn down a producer role on director Todd Phillips’ “Taxi”-like “Joker.” One of the topics interviewer Dave Itzkoff couldn’t resist was the recent criticism about Scorsese’s female characters, as expressed by The Guardian’s Beatrice Loayza in an op-ed titled “Seen but not heard: why don’t women speak in The Irishman?”
“Scorsese has created provocative roles for women. But with only six words in his latest film, Anna Paquin’s moral spectre is a sign of a troubling trend in Hollywood,” writes Loayza. “A practically mute, moral spectre judging her father’s criminal lifestyle from the sidelines, she appears only a handful of times – less than 10 minutes in total. Within these boundaries, Peggy is disconcertingly diminished: Paquin speaks six words in a movie that clocks in at three-and-a-half hours. There may be a potency to such intentional restraint within the film’s elegiac trappings, yet circumscribing Peggy as Frank’s moral conscience remains doggedly frustrating. Is she more of a symbol than an actual person? … In any case, women in The Irishman are moral reminders and checks on an inward looking all-male reality.”
In response to the criticism, Scorsese, Loayza writes, “argued that Paquin’s character — whose wordless rejection of the aging Frank devastates him — was in no way diminished by her silence.”
“Don’t go for the surface. The surface says, ‘I’m going to say something and there’s going to be two or three big scenes between me and my father.’ She doesn’t need to. She saw what he did. She knows what he’s capable of,” he said.
“Scorsese said he was aware of the wider debate about the representation of women in his films, acknowledging that ‘The Irishman’ is a ‘more sequestered’ movie but not solely representative of his body of work,” Itzkoff explains, but offers no further comments on the issue from the director.
Emma Tillinger Koskoff, the president of production of Scorsese’s Sikelia Productions company, however, had some more strident comments that Itzkoff chose to include in his write-up.
Koskoff, who has been working with Scorsese on various projects for over a decade, “vehemently rejected the notion that Scorsese had historically overlooked women,” Itzkoff writes.
“It’s silly,” she said of the criticism. Scorsese “is responsible for some of the greatest female characters in cinema history,” she underscored.
Koskoff went on to cite “the roles played by Ellen Burstyn in ‘Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,’ Lorraine Bracco in ‘Goodfellas,’ Jessica Lange and Juliette Lewis in ‘Cape Fear’ and Sharon Stone in ‘Casino,’ among others,” notes Itzkoff. Additionally, Koskoff pointed out that Scorsese has “supported female directors by helping to produce films like Joanna Hogg’s ‘The Souvenir,'” Itzkoff adds.
“I could go on and on and on,” said Koskoff. “He’s not making ‘Lady Bird’ but it’s not like he’s opposed to that.”
While Scorsese didn’t bother to defend himself too strongly in the Times interview, he has done so more forcefully in the past. As The Daily Wire reported, when Scorsese was asked why his films have so few female characters during the Rome Film Fest in October, the director slammed the very premise of the question.
“That’s not even a valid point. That’s not valid,” said Scorsese. “…That goes back to 1970. That’s a question that I’ve had for so many years. Am I supposed to? If the story doesn’t call for it. … It’s a waste of everybody’s time. If the story calls for a female character lead, why not?”
The criticism directed at Scorsese from feminist circles at one point include the rumor that he “ordered” Paquin to accept the “diminished” character, but the actress promptly shot that down. “Nope, nobody was doing any ‘ordering’,” she tweeted in early November. “I auditioned for the privilege of joining the incredible cast of [‘The Irishman’] and I’m incredibly proud to get to be a part of this film.”
Nope, nobody was doing any “ordering”. I auditioned for the privilege of joining the incredible cast of .@TheIrishmanFilm and I’m incredibly proud to get to be a part of this film. https://t.co/yx54jE4ugy
— Anna Paquin (@AnnaPaquin) November 9, 2019
Related: Martin Scorsese Takes Swipe At Todd Phillips’ ‘Joker,’ A Film He Passed Up Producing