We shouldn’t assume too much but the fact that two women made Oscar’s best director field for the first time ever in 2021 suggests that Hollywood is realizing that the low number of female directors in the biz (still just 20 percent) is ridiculous. So, now that Chloe Zhao and Emerald Fennell are in the club, who’s next? My money is on Sarah Polley.
The 42-year-old Canadian should have been Oscar-nominated way back in 2006 for “Away From Her,” a beautiful drama in which she guided Julie Christie to a best actress nomination. Although Polley’s screenplay was nominated, the Oscar nod for directing didn’t happen.
Polley’s directing career is short but impressive. Her three films demonstrate an intense interest in the lives of women, the complications of public and private selves, the impermanence of relationships and the strength required to keep a family together.
All of those will come in handy in “Women Talking,” a movie Polley is about to begin shooting. Like “Away From Her,” based on a story by Alice Munro, “Women Talking” adapts the writing of one Canada’s leading literary lights. It is inspired by a tough-minded novel by Miriam Toews that’s right in the wheelhouse of Polley and her star/producer Frances McDormand. And Polley, who hasn’t acted in a feature in a decade, will showcase that talent in “Women Talking,” too.
Since her debut at age 4, Polley has racked up dozens of appearances. Her face, especially her large eyes, suggests delicacy. But she’s often cast against that notion, going all the way back to “Road to Avonlea,” her Canadian TV series about a poor little rich girl. She’s also utterly believable as an action hero in “Dawn of the Dead.”
One of her finest performances doesn’t make my list because it isn’t streaming, but you can get the DVD of “My Life Without Me” at libraries or online and I recommend her bracing performance as a terminally ill woman with a plan.
Polley’s intelligence and warmth shine in these five greats.
“Away From Her” (2006): This heart-tugging stunner is so much more than a movie about Alzheimer’s. “Everything is going,” says the character played by Julie Christie, who reluctantly agrees with her husband that a memory-care facility is where she needs to be. That difficult decision is the catalyst for a movie that insists on the vitality of Christie’s character — who, as her memory of her marriage fades, begins a new relationship that baffles her loved ones.
“Dawn of the Dead” (2004): Exhibit A in the you-do-not-want-to-mess-with-Polley argument is this remake of the George Romero classic. Zack Snyder’s movie is vigorous, funny and suspenseful. Polley — as a suburban woman who literally wakes up one day to discover her neighborhood is overrun with the undead — is a resourceful survivor.
“The Sweet Hereafter” (1997): This is the place to start with Polley’s career. Atom Egoyan’s stirring movie reconfigures the Russell Banks novel on which it’s based, with a tricky structure that skips around in time and into the heads of various small-town characters whose lives have been derailed by a school bus crash. Polley plays a babysitter who, despite her shy demeanor, becomes the town’s moral compass.
“Stories We Tell” (2012): If we know any stories, surely we know our own? Maybe not, as Polley finds out in a documentary about her family, which has enormous secrets. Interviews with her siblings and others combine with re-created scenes, diary excerpts and film clips that reveal her parents, both of whom were actors, did their best acting offstage.
“The Claim” (2000): When I think of filmmakers I wish more people knew about, I go to Michael Winterbottom. And when I think about Winterbottom’s movies I wish more people knew about, I go to this adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s “The Mayor of Casterbridge.” Winterbottom shifts the setting from England to Northern California just after the Gold Rush, where hasty decisions have disastrous consequences for a family.
