The Eagle (2011)

[holyschist]

Complete Bechdel fail. Not only are there no named women, and no women with dialogue, you barely even see women in the background. The major secondary female character/love interest from Rosemary Sutcliff's novel has been removed (given how they changed the direction of the movie, I can see why, but).

(I did enjoy the heck out of it, but I wouldn't say it's a very good movie either.)

Comments

[ampersandand]

i'm interested, would you recommend the novel? i was eyeing it at b&n the other day, but just kind of assumed it would bechdel-fail so hard that it wasn'worth my time.

[holyschist]

It has been a really long time since I read the novel. The secondary female character, Cottia, is pretty awesome--but her role in the narrative is almost entirely redundant to the secondary male character, Esca, narratively, except she is the textual love interest (sort of tacked on, and with a squicky-to-2011-eyes age difference). I can't remember if there are any other secondary female characters, but if there are, I suspect the best it manages is a technical pass.

That said--Sutcliff wrote gorgeous books and I remember it being pretty good, although not my favorite of hers that I've read. She did not always do so well on female characters, and worse on Bechdel passes (I have not yet read any of her books with a female protagonist or co-protagonist, so I'm not sure if they do better). Part of that is that many of her historical novels focus on teenage boys and young men in wartime and she stays tightly in their viewpoint so we only see conversations between secondary characters if the protagonist is present (Esca and Cottia barely interact on-page in Eagle, although they must--because Marcus isn't there to see it). Part of that, I think, is that Sutcliff was more interested in writing about men's relationships with other men and occasionally (often unconvincingly) with women.

[I guarantee there will be people who disagree vehemently with my assessment of Sutcliff. But many of her books are not Bechdel passes, or only technical passes.]

I wouldn't want a steady diet of her books, but I do think they're worth a try if you're interested in the historical periods she writes about and don't mind the occasional book about men. You might want to try her book about Boudicca of the Iceni (Song for a Dark Queen) or The Shield Ring--both of which have female protagonists. I haven't read either yet, but I am pretty sure at least Song is a Bechdel pass.