Live By Night: F*** you, Ben Affleck.

It's that time of year again, guys. Glitzy dresses, best dressed lists, a barrage of celebrity interviews, and red-carpet coverage.

Awards season.

There are shivers down my spine.Predictably, as an actor, it's one of my favourite times of the year. A time to be inspired, to rejoice over my favourite films of the year being nominated for the coveted Golden Globes, and to keep practising my ever-evolving Oscar speech.

And here's been a lot of films this year that I've loved! (Three guesses: all of them La La Land).

Annnddd . . . there's been a few that have needed me to be forcibly removed from the cinema screen.

Cut to: Live by Night.

Oh, Ben Affleck. Not an actor that I really follow too closely. After rumours and claims of domestic violence and affairs, Ben Affleck at one point seemed to hit rock bottom. He made a come-back late last year, appearing as Batman in Superman v Batman and taking on grittier, hard-hitting roles. He's also dabbled in directing, and screenwriting -- like his latest film, Live By Night.

I was looking forward to this film, I really was. Though it was produced, written, and stars Ben Affleck, it had Elle Fanning, Brendon Gleeson, and Zoe Saldana, so I was intrigued. Set against the backdrop of Boston ridden by the first war, Ben Affleck's character sets up shop in Florida with a hungry gang of gangsters to sell alcohol right in the middle of Prohibition.


There's a lot going on in this film, and therein lies the problem. There's never enough violence or threat to make it a mobster film, and always too little of the most pivotal and engaging moments to give it sentiment. Instead, Ben Affleck drives a film that tries to cram in too much -- too much sex appeal, too many bullets, too much small talk.

Don't get me wrong, as a director Ben Affleck has a way of storytelling that is visually impressive, and the cast carries the film right to it's bitter end. But Ben Affleck, here's where I have the problem.

You have three very enigmatic, intelligent, honest, engaging female leads. You cast three fantastic actors.

So why, for the sake of your character's storyline, did all three female leads have to suffer enormously? Saldana and Fanning's characters don't even survive until the end of the film. I watched Ben Affleck's character go through highs and lows, and the female characters suffer because of his struggles. None of them -- even Elle Fanning's character, who had no direct link to Affleck's -- were autonomous in their own right. Their suffering came at the hands of men, their deaths happened so it would drive Ben Affleck's character to action. They died merely for the main male lead to have something to look tragic about, to make his successes suddenly bittersweet.

Why is it necessary?


As the film almost drew to a close, Elle Fanning's character had taken her life, we saw a past-lover of Affleck's character reduced to a broken, unhappy woman, and I thought -- alright, okay, they're just trying to be real. Not everyone gets off lightly in a world of gangsters and crime (but, funnily enough, all except the "villainous" males survived). Ben Affleck and Zoe Saldana's characters marry after a whirlwind romance and produce a son, and then set up a home for women just as Affleck renounces his gangster ways. All seems happy and well and right.

I thought, okay, (spoiler alert), two out of three women in this film have been abused, or raped, or killed. There's still hope that the last will survive, but God, if Zoe Seldana's character is killed now . . .

And then, in the final moments, Seldana's character is shot and killed. The happy ending for Affleck's character is no more.

At which point I got up from my seat (there was no one else in the screen except me and my boyfriend), stuck my middle finger up at the screen and said, "Fuck you, Ben Affleck."


I know Live By Night is a film adaptation of an already published book, which I haven't read (and don't plan to). The storyline is not Affleck's alone.


But there is a troubling trend in Hollywood and in the media for women leads -- of which there are few, let's be brutally honest here -- to die at the hands of men, and for the suffering and tragedy of the male hero. I'm not the first to stand on this soapbox, I won't be the last. I'm not saying anything revolutionary or what we don't already know.


But I left that cinema angry. Furious, indignant, that not one female in that goddamn film survived unscathed. That they all had to suffer for the male lead's storyline (of which I couldn't give a damn, for the most part). And don't give me bullshit about it being "historically" accurate. For every Viking, medieval, and/or fantasy story, there are clamours of "It's all historically accurate! Think of all the raping and pillaging described in the history books! Every woman died and all the men had long hair and muscles and could kill a boar with their bare hands!"


Your "historically" accurate show has dragons and people giving birth to creatures of smoke and ash, what history books were you reading at school?


The technology we use in media today is incredible. CGI is barely detectable -- we are creating bigger landscapes and more in-depth worlds to set our movies and TV shows in than ever before. Are you really telling me that you can have dragons that look terrifyingly real, but it's not "accurate" unless women are raped and killed at a writer's leisure?


I'm tired of consuming media where I'm just waiting for my favourite female leads to be killed off, where if they last longer than three seasons it's too good to be true. I'm tired of expecting something awful to happen when a female character starts to gain too much power, or becomes too popular, or too headstrong. It's lazy, disappointing writing. I don't care if it's a "reflection" of the time -- movies are about breaking the limits of reality, about re-telling stories and making them bigger, better, accessible for everyone. I'm tired, as a woman and an actress hoping to go into this industry, of watching this play out on screen.


Fuck you, Ben Affleck, and all the other male writers and producers and directors who are guilty of this.