Do we like Jane Campion?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Decent record, a real mentor to new filmmakers, and no harmful words or company found, with two public fumbles holding her off the top.
Jane Campion is New Zealand's best-known filmmaker, and in March 2022 she won the Best Director Oscar for The Power of the Dog, a film shot in New Zealand. It had already taken the Directors Guild of America's top prize. Instead of a long victory lap, she has since put her energy into backing the next crop of Kiwi filmmakers.
Her best-known stoush came just before that Oscar. At the Critics Choice Awards she told Venus and Serena Williams that they do not play against the guys the way she has to, and critics said it brushed aside their achievements. She apologised the next day, calling the remark “thoughtless” and saying she never meant to devalue them. An apology only counts if the behaviour changes, and nothing similar has turned up since.
She also had a public spat with Sam Elliott after he said on a podcast that The Power of the Dog was full of “allusions to homosexuality”. Campion fired back that he is “not a cowboy” and said she thinks he sees her as “a woman or something lesser first”. That's a director defending her film, and not a stoush anyone would hold against her.
On the harm test, nothing turned up: no words or acts against LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the planet, and no campaigning for anyone who pushes harm. The company she keeps looks clean too, with her mentoring programme backed by Netflix and the New Zealand Film Commission. The honest caveat is that searches found nothing on her views about climate or politics, so the record is thin there rather than bad.
The recent bit is the Weinstein comment. From a summary of Variety's June interview, she said he “did some horrific things” but also ran a brilliant awards campaign for The Piano that was his vision. Some will read that as a plain-spoken look at how the film won its Oscars, others as going too easy on him. We could only read the headline and summary, not the full interview, so take it as a close call.
The real good stuff is the mentoring. With producer Philippa Campbell she co-founded A Wave in the Ocean, which helps emerging New Zealand filmmakers make shorts and now develop debut features, backed by Netflix and the NZ Film Commission. She called encouraging new talent “the most satisfying and exciting part of my career to date”. She also stayed back at a Wellington university visit to talk with students about their projects.