Recent films pair hapless male leads with hypercompetent women, critic says

Several films from the past year center on ineffectual, bewildered male protagonists who are surrounded by unusually capable women, Diego Hadis writes in The New York Times Magazine. Hadis points to Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind, whose central figure James Blaine Mooney is an aimless, out-of-work father whose wife, mother and friend see dangers he does not; Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident, in which the mechanic Vahid seeks guidance from two female former prisoners, Shiva and Golrokh; and Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, where Bob Ferguson, a burned‑out former revolutionary, is repeatedly outmatched by Perfidia and other women, including his responsible teenage daughter, Willa.

The essay situates these character dynamics against political backdrops: The Mastermind unfolds in 1970s New England amid antiwar protests and portraits of Richard Nixon, Accident is set in contemporary Iran where Vahid was jailed and tortured for protesting labor conditions, and One Battle tracks Bob’s decline into a liquor‑and‑weed fog.

Hadis also links the films to the literary and cinematic schlemiel tradition while noting a key difference: these modern schlemiels are paired with processions of hypercompetent women rather than bumbling companions.

Key Topics

Culture, Diego Hadis, Kelly Reichardt, Jafar Panahi, Paul Thomas Anderson, Iran