Who is Cate Short­land and why has she direct­ed a Mar­vel movie?

It’s strange to think after a year and a half of films appear­ing and dis­ap­pear­ing due to mul­ti­ple lock­downs that we can now head back into cin­e­mas and enjoy its cathar­tic escapism and mag­ic. For the Aus­tralian direc­tor Cate Short­land, this will come with the added relief of final­ly plac­ing the spot­light on her as lat­est direc­to­r­i­al effort, Marvel’s Black Wid­ow, will final­ly be released a lit­tle over a year after its orig­i­nal due date.

The much-antic­i­pat­ed block­buster is a huge deal for Short­land who is mak­ing his­to­ry as Marvel’s first female solo direc­tor. And with that, com­ing from an inde­pen­dent film back­ground, it means that this is some­thing of a cre­ative leap for her in terms of the scope and scale of pro­duc­tion. This appears to be a com­mon move for Mar­vel: to hire film­mak­ers with a back­ground in indie or fes­ti­val films and then cat­a­pult them to this alien world of fame, for­tune and celebrity.

Black Wid­ow appears to dis­tance itself from the last few giant MCU films such as Avengers: Endgame and Spi­der-Man: Far From Home. It’s being per­ceived a spy thriller, but one that is kit­ted out in the typ­i­cal ​‘super­hero genre-styled’ trap­pings. Yet for Short­land and Kevin Feige (pres­i­dent of Mar­vel Stu­dios) this was an oppor­tu­ni­ty to real­ly grasp the Natasha Romanoff char­ac­ter (as played by Scar­lett Johans­son) as an indi­vid­ual rather than mere­ly a con­stituent of a team of heroes.

The direc­tor told Total Film mag­a­zine in Sep­tem­ber of 2020 that, if any­thing, she want­ed to ​“expose the char­ac­ter and get under her skin.” Is this search for more nuance and depth one of the rea­sons that Mar­vel looks beyond the ​“safe-pair-of-hands” fray when it comes to employ­ing cre­ative lead­ers for their fran­chise spin-offs?

Pre-release whis­pers sug­gest that this isn’t just your reg­u­lar hero saves the world nar­ra­tive. After all, we’ve wait­ed over a decade for this char­ac­ter to be explored on a more per­son­al lev­el. The movie is set fol­low Romanoff on the run as she heads back to her native Rus­sia where she is con­front­ed with an unfin­ished past she left behind before becom­ing an Avenger.

As a char­ac­ter, Romanoff was already a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from her peers. She wasn’t gift­ed with extra­or­di­nary pow­ers, but was instead dri­ven by her strength and an eth­i­cal code of per­pet­u­al do-good­ing. In an inter­view with The Inde­pen­dent, Short­land said: ​“Most of my char­ac­ters have had a hard time, but I don’t want to tell sto­ries which are just black and dark and upsetting.”

Johans­son was an avowed fan of Shortland’s crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed 2012 dra­ma Lore and her han­dling of its female lead. Lore tells a sto­ry of a young woman who leads her sib­lings through Ger­many as the Allied forces roll in. While it is a film that explores a vul­ner­a­ble sit­u­a­tion and com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ships, there is also some­thing very beau­ti­ful and strange­ly empa­thet­ic in the way Short­land directs Lore’s rage and her real­i­sa­tion of emotions.

Short­land is known for her rep­re­sen­ta­tions of strong women in real, often dead­ly and moral­ly off-cen­tre sit­u­a­tions. Her female pro­tag­o­nists tend to strug­gle with life nav­i­ga­tion which angers them when they try to defuse feel­ings of alien­ation, but with that she high­lights how these char­ac­ters sur­vive and move on in a con­vinc­ing­ly humane manner.

Take Shortland’s 2004 direc­to­r­i­al debut, Som­er­sault, as an exam­ple, a film which played in the Un Cer­tain Regard sec­tion at that year’s Cannes Film Fes­ti­val. This roman­tic dra­ma revolves around 16-year-old Hei­di (Abbie Cor­nish) who flees her Can­ber­ra home to explore a moun­tain town in New South Wales after try­ing to seduce her mother’s boyfriend. Con­fused and alone, she uses her sex­u­al­i­ty in an attempt to secure her­self a job and then she falls for Joe (Sam Wor­thing­ton) who is him­self is unclear his sex­u­al­i­ty. It’s a sen­su­al and authen­tic take on the feel­ings and desire of a young woman who is try­ing to define her own sense of belong­ing. The film right­ly received praise for its touch­ing and high­ly mov­ing slow-motion imagery.

Mar­vel have per­fect­ed a for­mu­la when it comes to their hir­ing poli­cies, and that’s not just when it comes to behind the cam­era tal­ent: many of their lead stars have either been nom­i­nat­ed or have won the industry’s biggest acco­lades. Indeed, the notion that Mar­vel could ever be an award sea­son play­er has been clar­i­fied by Black Panther’s nom­i­na­tion for Best Pic­ture in 2019, and a Best Pic­ture win for Chloe Zhao, who will show­case her Mar­vel offer­ing The Eter­nals lat­er this year.

While Shortland’s small but per­fect­ly formed film cat­a­logue had already made the direc­tor one to watch, Black Wid­ow will send her career on a new tra­jec­to­ry. From some angles, you could see Mar­vel as a malign force who are poach­ing the best and bright­est young tal­ent and bring­ing them into their film­mak­ing fac­to­ry to make films in their inim­itable house style.

Yet to do so would be to sug­gest that these film­mak­ers have no agency and aspi­ra­tions of their own – that mak­ing these giant movies is some­thing they would nev­er oth­er­wise want to do. Either way, when Black Wid­ow final­ly makes it to cin­e­mas on these shores, we’ll be look­ing hard for the per­son­al ​“touch” she cul­ti­vat­ed across three very fine films.

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