is The Gift (2000) anticapitalist?
it’s been a while, but I’m back with a spooky season essay!
The Gift (2000) may be the most underrated movie with the most stacked cast ever. It’s got Cate Blanchett, Katie Holmes, Greg Kinnear, Keanu Reeves, Hillary Swank, J.K. Simmons, Gary Cole, Giovanni Ribisi, and more! With such a high profile Hollywood cast, I didn’t go into it expecting a radical film, but The Gift (2000) is a socialist feminist movie for the ages. The movie follows Annie, played by Cate Blanchett, who is a single mom raising two kids after her husband died. She is a psychic/medium, and pays the bills doing readings for people in a back room of her home. When local woman Jessica, played by Katie Holmes, goes missing, Annie begins to have visions. Her powers, tenacity, and feminist ideals are the only hope for finding justice for Jessica.
From the get go, the movie assigns Annie specifically feminine qualities. Spiritual connections to the earth, like Annie’s “gift,” have often been specifically associated with women, and looked down on as “witchcraft.” Annie is derogatorily called a “witch” throughout the movie, and people doubt and make fun of her abilities. Her powers are seen as inherently connected to her femininity, and therefore fodder for misogyny by other characters, mostly men, in the movie. The overall framing of the film, however, portrays these traits with warmth, power, and positivity. Additionally, the gift has been passed down matrilineally, solidifying a strong Matriarchal tradition. Annie uses these powers in a compassionate, caring, and emotional way in line with the principles of feminism. In doing readings, Annie often ends up in the role of therapist and confidant. A young Hillary Swank has an abusive husband (Keanu Reeves), and throughout the movie he violently attacks both Annie and Hillary Swank for meeting together, for fear of the realizations the two women will have together. This way in which Annie interacts with and supports her community is a direct threat to her town’s patriarchal ways; her close work with many of the women in the town threatens the power the men hold over them.
In addition to her powers, other aspects of Annie’s lifestyle represent feminist and anticapitalist pratices. Halfway into the movie, it is revealed that the readings she does to make money are technically illegal; she gets around this by arguing that anything given to her is a donation. This is a literal example of Mutual Aid: where members of a community exchange goods and services. As we’re seeing across the country currently, Mutual Aid is proving to be much more effective to community needs during a global pandemic than our capitalist American system. Other aspects of Annie’s lifestyle similarly demonstrate the state’s failure to provide its citizens with a dignified life. Giovanni Ribisi plays the character of Buddy, a mechanic with PTSD from being abused as a child. Buddy desperately needs therapy, but he likely can’t afford it, because …… healthcare is broken in our country. Annie does her best to support Buddy since no one else will, but their relationship demonstrates the severe slack of mental health services available to him. Lastly, Annie has to rely on a neighbor for childcare, demonstrating the difficulties single moms face and the intense need for universal childcare. It is expected that Annie will marry again in order to raise her family, as the system is literally not built for her to be able to raise her children on her own.
Annie’s status as a single woman is a point of contention in the movie, and further places her character in opposition to traditional American family values. Annie’s friend is shocked that she is not more actively looking for a new husband, and forces her to go to the country club for a party. Enter Wayne (a young Greg Kinnear), the picture perfect Nice Man of the town. He’s clean cut, a teacher, and a member of the country club; just about the most wholesome gentleman imaginable. (I also once had a dream where Greg Kinnear was my dad — he just emits nice, safe guy energy. Very good casting). Throughout the movie, Annie and Wayne are portrayed in a romantic light. In one of the first scenes of the movie, Annie has to go to her son’s school because he’s gotten in trouble, and Annie and Wayne have a classic “meet cute.” While she’s there, though, Wayne’s fiancé Jessica (Katie Holmes) enters, and The Vibe is ruined. Later at the country club party, Annie’s friend sees her and Wayne interact, and comments on the chemistry between them. Annie shrugs it off, but when she happens upon Wayne’s fiancé Jessica and Gary Cole making out in a broom closet, the audience is given hope again for her and Wayne.
Soon after, Jessica disappears, and Annie is called upon to help with the investigation after it stalls. In dreams and visions, the events on the night that Jessica disappeared are revealed to Annie piece by piece. This framing of Annie as the one with the key to solving the murder solidifies Annie as protagonist and hero of the movie. Through Annie’s visions, Jessica’s body is found in a lake on Keanu Reeves’ property, and the homicide is seemingly solved when he is arrested and convicted for Jessica’s murder. Annie’s visions continue, however, and she starts doubting that Keanu Reeves is the killer. The investigators are reluctant to re-open the case, so Annie confides in bereaving husband Wayne about her misgivings. In a twist that becomes obvious pretty quickly, it turns out that Greg Kinnear is actually the killer. He lures Annie out to where Jessica was murdered, pretending to want to help Annie solve the crime, and then attacks her. This reveal that seemingly perfect man of the town Wayne is actually the film’s villain is the final key element in The Gift’s portrayal of Annie as radical feminist hero. Wayne, now a known murderer, was supposed to represent the traditional American ideal of a heterosexual, Good Capitalist Christian husband. By associating these traits with Wayne, the movie is condemning this culture as seemingly positive and moral, but secretly insidious and evil. Additionally, the fact that Annie and Wayne don’t end up together, after the movie has led you to believe in their romantic storyline, is radical; there are very few movies with female leads that do not end with heterosexual romance for the protagonist.
From her powers to her business practices to her matriarchal family structure, The Gift gives us an unexpected timeless feminist hero inside an star-studded spooky season movie. The lifestyle that Annie proposes, one fueled by socialist feminist praxis, not only solves a murder, but is framed as a better alternative to the more traditional American way. Her interactions with her community, her sons, and the earth itself may seem specific to this town and this film, but upon closer inspection, can be extrapolated into a roadmap. The Gift (2000) offers us a glimpse, through Annie’s lifestyle, of how to build a socialist feminist utopia: we must start with compassion, mutual aid, free universal health care and child care, and never trust men that look like Greg Kinnear.
