For Your Consideration: Review

10th August 2020

By Rowan Malyon.

A much-needed film for our time, For Your Consideration builds a wonderfully pithy satirical narrative about the problems with the 21st century film industry.

Poppy Gordon’s debut short follows a series of young, privileged women meeting up to discuss the development of a film that will surely get them into the Sundance Film Festival. In just thirteen short minutes, they jump between ill-conceived ideas, claiming they are trying to give a voice to the voiceless when really, they are just vying to out-woke each other and find a narrative that focuses on the most on-trend minority.

Clearly inspired by frustration, For Your Consideration is as comical as it is blunt. These women have no idea what they’re talking about. Perhaps what is most frightening about this film is that despite its humor, it is a very accurate portrayal of people’s attitudes today, and how those with privilege get to define popular culture.

You know exactly which direction this film is headed from the moment we meet Heather (Samantha Robinson), the ringleader. These rich LA women, who have everything but are still bored, decide to make a film just because they can, just because they have nothing better to do. So, they have bad intentions, but perhaps they will use their privilege for good? Unfortunately not, they sway between being genuinely socially aware and incredibly ignorant, and as their ideas develop, they only grow more offensive. Every time you think they’re going to hit the mark, they glance off at the last second and miss by a mile.

The film manages to criticize these unfortunately ubiquitous voices who are filmmaking for all the wrong reasons without attacking the movements that inspired them. What Gordon does so well is that the villains in this film are not the ill-reputed rich, white men we are used to. It goes deeper than gender and age. It’s about privilege. These are young women exploiting important movements for their own gain, profiting from cultural appropriation and tokenism. For Your Consideration is even bold enough to reference films that have done just that, such as Green Book, the 2019 Oscar winner highly criticized for being just another white savior movie disguised as progress.

I am 23 years old and deeply entrenched in most social media platforms, so this film resonated with me. The commercialization and co-opting of social justice movements is unfortunately commonplace, and you have to wade through a torrent of influencers riding on the coattails of any social change to find the real activists, who, unfortunately, usually get swallowed up in the cacophony.

Gordon’s film is pleasingly to-the-point and holds no punches. Even the title grabs you by the collar. It doesn’t just refer to the golden words of award season, For Your Consideration asks you to think, to reflect, and start your own conversations about these topics. An interesting piece that entertains as much as it educates, For Your Consideration is a film we sorely need.

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