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'Big Little Lies' Season 2: Why Filmmaker Andrea Arnold Is Perfect for the Role of Director

The HBO series is back and more breathtaking than ever—and it's because of this season's Oscar-winning director

By Dee SimonePublished 5 years ago 6 min read
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The Monterey Five, minus Jane. (From left to right: Bonnie (Zoë Kravitz), Renata (Laura Dern), Celeste (Nicole Kidman), Madeline (Reese Witherspoon))

The first season of Big Little Lies captured the attention of many—a deeply captivating, hard-hitting story which focuses on the strength of women as mothers and friends along with the power of the "perfect family" facade. The HBO series won four Golden Globes in 2018 and it is now back with its second season.

Having adored the first season, I was excited when the second season was announced—this excitement only amplified when I saw who was directing it: none other than Andrea Arnold, one of the most renowned female filmmakers of the indie film world.

In this article, I will explain why Andrea Arnold is the perfect person to direct the second season of BLL and why the chemistry between Arnold and cinematographer Jim Frohna produces a show that is not only entertaining, but harrowingly real in all the right ways.

Andrea Arnold at the 2017 BFI London Film Festival (Source: Variety)

Even if you do not recognise the Oscar-winning British director and writer by name, if you regularly watch independent films, you may have come across Andrea Arnold's works, which include:

  • Fish Tank (2009), a gritty drama which tells the story of teenager Mia, who lives on a council estate and begins to form a questionable relationship with her mother's new boyfriend Conor (played by Michael Fassbender)
  • American Honey (2016), a realistic road drama about Star, a teenager who comes across a traveling sales crew and goes with them on a wild journey
  • Red Road (2006), a wonderfully dark drama about a woman with a job as a CCTV operator who becomes obsessed with a man she watches on one of the security cameras

Still of Katie Jarvis and Michael Fassbender in Fish Tank (2009) (Source: Michaelfassbender.org)

As you can see from this list, Arnold's films have female characters at their centre, and this is particularly why the role of director for season two suits her so well. She is also not a stranger to directing for TV, as she has directed four episodes of Jill Solloway's brilliantly funny, Emmy-winning queer series Transparent, which will have its fifth season premiere this year. Also on her resumé is I Love Dick, another Amazon series also created by Solloway, of which she has directed four episodes.

It has been Andrea's signature style for her artistic visions to be filmed using a handheld camera since the launch of her career. The handheld techniques used in her films are unique, as they gift a naturalistic quality that makes us feel a genuine connection to the characters, as if we are really there watching their story unfold with them. It is the home movie-style elements, the slightly unsteady close-ups and slightly out-of-focus, over-the-shoulder shots that make us relate to Arnold's characters so well and make her work so unforgettable.

As well as Andrea's visual style, her directing skills also really bring characters to life, encouraging actors to step out of their comfort zones in order to truly become the character that they are playing. As mentioned previously, Arnold's stories are female-centric. They often involve women who are in difficult situations but who also develop through these situations and reveal their inner strength. In American Honey, for example, Star escapes an abusive household to travel with a sales crew and uses her intellect to make money. These aren't Hollywood fairy tales to any extent; we see the imperfections and vulnerabilities of Arnold's characters, and in some films, we see them express their anguish through anger and intense reactions that are jarring to us as an audience. However, this is completely necessary, as it brings humanity to the production. Directing these actors to help them reveal their character's imperfections, desires and anger in a way that startles us as an audience may not always be comfortable to watch, but this is what makes Arnold's creative ability so effective.

In Big Little Lies, characters such as Jane (Shailene Woodley) and Celeste (Nicole Kidman) have been subject to horrific experiences such as rape and domestic abuse, which are controversial subjects that are challenging to portray through any channel of media. In the second season, these experiences and their detrimental effects are examined further, and we see the vulnerability of the female characters as well as their anger towards others in response to these events. Arnold's passion for conflict and depicting fragile yet strong characters means she knows how to communicate clearly the pain they are experiencing, and she has said herself that she finds it easier to work with difficult narratives:

"I work best when there is adversity: I seem to get calmer the more the fur is flying."

Andrea's phenomenal directing is supported with the help of cinematographer Jim Frohna, with whom she shares a vibrant, captivating creative chemistry.

Jim Frohna has worked alongside Arnold previously as director of photography on Transparent and I Love Dick, and according to an interview with Variety, Frohna has become "a preferred DP for capturing the female gaze." Taking this into account, along with the fact that the first season of Big Little Lies was filmed handheld whilst being heavily female-centric, it is obvious why Arnold and Frohna appealed to the Big Little Lies producers so much. After first season director Jean-Marc Vallée had to leave to film Sharp Objects, they needed experts on realism and the stripping naked of characters to reveal raw, unfiltered emotions. After studying the first season, Jim Frohna explained how he felt he was perfect for the job of DP for season two:

“It was so grounded in naturalism and done mostly handheld. I thought, ‘I could have shot that.’ It played to my strengths and felt like something I knew how to do very well.”

Jim Frohna captures Shailene Woodley on the beach (Source: ICG)

Together, Arnold and Frohna work to make us feel both the characters' strengths and weaknesses, and with the emotional changes that the female characters are experiencing as a result of what took place in the season one finale are depicted perfectly. We see Madeleine's anxiety, Celeste's guilt, Jane's relief and Bonnie's trauma unveiled beautifully through intimate, unconventional close-ups combined with directing that makes scenes of emotional conflict really come to life.

One particular scene from last week's episode (Episode 2: "Tell-Tale Hearts") in which the magic between Arnold's directing style and Frohna's cinematography is clear is when an important conversation takes place between Jane (Woodley) and her son Ziggy (Iain Armitage) whilst he is laying in bed (I won't go into too much detail to avoid spoilers): every detail of Ziggy's reaction to what his mother is saying is captured perfectly in a series of handheld, intensely close shots of his face, and sometimes Jane's arm appears slightly in the shot as she sits on the side of the bed. The shots are unconventional but make the scene feel completely natural. These types of over-the-shoulder/to-the-side shots are used heavily in Arnold's films, and as a frequent occurrence in new episodes of BLL, they add another layer of authenticity to the show's second season. The viewer is invited to feel as if they are there beside Jane, one of the participants in the conversation that is taking place between her and Ziggy, and extreme close-ups enable the viewer to feel a close emotional connection with Jane and Ziggy, really recognizing their unconditional love for one another.

Still of Jane (Shailene Woodley) in Episode 2: Tell-Tale Hearts. (Source: Wherever I Look)

Along with the stunning cinematography, another reason why Arnold is perfect for the series is demonstrated in the fact that in season two, she has connected each character to a piece of nature to reflect their emotions. As described in a Variety interview with Jim Frohna on Arnold's technique, Bonnie is often seen jogging among redwoods and wandering out among them—this may be symbolic in the sense that she is feeling lost in relation to the events of last season's finale. Jane is often seen near the ocean, dancing on the sand whilst staring out into the vastness, and I speculate that Andrea may have picked the ocean to represent her finally beginning to come to terms with, and let go of, the memory that made her avoid the ocean so much in the previous season.

Overall, Andrea Arnold and Jim Frohna intensify the impact of the gripping story that Big Little Lies tells, and they do so with great care and devotion. You can tell that they really love the characters and truly want to bring their emotions and experiences to life—their techniques unmistakably achieve this, and we leave each episode always feeling something for at least one of the characters: whether it be fear, uncertainty, shame... or hope.

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About the Creator

Dee Simone

I like to write, create, pet kitties, listen to owls, talk about life, watch indie films, laugh, make new friends 😊🐌🌻💋👾🧠⚡️🪐

✍️ www.medium.com/indiefilmsdee

📷 www.instagram.com/indiefilmsdee

🐦 www.twitter.com/indiefilmsdee

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