I could weep every time I hear this brilliant woman speak. She’s so true and wise

March 21, 2026 — 8:30am

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“One of the greatest tragedies in modern society,” said Chloé Zhao at the London Film Festival, ”is that we forgot the power of the crone, the power of the grandmothers and grandfathers and elders in society. And that we stopped gathering around them. We stopped going to them to help make decisions about how this tribe should work.”

It’s not easy being a crone in Hollywood. Women over 50, or even 40, who still glam up, and turn up, are subjected to the kind of exacting, often cruel scrutiny that would make the couch seem a far preferable option to the red carpet.

The lighting was apparently so harsh at this year’s post-Oscars Vanity Fair party that one actress spent the whole time on her phone yelling at her publicist, then went home and cried herself to sleep.

The Hollywood Reporter quoted a “VF Insider” saying: “It was just so unforgiving. Like being shot in extremely high-def. You saw a lot of excess pounds and wrinkles that used to be hidden. Nobody wants to be photographed like that!”

One problem with this whole charade is that it is just such a boring, limiting way to view women.

During this year’s awards season, past the parade of “best” and “worst” dressed, and those just trying to keep it together in a world of seemingly infinite judgment, came the sweetest relief in the figure of Chloé Zhao. The Beijing-born director is a marvel, an illumination in a........

© Brisbane Times