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    Oscars’ In Memoriam: Academy Honors Aleksei Navalny and Andrea Bocelli Performs

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    The in memoriam segment at the Academy Awards opened not with a Hollywood star, but with a clip of Aleksei A. Navalny from “Navalny,” the Oscar-winning 2022 documentary about the Russian opposition leader who died last month in a Russian prison.“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing,” read a quote of Navalny’s on the screen.Taking a moment to recognize those in the film industry who have died since the previous Oscars ceremony, the telecast also paid tribute to stars such as Harry Belafonte, the barrier-breaking performer and activist, and Chita Rivera, the Broadway star who also appeared in films, as well as filmmakers such as Norman Jewison, the lauded director behind “In the Heat of the Night,” “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Moonstruck.”To accompany the tributes, the superstar tenor Andrea Bocelli sang “Time to Say Goodbye” — with a new orchestration by Hans Zimmer — alongside his son, Matteo Bocelli.Chita Rivera, the Broadway star who also appeared in films, was honored in the Oscars’ in memoriam segment.Amir Hamja/The New York TimesHere are some of figures the Academy honored:Alan Arkin, the acclaimed actor who won an Oscar for his role in “Little Miss Sunshine”Andre Braugher, a film, TV and theater actor who had roles in Spike Lee and Edward Zwick filmsMichael Gambon, the acclaimed Irish-born actor who played Albus Dumbledore in the “Harry Potter” moviesWilliam Friedkin, director of the box office hits “The French Connection” and “The Exorcist”Bo Goldman, the admired Hollywood screenwriter who took home Oscars for his work on “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Melvin and Howard”Glenda Jackson, the two-time Oscar winner who turned to politics in her 50sPiper Laurie, a respected actress with three Oscar nominations, including for her role in “Carrie”Bill Lee, a jazz bassist and composer who scored the early films of his son Spike LeeRichard Lewis, the acerbic stand-up comic who became a regular in movies and TVRyan O’Neal, who became an instant movie star in the 1970 hit film “Love Story”Matthew Perry, the “Friends” star who had roles in movies such as “The Whole Nine Yards”Paul Reubens, the comic actor behind Pee-wee Herman who had scores of movie and TV creditsRichard Roundtree, one of the first Black action heroes who was catapulted to fame in the movie “Shaft”Ryuichi Sakamoto, one of Japan’s most prominent composers, who scored the films “The Last Emperor,” “The Sheltering Sky” and “The Revenant”Tina Turner, the pop sensation who appeared in films such as “Tommy” and “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome”Carl Weathers, a former pro linebacker, who played Apollo Creed in the “Rocky” movies More

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      The Artists We Lost in 2023, in Their Words

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      The many creative people who died this year built their wisdom over lives generously long or much too short, through times of peace and periods of conflict. Their ideas, perspectives and humanity helped shape our own: in language spoken, written or left unsaid; in notes hit, lines delivered, boundaries pushed. Here is a tribute to just some of them, in their voices.“I never considered giving up on my dreams. You could say I had an invincible optimism.”— Tina Turner, musician, born 1939 (Read the obituary.)“Hang on to your fantasies, whatever they are and however dimly you may hear them, because that’s what you’re worth.”— David Del Tredici, composer, born 1937 (Read the obituary.)“Ever since I can remember, I have danced for the sheer joy of moving.”— Rena Gluck, dancer and choreographer, born 1933 (Read the obituary.)“The stage is not magic for me. It never was. I always felt the audience was waiting to see that first drop of blood.”— Lynn Seymour, dancer, born 1939 (Read the obituary.)Paul Reubens.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images“Most questions that are asked of me about Pee-wee Herman I don’t have a clue on. I’ve always been very careful not to dissect it too much for myself.”— Paul Reubens, actor, born 1952 (Read the obituary.)“If you know your voice really well, if you’ve become friends with your vocal apparatus, you know which roles you can sing and which you shouldn’t even touch.”— Grace Bumbry, opera singer, born 1937 (Read the obituary.)“Actors should approach an audition (and indeed, their careers) with the firm belief that they have something to offer that is unique. Treasure who you are and what you bring to the audition.”— Joanna Merlin, actress, born 1931 (Read the obituary.)Glenda Jackson.Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images“If I have my health and strength, I’m going to be the most appalling old lady. I’m going to boss everyone about, make people stand up for me when I come into a room, and generally capitalize on all the hypocrisy that society shows towards the old.”— Glenda Jackson, actress and politician, born 1936 (Read the obituary.)“I don’t see myself as a pioneer. I see myself as a working guy and that’s all, and that is enough.”— William Friedkin, filmmaker, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)“Some people, every day you get up and chop wood, and some people write songs.”— Robbie Robertson, musician, born 1943 (Read the obituary.)“I wasn’t brought up in Hollywood. I was brought up in a kibbutz.”— Topol, actor, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)Jimmy Buffett.Michael Putland/Getty Images“I don’t play at my audience. I play for my audience.”— Jimmy Buffett, musician, born 1946 (Read the obituary.)“I’m still not a natural in front of people. I’m shy. I’m a hermit. But I’m learning a little more.”— Andre Braugher, actor, born 1962 (Read the obituary.)“Some poets do not see reaching many in spatial terms, as in the filled auditorium. They see reaching many temporally, sequentially, many over time, into the future, but in some profound way these readers always come singly, one by one.”— Louise Glück, poet, born 1943 (Read the obituary.)“I paint because I believe it’s the best way that I can pass my time as a human being. I paint for myself. I paint for my wife. And I paint for anybody that’s willing to look at it.”— Brice Marden, artist, born 1938 (Read the obituary.)“Writing is about generosity, passing on to other people what you’ve had the misfortune of having to find out for yourself.”— Fay Weldon, author, born 1931 (Read the obituary.)Ryuichi Sakamoto.Ian Dickson/Redferns, via Getty Images“I went to see one of those pianos drowned in tsunami water near Fukushima, and recorded it. Of course, it was totally out of tune, but I thought it was beautiful. I thought, ‘Nature tuned it.’”— Ryuichi Sakamoto, composer, born 1952 (Read the obituary.)“I hate everything that is natural, and I love the artificial.”— Vera Molnar, artist, born 1924 (Read the obituary.)“A roof could be a roof, but it also could be a little garden.”— Rafael Viñoly, architect, born 1944 (Read the obituary.)“True architecture is life.”— Balkrishna Doshi, architect, born 1927 (Read the obituary.)Sinead O’Connor.Duane Braley/Star Tribune, via Getty Images“Words are dreadfully powerful, and words uttered are 10 times more powerful. The spoken word is the science on which the entire universe is built.”— Sinead O’Connor, musician, born 1966 (Read the obituary.)“Before I can put anything in the world, I have to wait at least a couple of years and edit them. Nothing is going out that hasn’t been edited a dozen times.”— Robert Irwin, artist, born 1928 (Read the obituary.)“An editor is a reader who edits.”— Robert Gottlieb, editor and author, born 1931 (Read the obituary.)Matthew Perry.Reisig & Taylor/NBCUniversal, via Getty Images“Sometimes I think I went through the addiction, alcoholism and fame all to be doing what I’m doing right now, which is helping people.”— Matthew Perry, actor, born 1969 (Read the obituary.)“It was the period of apartheid. You know, it was very hard, very difficult and very painful — and many a time I felt, ‘Shall I continue with this life or shall I go on?’ But I continued. I wanted to dance.”— Johaar Mosaval, dancer, born 1928 (Read the obituary.)“God would like us to be joyful / Even when our hearts lie panting on the floor.” (“Fiddler on the Roof”)— Sheldon Harnick, lyricist, born 1924 (Read the obituary.)“I remember back in the day, saying it’s so cool that the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, David Bowie are still played. That’s what we wanted hip-hop to be.”— David Jolicoeur, musician, born 1968 (Read the obituary.)“Civilization cannot last or advance without culture.”— Ahmad Jamal, musician, born 1930 (Read the obituary.)Harry Belafonte. Phil Burchman/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images“Movements don’t die because struggle doesn’t die.”— Harry Belafonte, singer and actor, born 1927 (Read the obituary.)“Some people say to artists that they should change. Change what? It’s like saying, ‘Why don’t you walk differently or talk differently?’ I can’t change my voice. That’s the way I am.”— Fernando Botero, artist, born 1932 (Read the obituary.)“Performing is my way of being part of humanity — of sharing.”— André Watts, pianist, born 1946 (Read the obituary.)Renata Scotto.Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images“Singing isn’t my whole life.”— Renata Scotto, opera singer, born 1934 (Read the obituary.)“It’s through working on characters in plays that I’ve learned about myself, about how people operate.”— Frances Sternhagen, actress, born 1930 (Read the obituary.)David Crosby.Mick Gold/Redferns, via Getty Images“I don’t know if I’ve found my way, but I do know I feel happy.”— David Crosby, musician, born 1941 (Read the obituary.)“I’m very abstract. Once it becomes narrative, it’s all over. Let the audience decide what it’s about.”— Rudy Perez, choreographer, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)“I don’t have a driven desire actually to be in the act of writing. But my response to any form of excitement about reading is to want to write.”— A.S. Byatt, author, born 1936 (Read the obituary.)“I don’t think I ever wrote music to react to other music — I really had a very strong need to express myself.”— Kaija Saariaho, composer, born 1952 (Read the obituary.)Richard Roundtree.Celeste Sloman for The New York Times“Narrow-mindedness is alien to me.”— Richard Roundtree, actor, born 1942, though some sources say 1937 (Read the obituary.)“The reason I’ve been able to dance for so long is absolute willpower.”— Gus Solomons Jr., dancer and choreographer, born 1938 (Read the obituary.)“My practice is a resistance to the glamorous art object.”— Phyllida Barlow, artist, born 1944 (Read the obituary.)“My lifetime ambition has been to unite the utmost seriousness of question with the utmost lightness of form.”— Milan Kundera, author, born 1929 (Read the obituary.)Mary Quant.Hulton Archive/Getty Images“The most extreme fashion should be very, very cheap. First, because only the young are daring enough to wear it; second, because the young look better in it; and third, because if it’s extreme enough, it shouldn’t last.”— Mary Quant, fashion designer, born 1930 (Read the obituary.)“I spontaneously enter the unknown.”— Vivan Sundaram, artist, born 1943 (Read the obituary.)“The goal is to wander, wander through the unknown in search of the unknown, all the while leaving your mark.”— Richard Hunt, artist, born 1935 (Read the obituary.)Angus Cloud.Pat Martin for The New York Times“Style is how you hold yourself.”— Angus Cloud, actor, born 1998 (Read the obituary.)“I have an aura.”— Barry Humphries, actor, born 1934 (Read the obituary.)“Intensity is not something I try to do. It’s just kind of the way that I am.”— Lance Reddick, actor, born 1962 (Read the obituary.)Alan Arkin.Jerry Mosey/Associated Press“There was a time when I had so little sense of myself that getting out of my skin and being anybody else was a sigh of relief. But I kind of like myself now, a lot of the times.”— Alan Arkin, actor, born 1934 (Read the obituary.)“I have always thought of myself as a kind of vessel through which the work might flow.”— Valda Setterfield, dancer, born 1934 (Read the obituary.)“You spend a lot of time thinking about how to write a book, you probably shouldn’t be talking about it. You probably should be doing it.”— Cormac McCarthy, author, born 1933 (Read the obituary.)Elliott Erwitt.Steven Siewert/Fairfax Media, via Getty Images“In general, I don’t think too much. I certainly don’t use those funny words museum people and art critics like.”— Elliott Erwitt, photographer, born 1928 (Read the obituary.)“Every morning we leave more in the bed: certainty, vigor, past loves. And hair, and skin: dead cells. This ancient detritus was nonetheless one move ahead of you, making its humorless own arrangements to rejoin the cosmos.” (“The Information”)— Martin Amis, author, born 1949 (Read the obituary.)Magda Saleh.Vincent Tullo for The New York Times“I did not do it on my own.”— Magda Saleh, ballerina, born 1944 (Read the obituary.)“The word ‘jazz,’ to me, only means, ‘I dare you.’”— Wayne Shorter, musician, born 1933 (Read the obituary.)“What is a jazz singer? Somebody who improvises? But I don’t: I prefer simplicity.”— Astrud Gilberto, singer, born 1940 (Read the obituary.)“It’s who you are when time’s up that matters.”— Anne Perry, author, born 1938 (Read the obituary.)“When I think about my daughter and the day that I move on — there is a piece of me that will remain with her.”— Ron Cephas Jones, actor, born 1957 (Read the obituary.)“Let us encourage one another with visions of a shared future. And let us bring all the grit and openheartedness and creative spirit we can muster to gather together and build that future.”— Norman Lear, television writer and producer, born 1922 (Read the obituary.)Tony Bennett.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images“Life teaches you how to live it if you live long enough.”— Tony Bennett, musician, born 1926 (Read the obituary.)Photographs at top via Getty Images. More

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      Glenda Jackson, an Unnervingly Energizing Presence at Every Age

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      “I had been prepared to be awed, intimidated, even terrified,” Ben Brantley writes of meeting the actress in person five years ago.She didn’t so much enter the restaurant as erupt into it, a fast-burning blaze of psychic exasperation that seemed to set the silverware rattling. Glenda Jackson was five minutes late for our meeting, and she looked ferociously disgusted with herself, with the universe, with the “bloody” London transit system and, most likely, with the prospect of having to talk about herself.Such was my first in-the-flesh encounter with Jackson, who died Thursday at the age of 87 and who had seared herself into my teenage consciousness decades earlier as an uncompromisingly modern, sui generis movie star. Waiting for her five years ago in the restaurant of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, I had been prepared to be awed, intimidated, even terrified. What I hadn’t anticipated was how unnervingly energizing the presence of this 81-year-old woman would be.I probably shouldn’t have been surprised by the kinetic force of Jackson, who was about to return to Broadway for the first time in three decades in a revival of Edward Albee’s “Three Tall Women.” She had, after all, made her international name in the 1960s and early ’70s — in films like Ken Russell’s “Women in Love” and John Schlesinger’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday” — as the combustible embodiment of a very contemporary dissatisfaction with the world as she found it.Jackson and Oliver Reed in the film adaptation of the D.H. Lawrence novel “Women in Love,” for which she won a best-actress Oscar. A Park Circus/MGM StudiosHer most obvious antecedents were probably the nervy, forever restless Bette Davis and her Gallic descendant, Jeanne Moreau. But among her British peers, Jackson was the first to emerge as the female equivalent of a discomfiting archetype that had been haunting her country’s imagination since the 1950s, the Angry Young Man.Angular of form and feature, with a voice so sharp you half-expected it to draw blood, Jackson arrived into reluctant celebrity full-blown as the new Angry Young Woman, disgustedly making her way through the debris of a decaying establishment. She was the latter-day answer to Ibsen’s majestically discontented, hyperintelligent Hedda Gabler, a part she played both onstage and onscreen.That solar persona shone equally bright in period pieces (like the bohemian Gudrun in “Women in Love” and an extremely commanding Queen Elizabeth I in “Elizabeth R,” on television) and in 20th-century rom-coms (as the witheringly witty divorcée in “A Touch of Class,” her second Oscar-winning performance; “Women in Love” was her first).The same enlivening rage would be evident when she took on what she probably regarded as her greatest role, a Labour Party member of the British Parliament, where she served for 23 years. (In 2013 she delivered, in wonderfully high dudgeon, an anti-elegy for the newly deceased former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.)She was also a mythic creature of the stage, honing her scalpel-like style in the early 1960s in Peter Brook’s experimental company. It was for Brook that she portrayed, in London and on Broadway, the asylum inmate who becomes the murderous Charlotte Corday in Peter Weiss’s truly shocking “Marat/Sade.” It was one of those rare, raw performances whose impact was such in theater circles that even people who couldn’t possibly have seen it swear that they did.After a three-decade absence, Jackson returned to Broadway in 2018 in a revival of Edward Albee’s “Three Tall Women,” which also starred Laurie Metcalf, left, and Alison Pill, center.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWhen she returned to the theater at 80, years after retiring from Parliament, it was — but of course — in the most titanically angry role in the classic canon: King Lear, at London’s Old Vic. The dazzled reviews, along with a slew of awards, testified that age had not mellowed or muted her. When she came back to Broadway, two years later, she gave an eye-scalding fireworks display as the splenetic, dying mother in “Three Tall Women,” for which she won a Tony.In 2019, she did do Lear on Broadway, in a reconceived production tricked out with an abundance of postmodern conceits that might have smothered a less assertive star. Jackson cut through the surrounding flash like a buzz saw, throwing herself against the wall of old age and mortality until it seemed to crumble into unanswerable darkness.Jackson was not given to self-analysis, or at least not in any way that she was willing to share with the world. Nor was she fond of discussing the details of her craft. And her life outside her work, she said, was simple — that of a grandmother who did her own shopping and cleaning in a basement apartment. She eschewed the trappings of 21st-century technology (no cellphone) and of celebrity, the fact of which seemed only to embarrass her.And while she mostly avoided anything like personal confessions, she did make one admission that startled me. When I asked if it felt different performing for a live audience again, she said it felt exactly the same, meaning that this most fearless of dramatic actresses was profoundly scared. “You can go onto that stage every night,” she said, “and it’s always the equivalent of going onto the topmost diving board, and you don’t know if there’s any water in the pool.“Every time I say, ‘Yes, I’ll do it,’ I think, ‘My God, I don’t know how to do it. I can’t do it.’ We are sadomasochists as well as being brave, actors, and we torment ourselves.” More

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      Glenda Jackson, Oscar-Winning Actress Turned Politician, Dies at 87

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      Ms. Jackson was a two-time Oscar winner who walked away from a successful acting career to become a member of the British Parliament, before then returning to the stage.Glenda Jackson, the two-time Oscar winner who renounced a successful film and stage career in her 50s to become a member of the British Parliament, then returned to the stage at 80 as the title character in “King Lear,” died on Thursday at her home in Blackheath, London. She was 87.Her death was confirmed by Lionel Larner, her longtime agent, who said that she died after a brief illness.On both stage and screen, Ms. Jackson demonstrated that passion, pain, humor, anger, affection and much else were within her range. “I like to take risks,” she told The New York Times in 1971, “and I want those risks to be larger than the confines of a structure that’s simply meant to entertain.”By then she had won both acclaim and notoriety for performances in which she had bared herself physically and emotionally, notably as a ferocious Charlotte Corday in Peter Brook’s production of Peter Weiss’s “Marat/Sade,” and as Tchaikovsky’s tormented wife in Ken Russell’s film “The Music Lovers.”And she had won her first best actress Oscar, for playing the wayward Gudrun Brangwen in Ken Russell’s “Women in Love” (1969); her second was for her portrayal of the cool divorcée Vickie Allessio in “A Touch of Class” (1973).Ms. Jackson pivoted to politics in 1992, and was elected as the member of Parliament representing the London constituency of Hampstead and Highgate for the Labour Party. After the party took control of government in 1997, she became a junior minister of transport, only to resign the post two years later before a failed attempt to become mayor of London.She did not run for re-election in 2015, declaring herself too old, and soon returned to acting.Throughout her career, Ms. Jackson displayed an emotional power that sometimes became terrifying, and a voice that could rise from a purr to a rasp of fury or contempt, although her slight physique suggested both an inner and outer vulnerability.Her notable roles on the big screen included her depiction of the troubled poet Stevie Smith in Hugh Whitemore’s “Stevie” (1978) and as the needy divorcée Alex Greville in “Sunday Bloody Sunday” (1971). On Broadway, she won praise as the neurotic Nina Leeds in O’Neill’s “Strange Interlude” in 1985 and a best actress Tony for her role as A, a woman over 90 facing mortality, in Edward Albee’s “Three Tall Women” in 2018.Glenda Jackson as King Lear in the play “King Lear” at the Cort Theater in 2019.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSara Krulwich/The New York TimesMany of Ms. Jackson’s performances provoked shock and awe with their boldness, none more so than her “Lear” in 2016. Though she had a reputation as a dauntingly confident actress, she admitted to having attacks of agonizing nerves before going onstage, and at London’s Old Vic, these were particularly acute.“I couldn’t make up my mind whether it was arrogance or just insanity,” she recalled of preparing for the most demanding of male roles in what she called “the greatest play ever written.” Her performance after 23 years away from the theater drew wide acclaim.“You’re barely aware of her being a woman playing a man,” Christopher Hart wrote in The Sunday Times of London. “It simply isn’t an issue.”Glenda May Jackson was born on May 9, 1936, in Birkenhead, near Liverpool in northwest England, the eldest of four daughters of Harry, a bricklayer, and Joan, a house cleaner and barmaid.Soon after her birth her parents moved to the nearby town of Hoylake, where home was a tiny workman’s house with an outdoor toilet, a cold water tap and a tin tub for a bath. The war increased the family’s privations. “We used to eat candle wax as an alternative to chewing gum,” she remembered. “The big treat was a pennyworth of peanut butter.”With her father called into the Navy, Glenda became increasingly crucial to an all-female household, something that explained, she said, both her defiant feminism and her “bossy streak.” She also proved bright and diligent, winning a scholarship to West Kirby County Grammar School for Girls. But she did not flourish there and left at 16. She was, she recalled, undisciplined and unhappy, “the archetypal fat and spotty teenager.”She was working at a pharmacy store and performing onstage as a member of a local theater group when, in 1954, she won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, which had begun to encourage the enrollment of working-class students, including Albert Finney and Peter O’Toole. (Ms. Jackson remained convinced that she was plain, even ugly — a belief later reinforced by the academy’s principal, who told her that she could become only a character actress and “shouldn’t expect to work much before you’re 40.”)The schooling prepared her for what became six years in provincial repertory.In 1958 she married Roy Hodges, a fellow actor. Regional stage work meant periods of unemployment, odd jobs and poverty for the couple, and Ms. Jackson later admitted that she had shoplifted food and other essentials that she could conceal under her coat.Her big break came in 1964, when the director Mr. Brook brought her into an experimental group he was assembling for the recently formed Royal Shakespeare Company. He later recalled her as “a very curious figure — a hidden, shy and yet aggressive, badly dressed girl who seemed resentful of everything.” But in an audition, she had left him mesmerized by “the sudden plunges she took and by her intensity.”Mr. Brook cast her in “Marat/Sade,” which transferred to Broadway in 1967, leading to a Tony nomination for Ms. Jackson’s Charlotte Corday.But she disliked the experience, which, she said, left the company “in hysterics — people twitching, slobber running down their chins, screaming from nerves and exhaustion.” Nor did she enjoy the three years she spent with the R.S.C., though her roles included a sharp, shrewd Ophelia in Peter Hall’s revival of “Hamlet” and several characters in Mr. Brook’s anti-Vietnam War show, “US.” She was not, she decided, a company woman.Such did her reputation as a “difficult” actress begin. She was regarded as aloof and egoistic, and could be contemptuous of actors she found lacking in commitment, bellicose in rehearsal rooms and unafraid of challenging eminent directors. Gary Oldman, who starred with her in Robert David MacDonald’s play “Summit Conference” in 1982, called her “a nightmare.”Yet Trevor Nunn, who wrangled with her in rehearsals, later called her “direct, uncomplicated, honest, very alive.”“Of all the actors I’ve worked with, she has a capacity for work that’s phenomenal,” Mr. Nunn said. “There’s an immense power of concentration, a great deal of attack, thrust, determination.”Motivated in part by her dislike of Hollywood glitz, Ms. Jackson did not attend either of the Academy Award ceremonies for which she was honored as best actress.What mattered more, she said, was “the blood, sweat and tears” of creating a role. For her Emmy-winning performance in the television serial “Elizabeth R” (1971), she learned to ride sidesaddle and to play the virginals, and mastered archery and calligraphy. She also shaved her head — all to add authenticity as her queen evolved from youth to crabbed old age.Subsequent stage roles included Cleopatra in Mr. Brook’s revival of “Antony and Cleopatra” for the R.S.C. in 1978, Racine’s Phèdre at the Old Vic in 1984, Lady Macbeth in a disappointing “Macbeth” on Broadway in 1988, and the title character in Brecht’s “Mother Courage” in 1990.Though she won awards for “Stevie,” including one for best actress from the New York Film Critics Circle, and received good reviews for her work in the television movie “The Patricia Neal Story” (1981) and Robert Altman’s “Beyond Therapy” (1987), her later screen work was generally less successful.With characteristic candor she was often withering about her own efforts, calling her performances in the film version of Terence Rattigan’s play “Bequest to the Nation” (released as “The Nelson Affair” in 1973) and as Bernhardt in the movie “The Incredible Sarah” (1976) “ghastly” and “lousy,” respectively.She brought that candor to Parliament in 1992, when she declared, “Why should I stay in the theater to play the Nurse in ‘Romeo and Juliet’?”Most scripts she had been sent were poor, she said, and contemporary dramatists were not writing good roles for women. Moreover, she said, she had a hatred of a Conservative government which, inspired by “that dreadful woman Margaret Thatcher,” seemed to be dismembering the welfare state the Labour Party had created after the war.In Parliament, Ms. Jackson took an interest in homelessness, housing, women’s rights, disability issues and, especially, transportation. After resigning from her transport post, she was a Labour backbencher, joining those who opposed Britain’s part in the Iraq war in 2003, declaring herself “deeply, deeply ashamed” of her government and calling for Prime Minister Tony Blair’s resignation.Ms. Jackson and Mr. Hodges divorced in 1976. In later years she shared a London house with her only child, the political journalist Dan Hodges, and his wife and children. She preferred, she said, to remain unmarried, explaining that “men are awfully hard work for very little reward.”Ms. Jackson also shunned the trappings of celebrity, dressing inexpensively, using public transportation and relegating her Oscars to the attic. She was, she admitted, a solitary person with not many friends.But she did perhaps fulfill her own ambition: “If I have my health and strength, I’m going to be the most appalling old lady,” she said. “I’m going to boss everyone about, make people stand up for me when I come into a room, and generally capitalize on all the hypocrisy that society shows towards the old.”Emma Bubola More

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      ‘Mothering Sunday’ Review: Sex, Death and Literature

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      A fine British cast is featured in this mildly transgressive love story set in the aftermath of World War I.It’s Mother’s Day in 1924, and England is a green and pleasant land of sturdy cars and bicycles, repressed emotions and class divisions. A familiar place, in other words, even — or especially — if your ideas about 20th-century Britain have been shaped by books, movies and prestige television.There’s nothing wrong with that, and there’s nothing egregiously amiss with “Mothering Sunday,” Eva Husson’s adaptation (from a script by Alice Birch) of Graham Swift’s 2016 novel. Pirouetting backward and forward from its highly eventful titular day, the movie samples a buffet of tried-and-true narrative offerings. It’s a love story about the mildly transgressive romance between a servant and a son of the gentry; a chronicle of literary awakening; a reckoning with the awful legacy of World War I and a foreshadowing of the social transformation that was to follow.Living through all of it is Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young), an orphan who works in the household of the Nivens, a kind couple who wear their unhappiness like well-tailored tweed. They are played by Colin Firth and Olivia Colman, who appear in just a handful of scenes and stamp the rest with a seal of highest British quality. So does Glenda Jackson, in even fewer scenes as the famous novelist Jane will grow up to be.First, however, she must cycle off to meet her lover, Paul (Josh O’Connor, Prince Charles in “The Crown”), a privileged fellow whose parents are off at a picnic with the Nivens, who are part of their social circle. The servants are all given the day off, which means they can have sex and then sit around smoking with no clothes on.Paul, who is engaged to a young woman of his own caste, goes off to join the luncheon. Jane then spends a significant portion of the movie wandering naked through the house, gazing at family portraits, studying spines in the library and grabbing a snack in the kitchen. Her reverie, and the audience’s discreet voyeurism, is intercut with scenes that point toward the past and the future. Later, she will marry a philosopher named Donald (Sope Dirisu), whom she meets in a bookshop and encourages her writing, giving her a copy of Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own” on one of their dates.Earlier, the war took many of the young men in the area, including Paul’s two brothers and the Nivens’ only son. Mrs. Niven at one point tells Jane that she was lucky to have been “comprehensively bereaved” at a young age, as if that would inoculate her against further loss.But more tragedies lie in store, and they tear at the gauzy fabric of sensuality that Husson has woven. “Mothering Sunday” never conveys the intensity of erotic passion, the ardor of creative ambition or the agony of grief. Even though it is ostensibly about all of those feelings, it handles them with a tastefulness that is hard to distinguish from complacency.Mothering SundayRated R. Naked lunch. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Elizabeth Is Missing’ Review: Glenda Jackson’s Return to TV

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Elizabeth Is Missing’ Review: Glenda Jackson’s Return to TVThe renowned actress stars as a woman fending off dementia while she searches for a lost friend.Glenda Jackson in “Elizabeth Is Missing.”Credit…Mark Mainz/STV Productions/PBSJan. 1, 2021, 1:56 p.m. ETThe BBC television movie “Elizabeth Is Missing” — a stand-alone episode of “Masterpiece” on PBS this Sunday — contains Glenda Jackson’s first screen performance since 1992. That certainly merits attention — Jackson, now 84, is one of the most technically accomplished and ferociously intelligent actresses of our time. Did it merit the rapturous British reviews on its release in 2019 and perhaps inevitable awards, including a BAFTA and an international Emmy, that she received for it? Not really, but it isn’t Jackson’s fault.You can see the appeal to Jackson of “Elizabeth Is Missing,” which was adapted by the actress and writer Andrea Gibb from a mystery novel by Emma Healey. The central character, Maud, who is moving from forgetfulness into dementia, is onscreen virtually the entire time, whether in the present or as her teenage self (played by Liv Hill) in a parallel story line set 70 years ago. The progress of the film largely takes place through Jackson’s twofold embodiment of Maud’s decline and of her stubborn, often angry battle to delay and deny it.The story puts Maud in a situation full of dramatic promise: her best friend, Elizabeth, has suddenly disappeared, and Maud is determined to find her despite the inconvenient fact that she can’t convince anyone that Elizabeth is actually gone. Scrawling notes to herself about Elizabeth’s glasses and some suspiciously broken vases, Maud carries on her investigation in fits and starts, picking it up again whenever she remembers that Elizabeth is missing.It’s a great setup for a straightforward mystery, but “Elizabeth Is Missing” is more complicated than that, and while you can’t hold that ambition against it, you might wish that you were watching something simpler. Maud’s search for Elizabeth is woven together with the disappearance of Maud’s married older sister in 1950. Events in the present and past continually mix in Maud’s mind, her memories triggered by objects or phrases in ways that are artful and a little too self-conscious.The mystery-novel structure of the story turns out to be both a feint and a reality, something that becomes predictable fairly early on and is disappointing in the final result. We’re supposed to be getting a deeper satisfaction from the detailed depiction of Maud and her affliction, and the neatly arranged thematic resonance between the two story lines, revolving around what it really means to be missing.But despite the efforts of the talented director Aisling Walsh (“Maudie”), who gives the film a welcome restraint and clarity, “Elizabeth Is Missing” doesn’t hit the mark — the screenplay is too fussy and tricky, and the resolution to the twin mysteries, with its mixed notes of heroism and resignation, isn’t convincing. (Walsh’s final image, a long shot of Maud crossing a street alone in mourning clothes, has a power lacking in the rest of the film.)But as you could expect, it contains a mostly faultless performance by Jackson, one that’s certainly worth 87 minutes of your viewing time. (It might also remind you that despite Jackson’s stature, and some high points like “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “The Return of the Soldier,” her screen résumé isn’t all that distinguished.)She doesn’t play for our sympathy — she leans into the character’s frustration and irascibility, making it clear how difficult she is to deal with. And she communicates Maud’s flickering moods and perceptions precisely and indelibly, in the way she briskly taps a notecard when Maud makes a connection or in a quick, shattering moment when she silently screams with frustration at a restaurant, conscious of not making (too much of) a scene. Maud may not come fully alive in the script, but there’s nothing missing in Jackson’s portrayal.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More