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    Oscar Contenders Like Lady Gaga and Ben Affleck Go Big

    Aim-for-the-fences performances from Lady Gaga, Ben Affleck and many others are making waves, and we’re here for the outrageous fun.There’s a great story Minnie Driver tells about the director Joel Schumacher, who responded dryly after a co-star complained that Driver’s performance in “The Phantom of the Opera” was too over the top.“Oh honey,” Schumacher replied, “no one ever paid to see under the top.”I’ve thought about that bon mot a lot during this movie season, where so many stars seem to be swinging for the fences. Think of Lady Gaga and Jared Leto, who go so daringly big in “House of Gucci,” or Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield as televangelists in “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” where they pitch their performances nearly as wide as Tammy Faye Bakker’s mascara-laden eyes.In “The Last Duel,” Ben Affleck has outrageous fun playing his costume-drama blowhard to the hilt, and the fact that he does it all in a blond wig and a nu-metal goatee makes the role even more over the top. And then there’s Kristen Stewart, who eschews her trademark minimalism for the awfully maximalist “Spencer,” where she is asked to wobble, shout, dance and heave, sometimes all within the same scene.Ben Affleck as a costume-drama blowhard in “The Last Duel.”Jessica Forde/20th Century StudiosAfter the last Oscar season celebrated the quiet, naturalistic “Nomadland,” it’s a kick to see so many of this year’s prestige dramas go in a different direction and embrace enormousness. In an era dominated by superhero movies, perhaps smaller films now need a performance that feels event-sized. Or maybe, after a period when so many of us have led circumscribed lives, it’s invigorating simply to watch actors shake off their shackles and go for broke.Whatever the case, it’s working. “Tick, Tick … Boom!” is animated by Garfield’s gusto as the composer Jonathan Larson, a man who operates at an 11 at all times. Watching him, I remembered the “30 Rock” joke where Jenna Maroney lobbied the Tonys to add a category for “living theatrically in normal life.” And this month brings a double dose of big Cate Blanchett performances in “Don’t Look Up,” which casts her as a terrifyingly “yassified” cable-news host, and “Nightmare Alley,” in which she treats the film’s eye-popping production design as if it were all custom-made for her femme fatale to slink on.I don’t mean to suggest that these outsize performances are a miscalculation. Quite the opposite: An actress like Blanchett is as tuned in to the tone of her movies as a singer who asks for the intended key and then begins belting. When a skilled performer is able to hit all those high notes, it’s more than just technically dazzling: It makes the softly played notes to come feel even more resonant.Cate Blanchett, center, with Bradley Cooper and Rooney Mara in “Nightmare Alley.”Kerry Hayes/Searchlight PicturesBut hey, there’s nothing wrong with simply being dazzled for the sake of it. It’s fun when Bradley Cooper shows up in “Licorice Pizza” to terrorize the young leads with wild, nervy electricity: Just when it feels like the film is coming to a close, Cooper adds enough of a jolt to power “Licorice Pizza” for 30 more minutes. Part of the thrill of watching such a big performance is that you know how much derision is at stake if the actor fails to nail it. Just think of poor Ben Platt in the film adaptation of “Dear Evan Hansen”: His crying jags, so potent on the stage, proved unfortunately memeable in the movies.And sometimes, the most fascinating thing about a film is the frisson between a performer who goes big and co-stars who don’t. The first time I saw “The Power of the Dog,” I’ll admit I didn’t connect with Benedict Cumberbatch, whose performance as the sadistic cattle rancher Phil Burbank felt far too broad. After all, his primary scene partners are Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons, a real-life couple who happen to be two of the best practitioners of American naturalism: They can do anything onscreen and not only will you believe it, you’ll hardly even catch them doing it. Up against them, I found Cumberbatch too mannered, like an actor determined to show his work.Benedict Cumberbatch opposite Kodi Smit-McPhee in “The Power of the Dog.”NetflixBut the second time I watched the film, I realized all of that artifice is perfect for Phil, who is concealing more than just his silver-spoon upbringing and degree from Yale. Put the pieces of his back story together and you’ll realize that Phil’s grime-covered cowboy act is all shtick, a performance of machismo so fraught that an interloper like Dunst threatens it because she doesn’t have to put on any sort of act at all. It took nerve for Jane Campion, the movie’s director, to assemble that sort of cast and trust that it would work, just as it took nerve for Cumberbatch to push things just a little further than some actors would deem comfortable.And hey, at least those bigger-than-average performances will make for some good Oscar clips. Many of the stars who’ve gone for broke have been earning awards attention, though I do want to go to bat for Affleck, who is delicious as the pompous count in “The Last Duel” and deserves serious supporting-actor consideration. The Golden Globes instead nominated him for his low-key work in “The Tender Bar” — a mistake, since the only thing Affleck has done this year that’s even comparable to “The Last Duel” is the contribution he made to pop culture as one half of Bennifer 2.0.Maybe that’s part of the fun of these supersized performances: They’re finally scaled to the level of celebrity that we count on someone like Affleck or Gaga to serve. So often, Hollywood has asked the stars who live largest to shrink themselves down for critical acclaim. But where’s the fun in that? They made that screen big for a reason. More

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    Hollywood Still Matters. This Year’s Best Actors Showed Why.

    Even as theaters suffer, cinema has been thriving during the pandemic — thanks to the intimacy movies create between performer and audience.Listen to This ArticleTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.Right now, individually and as a species, we spend more of our time looking at moving images of other people than at any other moment in human history. I don’t have data to support that claim, but come on: You and I both know it has to be true. What else have we been doing for the last two years?Even before the pandemic annexed previously I.R.L. interactions, turning work meetings and family gatherings into extensions of screen time, the writing was on the wall. Maybe that’s the wrong cliché: The shadows on the wall of Plato’s cave stopped being metaphors. They were us.A history of how this came to be — how screen life came to dominate reality, replacing large swaths of it and reconfiguring others — might begin with movies, with one of those origin myths about how early audiences mistook projected pictures for physical phenomena. Our naïve ancestors, one legend tells us, saw a black-and-white silent clip of a train pulling into a station and scrambled to get out of its way. Nowadays, our gullibility runs in the other direction. We might doubt the fact of a real locomotive if there were a video on YouTube questioning its existence.Really, though, what is happening to our minds, our morals and our politics has very little to do with movies, or television, or the other technologies that we used to blame for corrupting our youth and messing with our epistemology. What Susan Sontag called “the image-world” is now just the world. “The powers of photography,” she wrote in the 1970s, have made it “less and less plausible to reflect upon our experience according to the distinction between images and things, between copies and originals.” And, we might add, between experience and performance.That, along with everything else, complicates this Great Performers, traditionally an annual celebration of movie stars.In 2020, when Covid all but halted movie openings and made in-person photo shoots hazardous, we responded by opening up Great Performers, for the first time, to include performances in nonmovie media: actors who worked mainly in television; stand-up comedians; TikTok artists and Twitter jesters. We could have gone further, of course, making room for politicians and public health officials, anti-mask tantrum-throwers and their designated shamers, influencers and meme-mongers and toddlers who tumbled into frame during parental work Zooms. All of them could be classified as performers, and some of them were pretty great.This year, we faced a similar quandary. Movies are back, sort of, but it isn’t as if the status quo has been magically restored. This time, the urgent questions felt a little different. Not so much “Who is a performer” — because finally, who isn’t? — but rather: “What does a performer do to earn our attention?”What is the matter of performance, and why do some performances matter? The first part is to some extent objective. It’s possible, and can be a lot of fun, to analyze the particulars of technique that make the work work. Will Smith’s Louisiana drawl, thigh-hugging shorts and rounded shoulders in “King Richard,” details of an impersonation of Venus and Serena Williams’s father that relies on and repurposes Smith’s own familiar and durable charm. Gaby Hoffmann’s sparrowish quickness and hawklike focus in “C’mon C’mon.” Joaquin Phoenix’s shambling, loose-hipped movement in the same film. The menacing stillness and disarmingly graceful brutality of Benedict Cumberbatch in “The Power of the Dog.” The vocal, facial and gestural counterpoint of Ruth Negga and Tessa Thompson in “Passing.” The heartbreaking naturalness of Joséphine and Gabrielle Sanz in “Petite Maman,” twin sisters using their resemblance and rapport to play, of all things, a daughter and her mother.Joséphine and Gabrielle Sanz in “Petite Maman.”Lilies FilmsBut analysis can only go so far. The effect that actors have — the source of their power and fascination — is more than just subjective. It’s interpersonal. Watching them act, we don’t simply appreciate their discipline or admire their craft. Whether they are professionals or not, whether they are pretending to be well-known figures from literature and history (Macbeth, Princess Diana), ordinary people or themselves, they offer the potent, sometimes uncomfortable possibility of intimacy. The illusion they create isn’t that they really are who they are playing, but rather that, whoever they are, we know them.The process of choosing — of gleaning, from the universe of performances, 10 or a dozen great ones — has felt to me more personal this year than it has before. Less governed by the intellectual procedures of criticism, more fully influenced by mysteries of taste and affection. This year’s Great Performers is devoted to 14 actors whose presence I couldn’t shake, who would not quit me.One thing they have in common — maybe the only thing, beyond their effect on me — is that they appear in stand-alone, feature-length narratives. In the olden days (which ended around 2017), it would have been clear that we were talking about movies rather than television, but thanks to streaming that distinction is now fully obsolete. “The Power of the Dog,” Jane Campion’s epic, wide-screen western, is a Netflix thing. So is the exquisitely silver-toned period psychodrama of Rebecca Hall’s “Passing.” So is Bo Burnham’s one-man stand-up-special-cum-video-diary, “Inside.” Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” with its light-and-shadow cinematography and expressionist set design — and with a haggard, volcanic Denzel Washington in the title role — will appear on Apple TV+.Denzel Washington in “The Tragedy of Macbeth.”Alison Cohen RosaThe flood of digital content comes from a single tap, which can make everything seem equivalent. An Instagram feed, a British baking show, old “30 Rock,” new “Insecure,” plumbing tips and porn — all that stuff might share your algorithms with past and present masterworks of cinema. The old taste hierarchies that would stack such offerings (and their fans) into pyramids of cultural status are a distant memory.Aesthetic distinctions still matter, though, and may reside precisely in the various kinds of connection that different forms offer. Episodic narratives, with their busy ensembles, are simulations of social and domestic life. They concern people in groups, inserting the viewer into the dynamics of collective behavior. From episode to episode, your allegiances and tolerances will shift in ways that are anticipated and manipulated by the creators. As you watch “Succession,” let’s say, you might get annoyed with Kendall and decide to hang out with Roman and Gerri. When that becomes too kinky, you seek refuge in Shiv’s cynicism or cousin Greg’s goofiness. And then Logan does something that makes you feel sorry for Kendall all over again. The whole time, of course, you keep reminding yourself that you don’t really like any of these people. (Even if you’ve never watched the show, you get what I’m talking about. The same thing happens with “White Lotus,” “Grey’s Anatomy” or “The Real Housewives.”) At the other end of the spectrum, the stars of TikTok offer beguiling glimpses and whispered confidences — a state of perpetual flirtation that teases and endlessly defers the promise of something more.A single story contained in a more-or-less two-hour vessel — what we used to just call a movie — offers a form of engagement that is less extensive than any serial and also more intense. Cinephiles worried about the disappearance of movie theaters lament the potential loss of ephemeral communities that assemble when an audience of strangers gathers in a big, dark room. I’d suggest that what defines cinema as an art form is another kind of communion, the brief flickering of a unique bond with the people onscreen.The movies that generated this collection of performers vary enormously with respect to genre, tone, scale and theme. What they share is close attention to a single person functioning either within a circumscribed, highly charged set of relationships or in a state of isolation. Bo Burnham in his studio. Macbeth in his madness. Kristen Stewart’s Diana (in “Spencer”) in the empty chambers and whispering corridors of Sandringham House. Emi (Katia Pascariu) on the streets of Bucharest in “Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn.” Yusuke (Hidetoshi Nishijima), the widowed theater artist in “Drive My Car,” alone with his grief and guilt. Even the gregarious Richard Williams seems like a man apart, a stranger in the white, privileged world of competitive tennis, sometimes at odds with his own family.Hidetoshi Nishijima in “Drive My Car.”Bitters EndIt’s not surprising that loneliness is a recurrent feature — a subject, a mood, an artistic strategy — in Covid-shadowed cinema. (The pandemic itself, the subject and setting of “Inside,” also features explicitly in “Bad Luck Banging” and obliquely in “Drive My Car.” In the first, Pascariu wears a surgical mask almost the whole time; in the second, the masks show up in an epilogue that takes place some time after the main story.) It also strikes me that solitude is a source of these characters’ credibility, of the uncanny sense of recognition we (or I, at least) feel in their presence.The idea that movies run on empathy — a key insight of the great film critic Roger Ebert — is by now something of a truism. But empathy can be counterfeited, coerced and abused. Audiences can be tricked into caring about people who aren’t worthy of it. Or, even worse, we can restrict our caring only to people who obviously deserve it, who we have decided in advance merit our solidarity, pity or identification. A better standard might be curiosity — the feeling that we are in the company of someone worth knowing, however complicated that knowledge may turn out to be.One of the key words in the contemporary lexicon is “performative,” which functions in the more heavily polemicized zones of the internet as a fancy synonym for “insincere.” A wholly accusatory term — nothing you would ascribe to yourself or your allies — it implies that whoever you are accusing isn’t really mad, concerned or passionate about whatever the day’s news cycle has tossed in their path but is only pretending to be.Not to be that guy, but this usage is the opposite of what philosopher J.L. Austin meant by “performative,” a quasi-technical term he applied to a speech act that does what it says. Examples are scarce and specific: when you say “I swear” in a court of law or “I fold” at a poker table, you’re using performatives. You can fold your cards reluctantly or mistakenly, but not ironically. The words are the deed.These divergent definitions suggest an interesting tension within our understanding of what it is to perform, perhaps especially in a world where we presume everything is being done for show. A performance is, by definition, something false, put on, artificial, self-conscious. And also, by the opposing definition, something authentic, persuasive, organic, true.The illusion they create isn’t that they really are who they are playing, but rather that, whoever they are, we know them.In his book “The Method,” which will be published early next year, the critic and stage director Isaac Butler traces the history of this tension as it applies to acting. Starting in prerevolutionary Russia, a new approach to theater insisted on truth — as opposed to eloquence, bravura or technical skill — as the highest value in acting. Its guru was Konstantin Stanislavsky. The Russian word perezhivanie, usually rendered as “experience” and described by Butler as “a state of fusion between actor and character,” was the key to Stanislavsky’s system.The experience of the character is what the actor explores inwardly and communicates outwardly, in such a way that the spectator accepts what he or she knows is not the case. We don’t mistake Will Smith for Richard Williams, Kristen Stewart for Diana or Bo Burham for himself, but we nonetheless believe them.The arrival of Stanislavsky’s teaching in America — where it was preached as the Method by teachers like Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler and practiced by artists like Elia Kazan, Marlon Brando and Kim Stanley — coincided with a renewed commitment to realism in theater and film. For actors, the always elusive, you-know-it-when-you-see-it standard of realism was not faithful mimicry so much as psychological truth. There were differing ideas about how that could be achieved, but a basic tenet was that the feelings, memories and impulses of the performer were tools for mastering the character.The Method peaked in the 1950s and ’60s, but the mystique of authenticity remains. In popular culture, “method acting” now refers to an extreme commitment to erasing the boundary between character and self, a kind of total identification that is in many respects the opposite of what Stanislavsky and his American followers espoused. It means throwing yourself headlong into a character: speaking in dialect 24/7; gaining or losing a lot of weight; embracing outlandish behavior; neglecting personal hygiene. Not to find the sources of the character within yourself, but to make yourself, almost literally, into the character, to go so far into the performance that you are no longer performing.If you follow that logic far enough, it starts to loop back on itself. Didn’t we already establish that everyone is always performing? Doesn’t that make every performance a meta-performance? Isn’t authenticity another kind of artifice?That infinite regression — the abyss of self-consciousness that opens up whenever we open our mouths or turn on our cameras — is the explicit subject of “Inside.” Like Burnham’s previous stand-up specials, and like everyone else’s, it is addressed directly to an audience. The difference is that the audience is absent, and that Burnham’s performance is contained by a literal fourth wall. Alone in a room during lockdown, with a lighting rig, a keyboard and some other equipment but no other cast or crew, he plays with time — Does this last for 90 minutes? A year? Your whole life? — and with the conventions of online self-presentation. He undermines his privileged, white-male assumptions with self-awareness, and then undermines the assumption that self-awareness can accomplish anything. He mocks selfie and Instagram culture with the language of their own self-mockery. He fakes emotion so knowingly that when what looks like real emotion breaks out — when he weeps or raves or curls up in a ball — we have to be suspicious, even if we’re moved. He is either laying open his innermost self (one meaning of the title) or else showing off his specialized knowledge of how the manipulation of meaning works (another possible meaning of the title). Or both, because the point is that there isn’t a difference.Bo Burnham in “Inside.”NetflixUnless you really pay attention. Movies are often said to resemble dreams in the way they assemble fragmentary images and fugitive meanings into illusions of continuity. The internet, by contrast, replicates — and also, of course, consumes — waking consciousness, fragmenting experience into shards of distraction, dissociation and randomness. That’s the experience Burnham tries to capture in “Inside,” but you understand what he’s doing only if you keep watching, without checking your texts or your Twitter feed or using the screen-in-screen feature to keep track of the playoff game.That kind of exclusive engagement is something Burnham pointedly (and poignantly) begs for, even as he doubts it exists. His neediness turns a subtext of performance into text. Look at me! See me! Understand me! But like every other performer, he’s also saying the opposite: I’m not who you think I am. I’m not really here.What is it like to live inside that doubleness, to practice a self-presentation that it also self-erasure? The Diana in “Spencer” might have something to say about that. Kristen Stewart in “Spencer” absolutely does. The argument about how good an actress she is has long been settled. Her skill was never in dispute around here; this is her third Great Performers appearance. But her work in “Spencer” represents a new level of achievement, and not primarily because of the technical hurdles she clears. The accent is faultless, the posture impeccable, the mix of vulnerability and grit completely persuasive. But this isn’t Kristen Stewart disappearing into the role. It’s closer to the old Method ideal of an actor using her own experience to gain access to the inner life of the character. A big part of the experience that fuses Stewart to Diana is the experience of being a movie star, of living from a very young age in the glare of public scrutiny, of losing the boundary between your private and your performing self.I don’t mean that “Spencer” is shadow autobiography, or that Stewart identifies with Diana (though it’s easy enough to suppose that she sympathizes with some aspects of the princess’s plight). I’m more interested in the ways the film feeds our curiosity about both women, flattering and challenging our sense that we know them. We are taken into Diana’s confidence even as we are aware of invading her privacy, of witnessing her private agonies and anxieties. A terrible thing about her situation, among judgmental in-laws and all-seeing members of the royal staff, is the absence of anyone she can entirely trust. There turn out to be a few exceptions: her young sons; a kind dresser played by Sally Hawkins. Above all, there is the audience. Everyone else will betray her, but not us.Kristen Stewart in “Spencer.”NeonMaybe that’s too much. Maybe you recoil from that imposition. “Spencer” is like “Inside” in the way it risks alienating the viewer by demanding a kind and intensity of attention we may not be willing to confer. It also asks us to appreciate the way Diana learns to master the role of herself — to become more authentic not by rejecting the performance of princesshood but by taking control of it.Maybe that’s just what a great actor does. And maybe, right now, the truest performances — the great performances — are the ones that double that accomplishment, that require actors to play actors. The two women at the center of “Passing,” Ruth Negga’s Clare and Tessa Thompson’s Irene, are friends from childhood, both Black, who find themselves on opposite sides of the color line in 1920s New York. Not that it’s so simple as that. Clare, married to a racist white man, intentionally passes for white. Irene, who lives in Harlem and is active in the Negro Welfare League, is sometimes mistaken for white in other parts of the city. Which one is performing, and what role? Those questions generate a lot of suspense and also a sense of vertigo about what is real, who is telling the truth, and whether authenticity has any bearing at all in matters of race and sexuality.The beauty of the film lies in the contrast between the two central performances. Negga plays Irene as a risk-taker and an extrovert, delighting in her secret, in the danger of exposure, and in the ongoing, improvisatory imperatives of passing. Thompson’s Irene, repressed, serious and anxious, is driven to distraction, and ultimately to violence, less by Clare’s enactment of whiteness than by the lightness of spirit she brings to it. Clare knows how to act, so to speak, while Irene, forced into a performance of respectable, middle-class motherhood, feels trapped in a lie.Ruth Negga and Tessa Thompson in “Passing.”NetflixEmi, in “Bad Luck Banging,” is ensnared in the consequences of a performance that found the wrong audience. A sex tape that she made with her husband finds its way onto the internet, causing a scandal at the school where Emi teaches. The first three minutes of the movie consist of that tape, which means that Pascariu, like Emi — Pascariu as Emi, though we don’t know that yet — is introduced in a state of maximum physical exposure. For the rest of the film, she is fully dressed and almost always masked, which removes some of the usual resources of screen performance. There are barely any close-ups, no visible smiles or grimacing, so we try to read her mood through her eyes and the crease between them. At the end, she confronts a hostile audience of parents who watch the naughty clip in her presence and then enact a theater of shaming and bad-faith argument, both for and against her. If the greatness of some of the other performances lies in their achievement of intimacy, Pascariu’s is great because she defends Emi’s privacy and preserves her dignity, reminding us how much we don’t know about her, even if we think we’ve seen everything.And so it is with Julie Harte, the young filmmaker played by Honor Swinton Byrne in Joanna Hogg’s “The Souvenir Part II.” In the first “Souvenir,” Julie fell in love with an eccentric fellow who turned out to be a compulsive liar and a heroin addict, and in the sequel she is making a film about their relationship and his death. This is an overtly autobiographical film, set in the 1980s, and Julie’s movie-within-the-movie, a student film, is a replica of Hogg’s own early work. The two “Souvenir” movies together seem to amount to an act of total cinematic exposure, but they also affirm just how mysterious even our own experience can be. And the key to the mystery — not the solution to it but the dark center of it — is Swinton Byrne’s quiet, reserved, at times almost affectless performance. We know her by not knowing her; her performance hides as much as it reveals.Honor Swinton Byrne in “The Souvenir Part II.”Joss Barratt/A24Which is just what people are like. And acting, finally, is a way of acquainting us with the strangeness of being human. One of the most perfect metaphors for this strangeness — and also one of the most perceptive considerations of acting I’ve seen onscreen — comes in “Drive My Car,” adapted by Ryusuke Hamaguchi from a Haruki Murakami short story. The main character, Yusuke, an actor and director, specializes in an unusual form of experimental theater, presenting classic plays with multinational casts, each actor speaking in their own native language. At a theater workshop in Hiroshima, he assembles a cast for Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” with dialogue in Japanese, Mandarin, Tagalog, Korean and Korean sign language. The actors prepare by mastering the timing of the lines, and by receiving the psychological meaning of words they don’t literally understand.The result, as presented onscreen and threaded through Yusuke’s own emotional turmoil, is almost shatteringly powerful. As Yusuke, Nishijima stands at a slight remove from the play-within-the-movie, since Yusuke hasn’t cast himself. Instead, he watches, as we watch, a kind of miracle unfold. The tenderness and melancholy of Chekhov’s play, its nuances of thwarted ambition, misdirected desire and piercing devotion, don’t emerge in spite of the linguistic cacophony, but by means of it. A more concentrated, almost spiritual form of understanding ripples among the actors — finally including Yusuke himself — and it seems to flow outward, from the stage to the theater audience and then from the screen to you. You don’t quite believe what you’ve seen, but you feel it. More than that: You know it. More

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    The Best Actors of 2021

    HonorSwinton Byrne

    in ‘The Souvenir Part II’

    In both parts of Joanna Hogg’s autobiographical films, Honor Swinton Byrne faces a double challenge. As Julie Harte, she is portraying a version of the director, and frequently sharing the screen with her own mother, the formidable Tilda Swinton, who plays Julie’s genteel mother. “The Souvenir” is the two-part story of a young artist’s development, and Swinton Byrne’s confidence in her powers seems to grow alongside Julie’s.

    In both parts of Joanna Hogg’s autobiographical films, Honor Swinton Byrne faces a double challenge. As Julie Harte, she is portraying a version of the director, and frequently sharing the screen with her own mother, the formidable Tilda Swinton, who plays Julie’s genteel mother. “The Souvenir” is the two-part story of a young artist’s development, and Swinton Byrne’s confidence in her powers seems to grow alongside Julie’s. More

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    ‘Spencer’ | Anatomy of a Scene

    Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera.Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera. More

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    Kristen Stewart’s Princess Diaries

    Kristen Stewart has sometimes been accused of just playing variations on herself, as if that isn’t half the reason we’re drawn to movie stars. In “Twilight” (2008), she brought a specific and sullen appeal to a heroine conceived as a blank slate for female readers; later, in “Personal Shopper” (2017), when Stewart traded her polo shirts for a rich client’s shimmering dress, you could see both the star and the character regarding her new look in the mirror: Is this me? Could I make it me?At first, her new drama “Spencer” would appear to be a sop for the sort of moviegoer who’d demand a more rigorous transformation from the “Twilight” actress: Directed by Pablo Larraín (“Jackie”), the movie is a psychological portrait of Princess Diana as she unravels, then rallies, over a three-day Christmas holiday. Instead of hiring a British actress, Larraín chose Stewart, a contemporary figure of California cool who met me on the day of our interview wearing a brick-red pinstripe suit, her jacket sleeves rolled up to reveal a small constellation of tattoos.The 31-year-old actress who sat opposite me on a balcony at the Sunset Tower Hotel in West Hollywood may not have looked like the obvious pick to play the people’s princess, but a funny thing happens as you watch “Spencer”: The distance that initially seemed so vast between the two women will close to the point where it seems like the canniest casting ever. Stewart, after all, knows a thing or two about a life lived in the public eye, the scrutiny leveled at a high-profile romance, and the private moments snatched away by paparazzi.Stewart gave her all to the movie, studying Diana’s posture, mannerisms and accent; the resulting performance, potent and provocative, has thrust her to the front of this year’s crop of best-actress Oscar contenders. “I used to think that I needed spontaneity and anxiety to propel me into something truthful and that if I had too much control over it, it was immediately going to become fabricated,” Stewart said. “I just didn’t have the confidence to hold that and be like, ‘No, you can design something.’”But Larraín had that confidence in her.“She’s like an actress from the ’50s or ’60s,” the director said. “What she’s doing for the story can be at a very grounded character level, but it’s elevated to a poetic level that creates an enormous amount of mystery and intrigue. And that’s probably the best cocktail you could ever find for a performance on camera.”Stewart as Princess Diana (opposite Laura Benson) in a scene from “Spencer.”NeonStewart knew that taking on “Spencer” would be a challenge, and in the days leading up to the shoot, she even developed lockjaw as she ceaselessly practiced her British accent. But once she was on set, finally channeling Diana, her fears melted away: “At the end of week one, I was like, ‘This is the best thing I’ve ever done. This is the most alive I’ve ever felt.’”Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.What was your first impression when Pablo pitched “Spencer” to you?He was so sure that I should do this, and I thought that was audacious and crazy because it just doesn’t seem like the most instinctive, immediate choice.Did he tell you why it had to be you?He was like, “There’s something about Diana that we’ll never know. You make me feel like that. I’ve seen your work, and I never really know what you’re thinking.” And I feel that way about Diana as well. Even though I feel this overwhelming attraction to her spirit and her energy, there’s something that’s disarming about her. I want to hang out with her. I want to race her down a long hallway. I want to, like, meet her kid.Still, was it a natural step to say yes to this movie?The only reason that you work as an actor for this long is to try and outdo yourself every time. This one was just the proper step up that I couldn’t really say no to. It was ambitious and attractive, and I was like, “If I can’t do that, then I’ll just stop and direct movies instead.” And it’s fun to imagine a larger conversation. It’s fun to imagine if you’re capable of holding that.What emerged of Diana as you researched her?There were so many layers to read. There were so many ways in which she tried to reveal herself, that weren’t necessarily in the form of a direct sentence. She wasn’t allowed to be like, “I’m dying, and he doesn’t love me.” I think the way she expressed herself is so interesting because there are so many lenses between you and that communication.It’s like, to not acknowledge that every single person in the world is sitting here on this balcony with us is wild. We have to pretend they’re not because we’re being nice to each other. Which is nice! But also, we’re talking to everyone in the whole world right now.And I’m asking you to be vulnerable with me, as though what you say won’t be chopped up, reblogged and retweeted by people who aren’t here.You roll the dice, definitely. One could write a very long paper on the exchange between a journalist and an actor. That’s obviously not why we’re here, but yeah.Though Stewart knows something of what Diana experienced with paparazzi, the actress said she was never told “to sit and stay in the way that was so damaging and dishonest.”Ryan Pfluger for The New York TimesBut it kind of is. Diana had to be incredibly savvy about her image and the way it was used, while still radiating utter authenticity. Actors are required to do the same.Every way that we reach out toward each other has to be designed from an interior place. Therefore, it’s a form of manipulation. You want someone to understand you; you want to make someone feel the way that you feel. It’s sad to think about her in general because she’s just the most coveted, loved and also rejected, self-hating person. Those things shouldn’t go together.Unless some of it is cause and some of it is effect. Do we respond to her in a way that causes a little bit of that? When she’s called the people’s princess, does that imply a form of ownership?Of course, which I think she probably tried to cultivate. I think she had to reach out to get any sort of warm acceptance, when obviously at home she felt invisible and unheard and stifled and cold. She was looking sort of everywhere she could for that kind of love. She was the first royal in the entire history of them to reach out and touch people physically, in their face, without gloves on. That rocked people to their core.How did you square some of her contradictions?There were people that were like, “She would never use profanity.” And then other memories would be like, “Oh, gosh, she just came in swearing.” So you can’t know her. With famous people, you hear someone go, “I met them once and they’re not very nice,” but it’s like, “Were you asking them how their day went when they were coming out of the pisser? Maybe they weren’t nice to you in that moment.” People love to have one experience sort of sum up an entire human’s personality. You just have to take everyone’s perspective and shove them together and kind of figure out your own.You’re clearly speaking from personal experience. But in other interviews I’ve read, you demur when asked to draw a direct line between your time in the public eye and Diana’s.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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    ‘Happiest Season’ Review: Make the Yuletide Gay

    For fans of seasonal festivity, the lesbian romantic comedy “Happiest Season” is a three-for-one bargain. It’s set during Christmas, it’ll release over Thanksgiving, and in keeping with Halloween, it’s a monster movie about the horrors that can arise when socializing with straight people.In a charismatic and funny turn, Kristen Stewart stars as Abby, an amiable lesbian who hopes to propose to her girlfriend on a Christmas trip to meet the parents. The only catch is that Abby’s partner, Harper (Mackenzie Davis), has lied about coming out to her uptight family, and she wants Abby to keep up the heterosexual charade. Abby acquiesces to Harper’s wishes, despite the protests of her best friend John (Daniel Levy). For five days Abby fields prying questions, public ex-boyfriends and secret ex-girlfriends — all for the sake of her woefully abashed sweetheart.[embedded content]The movie (streaming on Hulu) was directed by Clea Duvall — perhaps best known for her star turn in the cult film, “But I’m a Cheerleader.” Her “Happiest Season” looks as glossy as a Tinseltown Christmas card; its coming-out plot has traces of decades old Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repression.Yet beneath the holly jolly facade, there is real disdain here for straight people’s cheery conservatism, their preference for smiling silence. This is a story about the self-annihilation queer people face when they mold themselves to straight expectations, told by a lesbian filmmaker working in maybe the most stereotypically heterosexual genre — the Christmas romantic comedy. The movie practically vibrates with its own meta tension.It’s a kick to watch household names like Stewart and Levy (along with Victor Garber and Aubrey Plaza) grapple with questions of queer performance and straight perception. Discomforted, thrilled, I felt gayer for having seen it.Happiest SeasonRated PG-13 for language and references to sex. Running time: 1 hours and 42 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More