A great example of one of these discoveries gone wrong occurred way, way back in the glory days of my youth (2009) when I watched a movie entitled An Education, a little British drama about a mature high school girl who is won over and betrayed by an older man. It starred Carey Mulligan, whose performance at the age of 24 was a miracle: as awkward as a 16 year-old, but clearly clever enough to make us believe she was wise beyond her years.
"She's the new Audrey Hepburn!" I declared to nobody, wetting myself in ecstatic glee. Seriously, though no urine was actually involved, I remember watching the movie alone in my room, all snot-nosed and zit-faced, saying that out loud. I am a genuine movie nerd, make no mistake.
But what has Miss Mulligan been up to in the last five years, you may well wonder. Well, she's been in several notable films: Drive, Shame, The Great Gatsby, Inside llewyn Davis. Is she good in these movies? Yes, she still possesses great screen presence and has retained her gifts for tragic and comic timing. But none of her performances outside of An Education would I call truly great. She's good and I have lost none of my respect for her, because at least she knows how to pick great movies to work on, but she's not really doing anything extraordinary that will make her stand out. If I mention Carey Mulligan at work, nobody will know who I mean.
That's not to say that being a big, recognizable movie star is the same as being great, or vice versa. Which finally brings me to my real point today, that Michelle Williams is a sure-as-shootin' great performer. And yet nobody knows her name, either.
There is no doubt as to when Michelle Williams came on the scene. It was her small performance in Brokeback Mountain as the suspicious, neglected wife of the Heath Ledger character who was ***SPOILER ALERT*** gay. Her role was small and monstrously effective, the real emotional anchor of the film. She got a lot of praise and an Oscar nomination and that was that.
She appeared in a few other movies after that, but her name and face would be cemented on my brain five years after Brokeback because of a movie called Blue Valentine. Now, keep in mind that I still didn't really know who she was. I wasn't yet a "fan," so to speak, but her gut-wrenching performance made an irreversible impact. This was an actress to watch out for, the kind of star that has the power to elevate the effect of whatever movie she's in. I would not forget her name again.
Then, as if by magic, Williams starred the very next year in My Week with Marilyn, playing Marilyn Monroe in what is undoubtedly her greatest performance, a role that earned her a third Academy Award nomination that she should have easily won, but I'll rant about that some other time.
Faithful readers of my blog may even remember how much I loved the movie and especially her. It came out at the end of the first year I started my blog and I wrote about it twice. I just re-watched the film again last night (It was actually to time how long Kenneth Branaugh was in it for my Supporting Actor Project, which is going good but slow, thanks for asking.) and was again blown away by how remarkable she is, but perhaps in a different way than I originally felt.
At the beginning of the movie, there's a scene where star Eddie Redmayne (the young man to which the 'My' in the title refers) is watching a Marilyn Monroe movie in a crowded theater, just overjoyed to have the privelege to fall under her spell. Watching Williams in the movie was, I think, a similar experience of blind admiration. I thought that she was brilliant and still do, though when I gushed in my original review, "Williams...very nearly reaches perfection...It was almost like watching a ghost," I seem to give the impression that I saw Williams as a Monroe copycat, which is false. I later stated, "This may not be what Monroe is actually like, but it is how we remember her." This is a bit more accurate.
You see, Williams' job was not to actually become Marilyn Monroe. That would be impossible. To watch her performance and try to compare it to what Monroe was actually like is missing the point. Yes, Monroe didn't speak as breathily as Williams does and was physically more, for lack of a better word, plump. And yes, I've seen the youtube clip with Williams' dance in this movie compared to Monroe's actual moves in The Prince and the Showgirl, and yes, I can see that they don't at all match up. The point was that Williams was embodying the spirit of Monroe, recreating shades of that recognizable icon from which she could then create the new character, the Monroe needed for the film, the Monroe that the film insists was the real one nobody knew.
I think I've strayed from this post's original intent. For that I sincerely apologize. I believe what I was trying to say was that Michelle Williams is a great actress who hasn't done anything recently, where do all the great performers hide when I'm not looking, I heart Michelle Williams, and so forth. In closing, I noticed while looking through pictures for this post that Michelle Williams and Carey Mulligan are rather similar in appearance. Could it be that my critical judgment has been blinded by some sort of "thing" I have?! Throw in my recent adoration for Anne Hathaway, Naomi Watts, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead and, yup, my opinions are irrelevant now.
*****
It is now your turn to gush, either in the comments below or directly to me at beauxmoviemail
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