You don’t normally find insightful and spot-on commentary of the actual work of actors and acting in movie or theatre reviews. It’s usually general pass/fail stuff, like: “So and so gives a good performance”, etc. Which is fine – but sometimes, sometimes, a reviewer will actually start to talk about a certain performance, and what he thinks the actor actually DID to make the performance happen … If the reviewer has some understanding of the craft of actors (like Ebert does, like all the good ones do), the review can sometimes illuminate just what it is about a certain actor that we like, love, or hate. I love it when a reviewer takes the time to “go there” – it doesn’t happen often.
I came across this review of Julianne Moore’s new movie The Forgotten – which I don’t think I will be seeing. It sounds pretty bad.
However, Manohla Dargis opens the review with one of the most insightful observations about Julianne Moore that I have ever read.
The actress Julianne Moore has one face as transparent as water, the other as opaque as a mystery. With her milky complexion and lapidary features, Ms. Moore can seem alarmingly fragile, as breakable and translucent as fine French porcelain. It’s a face that suggests vulnerability, femininity and an almost otherworldly ethereality.
But there is a tough side to the actress, too, a core resolve that can harden her beauty into a mask, and it is in the space between her perceived delicacy and this mask that Ms. Moore does her best work. For filmmakers who know how to put her faces into play, the actress can work wonders, as she did for the director Todd Haynes in “Safe” and his wrenching melodrama “Far From Heaven.”
it is in the space between her perceived delicacy and this mask that Ms. Moore does her best work
What an observation. It strikes me as utterly true – an apt description of the talent of Julianne Moore.
Anyone see Safe? Tremendous and creepy performance by Julianne Moore. I found the movie so disturbing, though, that I don’t think I could see it again. I was “off” for days after seeing it.
