All Hail La Streep!

In 1976 Jynnie and I saw a TV program about Joe Papp’s  New York Theatre in the Park production of The Taming of the Shrew.  We had never come across Meryl Streep or Raul Julia, who played Katharina and Petruchio, but their incredible energy burned so brightly in a very physical production that we asked who are they?     That was before either had made a movie.    Meryl also worked on stage with Mandy Patinkin and John Lithgow before she got into movies.

I am rather shocked to see that I have only seen 22 of her movies (plus her playing multiple roles in Angels In America),  but I cannot forget her portrayals in Sophie’s Choice,  The French Lieutenant’s Woman, Out of Africa, Silkwood, A Cry In The Dark,  Plenty,  The Devil Wears Prada, Adaptation, Doubt,  Dancing At Lughnasa,  Into the Woods, or Hope Springs to name just half of them.    

Pauline Kael, one of my favourite commentators on the movies criticized Meryl Streep for not being sufficient ‘mysterious’ as Sarah,  The French Lieutenant’s Woman,  but then she really didn’t like the whole movie’s adaptation by Harold Pinter.  After seeing the psychological thriller Still of the Night Kael took Streep to task for choosing  ‘noble roles’ and said that “I have come to dread her reflective manner and flooding tears - she could give pensive a bad name.” (Taking it all in, 1987 p 427) and later ‘for taking roles she was not suited for’  such as Karen Silkwood,  where ‘she has the external details of “Okie bad girl ” down pat, but something is not quite right.  She has no natural vitality; she’s like a replicant – all shtick.’  (State of the Art, 1987 p 107.)  Kael criticized Streep for not being enough like Silkwood, but had she ever met Silkwood?  Or had she an ‘Okie bad girl’ stereotype in mind?  

I know that some people only see Streep’s  remarkable technique and would rather have a method style immersion in her roles,  a critique also made of Lawrence Olivier.     Kael wrote in 1982, after seeing Sophie’s Choice that Streep ‘has, as usual, put thought and effort into her work. But .... is it possible that as an actress she makes herself into a blank and then focuses all her attention on only one thing--the toss of her head, for example, in Manhattan, her accent here? Maybe, by bringing an unwarranted intensity to one facet of a performance, she in effect decorporealizes herself. This could explain why her movie heroines don't seem to be full characters, and why there are no incidental joys to be had from watching her. It could be that in her zeal to be an honest actress she allows nothing to escape her conception of a performance. Instead of trying to achieve freedom in front of the camera, she's predetermining what it records.”   But she goes to say that  “Meryl Streep's work doesn't hold together here, but how could it? Sophie isn't a character, she's a pawn in this guilt-and-evil game played out by Sophie the Catholic, Nathan the Jew, and Stingo the Protestant.   Styron got his three characters so gummed up with his idea of history that it's hard for us to find them even imaginable.”  (Pauline Kael The New Yorker, Dec. 27, 1982).    Kael really did  not like Sophie's Choice; it didn’t even make it into her 1000 Movies You Must See!    Here are two examples of movies where maybe she blamed Streep rather than the script or directing, even as she complained about the script and/or directing.  My respect for Pauline Kael is not, of course, diminished by disagreeing with her in this. 

Mike Nichols, who actually worked with Streep, directing her in Silkwood, Heartburn and Postcards from the Edge, praised her ability to transform herself, remarking that "in every role she becomes a totally new human being.   As she becomes the person she is portraying, the other performers begin to react to her as if she were that person.”   

I also think that Meryl Streep has never wanted to be a ‘Film Star’, popular for simply being (safely predictably)  themselves on screen, but has continually pushed the boundaries.    She had the technique and the intelligence to play Sophie, Karen Blixen, and Sarah, but as she has grown she has been able to trust her skills, loosen up and play in Dancing At Lughnasa, Doubt, The Devil Wears Prada, Hope Springs and Adaptation,  not to mention Mama Mia and Into the Woods.    

It is true that most of Meryl Streep's roles have been of remarkable (and as Kael said often noble)  women, but one of my favourite Streep movies is Hope Springs,  in which she plays an entirely ‘ordinary’ woman, married to an entirely ‘ordinary’ man (played by Tommy Lee Jones).   But nobody is ordinary, and these two gifted and humane actors bring these people to life with humour, insight and affection.     No showboating, no grand display of technique, no accents (or if there was a regional American inflection I didn’t notice it) just a deeply observed understanding  of what it would be like to be these people in this situation.   By the end of the movie I really cared for both of the characters they had brought to life.   If you see Hope Springs or see it again do try to watch the one who is not talking.   Streep and Jones are wonderful listeners and reactors – and that is more than half of the art of acting. 

Meryl Streep’s  recent Golden Globe Lifetime Award acceptance speech is good to hear in its entirely – and not just the Trump reference.   In it she said  “An actor’s only job is to enter the lives of people who are different from us, and let you feel what that feels.” And “we have to remind each other of the privilege and the responsibility of the act of empathy.”  

The warm reception she received from her peers when given the Golden Globe Award showed, I think, that they too believed she had enjoyed that privilege and taken on board that responsibility in ways that have graced her art.   Thank you Meryl. 

A Monster Calls - but dare you answer?

The screenplay for A Monster Calls was adapted by Patrick Ness from his own novel of the same name, but is based on a plot thought up,  but not written,  by the late Siobhan Dowd,  another prize winning ‘Young Adult’ author.    After Dowd died Patrick Ness was invited to develop her idea into a novel and then script.

The film A Monster Calls  was directed by the Spanish Director J.A. Bayone (The Impossible and The Others) and stars Liam Neeson,  Felicity Jones, Sigourney Weaver and the young Lewis MacDougal as Connor.    I urge you to see it.   But I also offer a warning.

In the rather beautiful opening credits water-colours float across the screen.   We will see such images later telling important stories and providing vital clues to guide us through the psychological and emotional thickets of this powerful movie.     But this is about death and facing the dying of a beloved.     

Twelve year old Connor’s mother has cancer.   He knows this and struggles with his fear, rage and shame.     His father is remarried and living in America.    His Grandmother seems to be emotionally distant.     So he is visited by a Yew Tree Monster who seems to wreak destruction but also tells ambiguous stories that confuse Conner.   And the Monster also demands that Connor will eventually tell his own story, the story that terrifies him.   

I read the Patrick Ness book in one sitting and remained determinately dry-eyed, but I knew that the more potent medium of the movie would not let me get away with that again.   It is nearly eleven years since my beloved wife died but it seems I still have tears to let flow.    Anything that helps us take another faltering step along the grieving road has to be good for us.   How often have I assured the bereaved that the tears we shed can help to heal us, but warned that unshed tears turn to acid and burn us from the inside.    Grief can feel like a monster, but it will not harm us if we respond to its call and face it, like brave young Connor, and listen to it.

I love the way today’s movie makers are able to put literally anything they can imagine onto the screen, from the kaleidoscopic  cityscapes of Doctor Strange and the beguilingly human BFG to the Yew Tree ‘ Monster’ voiced by Neeson in this film.   They can do so to thrill and amaze us, and can also do so to touch our hearts and heal us.  Movies can properly and beneficially move us.   Sometimes they address our own personal struggles, sometimes they are - as Saint Roger Ebert once said - ‘machines to produce empathy.’  

Twice in this film adults are faced with the outrageous behaviour of an emotionally  tortured child.    Twice he expects to be properly punished.  And twice he is asked ‘What possible good would that do?’    And so are we.    The late Josephine Hart’s novel Damage (filmed in 1992 by Louis Malle with Juliette Binoche, Jeremy Irons and Miranda Richardson)  made the crucial and succinct point that ‘damaged people damage people.’   That was long before we had to come to terms with the fact that abused people’s behavior so often alienates us from them,  making them –at the least – unsympathetic witnesses, self-harmers or, too often, abusive themselves.  

Empathy is a crucial characteristic of big brained mammals,  and one that needs to be fostered and fed.    Books such as  A Monster Calls may be hard to read, and movies such as this may be hard to watch,  but if they can help in healing our own wounds or feed our understanding of the wounds of others they are good for us.    And often rather beautiful.   I give thanks for those artists who write such books and those make such films.    

Sigourney Weaver must be pretty busy making the fifth Alien and three Avatar sequels.   She certainly does not need to master an impeccable English accent again for this role as she did long ago for The Year of Living Dangerously,  so she obviously wanted to be in this film.   Felicity Jones is at the top of her Theory of Everything and Star Wars acclaim and fame, so this comparatively ‘little film’ must have called to her too.   Liam Neesom can earn squillions making more meretricious Taken style revenge movies, but he also sometimes commits himself to more redemptive roles such as the recovering-alcoholic cop Matt Scudder in A Walk Among the Tombstones,  a brief appearance as God in the BBC’s wonderful Rev and now this.

As I said earlier, I urge you to see this film, but do heed my warning.