Take Three: Emily Watson

Craig here with Take Three. Today: Emily Watson

Take One: Upstairs 0 - Downstairs 1

The Academy often doubles up with their supporting ladies – i.e. Weaver and Cusack for Working Girl, Farmiga and Kendrick for Up in the Air, and so on. It was true also for 2001’s Gosford Park's Helen Mirren and Maggie Smith. I always thought a third should’ve been added. Watson delivered five-star service and, for me, the film’s best performance by a country (house) mile. She played Elsie, the knowing, spirited maid that doomed homeowner Sir William (Michael Gambon) liked to see doing plenty of overtime.

Among the film's interviewing mini-plots, Elsie’s narrative was an intriguing red herring, a side dish. But then Gosford Park wasn’t really about the murder as much as it was about class. Watson had plenty.

Watson in Gosford Park

Altman’s film was packed wall-to-wall with high-level thesping and hidden somewhere in the pack was Watson effortlessly showing everybody up. Mirren was great, Smith very good, but Watson's was the most likeable, instinctive and vibrant turn. In Gosford Park Watson proves adept at making familiar type seem fresh and altogether vital. She’s always believable on screen. Mirren’s emotional resolution was Gosford Park’s sad closer, but Watson sent the film off on a more optimistic note.

Take Two: Staring death in the face

We were all was vicariously looking out for Watson’s character Reba McClane in Red Dragon (2002). Given the circumstances, somebody needed to. Reba was the blind co-worker dubiously romanced by heavily-tattooed serial killer Francis Dolarhyde (Ralph Fiennes). Falling for the mentally-suspect mother’s boy was a mistake, sure, but appearances can be deceptive and Reba didn’t have the foresight. Their shared outsiderdom brought them together  but with one major difference: he was madder than a box of frogs, she wasn’t; he went around watching other people’s home videos, gluing folk to wheelchairs then setting them on fire and eating paintings, she didn’t.

Watson in Red Dragon

Watson was spot on in the role offering no concession to cliché, no unnecessary dwelling on the “disability” aspect, no life-affirming monologues. Instead she provides  solid, amiable character acting. Her final moments, wondering aloud to Edward Norton whether she “drew a freak”, are brief but minutely heartbreaking. Watson turned a shopworn character, twice mislabelled a victim, into a full-bodied person, coloring her in with nuanced detail. Reba wasn’t just a pitiable blind girl. She was refreshingly knowing, slightly cynical and  believably vulnerable in ways we don’t normally see.

Take Three: Hard times, clean hands

Grandiose, revisionist westerns made with lyrical verve, riper than thou character names and terse dialogue aren’t ten a penny these days, so it's best to relish them when they roll around. Ace Aussie oddity The Proposition (2005) was one of my films of 2006; Watson made my best actress list. Martha Stanley, the homely, nervy wife to Ray Winstone’s Captain was quietly electrifying. Here was a woman ill-adjusted to frontier lief, stuck in the (out)back of beyond in a godforsaken 1800s town built on violence. This delicate English flower wilted in the heat of the Australian desert. Emily's Martha gradually hardens to all that death and dust, but never accepts it. She’s one of writer Nick Cave’s best creations: like a doomed heroine in one of his murder ballads, but fleshed out and allowed to cautiously flourish.

Watson in The Proposition

Even though Martha was on the periphery of all the manly action, Hillcoat’s camera is still attentive to her. Through Watson’s beautifully underplayed performance we are granted access to her inner thoughts. When she overhears of her husband’s betrayal (concerning the flogging of a man believed to have raped and murdered her only friend), we not only witness her utter disbelief in cutaway, but the scene itself ends on her exhausted yet defiant stride out of her isolated house. Her blue-brown dress is at elegant odds to the expansive, harsh desert terrain she heads towards.

Watson in the bath

Watson's performance is a set of emotive actions finely woven together. Watch the way she inspects her water-withered hands in the bath as she talks of her grief, the way her deathly dream virtually obliterates her own waking perception of events, how her brittle defiance turns to resigned revulsion during the flogging scene and, in the brutal climax, her frozen terror. The reality of how hard a slog life was for Martha is etched all over Emily's face.

Three more key films for the taking:  Breaking the Waves (1995), Hilary & Jackie (1998), Punchdrunk Love (2002)

Live Blog: The Hollywood Reporter Actress Roundtable 2010

The actual hour-long Hollywood Reporter video of the six actresses who grace their cover: Annette Bening, Nicole Kidman, Amy Adams, Hilary Swank, Natalie Portman and Helena Bonham-Carter. Here's how it breaks down if you don't have a full hour to watch (video at bottom of post). Unfortunately you can't "scroll" so the time stamps are useless as I type away.

0:01 Helena talks about first day-i-tis. Never thinks she can do it. I can't act!
1:30 Amy talks about being unemployed and feeling sorry for herself (interesting bit... both sad and funny) and the long time period where she considered giving up. But now that she's successful, what doesn't she like about her career?

Amy: I feel very vulnerable. I don't like it at all. You're very subject to other people's opinions. You know when it doesn't go well. 

Hilary: We know when it doesn't go well. We don't need to be beat over the head with it.

Oopsie!

5:00 Swank talks about trying and even if you fail, always try your hardest. Ah platitudes! I didn't get enough of 'em on election night.
6:48 Annette is asked about her input into making The Kids Are All Right more of a comedy than it originally started as...

Annette: I just didn't want it to be earnest. But she's (Lisa Cholodenko) also kind of too generous when she talks about me and my contributions.

9:00 Helena interrupts to talk about the vibrator scene (but says she hasn't seen the movie).
10:30 Hilary complains that she can't find good comedies. Uhnnh, you're not a comic actress. We're 10 minutes in and Nicole has said NOTHING. I need Nicki. But she was like this at the Margot at the Wedding press conference I attended, too. She is kind of robotic until directly addressed. I say that with the utmost love but it's like she's a robot until the movie camera is on or the press cameras are off. It's... odd.
12:00 Natalie Portman calls the Black Swan screenplay "a blueprint." and reveals that she and Darren Aronofsky have been planning to make the movie for the past 9 years (!) and credits Nicole with the following great career advice...

Read more »