... you can learn from:
The House of Mirth (2000)
Lily Bart: If obliquity were a vice,we should all be tainted.Mrs. Peniston: Only someone without familycould make such a vulgar remark.Lily Bart: Aunt Julia, you are my family.
I was talking about the director Terence Davies on Twitter the other week after watching his terrific gay coming-of-age flick The Long Day Closes for the first time (highly recommended) when it came up that I also had never seen his adaptation of The House of Mirth -- well I still haven't, but I have plans to now, as it's one of the films screening as part of The Paris Theater's reopening here in NYC, which I told you about a couple of weeks back. (That screening is actually sandwiched right in between two screenings of Call Me By Your Name, and you know I plan on going to both.) This is all good preparation for when Davies' new film, the WWII-era gay poet romance Benediction, starring Jack Lowden, premieres at TIFF next month -- I have already talked about Benediction quite a bit here.
But to get to the point of this post: we are wishing a happy birthday to the great Gillian Anderson today! Legend of small screen and the stage -- and here I'll remind you that her Blanche Dubois remains the best live performance I have ever seen -- but I think Mirth remains the biggest, meatiest film role she's ever had, right? As well known as she is she really hasn't had much of a film career, which at this point seems like more of a choice than not. She's been racking up the statues for her Thatcher turn on The Crown this past year, and next comes a role in the second season of my beloved The Great, opposite Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult -- that show dropped a teaser over the weekend and you'd best believe I shrieked when Anderson popped up! Watch below:
5 comments:
Big screen stardom isn't what it use to be when it was the desired apex.
Especially for women it's a rather barren wasteland without the star driven vehicles of the 20's to 50's or the challenging changing landscape of the 60's, 70's and to a degree 80's. Hell it's not even the leaner times of the 90's when independent production was on fire. If it's not a superhero or animated feature now forget it. She's much smarter to go where the challenging work is and that's cable/streaming.
She was Oscar-worthy (whatever that means) in Mirth. You are in for a real experience with echoes of her Blanche. I am still shocked it didn't lead to more meaty film roles but I suspect her X schedule was prohibitive.
Anderson is fab in Mirth (such a beautiful film, btw). Yep, she would have deserved a lot of accolades for her work but in 2000 competition was very strong and perhaps Davies film wasn’t considered a priority back then (despite Film Comment’s support)
Don't forget Sex Education! She's great on that, too.
She is at her most mercurial best in the series The Fall. She gives a stunning, minimalist portrayal of a very complicated woman. But you probably saw that given Jamie Dornan was in it.
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