Monday, August 09, 2021

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Lily Bart: If obliquity were a vice, 
we should all be tainted. 
Mrs. Peniston: Only someone without family
could 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:

joel65913 said...

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.

Tom M said...

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.

Mirko said...

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)

Anonymous said...

Don't forget Sex Education! She's great on that, too.

Shawny said...

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.