Can Natalie Portman act? He presents the following from Dana Stevens review of Brothers.
Unfortunately, [the movie] also assumes that Natalie Portman is interesting enough to watch suffer for two hours. Here I come up against what I’m fully willing to admit may be a personal limitation … I’ve never believed her in a single role. She evokes no emotional response in me beyond, “Oh, there’s Natalie Portman.” She doesn’t overact or underact; she just stands around with whatever the appropriate expression for the scene seems to be on her sweet, pretty, childlike face. If there’s something going on behind that face, I neither know nor care what it is, which means that long stretches of Brothers involving her character’s interiority struck me as dramatically inert. If you possess the gene that enables Portman-caring, you may find them brilliant.
Good question, and it applies equally to Jake Gyllenhaal and a bit to Tobey Maguire. Gyllenhaal appeared destined for greatness in October Sky, then doe-eyed his way through Zodiac and much of his later work.
Maguire is more skilled than the other two (his performance in Seabiscuit proved that), but is ensnared by the same adult/child persona as Portman and Gyllenhaal. Douthat gets to the heart of the problem through his analysis of Portman.
I think Portman was wonderful as a teenage actress — in “The Professional,” of course (her breakout, and still her best role), but also in “Beautiful Girls” and “Heat” as well. But she’s had the same problem that Leonardo DiCaprio had (and still has, despite his permanent stubble, and Martin Scorsese’s best efforts) making the transition to grown-up parts. Like Leo, she looks younger than she is, and the qualities that made her appealing in teenage roles (a kind of luminous transparency, above all) make her hard to take seriously when she plays a stripper, or a terrorist, or a scheming Ann Boleyn — or, in this case, an army wife and mother of two. As Stevens says, she may technically strike the right notes, but you never quite believe in the adult emotions that are supposed to be roiling her inside.
Tellingly, just as DiCaprio’s best role in the last decade was as a charming man-child in “Catch Me If You Can,” Portman’s best turn was playing the manic pixie dream girl in Zach Braff’s “Garden State.” She was magnetic, albeit in a mediocre and pretentious movie — but it was a throwback to the kind of girlish part that made her famous, rather than a leap into the kind of adult work that she keeps trying, and failing to quite pull off.
This has been a major problem for Maguire in the Spider-Man series. The first two he hit notes of angsty adolescent perfectly. By the third, we’re off to the Romita era of grown up and responsible Peter Parker, instead we get sniveling and whining Maguire – you can almost picture Sam Raimi throwing baby rattles at him off camera. Seeing the three with children in Brothers was like an ABC Afterschool Special.
Soon or later, you have to grow up.
Editor’s note: This blog post purposely refrained from referencing the Star Wars prequels.
Sorry, John, I need to go there even if you won’t. Having Natalie Portman and Hayden Christenson in the same movie twice nearly caused a critical mass of cardboard (a scenario to be seen in an upcoming movie, China Syndrome 2.0, starring Jane Fonda and the corpse of Jack Lemmon).
Also, don’t miss the new biopic, The Keanu Reeves Story, starring Ben Stein and a piece of laminated plastic, as old and young Reeves, respectively.
Maybe not a perfect comparison, but I’ll throw Scarlett Johansson into the mix. When she first hit the scene she was beguiling, but every subsequent movie seems to drain her appeal. I hope she rebounds in “Iron Man 2″ …
Agree on Johansson as well, though she gets less of a pass because she at least looks like a woman now.
Douthat sums up perfectly why I never liked her as an actress. I’ve seen her in plenty of movies, but she’s never been convincing as anything but a pretty face. But Hollywood loves her because like DiCaprio, Gyllenhall and all the rest of the current crop of doe-eyed actors, she is a perpetual adolescent, which our culture worships.
Another role that proves it is her role in Mr. Magorium’s Magic Emporium. My kids watch that all the time and she is oddly appealing in it, but definitely an innocent role.
Floyd, was that any good? Was it even released in theaters. It seems like I saw previews for months at the show, and then… nothing.
It was OK. I can see why people didn’t like it (critics), but it was odd in a good way for me. Jason Bateman was in it and was good as a tight-ass accountant who doesn’t understand the weird world he’s in. Natalie Portman is the counter girl in the store and her blank-eyed innocent shtick is good in that role (a perpetual youth role). Dustin Hoffman is kind of a cross between Willie Wonka (Gene Wilder without the menace) and a movie where the father prepares his children to replace him when he’s gone. He’s a little over weird perhaps, but it works in his world.
I like menace. Kid movies need more good, old-fashioned menace.
How about Dennis the Menace? Heeeellllo Mister Wilson!
Mrs. The Menace was pretty hot.
Nightmare fuel in my favorite kids’ movies:
The boat ride imagery and the oompa loompas in “Willy Wonka.”
The child catcher in “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”
Flying monkeys in “Wizard of Oz.”
Kids turning into animals in “Pinocchio.”
I’m sure I’ve repressed other examples.
TV, but Sleestaks still pop up in my nightmares.
I can’t like Brothers because it makes my sister mad. She’s really upset by the story line, afraid for what it could potentially put in the minds of soldiers who have to do a job that is becoming increasingly difficult. We need movies that support our troops, not make them wonder what’s going on back home while they’re fighting both the enemy and our CIC.
Tracy, believe me they don’t need to see a movie to give them ideas about cheating wives etc. all they have to do is talk to their buddies. There’s a reason we have a name for the guy who’s seeing your girl while you are deployed (Jody), and there’s a reason why there’s a saying, “Make a phone call, save a marriage.” for those who come home early from “the field”. That type of behavior is as old as the Army itself.
Don’t know anything about the movie “Brothers” but I don’t care to see it based on what has been described.
What I would like to see is an honest telling of a story involving the valor our Soldiers exhibit on a daily basis…but I guess that’s too much to ask for.
Mrs. Firefly and I saw the movie “Swing Shift,” and I guess I was supposed to like it because Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn had great chemistry, or something, but all I could think is, “That no good, draft-dodging loser is stealing the hero’s girl!” I kept hoping the soldier would come home, catch Russell and beat the snot out of him.
of course it’s already in their minds and it does happen with frightening regularity, but they don’t need a movie to see it in living color, or one that makes it seem anything but wrong.
I’d like to see the movie you described too.
Patience, Outlaw, the stories will be told. So close, so close…
I think I’ve said it before on other threads whenever she’s mentioned, but I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one who needs someone to explain to me Portman.
This post raises an interesting question (interesting to me at least): Has the pursuit of the “latest young hot thing” created, for these “young hot” actors, the same problem child stars have? A thesis bubbling up in what passes for my brain goes something like this: Teenagers are being thrust into the limelight by Hollywood, and that same Hollywood so worships youth that it doesn’t want to see its stars grow up. Actors and actresses do everything they can keep their youthful allure alive. Then they find themselves in roles that requires them to play believable adults, and audiences aren’t really buying it. They still see the kids they loved in Spider-Man, The Professional or October Sky.
To the best of my knowledge kid stars rarely, if ever, transition to become adult movie stars (unless you’re going to count adult film stars … I don’t need to explain that do I?). Is this trend now spreading to people who become stars when they are in their late teens or early twenties?
Outside of Christian Bale there is few, but then he wasn’t so much a “star” as a child like a Kirk Cameron, he came and went and was hardly a recognizable face on the streets.
The cult of youth is a big problem and a big problem for pop culture in general. Look at an MTV, its ratings are crashing, it’s dwindled its audience down from “anyone who likes music” to “20 and 30 somethings” to “college and high school kids” to “prepubescent teeny boppers” to nonexistence. How symbolic, a Video Channel that chased away all its videos hosting a Video Awards Show as its marquee event every year. It echoes Spielberg’s award show comments last year, where he said he no longer makes movies for the masses but for “the audience in this room.” That’s well and good, don’t get mad when Flyover Country walks out when you nuke the fridge. Weinstein may like it, the rest of us think it sucks.
That Spielberg quote reminds me of one of your comments today. Journalists don’t write stories for their readers so much as they write them for each other.
They do, and at the detriment of their readership. I always wondered what the general readership would think if they knew how many of the stories they were fed were for pure award consideration – way too much. I know editors who spend the entire year putting together work just to enter the state AP contests, I can only imagine how bad it is at the national and beltway levels.
Come on John… part of Christian’s current anger problems must stem from him being constantly stopped as a kid on the streets… “Hey! You’re that kid from Henry V! It must’ve been so cool to be in front during the St. Crispian’s Day speech!”
If I run into him, I’m going to start flapping my arms and scream ‘P-51 MUSTANG!” over and over.
CADILLAC OF THE SKIES!!!
Empire of the Sun, when Spielberg actually had talent.
Maybe I’m suffering from nostalgia-philia, but it seems that when actors & actresses (I love that latter term for no other reason than it drives the feminists in Hollywood crazy) were adults, i.e, folks in their late 20s or early 30s, before they made it big, audiences were able to suspend disbelief in the adult roles they played. Maguire, Portman, DiCaprio? … eh, not so much.
Maybe it’s the look these folks bring to the screen. I’m just not buying someone who wants to look 22 forever as playing a real-live grown-up. DiCaprio as Howard Hughes?!? It was ridiculous. All the acting chops in the world aren’t going to give a guy the look of someone who has built a financial empire. And makeup can only go so far.
I wonder if spending a few years in theater, performing live on stage would put some years on these kids’ faces that would make them believable grown-ups.
I guess I’m wondering why we believe Brando, Eastwood, Mickey Rooney, Stewart, Minnelli, Loren, Davis, and many, many more as grown-ups. Is it just that today’s Maguire, Gyllenhaal, DiCaprio, et al just don’t have the acting chops to pull off grown-up roles?
Amen. I’ll throw a little love Rick(y) Schroeder’s way. Nice transition to more adult roles via Lonesome Dove into pretty decent cop roles and funny run on Scrubs.
I loved the reference to “the Romita era.” Exactly right. I’ve always been more of a Ditko man myself.