Add Tail Slate
to Your Site/RSS
| Blog: |
| Tail Slate |
Topics: |
| films, movies, television |
Meryl Streep has aged well over the decades, keeping her beautiful looks - along with her incredible talent.
Dear Meryl Streep,
I realize what I am about to say will sound like heresy, but I promise you that this poison pen note is actually a love letter.
I’ll start by congratulating you on your record-extending Academy Award nomination – your sixteenth, for bringing Julia Child to effervescent life in Nora Ephron’s Julie and Julia. It was a cute movie, and you did solid work in it, as always. Sadly, I think the golden boy is headed Sandra Bullock’s way. Though she is not even one-tenth the artist you are, she’s made a lot of Hollywood people a lot of money, and if they don’t give her the statuette this year, they’re bound to do it another year, so we might as well get it over with.
But there is another, more controversial reason why I’m okay with Ms. Bullock taking the prize this year: I don’t want you to win it. Not this year.
Listen, here’s the thing. You’ll find no bigger fan of your work than me. No film aficionado has seen all of your work and loved it like I have. You have left an indelible stamp on the industry and the art and will stay in the pantheon of acting greats for all time. And that should be recognized with more than the two Oscars you earned at the beginning of your film career (Supporting Actress of 1979 for Kramer Vs. Kramer, Lead Actress of 1982 for Sophie’s Choice). Just not this year.
Your work is peerless; your craft knows no boundaries. But the strongest of your work – certainly dramatically, but also inclusive of comedy, romance and musicality – came during the oft-maligned 1980s and 1990s. You have played more roles with a higher degree of difficulty than any other performer in the medium.
Let me celebrate just a few:
There’s A Cry in the Dark, in which you re-lived Lindy Chamberlain’s pain and shame over the death of her daughter. Since her repressive lifestyle didn’t allow for enough public emotion, she wrongfully tried for her death. It’s hard enough for an actress to play a character in mourning. You somehow found a way to show the grief that Chamberlain refused to wear on the outside.
In Out of Africa, you, as Isak Dinesen, marry a man who consistently betrays you, and even gives you syphilis, thus rendering you barren. (The scene in Julia where you feel a pang of sorrow at not having children doesn’t hold a candle to this.) Your furor and devastation is palpable. Later, when the man with whom you find true live dies in an accident, you crystallize the entire film’s theme when eulogizing, “He was not mine. He was not ours.” And you’ve taken us on Isak’s journey in getting to that hardened realization.
In both Falling in Love and The Bridges of Madison County, there are moments when you feel the shame of having cheated on your husband and torture at potentially losing the true love of your life – at the same time. How you communicate the duality while inviting no judgment on the part of the audience is beyond me.
And you have surmounted so many other challenges – the two different roles you played in The French Lieutenant’s Woman. The brilliant, cathartic delivery of Shel Silverstein’s “I’m Checkin’ Out” in Postcards From the Edge. Your insight into Depression-era alcoholism in Ironweed. Certainly the way you handled the violin in Music of the Heart.
I’m perhaps most partial to your (not nominated!) performance in The Hours. The way you can tinge a line like “But I never see you anymore” with both glee and regret reveals a lifetime of experience and sacrifice.
You’ve often been accused of being a technical actress, but I disagree. You are one of the very few (Gena Rowlands and Ronald Colman come to mind, as do Kathy Bates and Jeff Bridges) who are able to fuse all of those actorly nuances – poise, gestures, accents, intonation, eye contact, emotions – into something much greater. You find a way to make what is impressive coalesce into something expressive. Such work is transcendent; it allows us not to see you, the actress, but your character, and find the places in ourselves that might mirror her.
I’ve long had a theory as to why this is. It’s because I think you’re among the few truly selfless performers out there. Maybe because of the early rush of success you enjoyed, your choice of roles – nor the choices you’ve made in playing them – feel dictated by external politics, like, say that of such similarly towering giants like Nicholson, Davis, Olivier, Close or Hoffman. That you’ve had not just the opportunity but the choice to play the great roles for three and a half decades id your blessing – but it’s our gift as well.
Which brings me back to Julia. Obviously, unquestionably, you are great in it, reveling in a feminist character in a fun film. But it’s a trifle compared to the work you’ve done in the past. An Oscar holds more sway in preserving the legacy of a movie, a performer, or a role than anything else, and while I want you to have a third (and yes, a fourth! A fifth! You’re that deserving!), Julia is just not the role to be heralded for the ages. You know how often we currently talk about Jack Nicholson’s work in As Good As It Gets, for which he got his third Oscar? Yeah, I didn’t think so.
I write this because I know you still have plenty delicious meals left to serve onscreen. And I look forward to devouring each and every one of them.
Bon appétit,
Doug
Share on Facebook
- 
-