We’ve now made it to the end. We’ve seen every movie Meryl Streep has done which earned her an Oscar nomination. So now we have to just tally up the totals and ultimately see what shakes out to be the best of all her performances.
Out of Africa is about the sufferings of the rich. In today’s world it looks elitist and loses a lot of power it may have had in spite of several strong performances.
The basic premise of A Cry in the Dark hinges on an idea that has now become a meme of popular culture. As a result, the movie seems comical when it should be dramatic.
There is a challenge in playing multiple characters, especially when those characters have to reflect each other. In playing both characters it allows an actor to stretch, even if the movie doesn’t give a lot of room for that growth.
No matter how good a performance and idea is, there needs to be a story to carry them all forward, otherwise everything falls flat.
It’s hard to keep focus as the lead of a movie, it’s even harder when your story is suddenly overridden and you’re forced to the background.
There are a lot of pieces that go into making a musical, and that makes it harder than you would think to get a successful performance, and movie as a whole.
Playing a human being is a challenge, playing a human being and the personification of an idea is even harder. It makes the process a battle unlike anything one can imagine.
The idea of high stakes don’t have to be action and intrigue, there is a lot of power within simply showing conflict and letting characters live it out in their performances.
When it comes to giving terrible performances there is a huge test of skill that comes from the performer and often requires them to be so good that they can be believably bad at the very thing they excel at.
There are a lot of portrayals of mental illness and often they are not so flattering. Ironweed manages show characters in dire situations of mental suffering for the honest characters they are.
It’s hard to humanize characters committing acts we often consider to be immoral. But in doing so it allows us to have a real love and genuine humanity that we lose otherwise in the way we view people.
The entire plot of Silkwood hinges on the stakes of the story, if they weren’t so high it would have made the movie worse and caused bigger problems than we can fully comprehend.
Pop culture icons are so beyond the realm of humanity it make their stories difficult to tell. Streep turns Julia child back from a character in to a person and it helps improve the movie.
To show chronic pain there must be a level of constant tension that affects a character. This is hard to portray if not experienced and so to do it is an even bigger success than you may realize.
How do you make someone human when the world is against them? How do you do that at a time in their life when they are past their moment of impact and looking for one last gasp of humanity.
The idea behind Sophie’s Choice has been so often turned around and ridiculed that it ultimately has lost the power it had when the movie was initially released.
The idea behind modern biopics is that they have to be these grand things. Postcards from the Edge shows that a small story can still have a major impact on the audience watching these stories being told.
Streep personifies grief in her portrayal in the Deer Hunter, it makes the movie better and allows the audience to connect to a situation they can’t understand in a way that they can.
It’s so hard to play the idea of indecision, and basing an entire role on the unsaid, the unseen, and the unknown only adds to the tension on a screen and the idea of doubting everything in the moment of conflict.
It is very hard to make an antagonist someone we sympathize with. To do that and keep them still a character we cannot see win is a powerful thing and it really shows talent in the performers and the filmmakers.
And this of course means that the best Oscar nominated Meryl Streep performance is…
The truth is that there is power in not doing a lot. A character doesn’t have to be bombastic to be memorable and no role shows that better than Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada. It succeeds not because of her big moments but because she doesn’t need them to be powerful.
So that is all she wrote. We’re closing the door on Meryl Streep and moving on to other things.
And by other things I mean that I am going to take a break from the weekly movie blogs for a bit. It’s been a lot of work and I’m running out of steam at the moment. I think a bit to recharge will be good for me but don’t worry I’ve got some ideas for when I finally come back. And the Little Joy posts won’t be ending anytime soon so come back every month for those in the meantime.
Thanks again for joining me on this journey and until next time, thanks for taking the time to get Ploominated.
Ploominate 