Post by Carla on Oct 5, 2006 14:33:28 GMT
Source: USATODAY.com
Excerpt from 'Nicole Kidman'
By David Thomson
Chapter 1
Strangers
I am talking to an Australian, a woman, about Nicole Kidman, and
the crucial mystery is there at the start: "I've known her twenty
years, and I've spent a staggering amount of time with her, but I
feel I don't know her. Because what she gives you is what you
want. A lot of actors are like that. They don't exist when they
aren't playing a part."
This book is about acting and about an actress, but it must also
study what happens to anyone beholding an actress—the
spectator, the audience, or ourselves in any of our voyeur roles.
And the most important thing in that vexed transaction is the
way the actress and the spectator must remain strangers.
That's how the magic works. Without that guarantee, the
dangers of "relationship" are grisly and absurd—they range from
illicit touching to murder. For there cannot be this pitch of
irrational desire without that rigorous apartness, provided by a
hundred feet of warm space in a theater, and by that astonishing
human invention, the screen, at the movies. And just as the
movies were never simply an art or a show, a drama or narrative,
but the manifestation of desire, so the screen is both barrier and
open sesame.
The thing that permits witness—seeing her, being so intimate—is
also the outline of a prison.
This predicament reminds me of a moment in Citizen Kane.
The reporter, Thompson, goes to visit Bernstein, an old man who
was Charlie Kane's right-hand man and who is now chairman of
the board of the Kane companies. Thompson asks him if he
knows what "Rosebud," Kane's last word, might have referred
to. Some girl? wonders Bernstein. "There were a lot of them back
in the early days. . ." Thompson thinks it unlikely that a chance
meeting fifty years ago could have prompted a solemn last word.
But Bernstein disputes this: "A fellow will remember a lot of
things you wouldn't think he'd remember.
"You take me," he says. "One day, back in 1896, I was crossing
over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was
another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get
off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol.
I only saw her for one second. She didn't see me at all, but I'll
bet a month hasn't gone by since, that I haven't thought of that
girl."
Bernstein seems to be single—to all intents and purposes he
was married to Charlie Kane. I daresay some beaverish
subtextual critic could argue that the girl in the parasol stands for
the sheet of paper on which the young Kane sets out
his "Declaration of Principles." Yet the reason why the anecdote
(and the actor Everett Sloane's ecstatic yet heartbroken delivery
of it) has stayed with me is that it embodies the principle of
hopeless desire, and endless hope, on which the movies are
founded. Of course, most little boys (even those of an advanced
age) feel pressing hormonal urges to satisfy desire. And I would
not exile myself from that gang. Still, there is another calling—
and film is often its banner—that consists of those who would
always protect and preserve desire by ensuring that it is never
satisfied. For those of that persuasion—and it is more than
merely sexual—there is no art more piquant than the films of Luis
Buñuel, one of which is actually entitled That Obscure Object of
Desire. (In that light, let me alert you not to miss this book's
vision of Belle de Jour as if Nicole Kidman had played in it. In fact,
I have dreamed this film with such intensity that it matters to me
more than many films I actually have to see.)
Anyway, the subject of this book is Nicole Kidman. And I should
own up straightaway that, yes, I like Nicole Kidman very much.
When I tell people that, sometimes they leer and ask, "Do you
love her?" And my answer is clear: Yes, of course, I love her—so
long as I do not have to meet her.
Now, that proviso could be thought hostile; it might even conjure
up possibilities of an aggressive streak, a harsh laugh, or even a
regrettable body odor in Ms. Kidman that one would sooner
avoid. That's not what I am talking about, and it's nothing I have
ever heard suggested. I suspect she is as fragrant as spring, as
ripe as summer, as sad as autumn, and as coldly possessed as
winter. Much more to the point, you see, I am suggesting that
getting to know actresses is a depressing sport. The history of
Hollywood could be composed as a volume of melancholy
memoirs all made ruinous when Alfred Hitchthingy, say, actually
met Tippi Hedren, or whomever. Actors and actresses are seldom
marriageable and too little thanks has been offered to the
profession for the steadfast way in which its members sacrifice
themselves to each other. It is as if they understood the spell
put upon them and knew that anyone raised in any other craft or
system would collapse with incredulity if confronted by the
endless fascination performers only find in themselves. They go
to the altar— they do not alter.
Laboring with movies for six decades now, I am coming to the
conclusion that this medium has been steadily misunderstood.
Yes, it has some semblance of being an entertainment, a
business, an art, a storytelling machine—and so on. But all of
those semirespectable identities help obscure what is most
precious and unique, and what is absolutely formulated by the
simultaneous presence and denial on the screen: that a movie is
a dream, a sleepwalking, a séance, in which we seem to mingle
with ghosts. And here is the vital spark: whenever we seem
within reach of these intensely desirable creatures, their states
and moods, we ourselves resemble actors as they come close to
redeeming their terrible vacancy by assuming parts, or roles.
In other words, acting and being at the movies are mirror
images, and they are the persistent, infectious forms of non-
being that have steadily undermined the thing once known as
real life in the last hundred years. So the study of acting is less a
record of creative process or artistic eloquence; it is a kind of
drug-taking, very bad for us—yet absolutely incurable. I daresay
this sounds a touch odd or obscure at first—or maybe it is just
alarming—but it will creep up on you as this book proceeds. It is
an insidious process, such as ought to be banned everywhere by
churches, schools, parents, and the law (all those institutions
that claim to be looking after us). On the other hand, it has
entered the bloodstream; it goes on and on—and some would
say we are hopelessly lost to fantasy already, and so thoroughly
immersed in desire that something like real, practical
improvement (surely a good thing?) has been befuddled.
And yet there is something enormously positive and creative that
can come from it, a mixture of calm and insight. It is to see that
we can entertain the idea of strangers in our minds—if only by
wanting to be them, or be like them. The movies are about
beholding strangers and in the process losing touch with those
real people one happens to meet and has the chance of
knowing. I believe now that I learned to fall in love by watching
actors and actresses, and that is not a wholesome training. It is
one that prompts a rapid dissatisfaction with the thing or the
person present, or possessed. Their charm can never compete
with the allure of the unattainable. Thus, to follow desire is to
give up the ghost on relationship. Just as you reflect on that, and
consider how far it is a restlessness that has you in its grip, you
will remember from so many life lessons that it is also a very bad
thing. This is very dangerous territory, even if most of us are
already there—in other words, there is still a weird kind of polite
respectability that is possible in life from denying it.
Let me tell you a story that helps explain this. In my last book
about the movies, The Whole Equation, I was feeling my way
toward this point of view, and I included a chapter, "By a Nose,"
which concerned Nicole Kidman in The Hours. I offered it as a
testament from a fan, a love letter, from someone in the dark to
one of those beauties in the light. As a matter of fact, she was
not my true favorite. Indeed, I feared in advance—and I still think
it likely— that if I were to write about my real favorites, my movie
sweethearts, I would be rendered speechless and helpless,
because the fantastic intimacy is too great. So, yes, I do like
Nicole Kidman, but not quite as much as Catherine Deneuve, Julia
Roberts, Grace Kelly, and Donna Reed (I am tracing
sweetheartism back to when I was about eleven).
Nevertheless, when Michiko Kakutani reviewed The Whole
Equation in the New York Times, she saw fit to call my "crush" on
Kidman ridiculous. (You see how brave authors must be.) Well,
maybe, but I am owning up to it, because I think it is the only
way to get at things that need to be said (somehow in all the
turmoil of desire, I have retained the semblance of some
educational purpose). Going to the movies and believing may be
foolish, or worse. It may be crazy. But I think even book
reviewers have been formed by its risk.
At the moment, as I try to write this, just behind one layer of my
computer screen there is an AOL home page in which I have the
chance to catch up with the diet secrets of Jessica Simpson and
Denise Richards. There are their pictures—lean yet carnal—
Jessica and Denise, would-bes who maintain a presence not
always in movies, per se, or shows, but in celebrity newsbreaks,
in fashion follies, dietary secrets, and scandal scoops. That
supporting atmosphere is as old as movies, but it is more intense
now just because of the Internet. Moreover, one of the most
intriguing things about Nicole Kidman is that at least one of her
ample size ten feet is firmly planted in that electronic wasteland.
Nicole can be great and serious. She is an Oscar winner.
Sometimes you can believe she might play any part. But she is
also heart-and-soul a sexual celebrity, someone who, close to
forty, is not just ready or eager but proud to give her sexy come-
hither look to some magazine. Her appetite for life is not
snobbish, or elitist, not ready to act her age. I mean, we do not
see Vanessa Redgrave or Meryl Streep or Miranda Richardson
(her colleagues as actors) in glamour pictures, not these days.
Yet on the Internet you can get a lubricious roundup of every
nude or seminude scene Nicole has ever done. You may know
the curve of her bottom as well as you know your child's brow.
Nicole does expensive perfume ads; she does eye-candy covers;
she will drop her clothes if only to air out that elegant Australian
body (she does wish she were a few inches shorter, with those
inches added on her breasts—but there you are, she is very
human). That's another reason why the world, for just a few
years, has been crazy about her. How can I put it? Let's just say
she has not flinched from the duty of a great celebrity to be on
public display. There are thousands of hits on her every day, not
real hits, blows to the body, but the hits of our day, the fantasy
contacts, the "I want to know more about Nicole" pressures on
the mouse.
I daresay that as she grows older she will become weathered, a
great lined old lady like Katharine Hepburn, a mistress of the art
of acting and of the cult of her own high-mindedness. But this
book was conceived and composed while she was still hot and
hittable, and likely to be in every tabloid and on every magazine
cover because the rumor industry—our essential river of story—
could not leave her alone. Even if she becomes that great old
lady, Dame Nicole Kidman, in those greedy eyes of hers the
hunger will persist for the good old days when she was in
everyone's virtual bed. Millions more have had that palpable
illusion help them make it through the night.
But note this, please. She is, as I write, in addition to everything
else, a fun-loving thirty-nine-year-old with a cheerful eighteen-
year- old's attitude. I mean, she has not grown up or old—she
has been kept young by attention. She would like to go skiing;
and for a moment at least she might like to go with you! One of
the more hideous things about what happens to actresses and
celebrities is that, somewhere around forty, the tissue-paper
safety net dissolves and the star suddenly has to go from being
a nymph to being an adult. Nicole's own name is already part of
that terrible future, and I daresay she wakes up some nights
screaming because she felt it was about to happen. (Not that I
can be there to witness it—or stop imagining it.)
But just because of that vulnerability, it would be improper or
cruel for a biography to grind too remorselessly close or fine. Let
her live while she can. Why pretend to be censorious over every
fleeting love affair, or any toke she might take? Let time take its
course. Let her awkward teenage years off lightly, and know
that, as with all actors and actresses, the idea of the real life is,
anyway, the ultimate tragedy, the terminal desolation. They are
too busy being the center of attention to have a life. So, I will be
gentle and tender on passing over some things. If I elect to say
little about the movie Far and Away, for instance, then
understand that there are films made for no other reason than
that the people involved were in love. It is their business.
Sometimes it ends up looking like Pierrot le Fou or an Ingmar
Bergman picture. Sometimes it's Far and Away— enough said. It
is so very much more interesting to explore films not actually
made, such as Nicole Kidman as Belle de Jour or Nicole Kidman in
Rebecca. In a way, the best admiration we can give her is to
imagine other parts she might play. That is adding to her creative
soul.
One final word. You will want to know, "Did I talk to her?," no
matter how ardently I have stressed the point about staying
strangers. Well, at the very outset, I approached her through her
representatives, asking for an interview. There was silence, and
then there was a Well, yes, she is interested. But she was so
busy. .. and time passed. So I began to write the book, and I had
an entire draft done before hearing a word from her. What
happened? Well, what do you think happened? One day in
February 2006, my phone rang and I heard, "It's Nicole," as if
she were a languid, superior, but amused prefect who had called
a naughty boy to her study to see what he had been up to.