Okay, so... did Nicole actually speak those words? No. It was Miley Cyrus dressed in what looked like a sparkly bathing suit with huge lips on it. But do those words convey the full meaning of what went on with her career during the mid-to-late 2000s? Yes and no. The mysoginists critics had her knives out for her, but she also made some choices that can only be described as her Clown Behavior Era.
Today we continue with the Nicole Kidman career retrospective we began in the previous post, and we'll continue where we left off: Nicole had just done Cold Mountain. She was a star, a critically acclaimed thespian, the woman who sang Something Stupid with Robbie Williams and then proceeded to realize he was hot and she had a yacht gathering dust she could bang him in. She collected $3 million for looking unattainable in a 30-second-long Chanel ad while Tom Cruise jumped, monkey-style, on top of Oprah's couch. She had won.
And then, things started to go downhill.
While "doing research" for this post, I got anxiety just by looking at the list of projects she has rejected through the years, but knowing what would actually be her slate of films in the mid-to-late 2000s, two of them jump out the most.
She was offered to play Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator by Martin Scorsese and either turned him down or had to drop out, giving Cate Blanchett (that thief!) Oscar #1. Years later, she did the same with The Reader, this time because she was pregnant with her first daughter (this one gets a pass because I know it was a special moment for her).
That's two Oscars lost given away (generous queen) in the span of a few years. So one wonders: Whew! The sheer quality of the work she must have been offered and accepted during those years! Wig ready for take-off! Well... not quite.
Okay, okay, okay... this is kind of a false start because, even though Birth was dragged through the mud, it is also a prime example of her "they say the movie is trash but she's great in it" phase (which is, at this point, a genre in and of itself). And, critics be damned, I love this film. It's, maybe, a bit too heady, but I believe people got distracted with the controversial aspects of it (I'll let you find them out yourself, if you still haven't seen it) and missed out on a great movie and a near-perfection performance from Nicole, who is fantastic in this. The opera scene and her take on the Kubrick Stare make the film an unmissable one in her filmography for any fan who's worth the title.
Another example of "sort of trashed film/praised performance". I had read wonderful things about Nicole before watching, but it took me a much longer time to connect with the movie than in Birth's case. Nicole plays a pretty despicable character (probably, as unlikeable as she's ever been) and it's not until the half-way mark that the whole thing clicked for me. This is an actress giving one of her best, angriest, most toxic and razor sharp-edged performances while no one was watching and, here's a key to understanding the angst every Nicole Kidman fan must endure, in what is likely the only poorly recieved movie Noah Baumbach has ever done. She would repeat the feat with Lee Daniels, as I'll discuss later, but here, five years after her Oscar win, already dismissed again as a has-been, she kept trying to prove herself. And, if anyone had been paying attention, they would've realised... she did.
Ah, yes... my first mega-flop. Nine was the first film I stanned hard, mainly because I though life would be good and Marion would score an Oscar nom, no questions asked. Nowadays, I would simply see Rob Marshall directing and I would just know. I'm sorry, Ventura of 2009, but I'm different. The one silver lining? Had I been as atuned as I am today with my Nicole Kidman stan side, I don't think I would've survived it. One day, someone will explain what went wrong with this adaptation, in an eleven hours-long documentary where Meryl Streep will play Nicole and get another Oscar nomination.
Thankfully enough, life would give me reasons to believe soon after. Rabbit Hole is one of my favorite Nicole Kidman films and performances. She's just gut-wrenching in this, probably because she felt deeply connected to the subject matter. There are movies that leave a leave a mark on me, in a way that, years later, I remember where I was and how I felt when I saw them. When the credits rolled on Rabbit Hole, I was alone in my kitchen, it was night, and a cool breeze went by me. Such a hard movie, and yet I finished it feeling hopeful.
And then came The Paperboy. I know sometimes successful comebacks don't translate into better roles, especially for older actresses, but... whew! This is not one of those cases where a good performance saves a mediocre movie. The Paperboy is utter trash. Disgusting, unpleasant to watch, nonsensical... Two silver linings: Nicole is expectably great and Zac Efron is as hot as he's been. But is it enough to make it worth watching? Definitely not. A definitive skip.
It's a pitty critics focused on her Paperboy turn and ignored her for Stoker, because she's great in this, and the film is quite good. Foreign directors' forays into English-language movies are rarely critically acclaimed (Lanthimos might be an exception, even though The Favourite was the first film of his I truly loved) but, at least for Nicole's performance and that infamous speech, this deserved more attention.
When faced with the decision of who on earth would play a trashy woman who pees on Zac Efron, someone told Lee Daniels "Call Nicole; she'll do it", so it truly shouldn't be a surprise that she later went on to play Paddington's bowl cut-wearing villain. Why? No one knows, but we're much better for it. Regardless of where this particular role stands in her list of best performances, Paddington (and its sequel) are cinematic treasures and, when it comes to Nicole, we shouldn't be asking ourselves "Why?" but "Why not?".
You can tell a straight man directed this film because that wig is simply atrocious. If you pretend this foray into indie features was what resulted in Billy Eichner organizing a Nicole Kidman awareness rally, though... it sort of makes it worth it (I checked, it sadly wasn't, the rally came first). The movie is unpretentiously solid, and Nicole proves, once again, she'll do anything (literally, look at this list), but Jason Bateman directed it, and he casually disregarded Jessica Walter while she cried because Jeffrey Tambor verbally harrassed her, so he can choke.
And we've gotten to the end of this second part. It's not necessarily Nicole's most successful era, but there are some real gems hidden in here, even those trapped inside mediocre or outright bad movies. Right after this, she would do Lion and Big Little Lies, and a new day would begin.
I'll talk about that, and more, in the next entry of this career retrospective. In the meantime, you can continue to vote for you favorite Nicole Kidman performance, and comment down below what you think about this uneven, yet daring, phase in her career. Until next time!
This is Nicole every time you comment and vote ;)
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