
Victoria
The best thing about Victoria isn’t actually its technical prowess—it’s the lead performance from the mesmerizing Laia Costa as the title character.
The best thing about Victoria isn’t actually its technical prowess—it’s the lead performance from the mesmerizing Laia Costa as the title character.
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August Strindberg felt that the entire world had gone crazy. The "norms" of class hierarchies and gender roles were starting to shatter, and he saw chaos pouring into that vacuum. His 1888 play "Miss Julie" is the prime example, although it's evident in all of his other disturbing, great modern works. "Miss Julie" plays in almost real-time, taking place in one setting over the course of a single evening, Midsummer Night's Eve, the one long night of the year when the classes blend together, when rich dance and drink with poor, when the boundaries have blurred. There are only three characters in the play, and it opens with Jean, an upwardly-striving valet remarking to his pal and sort-of girlfriend, the kitchen maid, that "Miss Julie is crazy!" Miss Julie is the daughter of the count in whose manor they both work.
Strindberg was a nervous man,
whose plays read like frenziedly-written journal entries of despair and
anxiety (crying out, like Dr. Venkman in "Ghostbusters," "Human
sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!") Legendary
acting teacher Stella Adler lectured extensively on Strindberg (and
other playwrights), and these lectures have been published in a
wonderful volume, "Stella Adler on Ibsen, Strindberg, and
Chekhov." Adler spoke of the difference between Ibsen and
Strindberg, helpful to keep in mind when examining Strindberg: "In
Ibsen, the single person is rebellious. In Strindberg, you can't really
rebel. In Ibsen, you don't break the social form. In Strindberg, the
social pattern of life is broken. The revolt is a strong, nervous one.
It doesn't come through as ideas but as temperament - violent. Inner
conflict with Ibsen leads to ideas; with Strindberg it leads to chaos."
When Liv Ullmann's "Miss Julie" works best, it shows us that total
emotional and social chaos, chaos that destroys not only the individual
characters in the play, but the entire society in which they live. "Miss
Julie" is a rather strange experience, with its consistently static
medium shots of the three actors, as they roar their lines at one
another. But it has an undeniable power. For Strindberg to work, one
must feel the context of his time, and understand Miss Julie's immediate
ruination by "falling" for the valet (the script is filled with images
of rising and falling).
Ullmann's adaptation of Strindberg's script stays very close to the
original; the main change being that it now takes place on an estate in
Ireland. Ullmann opens up the action only slightly, with the reveling
Midsummer Night's Eve crowds always offstage, heard but never seen.
There are a couple of scenes in Jean's bedroom, and one outdoor scene
when Jean and Miss Julie take a walk. Other than that, the action stays
in the kitchen, suggesting how much Miss Julie is "lowering" herself by
hanging out there. The claustrophobia of the kitchen is overwhelming in
the film, and the shots of Miss Julie wandering through the manor by
herself, her posture broken and stiff, her dress falling off her
shoulder, give us a welcome (and yet rivetingly disturbing) change of
scene.
The three characters are played by Jessica Chastain, Colin Farrell and
Samantha Morton, and each actor has to deliver some of the most
challenging monologues ever written, with no cinematic tricks. Many of
the monologues are delivered wholesale, in one shot, with barely a
cut-away to the listener. It requires A-game acting, shots like that,
and watching these actors work is the main pleasure of "Miss Julie."
Ullmann doesn't worry too much about making the action cinematic, and
the constant monologuing can get a little trying. The entire play is
conversation, bantering at first, growing in desperation, until finally
the chaos roars in like a tsunami. As Miss Julie breaks down, Chastain
is, quite frankly, extraordinary. She gathers her considerable powers
and pours them into a role that is different from anything else she has
ever done. It's a powerhouse performance, without any
self-congratulatory or self-indulgent giveaways. Her agony is so
palpable that one wonders how she will survive her own performance.
Feeling that way is essential for "Miss Julie" to work, and
from Chastain's unforgettable first entrance, sidling into the kitchen,
looking like a wreck, the crack in her psyche is already clearly visible
on her face.
Farrell is terrific as Jean, playing around with Miss Julie at first,
following her seemingly heedless orders to kiss her shoe, despite what
it might look like to others, and despite the fact that he is in a
relationship with Kathleen. He warns her at one point that by flirting
with him, she is playing with fire. He's not to be trifled with. He is a
man trapped in his social station, although he is representative of the
movement between the classes, a valet who has traveled the world with
his Master, knows about good wines (although he steals a bottle on
occasion), speaks other languages, and has an ease in the world that
Miss Julie lacks. And yet when the Master rings the bell for him, his
loyalty sways automatically towards the man he serves. He is in deep
conflict, and the fact that Miss Julie falls so hard for him shows that
she is just as "low" as he is. His lust turns to contempt in a
devastating heartbeat. Farrell manages all of this gracefully and
sensitively, as though he were born to play the role. It's a great fit.
And Samantha Morton as Kathleen, the maid, is horrified and betrayed by
Miss Julie's inappropriate bantering going on in her
kitchen with her man. Unlike the other two
characters, Kathleen knows her place, and respects those "above" her.
The movement between the classes, representative by Jean and Miss
Julie's one-night fling, fills her with disgust and apprehension. She's
Strindberg's stand-in. Morton is magnificent. Some of her best moments
are reaction shots. As Miss Julie babbles to her about how she and Jean
are going to set up a hotel on Lake Como, and maybe Kathleen can work in
the kitchen there, and marry a nice man eventually, Morton's face shows
the deep horror of not only what she is seeing, but the clear madness
in Chastain's performance. "Do you really believe all that, Miss Julie?"
she breathes. "Miss Julie" is filled with small moments like that,
small behavioral moments that are rich and strange, trembling with
possibility and terror.
Miss Julie was raised with massive financial advantages, but she was
also raised in total chaos. There is madness in her family line. Her
mother taught her to hate men. That is the crux of Miss Julie's problem,
and that is the destabilizing effect that Jean, the good-looking valet,
has on her. When she "falls" for him, she means it. But the second they
sleep together, Jean turns on her. She's a whore to him now. After Jean
and Miss Julie sleep together, Chastain sits in his bed, stiff and
traumatized, wiping the blood from between her legs, with plucking
frozen fingers, the panic trembling off of her posture. ("Miss Julie"
also, famously, has her period, mentioned in the first scene by
Kathleen, who uses it as a possible explanation for why Miss Julie's
behavior has been so "queer" in the couple of days prior.) With all of
the monologuing in the film, Chastain's body language in that scene, and
directly afterwards, as she walks away from Jean's room, in pain and
entirely altered, tells the story clearer than any words could do.
Ullmann fills the score with mournful Schubert and Bach, familiar pieces
of music that become thematic, as opposed to mere pretty background.
The scenes of Miss Julie by herself, trapped in her red bedroom with her
caged finch, or staggering drunk up the main stairway of the manor, a
ruined woman, running from the madness of what she has done, are made
even more powerful by that urgent insistent underscoring.
Reaction to the film will depend on how one feels about seeing three
people stand around delivering lines at one another. But the acting is
so good it creates its own mood, outside of anything cinematic that
Ullmann could have chosen to add to it; it creates its own atmosphere of
claustrophobia, hysteria, and self-loathing. Ullmann, a brilliant
actress herself, hands the script over to her actors. It is theirs.
This message came to me from a reader named Peter Svensland. He and a fr...
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