Lady Love: Nicole Kidman--1/17

Nicole Kidman is one of my all time favorite actors. So its only natural that I would start this feature with her. There are so many performances of hers that are brilliant, but today I am thinking about DOGVILLE. A movie that many movie goers that I know have never even heard of.
This movie is BRUTAL. It is long, it is jarringly unrealistic, and it is tough to get through. What makes it worthwhile are the performances, especially Nicole's. She is haunting. She goes through the pantheon of human emotions in DOGVILLE, but if you blink, you might miss one. Her performance is so understated and quiet. She goes through a fat lot of terrible things in this movie (being a fugitive, being a slave, being raped repeatedly, being chained up) and she shows the complete breakdown of a person. And yet, there is always some glimmer of hope in her eyes. She is always hoping that something will come along and change her pitiful state. And in the end, she becomes vengeful. There is a moment when she is talking to her father, at the end of the movie. She is sitting in the back of his car, and she makes a decision that is not a hard one for her, but that means the destruction of a whole town. A decision that I was SHOCKED by when I first saw this movie, but Nicole makes it understandable.
Nicole's performance in this movie is realism at its best. That's one of the great things about DOGVILLE and why I watch it over and over again. It's presentational style, and colloquial speech patterns, are counteracted with the most realistic form of acting: simply being. It isn't loud, it isn't over the top, it is free from self-indulgence. Nicole Kidman in DOGVILLE is one of the greatest performances by an actress of all time! (Yea, I said that) See DOGVILLE, and see the magic for yourself!