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Monday, January 12, 2009

From the "It's about freakin' time" file
Posted by Jill | 7:04 AM




In a country that eats celebrities for lunch, even those who are famous for nothing other than being famous, the resonance that Kate Winslet has for women in this country is a curious phenomenon. It isn't just that she is possessed of a tremendous talent that has been evident since her chilling portrayal of Juliet Hulme at the age of seventeen in Heavenly Creatures, directed by a guy no one ever heard of named Peter Jackson. At eighteen she set the industry on fire as Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility. At nineteen she brought Thomas Hardy's Sue Bridehead to heartbreaking life in Michael Winterbottom's unrelentlingly bleak and nearly unseen adaptation of Jude the Obscure. And that was all before being old enough to drink in this country.

And it went on. Hamlet. That Boat Movie. Iris. Little Children. Award nomination after award nomination, with nothing to show for it. Camille Paglia is STILL angry at Helen Hunt for stealing Kate's Oscar®, even after all these years. Until now.

But for those of us for whom this actress is something akin to a goddess, it's about more than talent. It's about that certain intangible something that some celebrities have that makes us think they're Just Like Us. Of course they aren't, no matter how hard they try. But while someone like Angelina Jolie displays a certain "Yes, I am a goddess" hauteur who may deign to rain a few pennies upon your unwashed head, Kate Winslet displays the accessibility of someone who'd happily go off with us for a spot of tea if you accosted her on the street and mentioned something interesting.

But while Winslet's talent shone long before That Boat Movie, it was said Boat Movie that catapulted her from mere Great Actress into Goddess on Earth. There are two reasons for this. One is that while James Cameron can't write dialogue for shit, he managed to create the Free Spirit Woman Triumphant to end all Free Spirit Women Triumphant. It may very well be that the frenzy about that film revolved around its male star among the teen set, but for us grown-ups, what resonated was that montage of photographs at the end -- not just the romance of a young girl but the entire life of a woman. And to some degree, Winslet has been playing a variation of that character ever since.

But the second reason we rallied around Kate back in the late 1990s was because of the "W"-word: weight. At a time when the willowy Gwyneth Paltrow was on the rise as The Perfect Female, there was Kate, with breasts and thighs and arms that had some heft to them. And they called her "fat." And we rallied around her as if she were our sister, being picked on by the world. Her battle was our battle, and we embraced her as one of our own. Even last night, with nearly all traces of that womanly figure toned down to a media-acceptable level, she still seemed to be Our Kate. And the fact that the only person in the room thinner than she was last night was the horrifically emaciated Sally Hawkins seemed not to matter: Underneath we know she's still our girl, and the female blogosphere is ecstatic at the double win. Chrissy at All My Jiggly Bits exults, "Kate Winslet is my Homegirl!" Mo Pie at Big Fat Deal notes how Winslet credits DiCaprio for telling her she has to "let the fat girl thing go." Melissa has the photo that's worth a thousand words. Carolyn Robertson asks, "Was I the only one bawling during Kate Winslet’s Revolutionary Road acceptance speech?" (Answer: No.)

So I'm not sure what it is about Winslet that makes us adore her so; even cynics like me who are all too aware that the image you see of people on television has nothing to do with what they're like in real life. Perhaps we see her as Cinderella made real -- a girl with body issues who decided that talent is the best revenge -- and turned into a swan anyway. Perhaps it's the characters she plays, or at least the ones who don't end up in jail or punishing themselves for the rest of their lives. But whatever it is, yes, Kate is our homegirl. And maybe now Camille Paglia can forgive Helen Hunt.

(And just for the record: My second favorite moment last night was Colin Farrell's win for the delightful In Bruges. I happened to catch this on New Year's Eve, and I'd forgotten how great Farrell can be given the right material and the right director. His acceptance was curiously subdued and possessed of a sweetness reminiscent to his character from A Home at the End of the World -- and it gave me hope that perhaps Farrell has avoided succumbing to Mickey Rourke's disease. For while Rourke may hae won an acting award last night, who the hell would want to take that circuitous a route?)


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