For me, the mark of an acting performance is if I genuinely cannot imagine a single other performer doing as well.
I can list several off the top of my head, in different categories. Joan Cusack in Addams Family Values. Try to propose anybody who could have made Debbie as effective. Ryan Gosling as Ken. So much commitment, sincerity, and perfection in that goofy role that put every doubter about his casting to shame. Genuine Oscar-worthy comedy acting right there. In the full horror dramatic sphere, there's Toni Collette, dear god, Toni Collette as Annie Graham in Hereditary. It's such a hugely upsetting film and she's such an upsetting character, but she rips out her soul five different ways for that part and no matter how unstable and dangerous she becomes, she somehow remains tragic and human. (In some ways, I wish Hereditary was not such a massively challenging and distressing film because it's genius filmmaking for those who can handle freaky scares, unbearably realistic bleak nightmare scenarios and grotesque, blood-curdling human suffering and Collette is a huge part of its strength. It's just not for many people at all and I would never try to push anybody to watch something so difficult.)
But I think recently, a new horror role has been performed that proves how much one film and one character can live or die on the strengths of one person. This film literally would not exist without the artist in the starring role. She co-wrote the film and truly embodied the term tour de force with her acting, anchoring almost every scene with a distressing, complex, deeply uncomfortable character and showcasing remarkable dedication to the role, in every aspect crafting her character with a passion and execution that was criminally overlooked by the awards circuit. This might be the most immediately stunned I was by any acting performance in a movie, and hers is still the first performance that comes to my mind for acting that just wowed me completely. The small scope of the film and narrow focus means it's mostly a one-woman show of a movie, and crucially, that woman nails it.
You know we're talking about Mia Goth as the title role in Pearl, Ti West's prequel to his film X.
[Go here to read my first post about the X series of films.]
[Content warnings for this film and my review: themes of abusive family dynamics, (vilified) mistreatment of a disabled character, gore, dark psychological themes]
Pearl is a cinematic anomaly, since it's a production of the type that almost never happens. Ti West and Mia Goth discussed elements of her elderly character Pearl's backstory to prepare her for that half of her dual role in the film. Eventually, they became so invested in the backstory that Goth and West decided to co-write a prequel film and shoot it at the same time while they were on location for X. As a result, two film productions took place during one trip, and even more unusually, both X and Pearl were completed and released in the same year, with Pearl following as a prequel several months after X was released. The only other series I can think of that's released multiple entries in a single year is the Fear Street trilogy, also horror, and which has X beat by being a trilogy that all released the same year in 2021.
Even from the start, you can see how promising this film is. Pearl is the very definition of a passion project--the lead actor and the director both loved this character so much that they decided to really work with her and make a whole second film on kind of a whim. That shows a level of artistic interest that feels so organic and wonderful...and it turned X into a brilliantly structured trilogy where Maxine and Pearl are opposing central characters who intersect at the X-junction in the middle of the series.
And of course, none of it would be quite as strong without Mia Goth. People applauded her for the strongly-executed dual role in X, but it's as one character in Pearl where I think she truly shows off her incredible caliber as an actor. She sustains the character to make her sympathetic but despicable--you know where Pearl's coming from seeking a happier life, but it's only correct that she fails because she's so dangerous. Goth also goes places and does some crazy endurance exercises in Pearl that show incredible dedication and immersion within a difficult, frightening character.
Pearl is set in 1918 Texas during the Spanish Flu pandemic. Pearl is a very young married woman whose husband Howard is off in the Great War. Pearl remains with her austere German immigrant mother and her father on their family farm, and she doesn't care for the job. Her father has been rendered nonverbal and immobile by illness, and her mother is strict and suffocating...but Pearl's dreams aren't entirely sympathetic because her desire for fame is linked closely with a disturbing deficit of empathy. As she wants to find fame dancing in the pictures, she starts to see human obstacles as disposable, becoming a serial killer to get rid of the people preventing her from attending an audition for talent scouts. As X viewers will intuit, Pearl fails the audition, and she breaks down entirely. Her crimes got her nothing and, more importantly to her, she's trapped on the farm she hates. The film is a deep, dark character study into a serial killer that also leans into commentary about the kind of person you have to be to be so driven by the pursuit of fame. While X lent sympathy to the young film crew wanting to capitalize on their best years to find their dreams, Pearl shows the dark side of the coin by illustrating the wrong reasons to get into entertainment and the disturbing extremes of personality the desire for fame may be linked to. The film is also a really fun Technicolor period drama with vintage whimsical filmmaking aesthetics, and it's really neat to see the same film location as X done up in its narrative glory days.
The film is a good idea, but it's Mia Goth who carries it all the way and makes it so scary and effective. Three scenes in the film really cement that Mia Goth knows how to capital-A Act, and they blew me away because I felt so aware of the challenge behind them which she was absolutely acing.
- After Pearl fails her audition, she goes into a rant screaming and begging like it pains her that she's a star and she deserves a chance. It's a scene that could very easily be goofy, even camp, but Mia Goth and the directing work together to make it deeply uncomfortable instead. She is shown as the egotist she is, broken down by rejection, and of course, also being faced with the fact that her life is going nowhere. After Pearl leaves the audition and goes outside, Goth really gives it her all with revolting snotty ugly-crying that shows she either commits or she quits, and Goth puts you in the moment with an upsetting character who feels terrifyingly realized.
- After this, Pearl returns home to the farmhouse she hates with her sister-in-law Mitzy, who also auditioned. Pearl starts to break down, spiraling into a bad place before Mitzy suggests she roleplay that she's talking to her husband Howard. Thus begins an unbroken six-minute-long one-take monologue with Pearl's face on camera in one long shot as she unpeels every neurosis, psychosis, and crime that's been tormenting her for the whole movie. It's uncomfortably intimate, disturbing in content and her frankness and vulnerability, and it is long. Mia Goth had to have all of that memorized for an endurance run of a scene and she's riveting. You become aware of just how long the monologue is going, but in the sense that you're awed, not bored. It's a rare case of a script thriving on the wrong side of show-don't-tell, because this moment where a character just breaks down and talks and talks about every frightening problem she has is spellbinding and deeply uncomfortable. It truly felt like I was watching a Cinema Moment in that scene, and Mia Goth, who even wrote her own lines there, was essential to its success.
- The last scene to mention is...the last scene. Pearl has killed Mitzy and has decided to decorate her house and stage a dinner party with the rot and corpses left over, only for her husband Howard to return home from war right then. Pearl's issues have just been entirely exposed to him, and all she can offer is a forced smile. A smile the camera holds on for about three minutes while the retro credits text rolls. Mia Goth's face strains, shakes, and turns red, and Pearl starts to shed tears all while trying to put on a grin. It is excruciating to watch, entirely unnerving, and it is one of the absolute creepiest images ever put to screen. And it, again, rides entirely on Mia Goth. She and West basically agreed to leave the camera rolling while she did that shot to see how it would look, and it turned out far scarier than any freeze frame, and far more emotionally poignant. Watching Pearl strain and crumble inside while she puts on this fake forced smile that physically starts to pain her is the perfect capper to a killer's breakdown and ultimate exposure in the eyes of her husband. But without Mia Goth's facial acting and endurance and dedication to the role, I can't imagine this working nearly as well.
And the last thing I have to mention isn't a scene, but
- In this entire trilogy, Mia Goth is totally selling the gamut of character traits within two Texan women and you'd never guess without seeing her other filmography that she's English.
I really just have so much respect for the work Mia Goth did here. She's captivating, frightening, sympathetic and grotesque and upsetting all at once. I can't wait to see what she does running the last film of the series as Maxine Minx, and I'm sure she'll be fantastic...but I won't be surprised or disappointed if I feel Pearl remains Mia Goth's best work in the trilogy, just because this is one hell of a show to surpass.
Most films aren't this heavily anchored upon one person in the cast, but Mia Goth's ascension to what I would, in my unprofessional opinion, deem auteur level in the creation and production of Pearl shows how much a non-directing actor can really bring to the table. All Pearl ever wants is to be seen as a star...and she kind of gets her wish because this film and the rich, exciting trilogy aspect of X exists because of a true superstar artist who got invested even beyond great acting to help make the story she was dedicated to even bigger, better, and more exciting. This is the kind of passionate, talented art I love to see.
Comments
Post a Comment