Welcome to 5 Favorites. Each week, I will put together a list of my 5 favorites (films, performances, whatever strikes my fancy) along with commentary on a given topic each week, usually in relation to a specific film releasing that week.
While it might seem like Rooney Mara just recently burst onto the screen, she’s been a working actor for 15 years now, her first appearance being in a direct-to-video movie. She may have had a few movie roles prior, but her first major breakthrough came with the ill-advised remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. That didn’t do any wonders for her career, but her supporting performance in the same year’s The Social Network bolstered her into her lead performance in David Fincher’s American remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. From there, she’s been a welcome presence in most films with one of her best performances coming opposite Cate Blanchett in Todd Haynes’ Carol. This week, she’s part of a terrific looking ensemble of the new Sarah Polley movie Women Talking. Let’s take a look back at her not-so-brief, but certainly ascendant career.
The Social Network (2010)
David Fincher’s look at the rise of Mark Zuckerberg is a detail rich, nuanced look at the self-made billionaire who seemingly stole his best ideas from others and turned them into Facebook. As is common with screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, the film is based on Ben Mezrich’s novel The Accidental Billionaire and is deftly layered and fascinating. Film goes to great pains to portray the aloof Zuckerberg as an unconcerned thief whose sole motivations are his own self-aggrandizement. Jesse Eisenberg is a standout as Zuckerberg, but Andrew Garfield as Eduardo Saverin, and Armie Hammer as twins Cameron & Tyler Winklevoss also give strong performances. Mara plays Erica Albright the college girlfriend who dumped Zuckerberg and sets in motion the events of the film. While it’s not a major performance, it’s a crucial one.
Fincher’s films are always magnificently detailed and his fine eye for drawing out mysteries that he solves is one of the reasons his work is so often celebrated. This film is one of his absolute best, scoring 8 Oscar nominations including Fincher’s second directing citation. The three categories the film won in, for Sorkin’s screenplay, Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter’s editing, and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ score were the best elements of the film, but the rest of the film was deserving of the adulation it received.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
While Mara’s role in Fincher’s prior film wasn’t particularly lengthy, she made up for that in this adaptation of the novel by Stieg Larsson. Adapted for the screen by Steven Zaillian, Fincher directs the film in the shadow of the acclaimed Swedish adaptation directed by Niels Arden Oplev and starring Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist. It’s difficult not to compare the two films as they were adapted from the same source material and were released a mere two years apart. Yet, they can each stand successfully on their own with Fincher’s being the slightly inferior effort.
Mara plays Lisbeth Salander, an asocial computer hacker hired by disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) to help him research the disappearance of a wealthy benefactor’s (Christopher Plummer) grandniece. The pair conflict initially, but their connective desires to take down the powerful allows them to combined their talents in hopes of finding this young girl. Nearly everything about this film is ever so slightly inferior to the Swedish original and it taps into Fincher’s strength at unraveling mysteries. Craig and Mara are strong in their respective roles, but the film’s lone element that excels over Oplev’s original is the magnificent score by Reznor and Ross. The film picked up five Oscar nominations, including Mara’s in Best Actress, but only Wall & Baxter’s editing took home the prize and, shockingly, Reznor and Ross weren’t even nominated.
Her (2013)
Mara has the terrific sense of self that allows her to find the most compelling filmmakers to work with. Such was the case with Spike Jonze’s quasi-futuristic drama Her starring Joaquin Phoenix a professional letter writer who falls in love with the artificial intelligence he’s installed to run his computer’s operating system. Naming herself Samantha (Scarlett Johansson), their relationship develops and he becomes more happy and self-assured. While he knows that the relationship with the AI is fraught with societal stigma, he can’t help but love someone who knows him so intimately.
Mara once again plays the ex, this time Phoenix’s soon-to-be-ex-wife. She doesn’t have much to do, though it’s more than she had to work with in The Social Network This film, however, belongs not to her or to Amy Adams as Phoenix’s neighbor whom he used to date, but to Phoenix and Johansson. Phoenix has never been better. While this wasn’t a stretch for him in terms of performance, it’s one of the most vibrant and humane performance he’s given, delving into the self-conscious depth of someone who isn’t socially adept. Johansson, for her part, is stellar in a singular vocal performance that elevates a character that is purely digital into something even more human than the characters that surround her. The film scored five Oscar nominations, winning for Jonze’s compelling script.
Carol (2015)
From Fincher to Jonze to Todd Haynes. Few actors can merit working with such cinematic luminaries. Her 2015 collaboration with Haynes co-starred Cate Blanchett. Mara plays aspiring photographer Therese working at a department store counter when she meets the luminous Carol (Blanchett) whom she assists with a Christmas purchase. There’s an instant emotional connection between the two that leads the pair towards a forbidden relationship in the midst of 1950s America. It’s a challenging relationship that threatens to destroy them both.
Although this is Therese’s story, it was Blanchett, not Mara, who was nominated in the lead category with Mara relegated to support. Both actors give terrific performances bringing the audience into their dangerous affairs and showing audiences a stark vision of a past where such connections could lead to unforeseen and sometimes horrendous consequences. Although it was the single best film of 2015, the Academy neglected to nominate the film for Best Picture in spite of bestowing it with six other nominations including Blanchett’s and Mara’s. The film went home empty-handed despite career-best work from everyone involved, especially the gorgeous cinematography by Edward Lachman.
Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)
It isn’t often that I’ll throw in an animated film as a representative of the actor’s best work, but Kubo and the Two Strings is no simplistic animated feature. Directed by Travis Knight from a script by Marc Haimes and Chris Butler, Kubo is one of the best films of 2016, animated or otherwise. It tells the story of a young, one-eyed boy (Art Parkinson) who plays street shows for the public infusing his origami creations with magic and delighting his audience. His ill mother (Charlize Theron) told him the tale of his absent father (Matthew McConaughey), which forms the basis for his street performance. His mother warns him not to go out after dark as her sisters and father are searching for him to take his remaining eye.
The film is crafted with stop-motion animation of top-notch quality with some fabulous visual effects thrown in. Mara voices one of the sisters chasing him in the night and infuses her character with gleeful malevolence, a haunting performance that resonates throughout the film. The rest of the vocal cast is wonderful as well with a film that is visually stunning in every respect. In spite of being one of the best films of the year, it couldn’t overcome the Disney stranglehold on the Animated Feature category even though the film is far superior to the eventual winner, Zootopia. It also received a rare nomination in Best Visual Effects, both awards of which it would have been a deserving victor. And a closing shout out to Regina Spektor’s brilliant adaptation of the Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” over the film’s closing credits.
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