Ask Mick LaSalle:
Getting excited about Jennifer Jason Leigh.
Dear Mick LaSalle: “The Hateful Eight.” Put another way: Jennifer Jason Leigh in a Quentin Tarantino film. How stoked are we?
Danny Sullivan, Dallas Dear Danny Sullivan: I’m pretty hopeful. Tarantino revived the careers of Pam Grier, Robert Forster and John Travolta, and if this new film does anything to enhance Leigh’s standing, it will have righted an enormous wrong. From the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, she was the most interesting thing in American cinema, and at the time I just blithely assumed that Leigh and I would have a beautiful few decades together, of her making great movies and me writing about them. Her body of work, starting with “Last Exit to Brooklyn” (1989), made when she was 27, through “Washington Square” (1997), made when she was 35, was unlike that of any other actress of the modern era.
She was a genre unto herself, in a way that even Meryl Streep isn’t and never was. A Jennifer Jason Leigh vehicle meant a particular kind of movie, one about a complicated, difficult woman, with a performance that went to extremes. Leigh was utterly without vanity, completely unafraid to appear stupid (“Miami Blues”) or desperate (“Rush”) or crazy (“Single White Female”) or tormented (“Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle”) or pathetic (“Georgia”). Her performance in the last film really should have been nominated for an Academy Award, at least if you believe the Oscars to be an emblem of quality.
But then, just when she was at the height of her powers — right when she was coming fully into focus as a screen powerhouse — the roles dried up. She has been a supporting actress, mainly in lowbudget films, ever since. Of course, it’s true that even in her heyday, she was never quite mainstream, never completely accepted, either critically or by the public. The kind of movie she made and the kinds of searing roles she chose were never going to appeal to everybody. But in another movie culture, that wouldn’t have mattered. Even at the time, I thought of Leigh as a kind of American Isabelle Huppert — a huge instrument in a small vessel, an actress with an affinity and a gift for the outer limits of the human experience. But unlike Huppert, Leigh wasn’t nourished by the industry in which she worked — thus, anyone under 40 could be forgiven for not knowing that this is one of our greatest screen talents. Actually, it’s so depressing I don’t even want to think about the criminal waste of this actress and all that she might have accomplished on screen between the ages of 36 and 53. The important thing to think about is that she’s not dead and that anything is still possible. As her brief but ferocious performance in “The Spectacular Now” (2013) showed, she hasn’t lost any of her force. Hey Mick: Don’t you think Robert Redford needs to spend the rest of his career behind the camera?
John Ferguson, Dublin Hey John: No. But then, if I had to pick a favorite American actor of the last 50 years, it would be Redford, so I’m not ready to close the books on his screen career. Also, directing is strenuous, and as he gets older, he might be less likely to want to do the heavy lifting behind the camera. Redford has a wonderful gift of suggesting much with little, and of seeming to stand for something just in the act of being there. He has always had a healthy disrespect for himself and a healthy respect for the medium, which is the opposite of many actors, and as a result he has only made movies that are either good or could have been good. That is, he has made some bad movies, but never one that was bad by design. I’ll be happy to see any film Redford makes for as long as he wants to make them.
Have a question? Ask Mick LaSalle at mlasalle@sfchronicle.com. Include your name and city for publication, and a phone number for verification. Letters may be edited for clarity and length.