Stockard Channing received her first Oscar nomination for playing Louisa Kittredge in Six Degrees Of Separation. Louisa and her husband are rich, high class people who are conned by a charming young man named Paul (Will Smith) and soon discover that there are other people who are being conned by the same person they were.
Six Degrees Of Separation is a simply AWFUL movie. It has a terrible script which is insufferable to listen to, since most of it's characters are shallow, rich people who are completely full of themselves. The plot is ridiculous and totally unbelievable and as I've said, unbearable to sit through. Unfortunately, Stockard Channing's performance is nearly destroyed by the mediocre material. For most of the film, all she gets to do is be a rich socialite who is stuck in a bad situation. She stays on this note for most of the time and as I've said, the material is so bad that she never seems to be above it or even tries to make something good out of it. There are a few good scenes though such as when she is telling her daughter that there are six degrees of separation between people and when she is on the phone with Smith, telling him that they will be happy together. And at the end, when she is telling her husband that Paul was something good in they're lives (But her voice has a weird tone to it that ruins the effect of this scene). In these scenes, Channing taps into the emotions of her character very well and is sometimes very moving. Despite this, she just can't save her performance from being sunken by the horribleness of the film or from getting
8 comments:
I should probably watch it again, as I haven't seen it in a long time, but you know my original grade...
Yes! You didn't like the film either, did you?
It was too obviously stagy for me...sometimes staginess works (Virginia Woolf?) and sometimes it doesn't.
She will probably be fifth, I have seen a few minutes of the film, but I it looked incredibly uninteresting so I did not watch it.
I actually really enjoyed the film, despite the fact that it is rather pretentious. It's funny and interesting (to me). I think that the performances really keep it grounded -- especially Channing who (as you know) I found totally effective in the part. I also discovered Will Smith's talent for drama here as well, and he was also incredible and and I would have easily of given him a nomination. But Channing holds the film together.
Louis Morgan: We'll see. This year seems pretty unpredictable to me in terms of the ranking, since I don't really know anything about the other nominees, except for Hunter.
Twister: Just different opinions, I guess! I'm sorry because I know you really like her. I thought Smith was fine, but his character is so superficial, to me.
Joe, don't be sorry! :)
Like you said, just different opinions.
Awful?! Wow, to say I love this performance is an understatement. The play/film is intentionally critical of these snobby, high-class people, it isn't glorifying them (that's the irony). And it's based on a true story. I think Stockard delivers one of the best performances of the nineties, and I don't think she's one note at all. But each to his own! :-)
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