Seriously Entertaining

I don't often see actress Jodie Foster's name in the news, but since she has long been my favourite, when I do see it, I'm likely to read the accompanying article. And there she was a few days ago in the BBC News, so I emailed myself the story to remind me to come back to it.

In "Jodie Foster to get lifetime achievement Golden Globe", we are told that Foster, whose career as an actress began over 40 years ago, at the age of 3, will receive the Cecil B DeMille award next January in recognition of her achievements in acting in, directing and producing both movies and TV shows.

I still remember the gripping tension of watching Foster play rookie FBI agent-to-be Clarice Starling against the deliciously awful Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs, which seems like only yesterday, but was more than 20 years ago. The next Foster film that stands out in my mind is Contact, a very different film to Silence of the Lambs, although I guess both do involve detective work, analysis and determination. In Contact, Foster plays an orphaned child who grows up to be an astronomer: the one who actually makes contact with an intelligent extra-terrestrial civilisation, but as the plot unfolds, the film also explores themes such as the nature of knowledge, the conflict between science and religion, and personal growth.

But I had to smile to myself when I remembered the old Cecil B mega-hits of an age ago. They were all the rage when I was a child, but had already been around for a few years when I arrived and started going to cinemas for the big screen experience. I'm afraid I thought that the Egyptians and Romans were rather more appealing, and better acted, than the melodramatic biblical stars of The Ten Commandments, where deMille relates the early story of terrorism for political ends in the Christian Bible's book called Exodus, and of The Greatest Story Ever Told, where he relates the life of Jesus according to the gospel accounts, complete with miracles.  I suffered the same sort of disappointment when I recently watched Cleopatra starring Elizabeth Taylor again, many years after first being stunned by her performance in the film adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedies Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra. It would have much better had Mrs Taylor changed her dress and hair less often and slipped in a few more of Shakespeare's words. I guess that like everything, industries mature, and the film industry seems to me to have matured greatly over the last half century - and now I'm of an age to personally make such comparisons! Even after 20 years, Foster's performance in Silence of the Lambs has not aged; I think that's a good sign of great art. But Shakespeare is still winning by a few centuries at continuously holding his audience again, and again, and again.

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Reference

Jodie Foster to get lifetime achievement Golden Globe, (2012, November 2). BBC News Entertainment & Arts. Retrieved November 6, 2012 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-20177698