[In Defense Of] Kristen Stewart — Brilliance Through Insecurity
She runs her fingers through her tousled hair and bites her lip. Her face wan, she darts her eyes around the room and steals a sharp breath. She squirms one last time in her seat before she finally stammers out the line we’d been awaiting for what feels like minutes. At this point, the toolbox that Kristen Stewart wields is apparent to everyone. This skillset is beyond divisive-audiences often find her talent easily dismissible, while in 2015 she also became the first American to win the Cesar Award, the equivalent of a French Oscar. Yet, even despite the recent critical praise, Stewart’s virtues remain unconvincing to traditional audiences.
Presently, the currency in Hollywood is confidence. Our movie screens are filled with confident men and women. The Superhero Formula is rooted in this confidence, led by the bottomless swagger machine Robert Downey Jr., supported by an army of Chrises, be they Pratts, Pines, or Hemsworths. One might think that movie stars have always traded in confidence, but this would ignore the tainted antiheroes of the ’70s, the stoic action figures of the ’80s, and the angsty misanthropes of the ’90s. Additionally, for our favorite actresses, a boldness is idolized, from our Meryl Streeps to our Viola Davises. Even Jennifer Lawrence juxtaposes her doting offscreen persona with bold, often caricatured protagonists. In fact, it is in Stewart’s discomfort both on-screen and off that audiences find themselves lost.
We are not comfortable when others are uncomfortable. This is true in life and on-screen. At times it appears Stewart is genuinely uncomfortable being in front of a camera. Even more, Stewart often looks uncomfortable being in her own skin. For a medium built on ‘stardom’, Stewart constantly bucks both her own stardom (from childhood, mind you) and the demands it brings. If we’re being honest, this discomfort and rejection are perhaps the most honest responses one can have to an industry as vapid as Hollywood. Yet still, she finds a way to channel this discomfort into brilliant performances.
There is a transiency to many of Stewart’s characters-they often remain on the precipice of the fear that they’re lost or fear that they’ll be found. Adventureland captures this in a theme park summer job: post-graduates lost in their own lives, beginning to hate the people they’re becoming. Stewart’s vulnerability here is arresting. (It is also of note that her work with Jesse Eisenberg throughout multiple movies remains some of my favorite work she’s done. Many of these same points apply to his career, as well.) Olivier Assayas’ Clouds of Sils Maria, the film that won her the Cesar Award, uses a type of meta-fiction with her character to describe both the typical arc of a Hollywood actress from ingenue to aging actress, as well as the arc of Stewart’s own career in the Hollywood system as a young starlet built by Hollywood’s carnivorism. Her performance is bold and uncompromising. Her insecurities, in other movies typically turned inward, now turn outward and displace themselves onto the Hollywood system that rejects her desire for introversion.
This year, Stewart re-teamed with Assayas in Personal Shopper to build a film around her insecurity. Personal Shopper is a ghost story only in form, not function. Stewart portrays a young woman haunted by the death of her twin brother. She wanders around Europe as a personal shopper for a young international starlet. Stewart employs that same narrow actor toolbox to beautifully draw a character losing her identity, purpose and belief in the world. The climax of the film isn’t when Stewart believes she’s seen a ghost, but rather when she dresses up in her boss’s expensive designer clothes because she’s so desperate to find her own lost identity. Assayas understands that her constant portrait of dread and discomfort on her face is a multi-tool when harnessed.
Yes, I’d be remiss not to discuss Twilight, the franchise that came to define her in a way that few movies do. The cadence leading to the infamous question, “….Vampire?” will perhaps define her career in the same way “Whoa” did for Keanu Reeves (another often misunderstood/misused performer). However, it is also no coincidence that the Twilight series did not fully find itself until it embraced the campiness that its author was unable to find, but that the actors had already long embraced. By the end of the (great) final Twilight movie, most audiences had probably had their fill of Stewart’s Bella Swan. In a way, I had, too. Her character’s journey into a superhero vampiress wasn’t befitting Stewart. Her retreat from blockbusters shortly after seemed to imply she felt the same.
It is understandable that we desire confidence from our movie stars. The fantasy that they are fierce and fully formed is easily digestible and comforting. A celebrity age defined by actors going on late-night talk shows to promote their personality as brand. Still, Stewart’s deep insecurity is brazenly human and real. Her personal and performance brands are the same as mine and probably yours, full of self-doubt and second guessing. She’s just found a way to pick up those insecurities and anxieties and wield them with passion.
And, in a way, that’s its own kind of confidence. And just as cool.
Originally published at http://swishpan.com on November 7, 2018.
