“Iris” (2001)
Sharing the same character as Judi Dench must be somewhat daunting for any actress, but Winslet steps up to the plate in Richard Eyre‘s film. Her young Iris Murdoch has a honed-in eccentricity that exudes an insatiable joie de vivre, and with it, Winslet delivers one of her most sensitive, subdued, and totally immersed supporting performances. The gut-puncher of the story is that famed novelist Iris Murdoch (Dench) is losing her memories and her sense of self due to a debilitating bout of Alzheimer’s. This emotional core is massaged by various factors, not least by Jim Broadbent‘s Oscar-winning turn as Iris’ bottomlessly dear husband John Bailey. But, these older scenes have a tendency to overcompensate in sap due to the very nature of their context and performances. The younger scenes, by contract, leave no room for such melodramatic dressing, making them slightly stronger as a result. Winslet’s Iris effortlessly expresses the mystery and attraction of the woman, her “secret world” of words and language feeling under continuous construction through her wondrous gaze. Free-spirited, natural, and vehemently feminist without an ounce of posturing about it, she disappears into the role of Iris Murdoch just as much as Dench does (a bit more, even?). It’s Winslet’s savvy for soft sublimity that magnetizes everything — from Hugh Bonneville‘s fine performance as young John to our own attention — whenever her Iris is on screen, making the disease that threatens to erase those moments from her memory that much more evil.
“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” (2004)
If all of Winslet’s characters found themselves sitting at the same dinner table, Clementine Kruczynski would be the free-spirited goofball who makes fun of everyone before starting a food fight. So far removed from the period films she led in the early aughts (“Quills,” “Enigma“), and a horse of a completely different (multi-)color than the type of romantic characters her name was synonymous with (“Titanic,” “Sense & Sensibility“), Winslet’s performance in Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman‘s “Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind” is a seminal, serendipitous breath of fresh air in her filmography. The topsy-turvy effect is even more enhanced because she plays the complete opposite to Jim Carrey‘s (!) shy, introverted, and broken-hearted man. The story follows Joel (Carrey) as he tries to get over a breakup with his girlfriend (Winslet). When he finds out that she erased him from her memory, he undergoes the same procedure and the film takes us down an exhilarating, memory-erasing rabbit hole. It’s a whirl of brazen, highly-ornate, and hilarious originality — a romantic comedy in a league of its own. Elements that surely spurred Winslet to tear into the modern, capricious Clementine with the zeal of someone aching to show the world her fun and humorous side. The side that chooses impulsive monkey business in lieu of woebegone refinery. It’s a streak of genius casting on Gondry’s part, and a beautiful demonstration of Winslet’s wondrous range. Her expertise at expressing longing and desire gets a whole new candy-colored shade in ‘Eternal Sunshine,’ resulting in another, 100% deserved, Oscar nomination.
“Little Children” (2006)
The American suburban housewife, whose once-lively spirit is stifled into muted submission by the mundane routines of an inexhaustibly boring life. Winslet’s talents of conveying volumes without uttering a syllable are perfectly suited for exactly this type of role, as witnessed in Todd Field‘s brilliant adaptation of Tom Perrotta‘s novel, “Little Children.” Winslet plays Sarah Pierce, a housewife with a torpid sense of obligation towards her husband Richard (Gregg Edelman) and their three-year-old daughter. Where once she was a promising student of English, and a fired-up radical feminist, today she’s stuck spending time with other vapid mothers in the park, wondering where it all went so wrong, and dreaming of a different kind of life. Sparks of this dream seem to light up when she begins an affair with Patrick Wilson‘s Brad, a man equally unhappy in his own marriage to Katherine (Jennifer Connelly). The performances in Field’s film, including Jackie Earle Haley‘s unforgettable Ronald, are towering feats of bottled sexual tension, immeasurable loneliness, and the all-too-human sense of entrapment by way of conformity. Winslet excels above her co-stars in this regard. Transcending the screen with Sarah — think of her cheering Brad’s touchdown, conversing with Katherine at the dinner table, or admiring Madame Bovary’s “hunger” in her book club — Winslet propels the most ordinary of characters towards something wholly extraordinary, while still keeping her firmly grounded. She’d go on to play a similar part in a completely different, much more acerbic manner a few years later, but “Little Children” remains a career-highlight more than deserving its own spotlight.
