How the “greatest performance ever” inspired Natalie Portman in ‘Garden State’
From blockbuster powerhouse to auteur darling, Natalie Portman has done it all, beginning her career as a child in Leon: The Professional and shortly landing one of the biggest roles in the Star Wars franchise as Padmé. From this point onwards, her career continued to flourish in many new directions, working with daring independent directors like Alex Garland, Terrence Malick, Lars von Trier and Mike Nichols, showcasing her versatility after starring in everything from action thrillers to psycho-sexual dramas.
While it was her role as Nina in Darren Aronofsky’s 2010 film Black Swan that finally earned her an Oscar, playing a ballet dancer who becomes consumed by her craft and sacrifices everything to achieve greatness, the actor had been making waves in Hollywood since the very beginning and continues to do so after the colossal success of May December, in which she starred alongside one of her acting heroes, Julienne Moore.
Surprisingly, this was not the first time that the pair crossed paths, with the actor describing how she had been a huge influence on one surprising film from her past.
After his award-winning role on Scrubs, Zach Braff turned his hand to directing, enlisting Portman in his directorial debut Garden State in 2004. The film follows a depressed man who returns to his hometown for a funeral, reconnecting with old friends and striking up a friendship with another girl who also suffers from depression. It was a classic indie hit, with the film only having a budget of $2million and making over $30 million at the box office, leading Braff to continue down this creative avenue.
However, Portman described how Braff encouraged her to watch Safe in preparation for her role in the film, which is a surprising pick given that both films share few similarities. Safe, starring Julianne Moore, follows a housewife in Los Angeles who becomes allergic to the world around her, convinced that she has a deadly disease that makes he sensitive to the chemicals and pollution in the air.
When describing the film, Portman said, “Todd Haynes and Julianne Moore made one of the greatest films ever, and one of the greatest performances ever — that has so much to do with a woman’s role in society, and also with environmental catastrophe, and the relationship between the two. It’s just great. Zach Braff showed it to me as an inspiration for Garden State, which is not obvious. I was like 21, and he gave me some reference films and that was one of them, shockingly”.
While the similarities are not obvious, both feature women who are depressed and weighed down by their lives, despite the fact that they display these feelings in different ways. Moore’s character is incredibly subdued after being forced into a life that is similar to that of Jeanne Dielman’s, leading her to become a shell of a person and quite literally allergic to her own existence.
Perhaps this is something that inspired Portman with her character in Garden State, adding a new dimension to her portrayal of depression and the interior world of someone who is stuck in modern suburbia.
