“It’s all stunning”: The movie Lily Gladstone labelled a “masterclass”
Everyone loves an Oscar scandal, and actor Lily Gladstone was at the centre of such a storm at the 2024 Academy Awards, losing out on the statuette she seemed destined to earn to Emma Stone. Social media exploded with discourse as to how Gladstone had been ‘robbed’ of an Oscar for her performance in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, and some critics, indeed agreed, even if Stone’s performance certainly deserved plaudits.
Yet, such is merely a testament to how quietly explosive Gladstone is in Scorsese’s American epic, playing Mollie Burkhart, the oblivious victim of her husband’s evil greed, stealing the oil-rich land beneath her feet by steadily killing her family. Mollie herself wasn’t even safe from such treachery, with the husband, played with great force by Leonardo DiCaprio, poisoning her bit-by-bit over the course of many months.
Despite the lack of an Oscar win, Killers of the Flower Moon has shoved Gladstone into the industry limelight, where she has already secured a deal to appear in The Memory Police, the forthcoming script by master screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. Clearly attracted to eloquent screenplays, such isn’t the first time Gladstone has shown appreciation for the American wordsmith either.
When speaking to A-Frame, Gladstone gushed over Kaufman’s Oscar-nominated screenplay for 2002’s Adaptation. Starring Nicolas Cage, Chris Cooper and Meryl Streep, the complex story tells the story of a screenwriter who represents Kaufman himself, struggling to adapt the real-life book The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean, with the idea coming from the Oscar-nominees own efforts to modify the same novel for the screen.
“Adaptation is a masterclass in writing, directing and acting,” Gladstone told the publication, “The humor in that film, and the way it’s so deeply enmeshed with how finely developed all the characters are, and every single actor and every character that they create — it’s all stunning”. Also praising Cage’s performances as dual characters in the film, she calls the movie “Spike Jonze’s filmmaking at its best”.
Going one step further, she calls Kaufman “my absolute favorite screenwriters of all time,” with this also being reflected in her own list of all-time favourite movies. There are, indeed, aspects of Kaufman in the quirky nature of Taika Waititi’s Eagle vs Shark, as well as even the tender storytelling of 2002’s Whale Rider by Niki Caro, which transformed Australian cinema upon its release.
Take a look at the trailer for Kaufman’s Adaptation below in preparation for Gladstone’s collaboration with the filmmaker in The Memory Police.
