Look at Marilyn Monroe, about twenty seconds into the clip, when a journalist “asks,” without a question mark at the end of the sentence, “You’re a happy girl now.” The infinitesimal silence that goes with her dubious glance—a tightly controlled eye-roll—away from the interviewer, followed by her ironic verbal shrug (a melodic “uh-h” with a subtly derisive smile), suggests the equivalent of, “You have no idea.” It’s in that sudden abyss of true and horrific emotion in the midst of the most conventionally candied context that encapsulates Monroe’s art—and art it is…
Richard Brody on Lindsay Lohan and Marilyn Monroe, “happy girls”: http://nyr.kr/V98boa
(Source: newyorker.com)
Lohan’s performance (not her impersonation) is thrillingly immediate, not a composition of interpretive pieces but an incontrovertible, full-spectrum presence, even if the mirror itself is broken and some shards of character are still missing from view.
Richard Brody reviews “Liz and Dick,” starring Lindsay Lohan: http://nyr.kr/Slr0Hn