In “The
Post”, the 2017 film about The
Washington Post’s pursuit of the Pentagon
Papers, Meryl Streep plays publisher Katharine Graham from behind an immense
pair of spectacles. Streep is always putting on the glasses to read the
newspaper or taking them off as she stops reading the newspaper. Or else she is
dozing on her desk with the glasses draped wearily over an arm, or squinting
while handling the temples of the glasses, or twirling the glasses absently in
her lap. When I watched the movie, I leaned over to my companion and said: Half
of
Meryl Streep’s acting is “glasses business”.
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I meant this as
an insult. I did not like the movie, and I was taking it out on Meryl Streep.
But in the years since, I have become attuned to Streep’s seemingly boundless
on-screen manipulation of eyewear. It’s stunning how often our most celebrated
movie actress has built her performances on one of the form’s hackiest bits. I
now follow this trend not with incredulity but with reverence. I’ve come to see
a pair of glasses on Streep’s face as a Chekhov’s gun: At some point, you know
they’re coming off, and it’s going to be fabulous.
Eyeglass business
represents a mishmash of cinematic tropes. Donning a pair of glasses functions
as a blunt disguise (now Superman is bumbling reporter Clark Kent). Removing
them reveals a hidden allure (now geeky Laney Boggs of “She’s All That” is
totally hot). The dramatic glasses pull is acting’s least surprising expression
of surprise. It’s something you would do if you existed in a fantastical genre
world.
The glasses
removal is such a worn gravitas signal that once, while pontificating at a
Senate hearing, Orrin Hatch reflexively pantomimed removing a pair of glasses
he had forgotten to actually wear. The most dedicated modern practitioner of
glasses business is probably David Caruso, who, as forensics investigator
Horatio Caine on “CSI: Miami,” spent a decade applying sunglasses to punctuate
his crude puns about fresh corpses.
Streep is not
intimidated by these clichés. Instead, she works fearlessly within them,
reveling in their campiness one moment, then imbuing them with unexpected
delicacy the next. She seems to understand that the glasses pull is so
overworked partly because it is immensely satisfying to watch.
In “The Devil
Wears Prada,” in which Streep plays exacting magazine editor Miranda Priestly,
hardly a scene goes by in which she does not indulge in glasses business,
contemptuously fondling her ombre sunglasses as she vanishes into a limousine
or ruthlessly lowering an angular pair of reading glasses to scrutinize her
unpolished new hire, Andy Sachs.
Miranda is based
on
Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue, who is rarely seen without
sunglasses masking her eyes. The glasses, Wintour told CNN, are “incredibly
useful because you avoid people knowing what you’re thinking about.” She added:
“Maybe they’ve just become a crutch.”
If Wintour uses
glasses to obscure her inner life, Streep deploys them in reverse. She
assuredly manipulates the glasses to accentuate Miranda’s power, which is her
discerning eye. (Her eye for fashion, which includes accessories, which include
glasses).
Among the most
powerful scenes of “The Devil Wears Prada” is when Andy discovers Miranda
bleary-eyed in her hotel room, her face unexpectedly stripped of eyewear as she
reels from the news that her husband has filed for divorce. Streep can fashion
eyeglasses into a scrim, using them to withhold full access to her characters
until she advances to a more intimate layer of the performance.
She can play
glasses subtly: In “Adaptation,” she portrays New Yorker writer
Susan Orlean
with an oval pair of wire frames, and the glasses business is only implied. As
she lies in bed at a low moment, the glasses appear on her face in one shot and
disappear in the next, suggesting a sudden de-escalation of mood. Or she can
play glasses broadly: In “She-Devil,” she adjusts the bridge of her glasses
with her middle finger.
There are moments
in an actor’s career when you get to watch as she ascends to a higher tier of
performance. That came for me while watching Streep in “Big Little Lies,” in
which she turns up in the second season as Mary Louise, the aggrieved
mother-in-law of Celeste (Nicole Kidman). I was thrilled when Streep appeared,
her eyes bulging behind a golden pair of cat-eyed frames. But then, in the
second episode, she unexpectedly wields a new accessory. In a confrontation
with Celeste’s friend Madeline (Reese Witherspoon), Streep lifts the necklace
she is wearing, suspends the chain tautly on her chin, and flicks at its tiny
cross with her finger.
This is not a
subtle move, and yet it is penetrating in its revelation of Mary Louise’s
bizarre character — a feral brand of sanctimony. It feels as if Streep is
challenging herself to make increasingly broad theatrics seem gloriously
peculiar. At this point in her career, why would she leave any prop unchewed?
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