Top 5 Kristen Stewart Scenes | Archive

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2:16What kind of a show are you guys putting on here today? You're not interested in art?

2:20Josh Larsen:No. Well, look, we're going to do this thing. We're going to have a conversation.

2:25Adam Kempenaar:Hey, film spotters, we'll get to our Kristen Stewart scenes here in a minute and tell you why we're even sharing this top five from the archive. But first, we wanted to let you know that you can get access at any time to top fives like this, other reviews from the past, over a thousand episodes. by becoming a film spotting family member. Josh, all they have to do if they want a discount through the month of August is do what?

2:53Josh Larsen:Use promo code SUMMER. Pretty easy. Yeah, through August 31st, we are offering this over at filmspottingfamily.com. I feel like it's always a good deal, but now, especially a good deal, 20 % off.

3:07Adam Kempenaar:Use that promo code SUMMER. So we're sharing a top five from 2017, our top five Kristen Stewart scenes. up until this year Meryl Streep hadn't even been given this type of treatment on film spotting you didn't need to point that out no I didn't need to but this was the the height of the case because she had just been in personal shopper Olivia Aseas's film that had followed certain women in 2016 the clouds of Sils Maria in 2014 and she had credits going back to panic room and into the wild as a teen. She is by far the youngest actor we've done a top five scenes for, but it seems at that time she had been appraised as one of our finest actors.

3:55Adam Kempenaar:And we felt that way. And we certainly felt that she was deserving of this type of treatment. Yeah.

4:02Josh Larsen:I feel like we also recognizing that this, I wouldn't call it a resurgence, but that this recognition was building. We wanted to dig into some of her movies, specifically looking at her performances and wrapping our own minds around what we made of her as an actor, what she brought to the screen, what she brought to these roles, and then come away with our favorites from what we saw.

4:29Adam Kempenaar:This doesn't happen often, but over the course of doing the show together, we have done a few joint top fives, and that's what you'll get here. This is truly our top five Kristen Stewart scenes. I'm Joan Jett. I play guitar, electric guitar. Joan Jett, that's a cool name. You guys got a demo? No. No, I don't. No, guys. I want to start an all-girl rock band. The Runaways and Kristen Stewart's Joan Jett with Michael Shannon as Kim Fowley, who's a music producer and who's their manager. And he is delightfully fun in that film, was my favorite thing about that film back in 2010. And I was sure, Josh, maybe it's because of the critical reconsideration of Stewart.

5:23Adam Kempenaar:I just assumed that I was a huge fan of Stewart's performance in that movie. And I went back and looked at my notes and kind of mixed on the film, kind of mixed on her. Rewatching a lot of scenes from it for this show, I've changed my thoughts on her and I think it's because the way we've seen her evolve through the work of directors like Olivier Aseas maybe it was a matter of not her needing to catch up to anything I'm doing but me needing to catch up to what she's doing and I think we'll talk about what we see her doing on screen as we get to our top five Kristen Stewart scenes and it's funny when I went back and looked at those notes Josh I had the setup for that show Maddie was sitting opposite me and that was the same episode where we shared our top five actresses of the decade.

6:06Adam Kempenaar:It was 2010, after all. And my setup question for Maddie was, 10 years from now, what are the chances that one or both of the young actresses at the center of The Runaways, Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning, what are the chances that one of them will make our list 10 years from now, looking back on the decade? And the fact is, it really was, like a lot of our setups are, just a provocation to get the conversation going at the time in 2010, I had no thoughts at all that Kristen Stewart might genuinely be in that conversation. But right now, as we sit in 2017, how could you try to form that list and at least not consider her?

6:44Adam Kempenaar:You'd have to, right?

6:45Josh Larsen:That's what we've been doing. I mean, I haven't given her that sort of consideration really. I've only seen, you know, not even half of her films. I think we both managed to now see the ones that most people regard as the important ones. But it is this reappraisal that's been happening in the last few years that's forced me, too, to think, OK, I got to look more closely, you know, at some of the specific scenes, visit films I haven't seen before. And for me, it was more just trying to get not really a quality thing. And where does she rank? It was just trying to get a grasp on what does she do on screen.

7:20Josh Larsen:And so that was what I was excited about having the opportunity to do.

7:24Adam Kempenaar:Well, we'll wrestle with that here in a moment. But if you are out there thinking, I've seen a handful or several Kristen Stewart films, I don't know what all the fuss is about, and that's totally fair, you're not alone in terms of the people producing this show. We can mention that one of the people behind the scenes was not necessarily all that on board with our desire to do this top five and actually suggested, looking back, we've done these types of appraisals of actors' careers for people like Robert De Niro and Philip Seymour Hoffman. why her? So part of the question is, where's the body of work?

7:57Adam Kempenaar:And then you could also ask, where's the talent? And some of the names that were mentioned, Scarlett Johansson, Jennifer Lawrence, even Mia Vosikowska, Saoirse Ronan, Brie Larson, all, some might argue, or some of them, better actresses maybe than Kristen Stewart. But I think what we talked about, Josh, is that none of those actresses, I think it's fair to say, have captured the imagination of critics anyway, and some moviegoers the way Stewart has recently. And there are some very formidable voices in film criticism who are all in on Stewart beyond Stephen Cohn, including Wesley Morris and A.O.

8:34Adam Kempenaar:Scott, who in the New York Times, when they did their piece, A Dialogue Between Them, about the great performances of the year 2016, A.O. Scott said his hunch is that Kristen Stewart is the new Robert De Niro. He says she doesn't, of course, transform physically the way De Niro has made a career out of doing, or at least did early in his career. But according to Scott, she burrows as deeply as De Niro ever has into the interiors of her characters. And he says the fact that she's the most interesting person in all the films she was in in 2016, including Cafe Society, Certain Women, and Billie Lynn's Long Halftime Walk suggests that her movie star charisma is still intact.

9:12Adam Kempenaar:She's just using it in subtle and occasionally subversive ways. And Wesley Morris adds, I think Kristen Stewart is just about the best American movie actress we have. So, okay.

9:21Josh Larsen:Yes. So some hyperbole there. Time to temper all that a little bit. We'll see. This is, this is what I found. She's very, to my mind, she's extreme. She excels at doing some things very well. And as a result of that, there are some things that are not in her, they're not her strong suit and you can see when certain movies place her in the positions to not be able to excel at least from the the small sample size that i've taken and getting ready for the show gives me that impression and let me give you an idea what i'm talking about i think personal shopper is a good place to start because she is she's one of those ghosts that cone is talking about not literally but she has that sense in the movie she's an apparition she's elusive She's ephemeral.

10:07Josh Larsen:You can't pin her down. And I think some people have claimed that that makes her a bad actress because you can't say this is exactly what she's doing easily. And so they will read that as blank. And that's been a criticism of hers. Now you have others who go way the other way, the people that you've mentioned. And I think my experience of her work at this point is that she's something in between those two positions. She's a master of reticence, just an absolute master of that. But perhaps because of that, I think she can be a little bit limited when it comes to conveying a genuine connection between two people.

10:41Josh Larsen:That's where I see some of the scenes. And there are exceptions. We'll get to Clouds of Sills Maria. There's a bunch of exceptions we're about to get to. Clouds of Sills Maria is one where, you know, it's a relationship movie. And I think it's her best performance that I've seen. But think about, you know, the first time I saw her on screen, Stephen mentioned it in David Fincher's Panic Room. She played a character there who was literally withdrawn, right? She's this diabetic tween who's hiding in the safe room with her mother and the posture she has there that she has to adopt. It's curled up, it's leaning back, it's turning away.

11:16Josh Larsen:And that is still, I think, her defining quality or her go-to position as an actress on screen. And I think you can say that even in something like, you know, the Swoony Twilight series, which Stephen pointed out that maybe when she's not as invested in the material, then it's not going to work. I think there's probably some of that going on there. But she's also too withdrawn to pull off this heavy breathing Bella character that she was supposed to be playing. You never believed that central relationship between the two of them. You always felt that Bella wasn't after Edward, right? You'll be able to back me up.

11:52Josh Larsen:It was Edward. Oh, yeah. I'm the expert. She wasn't after Edward as much as she wanted his doomed, lonely lifestyle more than she wanted him. That's the feeling I always got. OK. Yeah. So I think what makes her fascinating is that it's the same thing that makes her frustrating. She's this movie star that we can't have in the way that we like to have movie stars because her true talent is keeping us at a distance. That's not like a good or bad thing. I think that's that is what makes her an alluring presence. Yeah.

12:21Adam Kempenaar:I would say it's definitely more good than bad because there is that allure. There is something that you can't help but be drawn to. There's a mystery you're constantly trying to solve.

12:29Josh Larsen:But there are scenes where that doesn't work. And, you know, Twilight is maybe the easy example to give of that. But I think even in a film, a good film like Personal Shopper, there are scenes that suddenly require her to be connecting with another person personally and in a vulnerable way. and there's just the disconnect there for me where in Personal Shopper, and we'll get to it on our list, so I don't want to spell it, when she's alone, the word Steven was using, solitude, intensely private, those are the ones that sing.

13:00Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, I kind of know where you're going and I don't completely disagree. At the same time, I think that I still feel like when she is interacting with people in this film, it's meant to have that sort of awkwardness of people trying to connect in a world where they're much more used to connecting with people constantly over text. And I wanted to mention to Stephen that that's a huge part of this film where we have this other ghostly presence in Personal Shopper that is sending her these harassing text messages. And look, we all do that every day. Another presence is the presence we project of ourselves when we're interacting with people over text messages.

13:35Adam Kempenaar:And you add two at the layer of she doesn't know who she's talking to. And when she then is forced to actually try to connect with another individual, it's still fraught with that kind of artificiality. And I think it works. I think it definitely works.

13:48Josh Larsen:We're going to get trapped into a personal shopper conversation, but I'm thinking of the one with her client's lover. Yeah. A long extended exposition scene where all of the sudden she just starts spilling her gut. It's not that the reticence is a problem there. It's that all of a sudden it's completely gone. And it's not true to that character in particular that she opens up so much to this guy she just met. And it's also not true to Stewart's talent as a performer. What are you doing in Paris? I'm waiting. I'm going to go. What are you waiting for?

14:25My brother died here. My twin brother died in Paris.

14:32Adam Kempenaar:An accident? No. I will give you briefly that when he started to engage her in a conversation and she stopped walking out the door and turned around and engaged with him, I thought that felt false. But then it also made sense to me that that character in that moment who was so used to not having any kind of actual conversation with people would say, okay, I'm going to put my guard down for a second. I'm going to actually do this. I thought it made sense. But let's talk about connection. It's going to be a big part of this. I think physicality is going to be a big part of what we single out when we single out these scenes and the moments that we love from very good to great Kristen Stewart performances.

15:15Adam Kempenaar:And I want to go back for number five here. We're doing a joint list to Into the Wild from 2007, another one that Stephen mentioned. And it's Chris and Tracy's Goodbye, Chris played by Emile Hirsch. He's Christopher McCandless, the kid who is heading off to Alaska. And this is kind of his last big stop, his last big encounter with society. before he goes off for his life of solitude in Alaska. And he meets this teenage girl, Tracy, who Stuart manages to convey without doing a whole lot that she has enough hormones flowing through her that it prompts Chris's friend Rainey to say, that poor girl is about ready to vault herself onto a fence post.

15:56Adam Kempenaar:And yes, there is that element to her performance and her character. But like her playing Joan Jett in The Runaways, this is another bit that involves her playing a guitar and performing Josh. A lot of people listening might think I'm going to go with the Angel from Montgomery duet scene where they're playing this great John Prine song and she sings and Hirsch joins her in the duet singing for these people who have all joined together at a place they call Slab City, which is just a snowbird kind of camping ground. but for me it's the moment right after the song and that performance angel from montgomery dissolves into their goodbye they've made this connection she's only 16 years old though so he hasn't engaged with her sexually but they've certainly had some kind of bond over this brief time they've been together and sean penn the director really stages this goodbye wonderfully where it starts with the camera panning slowly across the campground we see the camper that he's going to be going away in, pulling in, and then it cuts to Chris and Tracy.

16:54Adam Kempenaar:And Chris is in profile, and the close-up is really on Stuart's face as he's telling her where she can send him mail. You can send mail to this address in South Dakota. I don't know when I'm going to get it, but I'll get it. I hate you pretty magic. Yeah? Yeah. She's clearly upset. She's sad that he's going, but there's something more than that in her face. It's not just anger or sadness. It's almost like the only way I can describe it, like she's trying to will him to stay with her eyes. She's not doing anything physically in this moment, but there's nothing passive about the scene whatsoever.

17:42Adam Kempenaar:And it extends to the moment where they finally do say goodbye, and he shares this cheesy platitude with her. he says, if you want something in life, reach out and grab it. And that's where this physicality comes in, where she then gives him a hug. And it's something I think we see in a lot of Stuart performances. She makes a slightly unconventional choice. In The Runaways, it's the way she smokes a cigarette. It's the way she hunches her shoulders like she's always ready for a fight. Here, she doesn't just throw her arms around him. It's not a hug like we've given or been given a million times, but she actually cups the back of his neck and pulls her toward him in that moment.

18:20Adam Kempenaar:And I love that choice. And I love the aggressiveness of it. Again, nothing passive there, but also it is her literally reaching out and grabbing him just as he expressed to her, whatever you want, just go and get it. Well, she does. She does in that moment. And yet he obviously doesn't stay. So there's a bittersweet irony to this whole endeavor. And we know it's going to play out in terms of ultimately how things end for Chris. And I think that's where this scene also really hits me in terms of some emotional resonance, because we know that he could have this, whether it's her or someone else, that type of connection, that bond with another person, he's about to let it all slip away in this quest to find himself and his determination to be alone.

19:06Josh Larsen:Yeah. Into the Wild, my favorite film of 2007 and Stuart, one of the reasons for that. I'm going to jump ahead about 10 years exactly and go to Kelly Reichert's Certain Women. And this is the horseback riding scene that many people who have seen this film come out of it talking about. Stuart anchors one of the triptychs here in Reichert's movie. She plays a young lawyer who travels to middle of nowhere, Montana, once a week to teach a class on school law. A ranch hand played by Lily Gladstone crashes the class and becomes infatuated with her. So they form this tentative relationship. She sits in on the class.

19:41Josh Larsen:They go out afterwards for a late night dinner. I think this is probably certain women's best seen when Gladstone offers to give her a ride on her horse after class and she accepts. There's a quiet understanding between them there that no words are used at all to express what they both come to realize and know. And I like towards the end of this where Stewart just leans in slightly. And in a movie that's very matter of fact in its framing and its camera work also allows them to pass in front of a streetlight at one point so that a halo glows over them. And that's a big flourish for someone like Reichert in a movie like this.