Remarkably Bright Actress: Sally Field

Not long ago, I read Sy Montgomery’s The Soul of an Octopus, a 2016 non-fiction study of one of the most fascinating of all sea creatures. Montgomery’s book, based on the author’s years of interaction with giant Pacific octopuses at the New England Aquarium, gave me a new respect for an undersea critter with eight limbs, several hearts, and a good deal of intelligence. One of Montgomery’s many fans is Shelby van Pelt, whose debut novel, Remarkably Bright Creatures, became a worldwide best-seller. One of its unusual features: an octopus named Marcellus serves as its narrator.

 Van Pelt’s novel has evolved into a new Amazon made-for-TV drama that’s now nominated for two Emmy awards, including Outstanding Movie. Moreover, star Sally Field is up for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie. Despite her two Oscars and multiple other prizes, Field is by no means a shoo-in: also in the running are such bright—and much younger—Hollywood stars as Claire Danes (The Beast in Me) and Carey Mulligan (Beef).

 But for Emmy voters, Field will be hard to overlook. In a poignant tale that somehow avoids being cloying, she’s a widow living in a small costal town of what looks to be Washington State. Having survived her son’s death and other heartbreak, she has turned inward, taking an after-hours job as a cleaning lady at the local aquarium where she identifies with the frequently on-the-loose Marcellus. Though she resists most human relationships, she remains spunky (in that irresistible Sally Field way), even after she’s sprained her ankle and seen her janitorial job claimed by an unhappy young musician. Cameron, a drifter, is on the lookout for the father who’s missing from his life. Of course Field’s character, Tova Sullivan, ultimately gets involved with his quest; both eventually find rewards in unexpected places. At the end it all ties together, perhaps too neatly, but the sincerity of everyone involved comes through . Kudos to Alfred Molina who gives the octopus an acerbic, authoritative voice, and to all the technical wizards who make a sometimes puppet/sometimes CGI cephalopod seem to have a life of its own.  

Field’s career has been one of Hollywood’s longest, starting off when she was barely out of her teens with such lightweight TV fare as the title roles in Gidget and The Flying Nun. Trying to break away from these “cute” performances, she fought for the role of a young woman with multiple-personality disorder in the acclaimed TV film, Sybil (1976), winning her first Emmy. She went on to win two Best Actress Oscars, one for her role as a spunky union organizer in Norma Rae (1979)) and a second for her portrayal of a (yes) spunky Texas widow in Places in the Heart (1984). Always tiny and youthful-seeming, she gradually evolved into a mature on-screen wife and mother, notably as Mary Todd Lincoln opposite Daniel Day-Lewis in Spielberg’s 2012 Lincoln. For this highly dramatic performance she was yet again Oscar-nominated, but lost out to Anne Hathaway for Les Misérables.

Now almost 80, Field seems in interviews both as sweet and as spunky as ever.  Which doesn’t stop her for being convincingly crochety as Tova Sullivan. There’s an ornery side to this character that stops her from appearing overly twee, and we’re meant to recognize that at times she can be totally exasperating. No wonder that the hyper-sensitive Cameron, well-played by Bill Pullman’s son Lewis, at first considers her merely a pain in the neck. Marcellus the Octopus, though, is smart enough to see Tova as the caring friend she is.

 

Sally Field’s “Hello, My Name is Doris” (& other tales from the Over-the-Hill Gang)

I just saw a trailer for an upcoming Susan Sarandon flick, an indie called The Meddler. It played at the Toronto International Film Festival last September, and will open in general release next month. Apparently the great Sarandon (a 1996 Oscar winner as a crusading nun in Dead Man Walking) here plays a widow who follows her grown daughter (Rose Byrne) to Los Angeles, in search of a new life for herself. Recent Oscar-winner J.K. Simmons is on hand to show her around SoCal on his Harley. It sounds like fun.

But, admittedly, I feel I’ve seen this movie before. Seems like in the past year every one of Hollywood’s aging leading ladies (with the notable exception of Meryl Streep) has taken on the role of a lonely widow -- or lonely spinster – who risks everything for love. The movies are hardly identical: they are all very much shaped by the personalities of their stars. And I’m glad that those stars are still, after all these years, able to find meaty roles. The generally underused Blythe Danner is luminous as a still-elegant widow romanced by Sam Elliott in I’ll See You in My Dreams.  Lily Tomlin brings her cantankerous charm to bear on Grandma, a film that manages to contain some surprises (and, yes, Sam Elliott too). But I feel a nagging sorrow that stories featuring older women all cover so much of the same terrain. If you’re an actress past a certain age, loneliness and a longing for love seem to be just about all you can expect in your movie roles.

The latest Hollywood leading lady to star in a lonely spinster part is Sally Field. Frankly, I hate to think of Field as old, since she and I are of the same generation (and I certainly remember her various “cute” roles as TV’s Gidget and The Flying Nun.) Happily, Sally Field is still petite and cute, and so Hello, My Name is Doris is built around her exuberant persona. Doris is a Staten Island dweller who once upon a time gave up her marriage plans in order to keep house for her mother. Now, long years later, that mother is newly dead, and Doris faces an empty life in the cluttered bungalow full of trash-bin “treasures” she can’t bear to discard. But — always ready to find the silver lining – she develops a crush on a much younger guy she meets at work, and her ready-for-anything spirit (abetted by her eccentric but charming fashion choices) briefly gains her entrée into a world of Manhattan sophisticates. Her sister-in-law, a sour realist, bluntly opines that these hipsters merely see Doris as an “art project.”And maybe Sis is right.

Doris does find love, sort of. And though the ending of the film is ambiguous, I’m hoping the character’s pluck survives the changes that lie in store for her. Anyway, thirty years after Places in the Heart and nearly forty years after Norma Rae, it’s wonderful to see Sally Field at the center of a drama once again. Those two roles won her Best Actress Oscars. In 2012 she nabbed another nomination, this time for playing Mary Todd Lincoln opposite Daniel Day Lewis in Spielberg’s Lincoln. I very much admired her work in that uncharacteristically somber role. Still, she’s irresistible when she’s perky, so I hope Hello, My Name is Doris brings her many more opportunities. Maybe next time she’ll be looking for something other than love. I certainly hope so. Because I like her . . .  I really like her!