This article contains spoilers For “anemone”.
There is no doubt that “the anemone” would not exist without the contributions of Daniel Day-Lewis. Not only is the film co-written and directed by his son, Ronan, but Daniel also co-written, executive product and stars in the photo. “Anemone” is sufficient in a whole that one could say that Day-Lewis is not necessarily the head of the film, but his character of Ray Stoker certainly plays a central role. Daniel and Ronan Day-Lewis seem to be perfectly aware of the importance of the first being involved, while the actor retired publicly after having made “Phantom Thread” in 2017. Knowing intrinsically that the public will present themselves to see him, Daniel and Ronan build “Anemone” around several long monologues, the majority of which are carried out by Daniel. It is enough to ensure that the film almost looks like the cinematic equivalent of an individual spectacle.
However, “Anemone” is not categorically “the Daniel Day-Lewis Show”, and this is demonstrated in a way that can be subtle for a general audience but is absolutely crucial. For example, the other actors like Samantha Morton and Samuel Bottomley play characters who make the film a much more extensive experience, and the imagery that Ronan Day-Lewis and the director of photography Ben Fordesman bring to the film is essential to the decoding of his themes and his emotional arch. The most important player who followed Daniel, however, is Sean Bean. Once again, it may seem strange to someone who makes a surface analysis of the film, because the character of Bean, Jem Stoker, barely speaks in the majority of the scenes in which he appears. However, Bean’s work is an accomplished example of the adage that the game is really to react. A mediocre actor will only bring from the page as on the page, but a large actor will transform what may seem a small gold in gold. Bean is a big actor, and he is the secret weapon of “the anemone”.
The presence of Bean gives the performance of Day-Lewis a greater weight
It is certainly true that a film or a stage game which presents only one actor can work, and all is a question of material and context as well as the capacity of the actor. However, “the anemone” was not conceived as a story with a single character, which means that the other characters are just as important as Ray. Of course, the performance of Day-Lewis of its several monologues may have been just as good if it spoke directly to the public, but the presence of Jem de Sean Bean gives them a greater weight and intention than if they were more generally directed. In other words, Ray does not know that he delivers a monologue to an audience of moviegoers; He says these things to his distant younger brother, and it is Jem’s reaction through Bean’s performances that give these monologues the form, dimension and resonance.
Consider the most central, revealing and emotional monologue of Ray, where he admits the incident that made him disintewardly discharged from the British army during the problems. His murder of mercy of what he perceived as a young Irish boy who is fatally injured after an accidentally triggered bomb is a memory that man has clearly sank with his whole life, literally and figuratively. His rationalization of his actions is obviously not sufficient for him, perhaps because of his strict religious education and the conflicting feelings he has on this subject. All of this is conveyed by powerfully sincerely sincere delivery, but the moment would not be as powerful if Jem did not take it all. He may only listen to, but he actively listens, and that makes a huge difference.
Bean’s Jem is the most fascinating character of “the anemone”
Each main character of “anemone” is treated as an onion, because a layer after the layer is derogated during the execution of the film until we understand much more deeply from their interior disorders. You could say that Jem is the most simplistic character, a dedicated Catholic British of working class, being much more a type of rigid upper lip. However, Bean does not play Jem in this way, and instead, his performance means that Jem looks like a rock in the Stoker Stoker family.
Namely: after the violent incident in which Brian (Bottomley) is involved, it is Jem who decides to seek Ray to convince him to come and visit the son (otherwise the family) that he abandoned. While we learn more about the history of stokers, we discover that Jem has taken it upon him to marry Nessa (Morton), the ex of Ray, and to become a stepfather of Brian, who is really Ray’s son. There is an element of Catholic guilt in him, of course, which makes his motivations to be the father who intensified less noble and more imposed. However, the way Jem acts as a resonance box for the bitter invective Ray allows the latter to realize that it has actually been flogged all these years for its troubled past.
Bean plays Jem as a brother knowing brother, partly priest, making his journey to deep woods where Ray fled a kind of missionary outing. Although Jem never receives a long monologue to explain its side of history with as many details as Ray, Nessa or even Brian, Bean’s performance is as richly superimposed as the rest of the distribution. The way we have to observe more than the bean than listening aligns with Jem with the rich tapestry of the film of surreal and symbolic images. So, while Jem is perhaps the least well drawn character on paper, Bean’s performance makes him fascinating. It is exemplary of a film which invites the public to have a little patience and to look a little deeper to be rewarded.
“Anemone” is now in theaters.
