7) Melinda in Speak
I’m going to go ahead and say that I find Kristen Stewart to be one of the best young actors in the business today and y’all are going to have to go ahead and deal. Because unless you’ve seen her work outside of Twilight, you’re missing a career that demonstrates some incredibly interesting choices and roles and work on independent art films and being victimized by the hype machine that makes you see everything through the prism of Twilight. I’ll save more thoughts I have on her for another time.
In Speak, Stewart plays Melinda, who shares some qualities with Dwayne in Little Miss Sunshine, except her vow of silence comes from a significantly more tragic and serious instance involving a sexual assault. Instead of representing just the angst and dissatisfaction that defines adolescence for many people, Melinda’s decision to refrain from speaking represents an overall frustration with an inability to assert her own voice, and the lack of interest others show in hearing what she has to say.
It’s an expression of a specific rage against not being heard, a type of protest, but one that comes from an understandably angry place. It’s heavy material, but handled terrifically by a young K-Stew (the film was released in 2004, or the year 4 BT, that is, Before Twilight). She has to carry the mantle of this tradition of actors going dumb for roles and therefore expressing themselves physically. It calls attention to her skill with subtle body language. Which of course she gets no credit for. Because this skill was so ineptly handled in the movies she’s most famous for. Such is life.
Are there any soft-spoken or mute movie characters you’ve found memorable for moments of silence rather than catchphrases? Share your examples below.
