Nicole Kidman makes her entrance at the AFI Tribute ceremony.
You've heard of the Nicole Kidman AFI Tribute, but do you know there's also a TFE celebration in the works? Last year, the American Film Institute announced that Australian superstar Nicole Kidman would receive their Life Achievement Award in honor of her contribution to American film. The ceremony took place on April 27th, but apart from some online videos and photo-ops, little of the celebration was publicized. That will change in June when the entire Tribute will air on TNT and TCM, as is tradition with such AFI events. To mark the joyous occasion, the Team Experience will be doing a tribute of our own.
From now until June 17th, you can expect a new daily post on Kidman, going over some of her best films and performances. Since tomorrow we'll jump straight into the 90s, this introduction shall serve as the Tribute's overview of her origins in Australian cinema…
BUSH CHRISTMAS (1983) Henri Safran
Born Nicole Mary Kidman in 1967 Honolulu, the future Oscar winner grew up in Sydney, where a repertory screening of The Wizard of Oz left her besotted. But it wasn't Dorothy or Glinda who captured little Kidman's attention. Instead, she was drawn to Margaret Hamilton's iconic villainy as the Wicked Witch of the West. That tendency to seek the darkness within would stay with her, manifesting in many a great turn throughout the actress' career. Not that it was much apparent at the start of it all, one must say. After studying drama and mime at both the Phillip Street Theater and the Australian Theater for Young People, she dropped out of high school to pursue the craft as a full-time profession. Her first few roles fit into a classical ingenue archetype.
The teen's debut came in the 1983 remake of Bush Christmas, an Australian holiday classic about a family of farmers struggling to survive in the outback. It's not an amazing showcase for the actress's capabilities, but one can't assume Kidman entered the business fully formed as the master she is today. Indeed, she's quite awkward in BMX Bandits, a kid-friendly caper released that same year whose most apparent quality is John Seale's poppy cinematography and director Brian Trenchard-Smith's penchant for fun stunt work. Alabaster pale, tall and crowned by a mane of red curls, Kidman was a striking sight even in her youth, making it difficult to cast a convincing double. Legend says that, because of it, she had to do some of her BMX feats for real.
BMX BANDITS (1983) Brian Trenchard-Smith
By the end of 1983, she had also played a hostage in the dreary Chase Through the Night and a statuesque model for the TV movie melodrama Skin. These stabs at small screen work involved a recurring gig in the Five Mile Creek series that would hold until 1985. In the meantime, Kidman had to forego some of that career momentum as her mother was diagnosed with cancer, and the young woman dedicated part of her time to learning massage techniques for therapeutic purposes. Even after that, television was her home for a few more months, though the romantic comedy Windrider proved a nice return to the big leagues.
Again, one must acknowledge the nascent quality of Kidman's stardom and how she was still in the process of becoming the screen presence we're so familiar with nowadays. But even then, working with roles of little dimensionality, the actress was starting to pull focus. There's a Barbie dynamic in many of these projects, where Kidman is everything and her romantic partners are just Ken. Sometimes they're less than that. In Windrider, for example, though the text privileges her paramour, played by Tom Burlinson, Kidman's rockstar girlfriend commands the screen whenever she's on. That their romance is even a little plausible is all due to her, as is the picture's faint gesturing toward adult compromises, perhaps even some character drama.
WINDRIDER (1986) Vincent Monton
For meaty roles worth her while, Kidman had a couple of TV miniseries, which earned her critical respect and even her first nominations from the Australian Film Institute Award. Vietnam and Bangkok Hilton did the trick, expanding Kidman's repertoire and showing the industry that she was capable of more than peripheral, chronically underwritten parts. By the time 1989 came a-knocking, Nicole Kidman was a bright young thing of the Australian film industry, having scored an additional AACTA nomination for her supporting turn in Emerald City and proven to the folks back home she had what it took to become a star. At the year's close, nobody would question it further, for the thespian was about to score her "a star is born" moment.
Dead Calm is a nasty piece of work, plotted like a nerve-wracking thriller yet directed with the patience of someone who likes to play with their food before gobbling it up. It starts with a mean prologue, shocking the audience and wrecking its characters' psyches by positing the main couple in the immediate aftermath of loss. While driving at night, Nicole Kidman's Rae had a terrible accident, and though she survived, the same couldn't be said for her son. When her husband, played by Sam Neill, arrives at the hospital, the child is an unsightly mess of dead flesh, and the woman is in a state of near catatonia, blue eyes still caught in the moment of horror. It's as if she's trapped in her trauma, a mother's worst nightmare.
DEAD CALM (1989) Phillip Noyce
That is just the prologue, mind you. Most of the film is set in open waters, after the couple set sail on a yacht, looking for whatever healing they might find in total isolation. Unfortunately for them, a schooner appears on the horizon, drifting like the ghost ship of some night-time terror. There's only one survivor from an apparent food poisoning crisis, but when Rae and her husband take the castaway into their vessel, it all turns to shit. Rather than an unfortunate soul, the man is an unstable killer who pounces on the first opportunity to separate the couple and escape in the yacht, taking the woman with him. Shot by Phillip Noyce with a keen eye for tight close-ups and oppressive masters, Dead Calm is a pristine object of suspense and minimalist agonies.
Yet, no matter how gorgeous the form might be, a lot of the film's success depends on the cast who spend most of the runtime in a game of cat and mouse, psychological twistedness and peril beyond belief. While Neill and an unhinged Billy Zane deliver some of the best work of their careers, we're here to talk Kidman, and she's just as impressive. Negotiating the character's loss with her present predicament, the actress is a bundle of frayed nerves with just a second to settle before they're recharged and set wild by Zane's murderous threat. Various scenes are built entirely on Kidman's face as she reacts to sounds from off-screen sources or reads the changing lights on a sonar screen. And damn if those aren't little morsels of pure cinema.
She does so much to ground Rae's decisions in psychological truth that even the movie's worst material is elevated by its leading lady. Kidman almost legitimizes an ill-considered sex scene, catching the camera's gaze when out of Zane's sight, so we can always tell the delicate juggling Rae's doing, manipulating a crazed man whose every gesture is dangerously unpredictable. We get to see the cost of her ploy, the tightrope she's walking even as her body playacts an erotic surrender. No wonder critics took notice worldwide, with folks like Roger Ebert singling out the Australian beauty for her tenacious work. One must assume that Dead Calm was Kidman's ticket into a Hollywood career, securing her the job in Days of Thunder.
FLIRTING (1991) John Duigan
After that 1990 blockbuster success, the doors of La La Land opened for Nicole Kidman. Still, she had one more down-under indie in store – the coming-of-age lark of Flirting, where she appeared alongside former classmate Naomi Watts, Thandiwe Newton, and Noah Taylor. Truth be told, John Duigan's underrated flick rightly belongs to the latter two actors, but Kidman's a nice twist on the teen movie bully. As haughty prefect Nicola, the actress is the embodiment of a raised eyebrow, an upturned nose and dismissive hair flick. Nevertheless, the character's more than a flat caricature, with Kidman conveying surprising layers to the mean girl menace. At her best, she complicates the archetype just as she grounds it in recognizable personhood. Moreover, Kidman proves herself a natural comedienne and sexual raconteur, setting the stage for such future triumphs as Eyes Wide Shut and Moulin Rouge!. If Flirting was to be farewell to the small-scale Australian cinema where her career started, it's a mighty fine goodbye.
Are you excited about the Nicole Kidman Tribute? Tomorrow, it's time to revisit the actress's first brush with Oscar buzz – Billy Bathgate.