Homeland (2011-2020)

I know I'm late to the game, but a few weeks ago I purchased the first three seasons of Homeland and just last night finished Season Two. Need I explain that Homeland is the story of a U.S. Marine who returns home from the Middle East after eight years MIA, only to find that his best friend and fellow Marine is fucking his wife, and for the rest of us to discover that he has been turned by his captors and is now a practicing Muslim whose mission is to kill a U.S. Vice-President who, as a CIA director, ordered a drone strike on his head captor's home, killing 82 children, including the captor's son. Complicating matters, a bipolar CIA analyst has fallen for him, having installed surveillance devices in his home. Eventually they are fucking too.

As is often the case, geo-politics is considered too high concept for U.S. Americans, so antagonisms manifest in families, where some of the series' most terrifying moments occur. I am speaking here of the former captive's teenage daughter (pictured above with the Vice-President's son, with whom she is breaking off relations), who, of all the actors in this series, is arguably the finest when it comes to interior acting. Very few actors can pull this off. But what is most remarkable is that interiority is all this actor has. Her movement is stilted, which might explain why she rarely takes more than a single step (usually into frame), as is her enunciation, though this limitation serves her character: that of the indifferent yet indignant teenager.

At first I was bored with this character, and would use her scenes to boil water or put cookies on a plate, but she grew on me. What I once saw as a tendency to suck the life out of a scene was in fact the opposite: an ability to slow things down, get the audience on her level so we could understand what it is like to be that age again; an emerging adult and child of parents, someone who takes both her feelings and her beliefs to extremes -- if only to better understand herself. A master class in interior acting, with the gestures that bring that interiority to life. One of the best (and sometimes worst) things about a developing series is that it takes what secondary actors do well and magnifies them. In the case of this young actor, it is all about the face (snarls, worming lips, dying eyes and brows that cock like a conductor's baton). Brando had that quality. With the right direction, it can be terrifying.