Halfway: All Hail Alicia Vikander!
Saturday, July 4, 2015 at 5:00PM 
½way mark - part 4 of ?
Here's Lynn Lee on 2015's Most Ubiquitous Actress
In the act(ress)ing world, there are rising stars and then there are rockets – the ones whose careers lift off so high so fast it leaves us all blinking a little. Think Jessica Chastain in 2011, or Jennifer Lawrence in 2012. 2015 looks to be a rocket year for young Swedish actress Alicia Vikander, who’s attracted favorable notice here at TFE and by critics and directors on both sides of the Atlantic, though she’s yet to achieve mainstream moviegoer recognition.
If she keeps going as she’s begun, she may soon have that, too.
I first took note of Vikander in 2012, the year of her breakthrough role in the historical drama and Oscar best foreign film nominee A Royal Affair, as a young queen who helps bring the Enlightenment to 18th century Denmark, and a supporting turn in Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina. Nathaniel nominated her for a Film Bitch Award that year and she’s worth watching in both films, especially the former. But it wasn’t until I saw her back to back in this year’s Ex Machina and Testament to Youth that I really got what the fuss was about.
And what is it about, exactly?...
At first glance Vikander looks like a perfect ingénue; she could be Emily Blunt’s more fragile, docile sister. But as with her screen characters, there’s more to her than meets the eye initially. Whether she’s playing a novice wife or an alluring android or a student turned wartime nurse, she starts out as a seeming blank slate only to peel away one layer after another, revealing emotional depths and a strength of will that one would never have guessed from that delicate, limpid surface. Most impressively, she does it so imperceptibly that you don’t notice quite when or how your impression of her is changing.
This is especially true of her two most recent performances. In Ex Machina [SPOILERS] Vikander’s Ava is first presented as an unknown – and literally unfinished – quantity, at once human and not-human. The exact measure of her humanity is to be tested by a naive software programmer (Domnhall Gleason). But as he becomes better acquainted with her, or rather as she becomes better acquainted with him, she quickly and smoothly molds her personality and affect for maximum appeal to his sensibilities: she becomes, before his eyes, winsome, girlishly dressed, flirtatious, and above all, a victim in need of rescuing from her tyrannical creator (Oscar Isaac).
It all turns out to be a deliberate projection of her tester’s fantasies, masterfully calibrated to achieve Ava’s twin goals of escape and revenge. He seems to sense that she’s manipulating him, even before he’s explicitly warned as much by her inventor, yet in the end the poor sap isn’t able to resist her. And neither are we: the act is too good, too beguiling, making Ava’s inevitable turn on both men all the more chilling. In her final scenes, she reinvents herself again, this time choosing for herself her own dress and look. There’s something more truly virginal about her than when she was playing a part, that’s reflected right down to her expression as she embarks on her new journey: wiped free of both charm and anger, her face, as she turns it towards the larger human world, is at once open and closed, human and not human, quietly probing and taking it all in—for what ultimate purpose undetermined. [/SPOILER]
Pretty much the opposite trajectory happens in Testament of Youth, an adaptation of Vera Brittain’s memoir of World War I. It’s a memoir of wrenching loss, as Brittain witnessed firsthand and suffered directly from the terrible carnage of a war that – unlike the second World War – would never be justified by its causes or vindicated by its outcome. As wartime dramas go, this one is fairly stiff and clunky, despite a cast that includes, in addition to Vikander, Dominic West, Emily Watson (underutilized yet again, alas), Miranda Richardson, Hayley Atwell (playing refreshingly against type), Taron Egerton (The Kingsmen), and "Game of Thrones” heartthrob Kit Harington as Vera’s love interest. In the end, it’s Vikander who elevates the movie to something genuinely poignant, even heartrending.
It’s a story we’ve seen before, sketched here in overly broad strokes – the bright, independent-minded girl who defies her father’s traditional views, only to fall in love against her will and then see her love, along with all the other young men in her life, shipped off to the front. She goes to the front, too, as a nurse and continues to defy expectations—and we’ve seen that before, too. Still, Vikander does a remarkable job capturing both the toll the war takes on Vera and the steely resolve that ultimately powers her through. One of the movie’s most effective scenes is one where she simply watches from the window of a house and waits for the telltale ring of the doorbell. Dread gives way to agony, inhabiting every inch of her body and her eyes. She doesn’t crumple or cry, but something in her dies – only to be replaced in time by a new resolve. By the time Vera charges into a post-war debate to speak movingly about her own experiences and why she can never support another war, I was putty in her hands.
I’m not the only one, apparently. Vikander has no fewer than six major feature films coming out later this year: the documentary Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words (Vikander does the narration), The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Tulip Fever, Adam Jones, The Light Between Oceans, and The Danish Girl[ She's also been cast in the next Bourne movie, due out next year. As if that weren’t enough, she’s apparently dating Michael Fassbender, her Light Between Oceans costar. It’s a good time to be Alicia Vikander – and maybe even a better time to watch what she does next.
Which of her upcoming films are you excited to see?
Previously at the Halfway Mark
pt. 1 Oscar Chart Updates - Acting
pt. 2 10 Best Leading Performances
pt. 3 Best & Worst in Animation
Reader Comments (13)
Despite the pretentious meh-ness of Place beyond the Pines, I'll pick Derek Cianfrance's Light Between Oceans, for the irresistible scorchio factor of the Fassbender-Weisz-Vikander love triangle. I mean c'mon. Think about it!
I truly recommend two of her swedish movies, Till det som är vackert (To all that is beautiful) and Hotel. Both directed by Lisa Langseth, great movies both and Vikander is amazing, perhaps her best perfomances so far. Don´t know if these have been distributed abroad?
I too first came across Vikander in A Royal Affair where she brilliantly played Danish queen. Vikander learning Swedish for the role was interesting to learn because I completely believed her portrayal of the role. Then the same year she danced her way into my heart as Kitty in Anna Karenina. Then this year because I like in Europe I had the chance to see the double feature of Ex Machina/Testament of Youth one after another and I was really impressed by her work in both. In Ex Machina she silently stole the picture from the bigger names (future star wars co-stars) and in Testament of Youth her presence made this film watchable. She has had two other films released this year but one was terrible and the other a little seen Australian feature. Seventh Son the Julianne Moore witch movie and Son of a Gun the McGregor crime thriller. Clearly her work wasn't note worthy in either so many myself included haven't seen them.
Some of her projects still to be released sound exiting with The Danish Girl and Light Between Oceans standing out to me. The former because the story is interesting even if the director/lead actor collaboration doesn't inspire much confidence for me and the later has a great team behind it with director and co-stars in Fassbender and Weisz. The other three feature films are probably little films or little parts but it will add to her case for MVP of the year. I didn't know she was doing narration for the Bergman documentary but that sounds fun and I just know she will be suggested for this upcoming Bergman biopic because their both Swedish and Vikander is the it girl at this moment.
Finally the idea of Fassbender and Vikander together makes me worry for the world because two Europeans that hot together is something terrifying. I wish she chose the Assassin's Creed project over Bourne but maybe her choice in bourne was to not be too connected to her fella and I can respect that.
I liked her a lot in "A Royal Affair" and in "Ex Machina," but she really impressed me in "Testament of Youth."
My Blake Lively!
I'm so taken with her. I don't find her particularly beautiful or anything, but she's got that undefinable quality which all the great actors/moviestars possessed/possesses. The minute I saw her in A Royal Affair I knew she was gonna be a big star. She had been acting for 10 years at that point, so she's not exactly an overnight success.
I'm somewhat worried about her choices of movies... Seventh Son, Son of A Gun, they sucked like a sonofabitch, son! And The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is pure fluff by the looks of it. And so is, I assume, the Bourne movie. I get the temptation; big movies, fat paychecks, but she should slow down and be selective, seek out the good parts, and the good scripts, work with exciting filmmakers on exciting projects. She should do the opposite of what Noomi Rapace did. Noomi Rapace took the money and ran into bad movies.
The Light Between Oceans and The Danish Girl are good choices on paper. I hope Alicia Vikander will have a magnificent career...
Nothing about her interests me, but I guess I'm alone in that. Just another bland white girl.
she was great in "anna karenina", in a role that could not have been great.
I like her. She seems more sophisticated than Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence, who are Dorito eating brother and sister. Crass and bland at the same time. Alicia has a Julie Christie, Meryl Streep vibe and I dig her. Happy 4th from California
I've always thought she was stunning, and I've been interested in her since A Royal Affair. But so far I haven't seen any of her films this year. (I know, I know.)
Her best performances are in Pure and Hotell. Unbelievably raw. And I think she won a Marrakech Film Festival best actress award from a jury comprised of Marion Cotillard, Patricia Clarkson, Martin Scorsese, and Paolo Sorrentino, which is an arguably better line-up of jurors than many Cannes juries.
I still think there's a bit of a filter in her non-Swedish work, but that's improving. I wasn't that impressed by her in A Royal Affair. She's completely natural (which I liked), though not very complex, among more stylized (and many terrible) performances in the atrocious Anna Karenina. I liked her very, very much in Ex Machina and Testament of Youth. I'm guessing from The Man from Uncle trailer that she doesn't quite have the language skills to make her comedic line delivery work. Curious to see how her year pans out! I don't think it'll be quite the breakout level of Chastain, if only because there's no single film that can top Tree of Life in terms of quality.
Eoin Daly - I'm sure you meant to say that Alicia learnt Danish for A Royal Affair, but just pointing out that you actually said she learnt Swedish.
In Anna Karenina the book I find Kitty intensely annoying, but I think that Alicia's portrayal of the character in the film is totally sympathetic. I also prefer Levin in the film too.
Alicia is fast becoming one of my favourite actors. Loved her in Anna Karenina where she easily outperformed Keira Knightley - the pain in her soulful brown eyes echoed in A Testament of Youth, another standout performance. She IS Ex Machina, while the male actors perform well it is Alicia's performancd that stays with me.
I'm eagerly anticipating The Light Between Oceans and not just for the love story between her and Fassbender which we now know is a real life love story too. Fassbender is an immense sublime actor who will surely bring out the best in Alicia. A European tour de force on screen and in reality, hot damn!