The magnificent Diane Keaton is 75! The Best Actress champion of the 50th Academy Awards has been enchanting movie audiences since the early 70s, making a name for herself as a comedienne before proving she was a versatile performer, as good at having audiences cry for her as she's at making them guffaw. Unlike many great thespians of the silver screen, Keaton's Oscar history is a good representative of her talents. The winning turn in Annie Hall and the runner-up marvel that is Something's Gotta Give represent two wildly different approaches at comedy, one spiky and cerebral, the other warmly commercial. Then we have the romance of Reds and the melodrama of Marvin's Room, a drama played at the scale of an epic and a chamber drama respectively.
Still, one can quibble with the results and wish Keaton had gotten even more love from AMPAS. For instance, when I examined the battle of the titans that was Meryl Streep and Jessica Lange's bid for the 1982 Best Actress trophy, many mentioned how Diane Keaton. Some said she should have been present among the nominees for her work in Alan Parker's Shoot the Moon for which she got considerable buzz. I confess I agree with those Keaton-loving readers…
When we first meet Keaton's Faith and Albert Finney's George Dunlap, their union is beyond apparent salvation. It's not that the marriage is dead, but that it has already decayed and been stuffed into a taxidermized facsimile of its former self. It's just that everyone is still pretending the stuffed beast is still up and kicking, like petting a dead cat and acting like one hears purring. George has been cheating on his wife, she knows it, even their children know it, but the entire family keeps pretending everything's alright, keeps petting the lifeless cat.
It's all placid insincere smiles, averted looks, passive-aggressive nagging that pretends to be jolly bickering but is not. The moment there's no one to impress with a performance of matrimonial serenity, no children, no neighbors, no cameras, chaos reigns between Faith and George. Before she's an unhappy wife, Faith's a beleaguered mother, presiding over her loud brood with the mindless automation of a well-oiled machine. It's easy to pretend nothing's wrong when there's so much work to do, so many innocent faces to smile at while pretending everything's alright.
A trip to an award show where George is to be honored is especially excruciating. Silence is broken by desperate humor, but nobody is happy with the results of George's feeble attempt at small talk. Faith doesn't laugh at his jokes anymore. In snide tones, he says it's because she has forgotten laughing, but that pithy comment dies the same death as his jokes, floating mirthlessly in the stale air before crashing to the ground like a lead balloon.
It's especially weird and heartbreaking seeing this miserable scene unfold because Keaton's lack of humor Is so shocking. She's a clown, she's supposed to laugh and makes us laugh, but here her stone face has more to do with a Bergman closeup than a Buster Keaton gag. We all know that, when a clown cries, it feels all the more tragic, painted smiles melting under tears. Even when there's no waterworks, the effect's the same. The expectation of comedy crash into smithereens as it collides with the reality of a sad world where joy is a picture book lie we tell children.
A lie we tell ourselves too, though George and Faith seem to be beyond self-deception and are "glad" to revel in their misery. She's so wonderfully charming when talking to any person that isn't her husband. He's like an industrial magnet that pulls the darkest parts of Faith's personality from the dregs of her soul, making her worse, meaner, more bitter than she may truly feel. Divorce, in their case, isn't a sad conclusion but the last hope of salvation and we almost cheer as they start to distance themselves from each other.
When she accepts a call from a mysterious Jerry as her husband has come back home to pick up his books, one can't help but be charmed by Faith's performative coquettishness. She's provoking the man who had the gall to bring a policeman to help collect old belongings, having a bit of cruel fun at his expense, looking to hurt him a bit and thus give George a taste of his own foul medicine. Faith isn't immune to pettiness and Keaton portrays her going low with the ease of a natural humorist, illuminating her character's humanity by tarnishing the veneer of martyred saintliness that can manifest over the roles of betrayed spouses.
She's a complicated character and the actress allows that complexity to remain mysterious, to us and herself. Is she ready for new love with sexy pre-Robocop Weller, for example? Is she just trying to distract herself or bullishly pursuing the happiness that has been denied her for so long? Keaton doesn't necessarily resolve these doubts or answer these questions, but she doesn't need to, hinting at Faith's complexities without making the interiority of the character crystal clear.
It feels more natural this way, more honest than perfect transparency. People aren't transparent, more akin to stormy skies made opaque by dark clouds than to crystal clear limpid lakes. Of course, as things turn heated, violent thunder starts to explode through the tempest, emotional ambivalence becoming a frightening blast of destruction. In other, less florid works, when George and Faith's fights escalate to physical violence, including against the kids, things get uglier than they've ever been, and Shoot the Moon starts transmuting. Marital drama turns to domestic horror, the ravaged soul of a once loving husband playing the part of the slasher villain.
And after the nightmare comes the morning, cold and unforgiving, stinking of paternal death and anguish. Hot feelings petrify in the chill, like lava turning solid, and Keaton's entire performance becomes an exhausted shadow of itself. It's heartbreaking and harrowing, a projection of bone-deep tiredness that cuts through any hint and melodrama, gutting sentimental excess without mercy. Then there's a whisper of peace, then another explosion. Overall, it's a marvel of discipline and precision, a scalpel-sharp procedure that deserves all the praise it can get. It's one of Keaton's greatest achievements and one feels overwhelmed in despair just by thinking about it.
I hope I've made it clear why Diane Keaton should have been a Best Actress nominee in 1982. The HFPA did recognize her brilliance, as did the NSFC and NYFCC, though AMPAS didn't follow suit. The Oscar lineup consisted of Julie Andrews's musical delights in Victor/Victoria, Jessica Lange's mercurial luminosity in Frances, Sissy Spacek's calcinating despair in Missing, Meryl Streep's precise tragedies in Sophie's Choice, and Debra Winger's romantic iconography in An Officer and a Gentleman. Streep's Sophie was the victor, but the collection of five is quite splendid in its entirety. Winger was probably the most vulnerable of the lot and, had Keaton gotten the nod, she'd be the likeliest one to be left out. As much as that may sadden some, it wouldn't have been an injustice. Not in my book.
You can rent Shoot the Moon from most services, including Amazon and Youtube. It's worth seeking out, both for Keaton's performance and other qualities.