The Film Experience

by Matt St Clair

Since Elizabeth Olsen burst onto the scene with her stunning debut in Martha Marcy May Marlene ten years ago, she has managed to deliver quality performances in films like Ingrid Goes West and Wind River that allowed her to make good on that early promise. Yet, she hadn’t found a role that reached the same rich, intricate heights as that debut... until now.

After a supporting role as Wanda Maximoff (aka The Scarlet Witch) in multiple films from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Olsen was given her own miniseries with WandaVision. Though the movies underutilized her, the series proved a strong acting showcase where she could play all sorts of notes between tragedy and humor...

She even gets to give a performance within a performance. WandaVision (half) serves as an ode to classic sitcoms including I Love Lucy and The Brady Bunch, so Olsen projects a decade-hopping sitcom persona, going from mimicking the comic stylings of 50s TV housewives to the sardonic delivery of Julie Bowen on Modern Family.

If you accept the argument that WandaVision is Marvel's most Lynchian project, than Olsen plays Wanda Maximoff like Diane Selwyn in Mulholland Dr..She's someone who hides behind a sitcom persona to mask her grief the way Diane dreams up her “Betty Elms” alter ego to escape her failing aspirations.

During the third episode, where Wanda is in the “Brady Bunch” version of her decade-hopping sitcom, a conversation she has with Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) aka “Gertrude” hints at how her facetious exterior will soon fully shed. The minute her deceased brother Pietro is mentioned, she temporarily slips away from her constructed reality, and Wanda angrily forces Monica out of her home using the superpowers she normally hides. Then she snaps back to back to the televisual masquerade. It’s like the audition scene in Mulholland Dr. where Betty’s performative distress serves as an augury to the self-flagellation we see from Diane Selwyn when she wakes from her dream in the film’s second half.

It isn’t until the eighth episode when Wanda has her “Llorando” moment. It's in the apex of her affirmation that she must “wake up” from her dream life when Olsen conveys Wanda’s sorrow without words. As Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) transports the Scarlet Witch to memories from her difficult past including her childhood and the death of her beloved Vision (Paul Bettany), Wanda’s feelings of anguish and grief live entirely in Olsen’s expressive face. In fact, minus her verbal conversation with Vision where he gives the pivotal “What is grief if not love persevering” line, almost the whole episode consists of Olsen's facial journeys rather than monologues which is as much of a daunting task as the comical beats she’s had to pull off earlier.

Olsen’s shattering work is proof yet again that performances in comic book films and shows shouldn’t be brushed off because they involve superpowers and capes... or because the actor isn’t playing the Joker. As history has shown, Oscar voters are drawn to rewarding actors for playing the Joker but otherwise relegate comic book movies to a few tech categories. Even when Black Panther became the first superhero film to earn a Best Picture nomination, and first MCU film to win an Oscar, there was no love shown for anyone from the SAG-winning ensemble as if they weren’t integral to the film’s quality.

The HBO miniseries Watchmen did win big at last year’s Emmys and won trophies for two of its actors, Regina King and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. However, the work that Olsen does is proof that such victories shouldn’t be an exception and that non-Joker comic book performances ought to be embraced when they're deserving. Plus, it’d be a great way to honor an actress who has yet to earn her proper due from the industry.

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