That Meryl Streep – what an actress!
So, she has won some Oscars: first for her performances in the heart-rending Kramer Vs Kramer (1979) and another for her performance as a concentration camp survivor in Sophie’s Choice (1982). She was a melancholy outcast in a doomed affair with Jeremy Irons (The French Lieutenant’s Woman, 1981); she played a worker at a plutonium plant possibly murdered for whistleblowing about worker safety (Silkwood, 1983) in a movie based on a true story; a Danish baroness/plantation owner in a torrid love affair (Out of Africa, 1985); an Australian mother who said a dingo took her baby (A Cry in the Dark, 1988). She was in The Deer Hunter, Marvin’s Room, Postcards from the Edge and nailed the role of the farmer’s wife in The Bridges of Madison County.
When she decided to do Mamma Mia!, a musical set in the Greek Islands with a weak story held together by remakes of Abba songs, I heard a lot of criticism and people wondering why she’d stoop to karaoke.
Mamma Mia!
But – wow. I watched Mamma Mia! (the exclamation point is their deal, not mine) the other night again for the first time since I saw it in the theaters right after Heaven Fest ’08. And when Meryl Streep sings “The Winner Takes it All,” mamma mia, seriously! (That was my exclamation point) It isn’t about her being a singer. That isn’t her day job, it isn’t Pierce Brosnan’s, either (so lighten up on them, people). I do think her singing was way above average and I had forgotten how important Abba was to my personal development and life’s soundtrack. There was just some darn fun singing in this movie.
But the song, THE song & how well Meryl Streep communicated it, for crying out loud!
She interpreted the lyrics and used the melody from the barely whispering and the crying out to her body language and that coral-colored wrap she was wearing and she told us something. We understood Donna and what she had held inside all those years. In an interview Meryl said she took the role because, “ It’s a film about women and their whole [life] experience in being hopeful and youthful and older and suffering the regrets that you have over a long life. It’s visceral and I love that.” And in the singing of the song she explored Donna’s pain, examined her sorrow and gave us all a taste of her experience and lonliness.
She proved herself. She did it well. She sang a song beautifully and in such a heartfelt way that I finally really understood it in a way I couldn’t have when it came out so long ago. The song, “The Winner Takes it All” written by Abba band members Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson. The singer, interpreter world-class and award-winning actress, Meryl Streep.
