Remembering Carrie Fisher with one of her greatest cinematic achievements.
The Last Jedi, the latest chapter of the Star Wars saga, has arrived to the delight of fans who are finding themselves wowed by director Rian Johnson’s take on the iconic series. While some have pointed to certain aspects of the film as slow, response has been overwhelmingly positive, with the film scoring the biggest opening weekend since The Force Awakens two years ago.
The film also marks the final big screen appearance of Carrie Fisher as General Leia, who brings closure to her character in a deeply moving performance. As fans once again bid farewell to Fisher (the actress died last December of a heart attack), I thought I’d pay special tribute by revisiting one of the greatest milestones of her career, namely the cinematic retelling of her very own life.
Fisher adapted her bestselling debut novel for the screen in this acclaimed Mike Nichols comedy loosely based on the actress’s struggles with addiction and growing up in a showbiz family. In Postcards from the Edge, a successful yet troubled actress named Suzanne Vale (Meryl Streep) is sent to rehab after having her stomach pumped following an overdose. After successfully completing the program, she attempts to maintain sobriety while rebuilding her career in a harsh and unforgiving industry. Adding to Suzanne’s frustrations is a strong attraction to Hollywood playboy Jack Faulkner (Dennis Quaid) and the overbearing shadow of her legendary showbiz mother Doris Mann (Shirley MacLaine).
In true Fisher style, Postcards from the Edge serves as an unflinching indictment of the entertainment industry. Even today the film maintains an unexpected, potent realism in the way it shows Hollywood’s views on actresses, particularly those starting over from scratch. The industry, according to Fisher’s screenplay, quickly tosses Suzanne to the curb, writing her off as a drugged-out has-been. Yet the movie shows an actress whose affinity for the business is strong enough that she willingly succumbs to the crap the industry throws her. Postcards from the Edge should be lauded for taking a look at the career of an actress from a business perspective away from the glitz and glamor most associate with such a career. This is a business; and a cutthroat one at that, with Suzanne shown to be given endless critiques from various producers while having her physical appearance torn apart by costume designers in the most dehumanizing, yet somewhat hysterical, ways. Showing Suzanne as a constant outsider works in the film’s favor. She is like a rusty penny; someone who knows the world of Hollywood inside and out yet still doesn’t fully belong to it and isn’t accepted by it. Moreover, watching the artificiality of the sets on the studio lot Suzanne is shooting proves more effective beyond simple laughs. Such instances say a great deal about the illusion of the place and the business, proving that there is always a reality behind the fantasy.
Maybe it was because she was telling a fictionalized version of a subject that hit VERY close to home, but Postcards from the Edge remains the best example of Fisher’s writing voice. This is especially true where the film’s humor is concerned. At one point Suzanne is shown walking through an imaginary emergency room hallway adorned with portraits of Judy Garland, Elvis Presley, Jim Belushi, and Marilyn Monroe on the walls. But Fisher’s strength has always been her trademark wit, which she wholeheartedly bestows onto Suzanne in an endless well of hilarious dialogue. “Suzanne, we’re going to have to pump your stomach,” an emergency room doctor tells her early on in the film. “Oh… do I have to be there?” she dazedly replies. “Thank God I got sober now so I can be hyper-conscious for this series of humiliations,” Suzanne says after enduring a flood of criticisms on the set of the low-budget film she’s working on. But Fisher surprises and goes beyond the humor for some of the wisest lines to ever come out of a Hollywood movie during that era. “You’re the realest person I’ve ever met in the abstract,” Jack says to Suzanne. “You’re my fantasy; and I want to make you real,” he adds. Eventually Postcards from the Edge ventures away from self-deprecation and into a baring of the soul as Suzanne finds it hard to cope with life as a sober person. “Nothing you say to me is as horrible as what I say to myself,” she tells her former director Lowell Kolchek (Gene Hackman), “but at least it’s happening outside of my head where I can deal with it easier.”
In many respects, Postcards from the Edge is a story about a mother and daughter trying to come to terms with themselves. It’s hard not to speculate about the parallels between the relationship of Suzanne and Doris and that of Fisher and her real-life mother Debbie Reynolds. While Doris spends the majority of the film fretting over her daughter with what she feels is the best of intentions, they cannot help but come across to Suzanne as misguided attempts to run her life and make up for her shaky childhood. “You feel sorry half the time for having a monster of a mother like me,” Doris exclaims. “Everything about you says ‘look what you’ve done to me.’” Suzanne on the other hand looks at her mother as a shadow she can never escape. As much as she loves her mother and wants her in her life, she’s equally infuriated by Doris and is unable to shake off the resentment she has towards her. “You don’t want me to be a singer,” Suzanne tells Doris. “You’re the singer, you’re the performer. I can’t possibly compete with you. What if somebody won?!” The fact that this tumultuous mother/daughter dynamic plays out against the backdrop of Hollywood makes it all the more involving and provocative, while remaining endlessly familiar. “We’re designed more for public than for private,” Suzanne says about herself and Doris near the movie’s end. That’s true of most people, whether or not they’re from Hollywood.
Postcards from the Edge came at an interesting time in Streep’s career. In prior years, the actress’s reputation had become defined by, as critic Leonard Maltin put it, “her aloofness offscreen, and the lack of sympathy of her characters on screen.” The actress took note and embarked on a series of projects which showed her in a more relatable light. Out of all the films she made during this period, which included She-Devil, Defending Your Life, and Death Becomes Her, Postcards from the Edge is the only one which allows her to really explore a character’s soul and bring it to life in that mystifying way she can. Not only does Streep flawlessly adopt Fisher’s acerbic humor, shooting off one-liners like no one’s business, but she also hones in on Suzanne’s aimlessness and longing as someone who had everything, yet felt as though something was eternally missing.
For her part, MacLaine enjoys one of the best roles the decade gave her. The way the actress plays Doris as a lush coping with her own regrets and misfortunes is interesting to watch. Yet it’s how she brings out her character’s struggle to maintain a hold and balance on her drive as a star and her instincts as a mother which makes her performance soar. The guys in Postcards from the Edge likewise turn in great work, embodying the vastly different types of male figures that exist in Tinseltown. Quaid is so convincing as the cassanova that you never want his scenes to end. The same is true with Hackman, whose moments with Streep are some of the film’s most poignant as his character shows himself to be one of the few truly on Suzanne’s side.
Postcards from the Edge did middling box office when released in September of 1990, showing audiences weren’t too interested in watching a tale of an addict actress trying to put her life back together again. The critical media felt differently however as they bestowed countless positive reviews on the film, which went on score Academy Award nominations for both its lead actress (big surprise) and the film’s Shel Silverstein-penned song “I’m Checkin’ Out,” which Streep belts out in the movie’s finale.
To date, Postcards from the Edge remains the only film adaptation of one of Fisher’s novels. While it’s hard to say exactly what aspects of the movie are fact and which are fiction, the whole exercise speaks to the boldness of Fisher as an unfiltered artist. The film itself is the perfect representation of her essence, not only as a writer, but as a human being. Fisher’s life, fraught with ups and downs, was ripe for judgement, criticism, and late night fodder. Yet she embraced her journey and all the bumps and bruises she sustained along the way, choosing instead to laugh in the face of it rather than run away and hide. Regardless of how Fisher’s real-life tale ultimately ended, her reaction to personal demons and public ridicule remains one of bravery and admiration. Fisher herself summed it up best when she said during a 2010 interview, “Say your weaknesses in a strong voice.” That, she truly did.
