Juliette Binoche Instagram – Meryl, your face and voice are a part of our lives. You’ve made us feel. You’ve nourished us. When I see you on the screen, I don’t see you, I see a movement that is passing through you, that we call acting, but in fact it’s something else. It’s a connection that you make by a presence, letting beauty come to you. A place where intention-thought-energy-love-truth are flowing through you all at once. Where does it come from ? Loss ? Love ? Were you born like this ?What was your dream ? I don’t know, but what I know is : there’s a believer in you. A believer that allows me to believe. Already in the 1978 TV series « Holocaust » you were superb. Emotionally opened. Full. Then in « Kramer vs Kramer » you wrote your own courtroom speech to express Joanna Kramer’s need to have her son back, to fight for her rights. It remains firm proof of how you embrace tour characters. In « Falling in love », I fell in love with you. You made me want to love again, to feel the need to love control, to become obsessed. And what force possessed you in « Sophie’s Choice »? That performance helped us see, feel and understand the mechanism of how it feels to come back from a death camp, from the unthinkable. As baroness Karen Blixen in « Out of Africa » you came face to face with a hungry untethered lion, fighting for your life in front of the camera. You’ve said that you like playing difficult women or difficult to understand. What we see always is the intelligence that shines through and your empathy for any character you’re playing. If women’s contributions to history are still too invisible, yours have not been. In helping us laugh, cry, imagine, be inspired you have carved out an indelible place for yourself in the history of cinema : you are an international treasure. We can point out your greatness as a dramatic actress in movies like « The Deer Hunter » « Silkwood » « A cry in the dark » « The Hours » and « Doubt » but at the risk of forgetting that you’re also one of the great comedians of the screen in movies like « Adaptation » and « Death becomes her ». (Following…next post)