Kirsten Dunst can hold our attention with an almost motionless face or an angry demand. She lets difficult characters stay difficult, and can give us a reason to watch films we have reservations about.
Fi1m perspective
In Civil War (2024), Kirsten Dunst’s Lee can watch a man burn and still think about getting the photograph. Dunst barely moves her face, making the photographer’s long experience of other people’s wars seem frightening rather than reassuring. We were unsettled by how little she appeared to react; the attention to the job made the moment worse. Alex Garland’s film is tense and expertly made, but its silence about the war itself keeps us at a distance. Dunst is the reason to see it, because she gives us someone to watch closely even when the film declines to explain itself.
That ability to hold our attention was already there in Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire (1994), though Claudia is considerably less restrained. Her child vampire is angry, and Dunst does not soften that anger into a request to be liked. Against Brad Pitt’s repeated expressions of remorse, she brings a welcome impatience to the household. We find the domestic quarrels more involving than the talk of eternity, and she makes those quarrels matter. It is a forceful performance in a film that can spend too long having its adults explain their unhappiness.
Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides (2000) gave her adolescent longing and rebellion to play as Lux Lisbon. Her work with Coppola makes good use of an emotional directness that does not need much dialogue. Mary Jane Watson in the Spider-Man trilogy (2002–2007) brought wider recognition, though those lighter commercial roles could make her look a simpler actor than she was. From the late 2000s, she turned increasingly towards director-led, character-centred films. Melancholia (2011) and The Power of the Dog (2021) continued to find room for her willingness to show women under pressure.
It would be a mistake to describe her gift as merely doing less. Claudia’s anger is as persuasive as Lee’s near-stillness, and neither performance is trying to make its character pleasant. The limitation is that Dunst cannot supply everything the writing lacks. Jordan’s repeated remorse still wears, and Garland’s decision not to explain his conflict still keeps a good film from being more satisfying. Try Civil War if a performance can be enough of a reason for an evening.
Biography
Kirsten Dunst is an American actress. She was born on 30 April 1982 in Point Pleasant, New Jersey. Her career began with an uncredited role in New York Stories (1989) and a credited appearance in The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990). She gained early recognition as Claudia in Interview with the Vampire (1994).
Dunst starred as Mary Jane Watson in the Spider-Man trilogy (2002–2007) and appeared in Jumanji (1995), Bring It On (2000), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and Marie Antoinette (2006). She received an Academy Award nomination for her role in The Power of the Dog (2021).
In 2024 she played the photojournalist Lee in Civil War. Dunst has also received Golden Globe and Emmy nominations, including for her performance in the second season of Fargo (2015).
