Tilda Swinton, the pale, ghost-like Englishwoman who has attracted so many casting directors in recent years, is independent filmmaking’s favorite eccentric. Swinton is currently one of cinema’s most valuable assets, with approximately 100 acting credits to her name over the course of a career that has lasted since the mid-80s. She isn’t scared to play a character who is elderly, young, human, or alien. Swinton’s talent and versatility are unrivaled. Her body of work speaks for itself.
Below are some of her great work.
1. Orlando (1992)
Director- Sally Potter
In and around the court of historical England in the late 16th century, Orlando, a man of ideal nobility, begins his search for love, poetry, a position in society. Along with meaning in life. The gift of perpetual life from Queen Elizabeth I allows him to go on a long and in-depth philosophical journey. Accompanied by the characteristics of “noble” English living and a keen sense of irony. When Orlando, partly fed up and disgusted with how men think and act, returns from his ambassadorship in the Far East as the same guy. Let alone his sex, both sides of the coin are displayed. For someone who has lived 400 years and hasn’t aged a day, discovering humanity’s forgotten need for androgyny as the key to her own and her daughter’s happiness is a revelation.
2. We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011)
Director- Lynne Ramsay
Eva is a wife and mother. She has been overcome by despair to the point where her entire existence occurs in her thoughts at the same time. There is no discernible pattern. Nothing seems to make sense. Her son, Kevin, who is an instinctual sadist with a genius for understanding just how to injure her, reject her, deceive her. And make her soul bleed, is the one who is at the core of it all. Kevin commits things to Eva in his life that is so terrible that she appears to be haunted by an evil demon.
3. A Bigger Splash (2015)
Director- Luca Guadagnino
Marianne Lane is recuperating with her partner Paul on the volcanic island of Pantelleria. An iconoclast record producer and old flame Harry arrives unexpectedly with his daughter Penelope. He interrupts their vacation, bringing with him an A-bomb blast of delirious nostalgia from which there is no escape. Under the Mediterranean sun, A Bigger Splash is a sensual portrayal of laughter, desire, and rock and roll exploding into violence.
4. I Am Love (2009)
Director- Luca Guadagnino
Emma left Russia over two decades ago to pursue Tancredi Recchi, the guy who had proposed to her. She is now the respected mother of three children: two boys, Edoardo, who is engaged to Eva, and Gianluca, a businessman, and their gay daughter Elisabetta, who lives in Nice. Emma is not unhappy, yet she is confused and unfulfilled. One day, Edoardo joins Antonio, a great chef and Edoardo’s friend, as a partner in a restaurant, and Emma develops feelings for him. It isn’t long until she begins a passionate relationship with the seductive young man. There will be a disaster for the Recchi family when Edoardo finds his mother’s affair.
5. Okja (2017)
Director- Bong Joon Ho
Mija has been the keeper and constant companion of Okja—a gigantic animal and an even greater friend—at her house in the mountains of South Korea for ten wonderful years. But that changes when the Mirando Corporation, a family-owned international business, adopts Okja and moves her to New York, where image-obsessed and self-promoting CEO Lucy Mirando has huge plans for Mija’s best friend. Mija sets out on a rescue mission with no particular plan in mind, but her already difficult journey becomes even more difficult when she comes across disparate groups of capitalists, demonstrators, and consumers, all fighting for control of Okja’s fate…while all Mija wants to do is bring her friend home.
6. Snowpiercer (2013)
Director- Bong Joon Ho
Except for passengers aboard the Snowpiercer, the world remains frozen in 2031. The world’s survivors have been on a train traveling around the globe for seventeen years, building their own economy and class system. A gang of lower-class residents living in filth at the back of the train, led by Curtis, are eager to climb to the front of the train and spread the wealth around. The party must battle their way through each compartment of the train, which offers unexpected shocks for them. A revolution is taking place.
7. The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
Director- Wes Anderson
One of his institution’s oldest and wealthiest patrons turns up dead and suspiciously leaves him her most valuable work of art. A Renaissance painting of a boy with an apple – M. Gustave, the famous concierge at a legendary hotel in the Alps during the 1930s. He becomes the center of a farcical whirlwind of suspicion. The woman’s greedy and nefarious heir was enraged that she left anything of value to anyone else. They use a variety of underhanded and illegal tactics to pin her death on Gustave. Also, silence anyone who questions his goal of inheriting every penny of her estate. As a result, leaving Gustave’s trusted lobby boy Zero Moustafa to clear Gustave’s name. To prove that the grand lady’s killer is none other than her own son, Dmitri.
8. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Director- Andrew Adamson
During World War II, Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy are deported from London to the home of an eccentric professor, where they find life to be extremely boring until Lucy discovers a wardrobe that leads to a magical world known as Narnia, where animals can talk and all are ruled by the wise and benevolent lion Aslan. The others don’t believe her at first, but after going through the wardrobe, they realize something is wrong in Narnia. The terrible White Witch, Jadis, keeps the region in everlasting winter by turning everybody who doesn’t obey her into stone. In an attempt to defeat Jadis, the children join Aslan and his loyal animals.
