I think we can all agree that Helena Bonham Carter’s career is not the lively array of complex and fascinating characters it once threatened to become. Over the last ten years, we’ve seen the honourable Mrs. Burton play a dozen loose variations on Madame Cholet and a couple of saucy historical figures, and realise each and every one of them with the same sort of theatrical schizophrenia most commonly found in regional pantomimes starring ex-Love Island contestants.
My theory is that this creative stagnation essentially boils down to a single obstacle: Helena Bonham Carter is no longer playing characters who get out of cars. That is to say, she’s no longer playing real human beings in real human environments with real human emotions who drive real human automobiles. I will concede that there have been a few exceptions to this rule over the last decade, but in the grand scheme of things I think you’ll find little to disprove my theory:
Her next role: Dr. Clair, the mother of a freighthopping 12-year-old cartographer in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s The Young and Prodigious Spivet. I rest my case.