Already established in both the blockbuster sector and the art-house crowd, Timothée Chalamet is about to have his biggest year yet. Cat Woods examines the young talent’s upcoming roles for 2023.
If there was any doubt that we are in a period of Peak Timothée Chalamet, the 27-year-old French-American actor’s schedule of 2023 releases will detonate any lingering doubts.
Chalamet has a knack for portraying damaged males trekking the fraught physical and psychological terrain from adolescence to adulthood. Both on-screen and off, he is deliberate about his gestures, words and the impact they will have. His many interviews depict a coming-of-age every bit as compelling as his fictional film portraits. In years of interviews going back to 2015, we can observe his voice deepen, the way that he fidgets less and smiles more, deflecting attention to his female co-stars or beloved directors rather than craving the spotlight.
Chalamet as Finn Walden in Homeland
Just over a decade ago, Chalamet appeared on entertainment industry radars as a talent to keep an eye on. As the Vice President’s unruly son in Homeland, his Finn Walden carved out a space alongside luminary talents like Claire Danes as Carrie Mathieson and Jamey Sheridan as the Vice President and Finn’s father, William Walden. A year later, he graduated high school—a prospect that had appeared doomed owing to Chalamet’s problematic middle school record.
Though he ultimately dropped out of university, he’d pursued anthropology and cultural studies. His interests beyond the Hollywood system that cannibalises its own (eating up one nimble young star and finding a look-alike) feed his nuanced portrayals, but also provoke the heightened public interest in him as a phenomenon rather than purely a star. His fashion choices are founded on curiosity, courage and a pure fascination for design (rather than the overly-strategised, stylist-driven choices of Jared Leto). “Timothée Chalamet On The Red Carpet” is a documentary waiting to happen.
His musical interests are also revealing, indicating the time on-set and off spent with men and women decades older than him.
Bones and All
In an interview about Bones And All, Chalamet casually referred to his choice of Leonard Cohen’s “You Want It Darker” for the official trailer as the consequence of driving around Los Angeles listening to a Best Of Leonard Cohen album. It is a song in which Cohen plaintively devotes himself to the Lord, accepting his own imminent death while also lamenting the demons that haunt him to his last breath: the mass killing of Jewish people by “middle-class and tame” men. It is a song that is wrought with richly textured layers of faith, divinity, morality and mortality. It is a song one might associate with men much older than Chalamet.
His artistic choices have been paradoxical and curious, too. Not surprising, since he has proven an agility and curiosity for embodying a diversity of characters since his mid-teens, but interesting. Once his name is attached to a movie, it bears a stamp of approval and quality that ensures the plotline, co-stars and themes are secondary in viewers’ thinking. How many people would have gleefully booked tickets to Bones And All, a cannibal love story, if Chalamet had not been starring? Indeed, he co-produced the film. We should expect to see more of his production credits in the future, though which direction he chooses to funnel his time and funding into remains a mystery.
He has aptly slid between the worlds of mega-movie event (Dune, 2021) and stylish arthouse magic (The French Dispatch, 2021) for the last few years. In 2023, we can anticipate two major releases in Dune: Part Two and Wonka.
Wonka
Due out mid-December, Wonka is a particularly interesting choice, since Johnny Depp stepped into the warped, psychedelic world of Wonka care of Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in 2005 and while critics were divided, his tic-laden and kitschy over-acting in the role grated on many (this critic and Roald Dahl fan included).
Relievedly, Paddington director Paul King’s Wonka is not dressed in the camp, cartoonish purple splendour of Depp. It is an exploration of the young Wonka, starring stalwarts of British cinema (Olivia Colman, Sally Hawkins, Matt Lucas, Hugh Grant, and Rowan Atkinson). Chalamet’s earliest performances were on stage in Broadway-style shows, so perhaps it is only natural that he is the star of at least seven musical numbers in Wonka.
If Wonka is a British All Stars of acting, then director Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two showcases the American Greats. In Dune: Part Two (due out early November), Zendaya, Florence Pugh and Austin Butler star alongside the powerhouses, Christopher Walken and Stellan Skarsgard.
Dune
The fate of the universe rests on Chalamet’s Paul Atreides, who hungers for revenge on behalf of his family. Unlike some sequels, which feel like rushed responses to the riches of box office receipts, Dune: Part Two was always intended as a two-part story. Villeneuve had made the creative decision to divide Frank Herbert’s sci-fi classic into two (with a potential third movie interpretation of Herbert’s Dune Messiah, the fate of which rests on viewer response to Dune: Part Two).
Combining the popularity of Chalamet and post-Euphoria Zendaya in a major screen sequel seems like a no-brainer, even for those of us unaccustomed to production meetings. Appealing to the 40+ audience with the likes of Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin and Walken ensures a cross-border, cross-genre appeal.
Next year, we might also expect Chalamet as Marvel Comic’s Nightcrawler (aka Kurt Wagner). Nothing has been confirmed.
What’s missing from Chalamet’s 2023 calendar is Luca Guadagnino. It’s a gaping, bleak absence for film lovers who are enamoured of the duo’s artistic chemistry. As skilled and proven translators of literature into a broadly appealing cinematic experience, surely they are investigating other adaptations?
Call Me By Your Name
Guadagnino has hinted that a Chalamet-starring sequel to Call Me By Your Name is in discussions, though the film was so heartbreaking and memorable in a large part because of the questions it leaves unanswered. The director is also behind Zendaya-headlining Challengers. She is the glue, perhaps, between Guadagnino’s tennis court-based drama and the futuristic gloom of Chalamet’s Dune. Perhaps the trio will convene for discussion of a shared project. Wouldn’t it be something spectacular if they were to adapt Ayn Rand’s 1936 novel We The Living, an exploration of post-revolutionary Russia and the many civilians who became victims of surveillance and vicious self-serving political regimes?
Or Milan Kundera’s 1984 novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, set in the 1968 Prague Spring era of Czechoslovakia. As a rumination on the singularity of each of our lives, and the inevitable transience of our lifetimes (the “lightness” of existence), it explores themes that both Chalamet and Guadagnino have shown affinity for to date.
We can only guess; we can only hope. What’s certain, anyway, is that we will see plenty of Chalamet in 2023 and for that, we’re grateful.
