Today, we have casting news that just feels right: Kristen Stewart will be playing the iconic Susan Sontag in a biopic based on Benjamin Moser’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2019 biography Sontag: Her Life and Work. Kristen Stewart is no stranger to biopics, having starred in 2021’s Spencer, 2009’s The Runaways (as Joan Jett), 2018’s JT LeRoy (as Savannah Knoop) and Seberg (as Jean Seberg).
While I’m usually skeptical of biopics because lives have no narrative arc and attempts to force them into a shape that movie-going audiences find interesting are often unsuccessful, this one has me intrigued. The film, with the working title Sontag, will be directed by Kirsten Johnson, whose most recent previous film Dick Johnson Is Dead is a speculative documentary in which Johnson’s father, who suffers from dementia, enacts various versions of his death.
Okay, I’m sold. I’ll watch a biopic. Just this once.