Great actors become great actors by doing one great scene after another. However, nobody is ever entirely perfect. Marion Cotillard is a great actress. However, when people think of her, they often think of her death scene from The Dark Knight Rises which is less great. She kind of wishes everybody would just let that scene go. While she seems to agree that it's not the greatest, she takes it in stride that sometimes that happens and she wishes everybody would just remember that she's done good work too.
Sometimes there are failures, and when you see this on screen, you're thinking: 'Why? Why did they keep that take?' But either you blame everyone or nobody. But I thought people overreacted, because it was tough to be identified just with this scene. When I'm doing the best I can to find the authenticity in every character that I'm playing, it's tough to be known just for this scene.
Speaking with French publication Allocine, and translated by ComicBook, Marion Cotillard does bring up one point that's worth considering. She's not actually the only person involved in a bad scene. The director had to believe that was the best take worth using, or even make the decision to stop doing takes because they had apparently made one that was good enough. The scene was edited into the film in the way that was by somebody else. It may truly be a terrible death scene, but it was a team effort that made it bad.
If you don't remember the death of Talia Al Ghul in The Dark Knight Rises then you're a lucky person who's about to have their day ruined. The scene is just awkward. Marion Cotillard gives a fairly standard comic book villain final statement of victory before her eyes close in death, but that moment of death is just weird. It's like the actresses wasn't quite sure how to die, and varies between a couple of different looks before finally just quickly closing her eyes to end the shot.
There's no denying that the scene is rough, but let's face it, all of The Dark Knight Rises is rough when compared to its predecessor. The death of Talia Al Ghul could have been a much bigger problem, except that as a villain she wasn't much of a character in the movie at all. In the end, we know that Marion Cotillard is a great actress, so cutting her some slack on this one probably isn't too much to ask.
