Judi Dench, like her close friend Maggie Smith, is one of those nearly universally liked and admired British actresses who can be relied upon to add both dignity and dry humor to any production. Solid performances by these two celebrated Shakespearean actors, both born in 1934, have been sprinkled liberally throughout popular culture over the past decade or so (Judi in the James Bond franchise, and Maggie in the Harry Potter films and television's "Downton Abbey"), and though they have a century of acting experience between them, they are far better known by the U.S. public today than they were when they were the toast of the London stage and earning leading-lady roles in film and on British television. Maggie Smith became an international film star much earlier than her friend when she won an Academy Award for Best Actress in "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" in 1969, but among Americans she is best known for her supporting actress roles playing dry old ladies with withering insights. Judi Dench is much better known in the United Kingdom than in America; she was the star of several popular British television series and had successes on the stage in productions like "Cabaret" in London's West End as far back as 1968 as well as in serious roles like Lady Macbeth. When she became the first female incarnation of M in the James Bond film series beginning in 1995, she became better known to a wider assortment of international filmgoers, and winning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing Queen Elizabeth I in 1998's "Shakespeare in Love" gave her career a huge boost.
Like her friend Maggie Smith, Judi Dench often plays unsmiling, all-knowing, uncompromising women who cannot be fooled, but in her Oscar-nominated role as Philomena Lee in Stephen Frears's film "Philomena" she gives a unexpectedly soft, poignant and sympathetic performance that celebrates her versatility and range. The film is based on the true story of Irish woman Philomena Lee who became pregnant as a teenager in 1951 and was sent to a remote Irish abbey during her pregnancy. There she was forced by nuns to work as a laundress alongside other unwed mothers, and was made to stay on working at the laundry without pay for four more years both as penance for the sin of having had premarital sex and to pay the abbey for the costs of caring for her during her pregnancy. This practice of locking up unwed mothers in their teens (or even twenties) in what were known as "Magdalene asylums" or "Magdalene laundries" was common in Ireland and Britain in the 19th century, and it spread to other European countries and to the U.S. and Canada. The practice lasted well into the 20th century. The last Magdalene asylum in Ireland was in operation until 1996. At these workhouses girls were sometimes beaten, often locked inside against their will and sometimes forbidden to leave even after they became adults. The Catholic Church got a great deal of free labor from these women, and embarrassed parents of unwed pregnant teens were often so relieved to avoid the public shame of having their daughters' sins paraded before society that many abandoned their children to the Magdalene sisters forever. Families often told neighbors and friends that their daughters had gone to live with family, or emigrated, or even died, all in an effort to save themselves from shame and social ostracism.
While these teen girls worked long hours in the steamy laundries, their children were watched over by nuns in nurseries. At the abbey where Philomena lived, children were often adopted out to American married couples who sought children in return for generous donations to the abbey. Philomena was only able to spend a short time with her son each day, and her much-loved child was adopted by an American couple and taken away from the nursery with no warning one day while she was working. Philomena had no chance to say goodbye, she had no idea that her little boy had been flown to America, and she was not told that his named had been changed. All her efforts to learn what became of her son were rebuffed by the abbey, which destroyed her records and denied knowledge of her son's name and whereabouts. Ashamed by her plight but desperately sad to have lost her son, Philomena sought him secretly for a half century without luck, and then finally told her daughter the truth. She and her daughter enlisted the help of Martin Sixsmith, a journalist and former government advisor to the Labour Party who was out of work and searching for a journalistic assignment, and the two convinced him to help Philomena in her search. Martin and Philomena ended up traveling to America together and learning extraordinary things about Philomena's son and about the abbey's deceptive practices. Their story of their adventure together was published by Sixsmith in 2009 in his book "The Lost Child of Philomena Lee," described by the L.A. Times as "a serio-comic travelogue full of heart-rending discovery and the triumph of forgiveness over hate." For a link to a Daily Mail article describing the story in detail (including spoilers that you might want to wait to read about if you plan to see the film and want to be surprised), click here.
When I first saw previews for the film, I feared it might be a manipulative tear-jerker about a sweet, naive old lady with a can-do attitude and a big heart, the sort of story that could turn sickly sweet in under a minute if directed poorly or written by a sappy screenwriter. On the other hand, it stars Judi Dench and satirist Steve Coogan, two actors famous for their droll, dry, whip-smart screen performances. I doubted Coogan in particular would want to completely suppress his innate sarcasm and cynicism throughout the course of an entire film. Furthermore, Coogan was the cowriter of the screenplay, and I've seen evidence of his dark wit in films like "The Trip" and "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story." In England he's well known for his popular creation, a character named Alan Partridge decribed as "a socially awkward and politically incorrect regional media personality." I knew better than to expect mindless, treacly antics from him or from director Stephen Frears, whose dark, smart films like "My Beautiful Laundrette" (which starred a young Daniel Day-Lewis), "Prick Up Your Ears" (with Gary Oldman), "Dangerous Liaisons" (with Glenn Close, John Malkovich and Michelle Pfeiffer) and "The Grifters" (a dark little masterpiece with John Cusack, Annette Bening and Anjelica Huston) have impressed me for three decades.
Frears directed John Cusack to delicious perfection in one of the few comic films I find worth watching repeatedly, "High Fidelity," and he led Helen Mirren to her Academy Award for Best Actress playing Queen Elizabeth II in "The Queen." Frears has no fear of difficult subjects or ugly moments. Weighing all these facts, I put aside my worries that this could be a manipulative feel-good movie that would make my eyes roll and went to see it with a bit of a "prove yourself to me" attitude. Happily, my fears that the too-cute trailer for the film would prove to be an accurate microcosm of the film itself proved unfounded, and I instead found it a movingly acted film about an unworldly, seemingly simple woman who is more complex and determined than people expect.
The battle between the jaded, antireligious cynicism of Martin and the every-day-is-a-gift positivity of Philomena is at the core of the film, but we see a spirited openmindedness in devout and seemingly old-fashioned Philomena. Her sense of hopefulness and appreciation for small kindnesses is nicely balanced by exasperation with Martin's dour, dark, angry worldview. He is not won over by her endless sweet simplicity; he is moved by her because he recognizes that she has insights into people and situations that he, with all his experience and inside information but lack of empathy, misses. Martin recognizes that her story is a door into a huge and devastating world of widespread, long-term institutional abuse of the most vulnerable among us: abandoned, pregnant teen girls and small children. He sees that Philomena has a power to connect with people that he lacks because he is often closed to anything but the fulfillment of his own expectations and prejudices. The journey they take together becomes more tangled than they expect, and it becomes more personally engaging and meaningful than Martin could have guessed.
The real Philomena Lee will attend the Academy Awards presentation in early March, where her
story has been nominated for Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Adapted
Screenplay and Best Original Score awards. Though now eighty years old, Philomena is currently traveling the world in her effort to help mothers who have lost children to forced adoptions. I doubt that she could have found a more effective or talented mouthpiece for her story than Dame Judi. Nor could Judi have found a more agreeable and appealing inspiration for her work than Philomena.
Saturday, February 22, 2014
Saturday, February 15, 2014
Phoenix Rising
Some actors have a gift for making audiences uncomfortable. They know when to hold a gaze too long or whether to avoid eye contact altogether; how to let panic, malice or discovery flit across their faces almost imperceptibly; how to touch their faces absentmindedly, betraying their anxiety or concern. We who watch them thrill to the feeling that we alone have discovered their secrets or noticed the tell-tale change in their mood that everyone else has missed. But sometimes the naturalism of their discomposure makes us worry that they are not really actors at all, but rather embodiments of the troubled characters whose lives they inhabit for our entertainment. James Gandolfini's Tony Soprano was so commanding and charismatic that the world believed the actor and the character must be two sides of the same being. Seeing him interviewed and hearing his intelligent, slightly shy delivery expressing insights with quiet, wry humor was disorienting. When speaking in his own voice, Gandolfini betrayed a tenderness and self-deprecation we would never have expected based on the behavior and body language of his most famous creation. When Bradley Cooper is asked about his mentor and co-star Robert De Niro, he describes a thoughtful, articulate and generous man who is nothing like the belligerent and threatening characters he is best known for playing in the movies.
Joaquin Phoenix is such a modern master of discomfort. As a child actor then known as Leaf Phoenix, he had steady television work and was in occasional movies, like "Parenthood," but he grew up in the shadow of his talented older brother, River. The two were together when River died of a drug overdose in 1993; a 911 emergency audiotape featuring Joaquin's anguished voice asking for help for his brother was played incessantly on television and radio for weeks after River's death, and the trauma and the constant media hounding so devastated Joaquin that he retreated from acting for a year. In 1995, however, he got a big break playing an important supporting role in the Gus Van Sant film "To Die For." Phoenix played Jimmy, a lonely, slow-witted, desperate boy who becomes obsessed by a perky local news television personality played with sociopathic relish by Nicole Kidman. Kidman's manipulative character strings the Phoenix character along and wraps him dangerously around her finger. Kidman plays her part with an earnest yet sprightly quality that's meant to be outsized, colorful, almost cartoonish, along the lines of the characters in "Edward Scissorhands." By contrast, Phoenix plays his role as Kidman's pawn with great vulnerability and realism. His confusion feels painfully real as he slowly tries to make sense of the situation he's been drawn into. A lesser actor could have played Jimmy as a sap or stooge not worth worrying about, but Phoenix gives him a shape and a heart; his character is the one touches us the most and makes Kidman's transgressions feel especially chilling.
It was his performance as Commodus, the twisted, desperate young emperor who ruins the life of Russell Crowe's Maximus in "Gladiator," that drew the world's attention and earned him his first Oscar nomination. The performance holds up powerfully all these years later, despite his on-again, off-again attempts at a British accent. His character is by turns vulnerable and tyrannical, and like a Shakespearean villain, his evil deeds are offset by scenes in which we see him squirm painfully as his father, Emperor Marcus Aurelius (played with appropriate disdain by Richard Harris), and the gladiator Maximus humiliate him emotionally and physically. We can't help but feel a measure of pity for him as we see the contempt heaped upon him by his father; evil-doers are always so much more fun to watch when we get a glimpse at what twisted their souls in the first place. Phoenix alternates a pouty, whiny narcissism with dangerous hubris in what is, to my mind, the most compelling performance in the film.
His second Academy Award nomination for Best Actor came five years later in 2005 when he starred in the Johnny Cash biopic "Walk the Line." Though he didn't win the Oscar that year, it was his strong performance that allowed Reese Witherspoon to play off him so effectively that she won her own Best Actress award. Johnny Cash had a jangling agitation in the way he sang and in the way he held himself, and Phoenix tapped into that perfectly. There's a low hum of anxiety and suppressed energy in Johnny's seemingly straightforward songs, and while Phoenix doesn't look particularly like Johnny, nor is his singing a spot-on impersonation of Cash as Jamie Foxx's impersonation of Ray Charles was in the film "Ray," Phoenix nonetheless gets the feeling right, captures Cash's charisma and energy and makes the story flow along a satisfying and seemingly inevitable path.
In 2010 Phoenix played a bizarre fictionalized version of himself in Casey Affleck's mockumentary "I'm Still Here." Where his odd, seemingly addled character ended and Phoenix himself began wasn't clear as he appeared barely coherent and gave conflicting stories about himself in talk show appearances and in written interviews while the film was being made. Like comedian and performance artist Andy Kaufman in the 1980s, he challenged people to recognize that he was playing tricks on them. Happily, his statements that he was quitting acting to become a rapper were false, and he was back costarring with Philip Seymour Hoffman in Paul Thomas Anderson's film "The Master" in 2012.
Phoenix played Freddy, an amoral, emotionally stunted deviant who regularly swilled cocktails concocted from shots of fuel and paint thinners. The character was so disturbed and outrageous that the rumors of Phoenix's own emotional instability spread. His portrayal of Freddy was simultaneously over-the-top odd and yet believable. To inhabit this broken and frightening man's persona, Phoenix turned memories of his own physical injuries into tics, and he slurred and mumbled his way through lines in a parody of his own shambling speaking style. (For a fascinating description of how he created his character, listen to his highly entertaining interview with Terry Gross, host of National Public Radio's "Fresh Air.") His intensity and rawness make the character of Freddy hard for the audience to spend time with; he has no boundaries and no filter, and his recklessness makes him appear capable of anything at all. When Phoenix plays off the hale and hearty, but no less frightening, charisma of Philip Seymour Hoffman's character, who is based on Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, there are almost literal sparks on the screen, so exciting is the contrast between their styles. These two actors were so fiercely focused and totally in the moment with each other that you believe everything they say occurred to them for the very first time as the cameras roll. Despite the loathsomeness of their personalities, they are so compelling and their performances bounce off each other so thrillingly that the resulting film is worth the discomfort of spending over two hours watching them behave atrociously.
Considering Joaquin Phoenix's history of playing one disturbed, fragile, inappropriate man after another, I feared that his character in the Spike Jonze film "Her" might be more than a little creepy. He is, after all, a man who feels such awkwardness among real human beings that he spends his days pretending to be other people and writing their most personal letters for them as a ghost writer. He then forms his most intimate attachment to a simulated woman, a disembodied, computerized voice, because he can't make a go of actual human relationships. Yet, despite the extreme oddness found in the careers of both Phoenix and writer-director Jonze, there is a beautiful, gentle quality to Theodore that drew me in and made me care for and want to protect him. Phoenix portrays Theodore with an immense vulnerability that builds up through small gestures: the way he presses his glasses back up his nose; the joyful, relieved smile that spreads across his face when he converses freely and delightedly with his computerized companion; the way his body seems to crumple inward when he has to interact with actual three-dimensional people. Theodore is fragile and scarred by life experience, and he is awkward and confused about how best to handle other people one-on-one, but he doesn't lose his basic decency even when others take him for granted or unleash their own rage or fear on him. He may be shy and scared, but he is also brave enough to be vulnerable, to try something altogether new, to pick up the pieces after a heartbreak. There is joy in watching this stunted soul open his heart and set aside his pain, and great sadness at seeing him struggle when adversity strikes. In another actor's hands, Theodore could have been too dark or too off-putting, or embarrassingly dorky, but Phoenix plays him with a gentle touch and the understanding of one who has himself been misjudged or or written off.
The willingness to lay oneself bare for others to view can be either narcissistic or generous; for many actors, it's both. Joaquin Phoenix and Spike Jonze seem to have found perfect partners in each other in creating "Her." While the story is Jonze's very personal vision, the process of making Phoenix disappear into the part was very much a collaboration. Initially, Jonze hired the talented English actress Samantha Morton to be the voice of Samantha. Morton, herself an indie film favorite who played Agatha, the senior precog in "Minority Report," is often described as quirky, sat in an uncomfortable little wooden box while on the set, far away from Phoenix, and the two of them communicated only via earpieces, like their characters. They did the entire film that way, and then Jonze realized that, lovely as their performances were, there was something not quite right in the chemistry between the two of them. He is circumspect about explaining what the problem was since he doesn't want to denigrate anyone's acting, and he and Phoenix have only praise for Morton's work on the film, which they say was very helpful in inspiring Phoenix's performance. The only thing Jonze has implied is that Morton's voice may have come across as too motherly, and that rather than instilling a belief in the audience that there could be a romantic spark between them, she may have sounded a bit too nurturing instead of sexy in her interactions with Phoenix. As a result, in post-production Jonze recast the computer love interest with Scarlett Johansson. As Spike Jonze put it, "[Joaquin] was speaking to Samantha Morton the entire time—she was in his ear, in another room, and he was in her ear. Samantha is a big part of the movie because she was with us, and gave Joaquin so much and gave the movie so much. And then in [postproduction,] when we decided that what we did wasn’t working, and we ended up recasting with Scarlett [Johansson]. [Joaquin] worked with Scarlett in post—but to help her do her part, so off-camera and off-mic with her.”
Phoenix was generous in coming back onto set to work with Johansson to make sure her performance sounded like a true, emotion-packed conversation; some actors refuse to run scenes with other actors once they've shot their own close ups and recorded their own looping (voice dubbing). Less generous actors leave the set after filming their own scenes, expecting crew members to read lines for other actors to react to, which can, unsurprisingly, result in less convincing results. By all accounts, all the actors in "Her," including Amy Adams, who plays Theodore's dear friend and confidante with warmth and tenderness, were generous and devoted to making the communication in this film feel genuine and organic. Their work underscores the theme of true connection with another being not depending on looking into his or her eyes.
There is a sadness beneath all four of the feature films Spike Jonze has directed, the threat of a dark underworld that drags all of his characters into melancholy. This Jonzian undertow brings a depth to stories that are often populated with slightly cartoonish, overdrawn characters who are going through midlife crises and react by turning their worlds upside-down. In his first two films, "Being John Malkovich" and "Adaptation," this depressive quality played off a sometimes manic, off-kilter humor. There was an occasional meanspiritedness to the characters that left me feeling admiration for the skill involved in the films' creation, but distaste for most of the people portrayed. "Where the Wild Things Are," though based on the classic children's book by Maurice Sendak, is more wryly bleak and dark than many filmgoers seemed prepared for. Max, the boy in his wolf suit who tames the the wild things and becomes their king, befriends Carroll, a depressed wild thing voiced touchingly by the late James Gandolfini. Although "Wild Things" is more moody and adult than audiences expected, it is a worthy effort with some moving performances.
This tender quality continues in "Her," and the film feels very personal to Jonze, who is an amiable and charming man, but who says that he spends vast amounts of time alone as he gets into the heads of his characters and creates his stories. He is a ruminator and a dreamer, which is surprising for a man who made a name for himself by directing kinetic, quirky music videos for groups like Weezer (and a brilliant one featuring a dancing Christopher Walken for Fatboy Slim), creating clever advertisements for Ikea, Adidas and The Gap and establishing youth culture magazines Homeboy and Dirt (the latter of which was once described as "Sassy Magazine for boys"). He was producer and co-creator of the MTV TV series "Jackass" and he produced "Jackass: The Movie." He's an occasional (and talented) actor as well. He makes a cameo appearance in "The Wolf of Wall Street," but his finest role was as Conrad, the dim but loyal redneck soldier in the excellent David O. Russell film "Three Kings," which also starred George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg and rapper Ice Cube. The film is by turns seriously dark and outrageously fun, and it is the initial jovial oddness of the characters, especially Spike Jonze's Conrad, that makes the later, rougher scenes even more poignant.
Jonze himself is ever affable, open and approachable in his interviews, and is known to foster a collaborative, creative atmosphere on set with his actors. He is well-liked by the film community, but his work points to a darker, sadder person within who enriches his films by incorporating his awareness of the melancholic side of the human condition into works designed to entertain and encourage connection, no matter how odd and unorthodox, between lonely creatures who hope to find homes in the hearts of others. Jonze was fortunate to find a partner in Joaquin Phoenix, whose performance in "Her" should have easily qualified him for a place among the five Oscar nominations for Best Actor in a Leading Role this year. His is a stunning and unusual performance in one of the more thoughtful films of 2013.
Joaquin Phoenix is such a modern master of discomfort. As a child actor then known as Leaf Phoenix, he had steady television work and was in occasional movies, like "Parenthood," but he grew up in the shadow of his talented older brother, River. The two were together when River died of a drug overdose in 1993; a 911 emergency audiotape featuring Joaquin's anguished voice asking for help for his brother was played incessantly on television and radio for weeks after River's death, and the trauma and the constant media hounding so devastated Joaquin that he retreated from acting for a year. In 1995, however, he got a big break playing an important supporting role in the Gus Van Sant film "To Die For." Phoenix played Jimmy, a lonely, slow-witted, desperate boy who becomes obsessed by a perky local news television personality played with sociopathic relish by Nicole Kidman. Kidman's manipulative character strings the Phoenix character along and wraps him dangerously around her finger. Kidman plays her part with an earnest yet sprightly quality that's meant to be outsized, colorful, almost cartoonish, along the lines of the characters in "Edward Scissorhands." By contrast, Phoenix plays his role as Kidman's pawn with great vulnerability and realism. His confusion feels painfully real as he slowly tries to make sense of the situation he's been drawn into. A lesser actor could have played Jimmy as a sap or stooge not worth worrying about, but Phoenix gives him a shape and a heart; his character is the one touches us the most and makes Kidman's transgressions feel especially chilling.
It was his performance as Commodus, the twisted, desperate young emperor who ruins the life of Russell Crowe's Maximus in "Gladiator," that drew the world's attention and earned him his first Oscar nomination. The performance holds up powerfully all these years later, despite his on-again, off-again attempts at a British accent. His character is by turns vulnerable and tyrannical, and like a Shakespearean villain, his evil deeds are offset by scenes in which we see him squirm painfully as his father, Emperor Marcus Aurelius (played with appropriate disdain by Richard Harris), and the gladiator Maximus humiliate him emotionally and physically. We can't help but feel a measure of pity for him as we see the contempt heaped upon him by his father; evil-doers are always so much more fun to watch when we get a glimpse at what twisted their souls in the first place. Phoenix alternates a pouty, whiny narcissism with dangerous hubris in what is, to my mind, the most compelling performance in the film.
His second Academy Award nomination for Best Actor came five years later in 2005 when he starred in the Johnny Cash biopic "Walk the Line." Though he didn't win the Oscar that year, it was his strong performance that allowed Reese Witherspoon to play off him so effectively that she won her own Best Actress award. Johnny Cash had a jangling agitation in the way he sang and in the way he held himself, and Phoenix tapped into that perfectly. There's a low hum of anxiety and suppressed energy in Johnny's seemingly straightforward songs, and while Phoenix doesn't look particularly like Johnny, nor is his singing a spot-on impersonation of Cash as Jamie Foxx's impersonation of Ray Charles was in the film "Ray," Phoenix nonetheless gets the feeling right, captures Cash's charisma and energy and makes the story flow along a satisfying and seemingly inevitable path.
In 2010 Phoenix played a bizarre fictionalized version of himself in Casey Affleck's mockumentary "I'm Still Here." Where his odd, seemingly addled character ended and Phoenix himself began wasn't clear as he appeared barely coherent and gave conflicting stories about himself in talk show appearances and in written interviews while the film was being made. Like comedian and performance artist Andy Kaufman in the 1980s, he challenged people to recognize that he was playing tricks on them. Happily, his statements that he was quitting acting to become a rapper were false, and he was back costarring with Philip Seymour Hoffman in Paul Thomas Anderson's film "The Master" in 2012.
Phoenix played Freddy, an amoral, emotionally stunted deviant who regularly swilled cocktails concocted from shots of fuel and paint thinners. The character was so disturbed and outrageous that the rumors of Phoenix's own emotional instability spread. His portrayal of Freddy was simultaneously over-the-top odd and yet believable. To inhabit this broken and frightening man's persona, Phoenix turned memories of his own physical injuries into tics, and he slurred and mumbled his way through lines in a parody of his own shambling speaking style. (For a fascinating description of how he created his character, listen to his highly entertaining interview with Terry Gross, host of National Public Radio's "Fresh Air.") His intensity and rawness make the character of Freddy hard for the audience to spend time with; he has no boundaries and no filter, and his recklessness makes him appear capable of anything at all. When Phoenix plays off the hale and hearty, but no less frightening, charisma of Philip Seymour Hoffman's character, who is based on Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, there are almost literal sparks on the screen, so exciting is the contrast between their styles. These two actors were so fiercely focused and totally in the moment with each other that you believe everything they say occurred to them for the very first time as the cameras roll. Despite the loathsomeness of their personalities, they are so compelling and their performances bounce off each other so thrillingly that the resulting film is worth the discomfort of spending over two hours watching them behave atrociously.
Considering Joaquin Phoenix's history of playing one disturbed, fragile, inappropriate man after another, I feared that his character in the Spike Jonze film "Her" might be more than a little creepy. He is, after all, a man who feels such awkwardness among real human beings that he spends his days pretending to be other people and writing their most personal letters for them as a ghost writer. He then forms his most intimate attachment to a simulated woman, a disembodied, computerized voice, because he can't make a go of actual human relationships. Yet, despite the extreme oddness found in the careers of both Phoenix and writer-director Jonze, there is a beautiful, gentle quality to Theodore that drew me in and made me care for and want to protect him. Phoenix portrays Theodore with an immense vulnerability that builds up through small gestures: the way he presses his glasses back up his nose; the joyful, relieved smile that spreads across his face when he converses freely and delightedly with his computerized companion; the way his body seems to crumple inward when he has to interact with actual three-dimensional people. Theodore is fragile and scarred by life experience, and he is awkward and confused about how best to handle other people one-on-one, but he doesn't lose his basic decency even when others take him for granted or unleash their own rage or fear on him. He may be shy and scared, but he is also brave enough to be vulnerable, to try something altogether new, to pick up the pieces after a heartbreak. There is joy in watching this stunted soul open his heart and set aside his pain, and great sadness at seeing him struggle when adversity strikes. In another actor's hands, Theodore could have been too dark or too off-putting, or embarrassingly dorky, but Phoenix plays him with a gentle touch and the understanding of one who has himself been misjudged or or written off.
The willingness to lay oneself bare for others to view can be either narcissistic or generous; for many actors, it's both. Joaquin Phoenix and Spike Jonze seem to have found perfect partners in each other in creating "Her." While the story is Jonze's very personal vision, the process of making Phoenix disappear into the part was very much a collaboration. Initially, Jonze hired the talented English actress Samantha Morton to be the voice of Samantha. Morton, herself an indie film favorite who played Agatha, the senior precog in "Minority Report," is often described as quirky, sat in an uncomfortable little wooden box while on the set, far away from Phoenix, and the two of them communicated only via earpieces, like their characters. They did the entire film that way, and then Jonze realized that, lovely as their performances were, there was something not quite right in the chemistry between the two of them. He is circumspect about explaining what the problem was since he doesn't want to denigrate anyone's acting, and he and Phoenix have only praise for Morton's work on the film, which they say was very helpful in inspiring Phoenix's performance. The only thing Jonze has implied is that Morton's voice may have come across as too motherly, and that rather than instilling a belief in the audience that there could be a romantic spark between them, she may have sounded a bit too nurturing instead of sexy in her interactions with Phoenix. As a result, in post-production Jonze recast the computer love interest with Scarlett Johansson. As Spike Jonze put it, "[Joaquin] was speaking to Samantha Morton the entire time—she was in his ear, in another room, and he was in her ear. Samantha is a big part of the movie because she was with us, and gave Joaquin so much and gave the movie so much. And then in [postproduction,] when we decided that what we did wasn’t working, and we ended up recasting with Scarlett [Johansson]. [Joaquin] worked with Scarlett in post—but to help her do her part, so off-camera and off-mic with her.”
Phoenix was generous in coming back onto set to work with Johansson to make sure her performance sounded like a true, emotion-packed conversation; some actors refuse to run scenes with other actors once they've shot their own close ups and recorded their own looping (voice dubbing). Less generous actors leave the set after filming their own scenes, expecting crew members to read lines for other actors to react to, which can, unsurprisingly, result in less convincing results. By all accounts, all the actors in "Her," including Amy Adams, who plays Theodore's dear friend and confidante with warmth and tenderness, were generous and devoted to making the communication in this film feel genuine and organic. Their work underscores the theme of true connection with another being not depending on looking into his or her eyes.
There is a sadness beneath all four of the feature films Spike Jonze has directed, the threat of a dark underworld that drags all of his characters into melancholy. This Jonzian undertow brings a depth to stories that are often populated with slightly cartoonish, overdrawn characters who are going through midlife crises and react by turning their worlds upside-down. In his first two films, "Being John Malkovich" and "Adaptation," this depressive quality played off a sometimes manic, off-kilter humor. There was an occasional meanspiritedness to the characters that left me feeling admiration for the skill involved in the films' creation, but distaste for most of the people portrayed. "Where the Wild Things Are," though based on the classic children's book by Maurice Sendak, is more wryly bleak and dark than many filmgoers seemed prepared for. Max, the boy in his wolf suit who tames the the wild things and becomes their king, befriends Carroll, a depressed wild thing voiced touchingly by the late James Gandolfini. Although "Wild Things" is more moody and adult than audiences expected, it is a worthy effort with some moving performances.
This tender quality continues in "Her," and the film feels very personal to Jonze, who is an amiable and charming man, but who says that he spends vast amounts of time alone as he gets into the heads of his characters and creates his stories. He is a ruminator and a dreamer, which is surprising for a man who made a name for himself by directing kinetic, quirky music videos for groups like Weezer (and a brilliant one featuring a dancing Christopher Walken for Fatboy Slim), creating clever advertisements for Ikea, Adidas and The Gap and establishing youth culture magazines Homeboy and Dirt (the latter of which was once described as "Sassy Magazine for boys"). He was producer and co-creator of the MTV TV series "Jackass" and he produced "Jackass: The Movie." He's an occasional (and talented) actor as well. He makes a cameo appearance in "The Wolf of Wall Street," but his finest role was as Conrad, the dim but loyal redneck soldier in the excellent David O. Russell film "Three Kings," which also starred George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg and rapper Ice Cube. The film is by turns seriously dark and outrageously fun, and it is the initial jovial oddness of the characters, especially Spike Jonze's Conrad, that makes the later, rougher scenes even more poignant.
Jonze himself is ever affable, open and approachable in his interviews, and is known to foster a collaborative, creative atmosphere on set with his actors. He is well-liked by the film community, but his work points to a darker, sadder person within who enriches his films by incorporating his awareness of the melancholic side of the human condition into works designed to entertain and encourage connection, no matter how odd and unorthodox, between lonely creatures who hope to find homes in the hearts of others. Jonze was fortunate to find a partner in Joaquin Phoenix, whose performance in "Her" should have easily qualified him for a place among the five Oscar nominations for Best Actor in a Leading Role this year. His is a stunning and unusual performance in one of the more thoughtful films of 2013.
Thursday, February 06, 2014
The Jaded Worldview of the Coen Brothers
While I will review all nine of this year's Best Picture Oscar nominees in the coming weeks, I want to share my thoughts on the Coen Brothers' latest film, "Inside Llewyn Davis," while it's still in theaters. This film only received Oscar nominations for cinematography and sound mixing despite having drawn a lot of attention from critics for the performance of its star, Oscar Isaac. It's well-acted, was created by a talented team of film-making professionals and covers an important historical moment, but it has one major problem: when a main character is this unlikeable and unable to learn or grow from his experiences, it's hard to care what happens to him. Yet the film has stuck with me because of the talent I saw in Oscar Isaac. Though I found the personality the Coens created for him to inhabit unpleasant, I admire him for the courage he showed in taking on such a role and playing it straight, not as a somehow likable loser whom we can care for despite careless behavior. Isaac allows Llewyn to be a jerk and stay a jerk. His dedication to naturalism gives me hope that his future performances will allow him to play someone I actually want to spend two hours with next time.
I promise you, I will get to the rest of the Best Picture nominees very soon, but for now, here are a few thoughts on "Inside Llewyn Davis" and the era in which the story takes place.
This film is about one of the prevailing countercultural forces in the early 1960s. The term "counterculture" is usually a form of shorthand used to describe the hippie movement of the 1960s. It conjures up images of blissed-out youths in miniskirts and bellbottoms grooving to psychedelic rock music in public parks, protesting the Vietnam War or haranguing their uptight parents. Some believe this was a brand-new challenge to a prevailing conservative military-industrial-complex-led America, that 1960s folk music was a movement that appeared out of nowhere and opened the eyes of the world's youth, but that's not so. The folksinging beatniks of the 1950s (and radical social protesters of decades long before that) made the advent of hippies possible. We generally underplay the importance of the folksinging tradition as a goad to social progress throughout the 20th century. When we consider how powerful a medium of political education and impetus to social change folksinging was from the 1910s through the 1960s, it's surprising that so few movies have examined the heyday of folksinging in the United States just before it was subsumed into the hippie culture and was overtaken by rock and roll.
With "Inside Llewyn Davis," the Coen Brothers have taken up the task of introducing the modern world to a moment just before folk music became one of the dominant influences on North American youth culture. Their story begins in the Greenwich Village folk music scene of 1961. Their antihero, Llewyn Davis, is a struggling, couch-surfing folksinger trying to snag a place to sleep each night, grab an occasional studio gig to make enough to scrape by on, and, eventually, secure a record contract that might help him earn enough to live on. The story takes place during that moment just before Bob Dylan became a household name and folk music exploded with politically relevant meaning and exhortations to wake up, get up and go change the world.
During the 1950s folk music had been growing in popularity but had been taken over by clean-cut, wholesome close-harmony groups like The Kingston Trio. These groups were often populated by talented musicians who were fun to listen to, but much of their music bleached the traditional soulful, bluesy influences out of folk music. The stories their songs told weren't so much about mining disasters or laborers ground down by corporate avarice, as many folksongs had been in the 1920s and 1930s (and long before), but were often lighthearted and humorous ditties, middle-class musical slipcovers over what had been a working-class art form. The Christopher Guest mockumentary "A Mighty Wind" is wonderful parody of the era of whitewashed, relentlessly upbeat folksongs. In the 1960s, the novelty folk songs started to be crowded out by grittier songs, compelling tunes and stories that encouraged an end to war, demanded equal rights and celebrated the innate equality of all. Folksingers encouraged outrage over social injustice and turned popular opinion on its head by singing simple tunes in earnest, nasal, sometimes piercing voices full of humorless sincerity. In dramatizing this important time, you might expect important directors to choose a highly political folksinger in the Pete Seeger or Bob Dylan or Joan Baez tradition. But of course the Coen Brothers are too cynical to make movies with political overtones, and their way of storytelling is too perverse and dark to for them to want to follow such an obvious or uplifting road.
Unlike Bob Dylan, Llewyn Davis has no interest in saving humanity, or in telling emotional stories that urge young people to take up causes, or in leading underdogs in nonviolent protest against their oppressors. He isn't worried about subverting the dominant paradigm or taking over the world; he just wants to make a living with his guitar. His more successful contemporaries aren't necessarily more talented—in fact, his scenes show that he has a more subtle and sophisticated innate musicianship—but the pale WASP competitors for singing spots in the Greenwich Village folk clubs are more immediately appealing and accessible, less complex, and easier to relax around. Llewyn is an uptight misanthrope without social graces who is surrounded by Peter, Paul and Mary wannabes and well-scrubbed Irish close-harmony quartets in matching Aran-knit sweaters. One of his best friends, played with an appealingly sweet-voiced earnestness by Justin Timberlake, gets him a gig playing guitar and singing backup on a terrible novelty song about flying into outer space, and you can tell right from the get-go that this cutesy dreck will have much more appeal in the marketplace than the intense, lonely blues-folk that Llewyn plays. His character was in part inspired by real-life folk singer Dave Van Ronk, an admired singer in his day who is little known now, having been completely overshadowed by Bob Dylan in his day.
Llewyn's way of singing is more in tune with the traditional folk songs of the earlier 20th century, the singers people like Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan listened to, the working men and itinerants and down-and-outers who inspired Steinbeck to write "The Grapes of Wrath." Oscar Isaac's style should appeal to those who enjoy the current folk music revival enjoyed by "nu-folk" and "indie-folk" bands like Mumford and Sons and Of Monsters and Men. (Indeed, Marcus Mumford appears in the movie.) But Llewyn has little empathy for causes or people (and notably little luck with animals, either). His lack of ability to connect with anyone else very successfully leads him on a series of frustrating misadventures which usually bring out the worst in him and don't do anyone else much good, either. But he has one thing going for him: he's a good musician. Not that most of the people in the film notice or care about that, but the Coen brothers must have thanked their lucky stars when they found singer/guitarist/actor Oscar Isaac to play the title role, since he has significant hangdog charisma despite his unpleasant behaviors. He has enough self-loathing to make the viewer able to care for him somewhat, despite his consistently bad behavior, but what empathy we can manage for this jerk is dissipated by one scene after another of him failing his friends, strangers and himself. Oscar Isaac has a natural affinity for folk singing, a beautiful way with an acoustic guitar and a naturalistic acting style—he's a real find. It's too bad that his break-out role is such a downer of a character.
There's a vein of meanspiritedness that runs through most of the Coen Brothers' films, even ostensible comedies like this one, which I find off-putting. Joel and Ethan Coen are clever fellows with a strong aesthetic sense; they choose excellent art directors and cinematographers to mold their vision, and their visual sense is powerful. Their film tableaux rival Sam Mendez's in their portrait-like stillness and attention to detail in each frame. However, their sense of humor runs dark, and despicable behavior is played for laughs. They have a nasty lack of empathy for their own characters; they revel in discomfort and like to watch people squirm. The sadistic element in most of their movies generally makes me feel like I'm spending time in the company of sociopaths. "Inside Llewyn Davis" isn't ruthlessly ugly like "Barton Fink," or gleefully grim like "Fargo," or psychopathic like "Burn After Reading" or "No Country for Old Men." Indeed, there's no glee in this film at all. Depression and angst run through Llewyn's story in an unstinting stream. His life is as relentlessly tatty as the dim folk clubs he plays in and the dingy old sofas on which he crashes each night. There's little peasure built into this film for the characters, not to mention the audience that pays to spend two hours watching this nasty young man roll through people's lives, making everyone he touches a little worse off for his influence.
Despite the Coens' usual blunted, blasé attitude toward man's inhumanity to man, there are times when dark humor shines in their work, and when a certain manic, outsized joy springs forth from characters that knocks us all sideways and delights us by its incongruity: George Clooney in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" is the best example, though that cartoony mania appears in the characters of Paul Newman, Charles Durning and Tim Robbins in "The Hudsucker Proxy" as well. Of all their films, I find their version of "True Grit" their strongest film of all: it retains their jaded world-weariness and portrays a dark and nearly lawless society in vivid and ugly detail, but it is redeemed by the pure, earnest sincerity of Hailee Steinfeld's shining portrayal of Mattie Ross. She is out for vengeance, it's true, but her focus is tight and she has no desire to harm anyone along the way unless they block her path. Her respectful politeness and integrity combined with her ruthless purity of vision brings out the last vestiges of honor in the most jaded and self-serving of men. It gave me joy to see the Coens recognize and celebrate the finding of good in a seemingly dessicated heart after dragging their work down such a dirty path for so long, but they appear to have gone back to the comfort of their dank, dark, jaded ways since then.
Unlike biopics about true musical superstars like "Ray" or "Walk the Line" which feature one engaging, compelling performance after another, "Inside Llewyn Davis" recycles its few songs. We see Llewyn play them repeatedly, even using the same patter between tunes. Rather than fashion fresh performances and engage with his audience, he seems stuck in a loop of depressive self-absorption. He angrily turns down the opportunity to sing at a party after being well fed and taken care of by friends, and instead of finding joy in performance or fostering friendship between himself and those who are already disposed to like him, he seems to begrudge people their desires to enjoy and admire his talent. He doesn't want to be fresh or in the moment, and repeatedly turns down opportunities to connect with people. He wants to keep offering the same thing up instead of giving any thought to what others find appealing. He has more talent but less love of humanity than anyone around him except for the jaded folk impressario played by F. Murray Abraham and the abusive, drug-addled jazz musician played by the Coen brothers' regular John Goodman in an ugly, unpleasant performance. His character inspires even the usually sparkling Carey Mulligan to give a growly, foul-mouthed, mirthless performance.
Llewyn's misanthropy keeps him from caring enough to put effort into expanding his repertoire or pleasing his listeners, and we see his chances for happiness grow dimmer by the moment. He is thoughtless, disconnected and seemingly incapable of growth, characteristics which do not make for a particularly enjoyable two hours at the cinema. There is pleasure in the quality of the performances, and there are moments of wit and wry humor, as in every Coen brothers film, but the story itself is deflating and hopeless.
I promise you, I will get to the rest of the Best Picture nominees very soon, but for now, here are a few thoughts on "Inside Llewyn Davis" and the era in which the story takes place.
This film is about one of the prevailing countercultural forces in the early 1960s. The term "counterculture" is usually a form of shorthand used to describe the hippie movement of the 1960s. It conjures up images of blissed-out youths in miniskirts and bellbottoms grooving to psychedelic rock music in public parks, protesting the Vietnam War or haranguing their uptight parents. Some believe this was a brand-new challenge to a prevailing conservative military-industrial-complex-led America, that 1960s folk music was a movement that appeared out of nowhere and opened the eyes of the world's youth, but that's not so. The folksinging beatniks of the 1950s (and radical social protesters of decades long before that) made the advent of hippies possible. We generally underplay the importance of the folksinging tradition as a goad to social progress throughout the 20th century. When we consider how powerful a medium of political education and impetus to social change folksinging was from the 1910s through the 1960s, it's surprising that so few movies have examined the heyday of folksinging in the United States just before it was subsumed into the hippie culture and was overtaken by rock and roll.
With "Inside Llewyn Davis," the Coen Brothers have taken up the task of introducing the modern world to a moment just before folk music became one of the dominant influences on North American youth culture. Their story begins in the Greenwich Village folk music scene of 1961. Their antihero, Llewyn Davis, is a struggling, couch-surfing folksinger trying to snag a place to sleep each night, grab an occasional studio gig to make enough to scrape by on, and, eventually, secure a record contract that might help him earn enough to live on. The story takes place during that moment just before Bob Dylan became a household name and folk music exploded with politically relevant meaning and exhortations to wake up, get up and go change the world.
During the 1950s folk music had been growing in popularity but had been taken over by clean-cut, wholesome close-harmony groups like The Kingston Trio. These groups were often populated by talented musicians who were fun to listen to, but much of their music bleached the traditional soulful, bluesy influences out of folk music. The stories their songs told weren't so much about mining disasters or laborers ground down by corporate avarice, as many folksongs had been in the 1920s and 1930s (and long before), but were often lighthearted and humorous ditties, middle-class musical slipcovers over what had been a working-class art form. The Christopher Guest mockumentary "A Mighty Wind" is wonderful parody of the era of whitewashed, relentlessly upbeat folksongs. In the 1960s, the novelty folk songs started to be crowded out by grittier songs, compelling tunes and stories that encouraged an end to war, demanded equal rights and celebrated the innate equality of all. Folksingers encouraged outrage over social injustice and turned popular opinion on its head by singing simple tunes in earnest, nasal, sometimes piercing voices full of humorless sincerity. In dramatizing this important time, you might expect important directors to choose a highly political folksinger in the Pete Seeger or Bob Dylan or Joan Baez tradition. But of course the Coen Brothers are too cynical to make movies with political overtones, and their way of storytelling is too perverse and dark to for them to want to follow such an obvious or uplifting road.
Unlike Bob Dylan, Llewyn Davis has no interest in saving humanity, or in telling emotional stories that urge young people to take up causes, or in leading underdogs in nonviolent protest against their oppressors. He isn't worried about subverting the dominant paradigm or taking over the world; he just wants to make a living with his guitar. His more successful contemporaries aren't necessarily more talented—in fact, his scenes show that he has a more subtle and sophisticated innate musicianship—but the pale WASP competitors for singing spots in the Greenwich Village folk clubs are more immediately appealing and accessible, less complex, and easier to relax around. Llewyn is an uptight misanthrope without social graces who is surrounded by Peter, Paul and Mary wannabes and well-scrubbed Irish close-harmony quartets in matching Aran-knit sweaters. One of his best friends, played with an appealingly sweet-voiced earnestness by Justin Timberlake, gets him a gig playing guitar and singing backup on a terrible novelty song about flying into outer space, and you can tell right from the get-go that this cutesy dreck will have much more appeal in the marketplace than the intense, lonely blues-folk that Llewyn plays. His character was in part inspired by real-life folk singer Dave Van Ronk, an admired singer in his day who is little known now, having been completely overshadowed by Bob Dylan in his day.
Llewyn's way of singing is more in tune with the traditional folk songs of the earlier 20th century, the singers people like Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan listened to, the working men and itinerants and down-and-outers who inspired Steinbeck to write "The Grapes of Wrath." Oscar Isaac's style should appeal to those who enjoy the current folk music revival enjoyed by "nu-folk" and "indie-folk" bands like Mumford and Sons and Of Monsters and Men. (Indeed, Marcus Mumford appears in the movie.) But Llewyn has little empathy for causes or people (and notably little luck with animals, either). His lack of ability to connect with anyone else very successfully leads him on a series of frustrating misadventures which usually bring out the worst in him and don't do anyone else much good, either. But he has one thing going for him: he's a good musician. Not that most of the people in the film notice or care about that, but the Coen brothers must have thanked their lucky stars when they found singer/guitarist/actor Oscar Isaac to play the title role, since he has significant hangdog charisma despite his unpleasant behaviors. He has enough self-loathing to make the viewer able to care for him somewhat, despite his consistently bad behavior, but what empathy we can manage for this jerk is dissipated by one scene after another of him failing his friends, strangers and himself. Oscar Isaac has a natural affinity for folk singing, a beautiful way with an acoustic guitar and a naturalistic acting style—he's a real find. It's too bad that his break-out role is such a downer of a character.
There's a vein of meanspiritedness that runs through most of the Coen Brothers' films, even ostensible comedies like this one, which I find off-putting. Joel and Ethan Coen are clever fellows with a strong aesthetic sense; they choose excellent art directors and cinematographers to mold their vision, and their visual sense is powerful. Their film tableaux rival Sam Mendez's in their portrait-like stillness and attention to detail in each frame. However, their sense of humor runs dark, and despicable behavior is played for laughs. They have a nasty lack of empathy for their own characters; they revel in discomfort and like to watch people squirm. The sadistic element in most of their movies generally makes me feel like I'm spending time in the company of sociopaths. "Inside Llewyn Davis" isn't ruthlessly ugly like "Barton Fink," or gleefully grim like "Fargo," or psychopathic like "Burn After Reading" or "No Country for Old Men." Indeed, there's no glee in this film at all. Depression and angst run through Llewyn's story in an unstinting stream. His life is as relentlessly tatty as the dim folk clubs he plays in and the dingy old sofas on which he crashes each night. There's little peasure built into this film for the characters, not to mention the audience that pays to spend two hours watching this nasty young man roll through people's lives, making everyone he touches a little worse off for his influence.
Despite the Coens' usual blunted, blasé attitude toward man's inhumanity to man, there are times when dark humor shines in their work, and when a certain manic, outsized joy springs forth from characters that knocks us all sideways and delights us by its incongruity: George Clooney in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" is the best example, though that cartoony mania appears in the characters of Paul Newman, Charles Durning and Tim Robbins in "The Hudsucker Proxy" as well. Of all their films, I find their version of "True Grit" their strongest film of all: it retains their jaded world-weariness and portrays a dark and nearly lawless society in vivid and ugly detail, but it is redeemed by the pure, earnest sincerity of Hailee Steinfeld's shining portrayal of Mattie Ross. She is out for vengeance, it's true, but her focus is tight and she has no desire to harm anyone along the way unless they block her path. Her respectful politeness and integrity combined with her ruthless purity of vision brings out the last vestiges of honor in the most jaded and self-serving of men. It gave me joy to see the Coens recognize and celebrate the finding of good in a seemingly dessicated heart after dragging their work down such a dirty path for so long, but they appear to have gone back to the comfort of their dank, dark, jaded ways since then.
Unlike biopics about true musical superstars like "Ray" or "Walk the Line" which feature one engaging, compelling performance after another, "Inside Llewyn Davis" recycles its few songs. We see Llewyn play them repeatedly, even using the same patter between tunes. Rather than fashion fresh performances and engage with his audience, he seems stuck in a loop of depressive self-absorption. He angrily turns down the opportunity to sing at a party after being well fed and taken care of by friends, and instead of finding joy in performance or fostering friendship between himself and those who are already disposed to like him, he seems to begrudge people their desires to enjoy and admire his talent. He doesn't want to be fresh or in the moment, and repeatedly turns down opportunities to connect with people. He wants to keep offering the same thing up instead of giving any thought to what others find appealing. He has more talent but less love of humanity than anyone around him except for the jaded folk impressario played by F. Murray Abraham and the abusive, drug-addled jazz musician played by the Coen brothers' regular John Goodman in an ugly, unpleasant performance. His character inspires even the usually sparkling Carey Mulligan to give a growly, foul-mouthed, mirthless performance.
Llewyn's misanthropy keeps him from caring enough to put effort into expanding his repertoire or pleasing his listeners, and we see his chances for happiness grow dimmer by the moment. He is thoughtless, disconnected and seemingly incapable of growth, characteristics which do not make for a particularly enjoyable two hours at the cinema. There is pleasure in the quality of the performances, and there are moments of wit and wry humor, as in every Coen brothers film, but the story itself is deflating and hopeless.
Saturday, February 01, 2014
"Dallas Buyers Club" and the Reinvention of Matthew McConaughey
I'm back! After a multi-year hiatus, I'm coming back to my blog to share my thoughts on the nine films nominated for this year's Academy Award for Best Picture. Let's get right down to business with the first of them: "Dallas Buyers Club."
Though Matthew McConaughey gave good performances in some of his early, serious roles in films like "Amistad" and "Lone Star," he was best known for playing relaxed slacker dudes or for taking off his shirt and greasing back his hair in a series of lightweight, forgettable romantic comedies. When he turned 40, however, he seems to have decided to take himself and his career more seriously, and he's appeared in a several surprisingly gritty, sometimes dark films since 2010, proving that he actually has range, power and considerable talent. His lead performance in the film "Mud" in 2012 really got my attention; his character is wary and careful at times, surprisingly trusting and vulnerable at others, and McConaughey had me caring about his character and wondering where he'd been hiding this subtlety for so long.
That same year he gained even more attention for his brazen, raunchy turn as Dallas, the male strip-club owner in "Magic Mike." He's often played keyed-up, self-confident characters, but here he pulled out all the stops and toyed with his greasy lothario image, turning it up all the way until he was simultaneously charismatic and repellant. McConaughey's cameo as a coked-up financial executive in this year's best picture nominee "The Wolf of Wall Street" was a high point of the film: he goes completely over the top, charming Leo DiCaprio's young stock broker character and drawing him into a web of lawlessness and lascivious living with gusto. His perhaps five short minutes of glory had everyone in the cinema around me giggling at his character's complete and gleeful amorality.
McConaughey's most powerful and moving performance yet is that of Ron Woodroof, a homophobic Texan rodeo rider and electrician diagnosed with late-stage AIDS in this year's best picture nominee "Dallas Buyers Club." His performance in this film is my favorite by an actor this year, despite a slate of excellent performances by Robert Redford for "All Is Lost" (an excellent performance that deserved but did not receive an Oscar nomination), Chewetel Ejiofor in "Twelve Years a Slave," Tom Hanks for "Captain Phillips," Bruce Dern for "Nebraska," another physical and emotional transformation by Christian Bale in "American Hustle" and some outlandish scenery chewing by Leonardo DiCaprio in "The Wolf of Wall Street." In "Dallas Buyers Club," McConaughey progresses from playing a strutting bantam carousing, fighting and drinking his way through one-night stands to a fragile and broken man at the edge of death. In short order he goes from a rail-thin invalid fighting for a few more weeks of life to a successful entrepreneur. He uses his brains, wiles and cockiness to provide himself and others with life-sustaining antiviral drugs even if he has to lie, cheat and travel the world under assumed identities to do it. In two hours we see his character (who is based on a real man of the same name) at turns showing vulnerability, rage, total self-absorption and touching selflessness. He's charming, he's disgusting, he's both ordinary and extraordinary, cowardly and self-serving for a time, then outrageously brave minutes later.
While the writing and direction are strong, it's the intensity and sheer force of will behind McConaughey's performance that makes the film hum. We must forget the usually buff, slick and confident ladies' man who comes to mind when we hear his name, and the moment we set eyes on his emaciated form (McConaughey lost fifty pounds for this role) and see the desperation behind his cocksureness, we believe his story and him. His face and character reflect the tiniest changes; he can be a powerhouse of grandstanding explosivity when a role requires it, but the delicious surprise of the past few years has been seeing how much he has learned to internalize a moment and let us see it register on his face without even a word.
Much has also been made of Jared Leto's supporting performance as a transgender woman named Rayon who is herself seductive and charismatic, but is also a drug addict with late-stage AIDS. Like McConaughey's Ron, Leto's Rayon required huge physical transformation; Leto became scarily thin himself in order to play her. His performance is lovely; there's a languid, drugged-out quality to Rayon, but there's also a warm and motherly aspect to her. She is unreliable but she nurtures to the best of her ability, and while vulnerable, she also has a steel core to her that appeals to Ron. Leto plays her with a slightly stoned, rather campy quality that fits her character but must walk a sharp edge between being jokey and being realistic. We must believe that she is real and at the same time a made-up construct, a woman in a man's body who is dealing with a very real drug addiction and a terminal illness who is at times shockingly lucid about it and at others is dreamy and not entirely present. Leto, who first gained fame as the gorgeous but none-too-bright love interest of Claire Danes' character on the short-lived but enjoyable 1990s TV series "My So-Called Life," has never shied away from difficult characters or extreme portrayals; he played a heroin addict in "Requiem for a Dream," and played John Lennon's killer, Mark David Chapman, in the film "Chapter 27," for which he gained over 60 pounds and became all but unrecognizable. He has also had success as the lead singer of his rock band Thirty Seconds to Mars for the past 15 years. In a recent interview with NPR's talk show host Terry Gross on her radio show, Fresh Air, Leto came across as affable but enigmatic; it was often difficult to tell when he was being sincere and when he was pulling Terry's leg. However, his commitment to and respect for his characters was as clear in his discussion with her as it is in each of his performances. Like Matthew McConaughey, Leto has a relaxed, casual slacker-like aspect to him that makes him appear not to take life too seriously, but the quality of both men's performances and their descriptions of the intense and earnest preparation that goes into their roles belies their apparent insouciance.
Four years ago I found McConaughey an annoying, unctuous presence who appeared to be coasting on his looks and well-worn charm; I now find him one of the freshest and most appealing actors of his generation. He has long been a charismatic figure, and he uses his Texan drawl to wonderful effect, drawing out his words and phrases, letting syllables flow over his tongue like honey in an slow and steady stream when he needs to flatter or cajole. He has a soft, low, lilting voice that reads as both manly and intimate, which is probably why the American Beef Council used him as the voice for their "What's for Dinner" ad campaign for several years and also helps explain his appearance in so many romantic comedies over the past decade.
McConaughey's persona has long been seen as shorthand for confident sexiness, and for many that quickly became tiresome. He can have an easy, seemingly effortless way about him that makes him look as if he's not trying very hard, but in a film like "Mud" we see that he can use such mannerisms to fool the characters around him while letting us in on his private thoughts. In "Dallas Buyers Club" much was also made of his ability to misdirect characters with his smoothness and confidence while occasionally showing us moments of desperation or tenderness. He makes it all look easy; that's why he's a star. He's already won a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Ron Woodroof; I predict that he'll take home the Academy Award for Best Actor this year as well.
Though Matthew McConaughey gave good performances in some of his early, serious roles in films like "Amistad" and "Lone Star," he was best known for playing relaxed slacker dudes or for taking off his shirt and greasing back his hair in a series of lightweight, forgettable romantic comedies. When he turned 40, however, he seems to have decided to take himself and his career more seriously, and he's appeared in a several surprisingly gritty, sometimes dark films since 2010, proving that he actually has range, power and considerable talent. His lead performance in the film "Mud" in 2012 really got my attention; his character is wary and careful at times, surprisingly trusting and vulnerable at others, and McConaughey had me caring about his character and wondering where he'd been hiding this subtlety for so long.
That same year he gained even more attention for his brazen, raunchy turn as Dallas, the male strip-club owner in "Magic Mike." He's often played keyed-up, self-confident characters, but here he pulled out all the stops and toyed with his greasy lothario image, turning it up all the way until he was simultaneously charismatic and repellant. McConaughey's cameo as a coked-up financial executive in this year's best picture nominee "The Wolf of Wall Street" was a high point of the film: he goes completely over the top, charming Leo DiCaprio's young stock broker character and drawing him into a web of lawlessness and lascivious living with gusto. His perhaps five short minutes of glory had everyone in the cinema around me giggling at his character's complete and gleeful amorality.
McConaughey's most powerful and moving performance yet is that of Ron Woodroof, a homophobic Texan rodeo rider and electrician diagnosed with late-stage AIDS in this year's best picture nominee "Dallas Buyers Club." His performance in this film is my favorite by an actor this year, despite a slate of excellent performances by Robert Redford for "All Is Lost" (an excellent performance that deserved but did not receive an Oscar nomination), Chewetel Ejiofor in "Twelve Years a Slave," Tom Hanks for "Captain Phillips," Bruce Dern for "Nebraska," another physical and emotional transformation by Christian Bale in "American Hustle" and some outlandish scenery chewing by Leonardo DiCaprio in "The Wolf of Wall Street." In "Dallas Buyers Club," McConaughey progresses from playing a strutting bantam carousing, fighting and drinking his way through one-night stands to a fragile and broken man at the edge of death. In short order he goes from a rail-thin invalid fighting for a few more weeks of life to a successful entrepreneur. He uses his brains, wiles and cockiness to provide himself and others with life-sustaining antiviral drugs even if he has to lie, cheat and travel the world under assumed identities to do it. In two hours we see his character (who is based on a real man of the same name) at turns showing vulnerability, rage, total self-absorption and touching selflessness. He's charming, he's disgusting, he's both ordinary and extraordinary, cowardly and self-serving for a time, then outrageously brave minutes later.
While the writing and direction are strong, it's the intensity and sheer force of will behind McConaughey's performance that makes the film hum. We must forget the usually buff, slick and confident ladies' man who comes to mind when we hear his name, and the moment we set eyes on his emaciated form (McConaughey lost fifty pounds for this role) and see the desperation behind his cocksureness, we believe his story and him. His face and character reflect the tiniest changes; he can be a powerhouse of grandstanding explosivity when a role requires it, but the delicious surprise of the past few years has been seeing how much he has learned to internalize a moment and let us see it register on his face without even a word.
Much has also been made of Jared Leto's supporting performance as a transgender woman named Rayon who is herself seductive and charismatic, but is also a drug addict with late-stage AIDS. Like McConaughey's Ron, Leto's Rayon required huge physical transformation; Leto became scarily thin himself in order to play her. His performance is lovely; there's a languid, drugged-out quality to Rayon, but there's also a warm and motherly aspect to her. She is unreliable but she nurtures to the best of her ability, and while vulnerable, she also has a steel core to her that appeals to Ron. Leto plays her with a slightly stoned, rather campy quality that fits her character but must walk a sharp edge between being jokey and being realistic. We must believe that she is real and at the same time a made-up construct, a woman in a man's body who is dealing with a very real drug addiction and a terminal illness who is at times shockingly lucid about it and at others is dreamy and not entirely present. Leto, who first gained fame as the gorgeous but none-too-bright love interest of Claire Danes' character on the short-lived but enjoyable 1990s TV series "My So-Called Life," has never shied away from difficult characters or extreme portrayals; he played a heroin addict in "Requiem for a Dream," and played John Lennon's killer, Mark David Chapman, in the film "Chapter 27," for which he gained over 60 pounds and became all but unrecognizable. He has also had success as the lead singer of his rock band Thirty Seconds to Mars for the past 15 years. In a recent interview with NPR's talk show host Terry Gross on her radio show, Fresh Air, Leto came across as affable but enigmatic; it was often difficult to tell when he was being sincere and when he was pulling Terry's leg. However, his commitment to and respect for his characters was as clear in his discussion with her as it is in each of his performances. Like Matthew McConaughey, Leto has a relaxed, casual slacker-like aspect to him that makes him appear not to take life too seriously, but the quality of both men's performances and their descriptions of the intense and earnest preparation that goes into their roles belies their apparent insouciance.
Four years ago I found McConaughey an annoying, unctuous presence who appeared to be coasting on his looks and well-worn charm; I now find him one of the freshest and most appealing actors of his generation. He has long been a charismatic figure, and he uses his Texan drawl to wonderful effect, drawing out his words and phrases, letting syllables flow over his tongue like honey in an slow and steady stream when he needs to flatter or cajole. He has a soft, low, lilting voice that reads as both manly and intimate, which is probably why the American Beef Council used him as the voice for their "What's for Dinner" ad campaign for several years and also helps explain his appearance in so many romantic comedies over the past decade.
McConaughey's persona has long been seen as shorthand for confident sexiness, and for many that quickly became tiresome. He can have an easy, seemingly effortless way about him that makes him look as if he's not trying very hard, but in a film like "Mud" we see that he can use such mannerisms to fool the characters around him while letting us in on his private thoughts. In "Dallas Buyers Club" much was also made of his ability to misdirect characters with his smoothness and confidence while occasionally showing us moments of desperation or tenderness. He makes it all look easy; that's why he's a star. He's already won a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Ron Woodroof; I predict that he'll take home the Academy Award for Best Actor this year as well.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
