January 29, 2007
Brando
Stanley Crouch analyzes him - I honestly don't know if I've ever read anything more insightful and thought-provoking about Brando, and what he really is doing. It's a very nuanced take. Here's part of the piece ... but most certainly read the whole thing.
Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), like any superior film, benefits greatly from the DVD format and the revisions it makes possible. The inclusion of the experimental gold and sepia tone, which was removed from the print shortly after the film was released, allows the audience of our moment to see a film that most did not when it was available in theaters. We now have director John Huston's vision intact. We also have Brando in one of the boldest performances ever given by an actor on screen. What validates that last claim is the exemplary courage of Brando's egoless deep sea dive into his character, Maj. Penderton, whose desperate and arrogantly veiled pathos tellingly overflows twice. The character's central problem is his feeling of inadequacy, of being less that he should, and his terrible loneliness because of the difficulty of handling his attraction to men.Brando reaches a nearly matchless desolation in the first instance of overflowing when his attempt to secretly equal his wife's control of her stallion is thwarted by the horse's power, which he cannot meet with the necessary combination of confident ease and equally confident force. When the stallion smells his fear, it is spooked into running through blueberry bushes that tear the animal's flesh and cut the face of the rider. The humiliation felt by a man facing the terrible pain of his limitations is far more intimate than cutting embarrassment?Brando evokes a moment of horrifying pathos. One thinks of Olivier's well-remembered theater cry after Oedipus has plucked his eyes out, for which the actor used the image of a seal shrieking when its tongue is stuck to the ice until it's clubbed to death by hunters. In the case of Brando's Maj. Penderton, the feeling is banked neither by having a tantrum nor by brutalizing the stallion with a tree branch; the violent action only deepens his sorrow to such a degree that the failed horseman slowly descends into apologetic sobs that cannot be held down. If a more shattering moment is available on film, I would like to know what it is.
This is brilliant analysis. Detailed, incisive ... One of the problems with most commentary about acting is that there is absolutely no understanding of the degree of difficulty ... or the rarity of certain things.
I've said it before - but it would be like a sportswriter who has no idea why a triple play is important and doesn't give it its due, for degree of difficulty - or the sheer fact of how rare one is.
Hey, that's a great idea! Members of the Academy, should submit two scores for each nominee, execution of the role and degree of difficulty, just like they do in diving!
Somebody should come up with some examples.
Posted by: JFH at January 29, 2007 2:53 PMFirst, Sylvester Stallone, then, Marlon Brando. My God--where might she go next?? It could be anywhere. The unrecognized subtleties of Don Knotts portrayal of Barney Fife? Several essays on Harpo Marx? Hoffman and Voight in Midnight Cowboy? Sidney Poitier in A Patch of Blue? It could be anything. Don't you just love her?
Posted by: DBW at January 29, 2007 3:49 PMDBW - hahahahahahaha Crazy!
I haven't even reached the tipping point on the Stallone thing. We've got a ways to go before this one gets out of my system.
Sheila, I'm curious - why do you think that is the case? Do you think that "degree of difficulty" in acting is something that can be pinned down as easily as the importance/rarity of a triple play in baseball, or is it more a case of those writing about film not being as knowledgable as they should be about acting?
One reason that I ask is that while I'm not a baseball player, I've watched hundreds (if not thousands) of baseball games in my life, and feel that I have a solid understanding of what is important and what is not - and could defend myself in an argument. But I've also watched hundreds (if not thousands) of movies in my life, and I don't know that I could even come close to expressing a reasonable definition of degree of difficulty. I know what I like and trust my instincts as to what makes good actors good, but there's no way I could explain it.
Posted by: Jeff at January 29, 2007 3:59 PMJeff - I think it's hard to talk about acting and why something is good. It's hard for people who actually are in the field and it's hard for people who aren't.
I'm like you. I see something and I know: that is good. I like that.
And it's fun for me to push myself to see if I can't express WHY it is good. WHY is Stallone good in Rocky? I like to really look at something closely.
The reviewer who can say: THIS is why this performance is good ... is a rare one. (And again: this is all subjective - so that's one thing - a triple play is agreed upon as a rare thing - and there's no mistaking a triple play.) HOWEVER - I do agree that there is a level of skill (or natural talent) that is NOT a subjective thing. But it's when you get down to trying to say WHY that you get into trouble.
But if you read what Stanley Crouch writes about Brando - you'll see what I'm getting at.
It's not that he can express explosive rage - which is often the Brando cliche. Trashing the apartment in Streetcar. Any actor can do that. Rage is usually very easy for male actors to tap into. But the other? The little-boy angst underneath? The insecurity? The terror that Stanley isn't even aware of?
I can count the actors on one hand who can express that - and not make it look like they're working too hard.
So maybe "degree of difficulty" is not a good way to say it - because any actor who shows me how hard he is working, is not doing a good job.
In my opinion - Russell Crowe was showing us how hard he had worked in Beautiful Mind. He was good - but I felt it was slightly mannerred, and not fully convincing because of that. Whereas his performances in Master and Commander, LA Confidential, and Romper Stomper are pretty much as good as acting gets - in terms of having it look natural, real, and for me to forget there is an actor up there.
But there's another thing - and this is a beef I have with some folks who read this blog as well: Actors aren't respected. It is not understood what actors do. And actors, as a people, are not respected - and never have been. It's seen as a vaguely shameful embarrassing thing to want to do ... to get up in front of people and pretend to be someone else. Now this is fine - I want no part of the 'respectable' world - I'm not interested in fitting in, or whatever ... but I think that kind of attitude bleeds over into how acting is discussed. (This is also different from how sports is discussed - so the analogy I made is not perfect).
The REAL criticism is saved for directors, or scripts ... because, in general, critics know how to talk about that stuff. Actors not so much.
However: what IS it about Cary Grant? What is he ACTUALLY doing?? Pauline Kael, in her huge essay, knows how to deconstruct it.
You may not agree with her conclusions - but it's still - a way of talking about acting that admits that it is its own artform, and there are those who are spectacular at it. For such and such a reason.
Stanley Crouch wrote an essay about The Searchers - I think I linked to it here somewhere - and he pulls out of the film one gesture that John Wayne makes - he breaks it down, and ends up saying it is one of the greatest gestures in all cinematic history.
Now that takes a good eye. You have to be attuned to looking at actors as creatures who do things that other people cannot do. A layman will scoff, "John Wayne just played himself."
Now this is an ignorant statement. On many levels.
First of all - it assumes that it is easy to play yourself. This is not the case.
Second of all - it assumes that it is BAD to "play yourselfF". That somehow actors are supposed to be able to play ANYthing. This is an ignorant opinion.
Third of all - it assumes that John Wayne is always the same in every single movie. This is CLEARLY not the case - if you have a good eye and you know what you're looking for.
So a very common statement: So and so just played himself - is based on completely incorrect assumptions - and yet it is parroted about - not just by 'civilians' but by critics - as though it is true.
Posted by: red at January 29, 2007 4:15 PMAnd the sports analogy is not really accurate - because you can look at a speed gun and see that a fastball is going 98 mph - and you know that that is quite an accomplishment.
There are some assumptions made (not just by critics) about what makes a good performance.
I think the assumption that if an actor puts on a funny nose or plays a mentally challenged person or a crazy person - that is good acting - is incorrect.
I think a performance like Bill Murray's in Lost in Translation is FAR superior than what Crowe did in Beautiful Mind. (And I love Russell Crowe - I just thought that was a hugely over-praised performance.)
But what Bill Murray did in Lost in Translation was quiet - between the lines - it rested in his silences - he told us EVERYthing but he showed us almost nothing - he completely messed with his own persona - and yet you never EVER caught him "working" or straining for effect.
This is just my sensibility, obviously - but that's the kind of thing I'm talking about.
To me - Crowe in Beautiful Mind was a dime a dozen. But Murray in Lost in Translation was one of a kind.
Posted by: red at January 29, 2007 4:18 PMSheila, some quick hits:
- I get what you mean with the example of Russell Crowe trying too hard - whenever we're watching a movie at home, whenever it looks as if someone is trying a little too hard to demonstrate how brilliant they are, we'll cry out, "ACTING!" a la Jon Lovitz' old "Master Thespian" character from Saturday Night Live.
- Maybe a more apt comparison would be with folks who complain about musical artists that "they all sound the same." As recently as last Friday, someone said that to me about Bruce Springsteen. Well, sure - there's a common thread throughout the work just like there's a common thread throughout the work of Cary Grant. But to simplify it to the level of "all sounds the same?" Give me a break!
- The worst "look at me, I'm acting" performance for me has always been Dustin Hoffman's in "Rain Man." I never could understand the kudos for that one. And yet, I loved him in "Tootsie." But I haven't taken the time to analyze why.
Posted by: Jeff at January 29, 2007 4:30 PMHahaha yeah, as though there's any crime in having a style.
It's STUPID. It's a stupid opinion. And yet look how common it is. It's everywhere. that tells me that "criticism" is a dying art if the majority of the people pracaticing it have no idea what they are talking about. You can tell Mozart from Beethoven - because they were different and they had different styles. Does that mean that Mozart should have "branched out" and tried to write like Beethoven?
It's moronic.
And it's unattractive when you see an actor going for an effect. Of course you need to take risks - I really applaud an actor taking risks, even if it's not 100% successful (that's another thing about "degree of difficulty" - I applaud an actor who is willing to really take some risks.)
- I watched Cop Land this weekend. And I think what Stallone did in that film is one of the most courageous pieces of acting I'd seen in a long time - because of the RISK it involved. People who blow off the risk, or who have some kind of buried resentment towards Stallone becuase he's rich or successful - (and I think that's a lot of what goes on with the ignorant chip-on-shoulder comments about actors - there's some kind of class resentment there) - but anyway, I look at what he did in that movie, and what he had to lose ... and I see a strong and a brave person - WAY more brave than someone like DeNiro - who is used to taking risks like that. Maybe not anymore - or not so often - but you know what I mean.
An actor MUST be loved. Otherwise you don't have a career. Stallone was willing to do something that would totally not please the Rambo fans who made him a millionaire. That takes guts.
And he was damn good, too. But still: it's the RISK I really admire.
Posted by: red at January 29, 2007 4:37 PMAnd yay for Tootsie. What a great performance. You just fell in love with the guy.
He was really good recently in Stranger than Fiction too - looks like he was having a BLAST.
Posted by: red at January 29, 2007 4:38 PMOh and yes, spare me from "actors".
My friend Mitchell and I used to laugh at an actor in our department because he was like that Jon Lovitz character and he was always booming about with a big THEATAH voice - he always had these carefully placed fingers - in a thespian pose - like his hands were SO not relaxed. He never was recognizable as a human being on stage. He was always an ACTOR!
Mitchell and I used to snicker about his "brilliant finger work". "Love his finger work." "Did you check out his finger work in that second scene?" "Brilliant."
Posted by: red at January 29, 2007 5:17 PMI can't believe that nobody here has actually caved into the temptation to write "STEELLLLAAA!" yet.
Posted by: Emily at January 29, 2007 6:06 PMSo now you dive into John Wayne a little. You're just toying with my emotions at this point.
On a serious note--to me, it's sometimes as simple as whether I am even aware of the acting, or not. It is really quite amazing that you can be watching a famous actor, someone you have seen in many roles/movies, yet they are able to get you to suspend disbelief, and dive right into the new "reality." Anytime I become aware of the acting, for whatever reason, the suspension of disbelief becomes more difficult--if not impossible. There have been many highly praised performances that I thought weren't really that great because I was too often aware of the acting. The old claim that "John Wayne just played himself all the time" really bugs me, because it's not true, and, as you said, it isn't that damn easy to "Play yourself." I remember when Clint Eastwood was derided as an actor who "just played himself," or "just played the same character all the time." You don't hear that so much anymore. As you said, performances like Bill Murray's in Lost in Translation might not be as immediately apparent in their skill, but those are the kinds of performances that really get me--much more than someone playing a cripple, or Tourette's sufferer, or any of that kind of thing. Not to say that there haven't been some great performances of that nature.
Posted by: DBW at January 29, 2007 9:26 PMWell, it won't have the same effect NOW, Emily, but I was going to type SHEEILLLAAAAA!!!!
I think some of the resentment people have about actors stems from the idiot feeling, "Aw, I can do that." Really? You can bring a whole person to life? You can know fifty times more about him than ever gets revealed on the screen, and let the audience know that it's all there without ever showing any of it? You can forget that there's a camera and techies and lights and mics and rigging and marks on the floor that you have to hit without looking? You can be alone in the middle of that coordinated madness? You can communicate to the world as if you're not communicating to anyone but you and God?
You can do that?
Posted by: Nightfly at January 29, 2007 9:37 PMNightfly--I don't know about others, but the only time I was ever coerced into trying to act before a crowd(with encouragement such as, "Oh, you're so natural, you'll be great, look how great you were last Tuesday in class,etc)...well, I've seen pieces of iron and steel that were less rigid and capable of more emotional expression, and I have seen actual deer in-the-headlights who looked less frightened and nervous. I was incapable of forgetting myself. It ain't easy.
Posted by: DBW at January 29, 2007 9:53 PMDBW - oh, I know. I did dramatic pairs in HS - Oh, you'll be great, etc. Well, not so much. Hammed my way through one half of a scene from The Prisoner of Second Avenue, and the only thing that prevented me from finishing the same way was FORGETTING MY LINES. I was halfway through "Oh, I don't know... It's the apartment, the city. It's everything!" I remember it NOW, DAMMIT, but not then. I wanted to die. I still get flushed thinking about it and it was 18 years ago.
That's why I'm so snarky watching stuff like Idol - the total disbelief they have when they're told they're not up to professional snuff, even when they're plainly gawdawful. Like, you've never heard yourself? You thought they were lying when they all shouted you down on the subway? When people took money from YOU on street corners, or left you coupons and old dry cleaner stubs? When people threw shoes and yelled "Damn cat!"
People who are eh-eh realize they're eh-eh. People who are horrible think they're Motown incarnate.
Posted by: Nightfly at January 29, 2007 10:42 PM//People who are horrible think they're Motown incarnate.//
Oh my God. That is just so perfectly true.
Posted by: red at January 30, 2007 10:07 AMDBW - It's funny about the whole "play yourself" thing. Cary Grant (who also had the same bullshit thrown at him) had a great thing to say about that. I'll see if I can track it down. (First of all: how on earth you could see Bringing Up Baby, Notorious, and North by Northwest and ever say that he was "just playing himself" is beyond me. That's just lazy critiquing as far as I'm concerned.)
Nightfly - along that note - member when I wrote that thing about Will Ferrell in Stranger than Fiction and how good I thought he was? You made a great comment about the critic in whatever paper it was saying it was a "boring" performance - or whatever - and the critic completely missed the point that Ferrell was playing a boring person. He was being appropriate to the PART. He submerged his own natural propensities - to be funny, a clown, to be out of control, go for the joke - and instead became this uptight totally submissive boring kind of guy. It was amazing acting.
But that critic (like the majority of critics) wouldn't know good acting when they saw it.
To them, Nicole Kidman putting on a prosthetic nose in The Hours is good acting.
Not that it's NOT ... but that's just the most obvious manifestation of "acting". To miss the subtlety of what Ferrell was doing - is just ignorant. If you don't LIKE the performance, then fine - back it up ... but don't miss the whole point of it - and then chalk it up to Ferrell's inadequacies.
Posted by: red at January 30, 2007 10:16 AMEmily - this is for you:
hey STELLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Posted by: red at January 30, 2007 10:28 AMDBW:
Here's the quote from Cary Grant about playing yourself:
To play yourself -- your true self -- is the hardest thing in the world. Watch people at a party. They're playing themselves ... but nine out of ten times the image they adopt for themselves is the wrong one.In my earlier career I patterned myself on a combination of Englishmen -- AE Matthews, Noel Coward, and Jack Buchanan, who impressed me as a character actor. He always looked so natural. I tried to copy men I thought were sophisticated and well dressed like Douglas Fairbanks or Cole Porter. And Freddie Lonsdale, the British playwright, always had an engaging answer for everything.
I cultivated raising one eyebrow and tried to imitate those who put their hands in their pockets with a certain amount of ease and nonchalance. But at times, when I put my hand in my trouser pocket with what I imagined was great elegance, I couldn't get the blinking thing out again because it dripped from nervous perspiration!
It's that first paragraph that really gets me. it's not easy for NORMAL people to "play themselves" - try doing it on camera with 100 sweaty grips and gaffers watching you.
Posted by: red at January 30, 2007 10:31 AMAs usual with Cary Grant, that is perfect. We struggle to play ourselves in our own lives. Try doing it with a camera magnifying your every tic and motion. Sure, that's real easy. Think how difficult it can be just to do nothing if several people are observing you. That little exercise was a real eye-opener for me. Where do I put my hands? How do I stand "naturally?" What do I do with my face? Those few people who are able to portray other characters with the unaffected ease that we all have when lying on the couch watching a movie by ourselves amaze me. That's why I always prize "naturalness" in actors more than displays of overt acting technique.
Posted by: DBW at January 30, 2007 10:42 AMI only ever took one acting class and that was just for the fun of it, so all I know about it is what I can or cannot believe in terms of what I'm seeing with my own eyes. I don't think I could ever really properly analyze an acting performance outside of whether or not I immediately bought the actor as believable in their role. But critics, people who should KNOW better, far too often have their arrogant heads shoved so deep up their posterior that they cannot discern between bad acting and bad writing (and that's something I know and can recognize inside and out) or directing. There are some scripts and some dialogue that even the finest actor in the world can't deliver without coming off dished.
Posted by: Emily at January 30, 2007 11:48 AMThere are some scripts and some dialogue that even the finest actor in the world can't deliver without coming off dished.
Oh, hells yeah, Emily. I always remember Harrison Ford's gripe to George Lucas on the set of the first Star Wars: "You can write this s*** but you can't SAY it." And it goes along in a way with what DBW's been saying, and with Sheila's quote from Cary Grant about being self-conscious on camera - it's tough to forget yourself while writing, too. The writer has to submerge into the character and speak with that voice, while still having the whole work speak with his own.
And that's why when writing is really moving the characters take on a life of their own. It's not just a figure of speech. They really DO resist having words put in their mouth, and show a great stubborness about what they feel like they want to be doing, instead of what the author feels they ought to be doing. Sometimes the character is even right. I love it when a story does that - it's so much like discovering what's happening next, coming up with a description worthy of the action rather than being the guy "making it all up." It's even flattering, in a way. I don't really feel like I can take credit for it. Certainly I didn't know it was about to happen.
Sheila - that "Stranger Than Fiction" review ran in the Newark Star-Ledger; Matt Zoller Seitz' old employer, as I recall. They often have that problem now that he's not around. That was a great thread. I always enjoy it when you guys start talking about craft and good critique.
Posted by: Nightfly at January 30, 2007 1:52 PMOH - and BTW, sometimes the character is WRONG, too - but the writer still has to let him have it his way, and not give in to fixing it from fear that people will think less of his writing.
Posted by: Nightfly at January 30, 2007 1:54 PM