Older men do it better
No, I haven’t seen The Artist nor a lot of the other films nominated for this year’s Oscars. Hell, I haven’t really seen a lot of movies lately, nominated or not. (Not even Hugo or Midnight in Paris.) They’re probably great. Their names come up in conversation so much either because it’s assumed that I’ve seen them or, right after finding out that I haven’t (voices usually turn shrill at this point), that I must really drop everything right there and then and go see them at once. It gets so tiresome thinking about everything that I’m supposedly missing that I get too worn out to get around to watching them. And it really can’t be all that great if you can encapsulate your enthusiasm for any film in a series of tweets so soon after watching, can it?
Movies, like a lot of great art, should take a while to settle. They stay with you much longer that way. You might decide you like them at once but it’s preferable that the reasons you do so should stay inchoate for a bit. It’s more enjoyable not to know exactly why a particular film just hit the spot. It’s more rewarding to gradually work out how it did it and why. Admittedly, it’s rare to see any movie at the cinema these days that does just that: leaving you knowing that you’ve witnessed something special that perhaps changes or, at the very least, makes you reconsider your view of what makes a movie exceptional. It’s even more rare that that can be said about the performance of one actor.
Gary Oldman’s turn as John Le Carre’s aging master spy George Smiley in Tomas Alfredson’s adaptation of Cold War classic Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is one such example. It’s a quiet performance but no less powerful for it. Film critic Philbert Dy has pointed out that it’s just welcome to see a character thinking and not just acting or doing “stuff” in a film, and in a thriller at that. It also goes against what we consider as good acting. He hardly says anything we’re well into the film before he actually utters a word of dialogue and even then they’re not lines that are particularly memorable. In fact, he spends most of the film sitting and listening to everyone else talk.
Consider that Oldman is the actor who said that he accepted the role of Dracula just so he could say that one line, “I have crossed oceans of time to find you.” This is the same actor who’s made a career of playing psychopaths so damn well in different pitches and guises that he can do it as a lead (Sid & Nancy), supporting (Leon: The Professional) or even as a cameo (True Romance) and still leave a distinct impression. With that knowledge (and that can’t be helped whenever an actor has a considerable filmography like Oldman does) it lends his portrayal of Smiley an added depth. After all, there’s no doubt that Smiley is mad. (He could’ve been a Sid Vicious when he was younger.) But like Oldman, he just got older.
Oldman is (forgive the pun) playing an older man. George Clooney does that too in The Descendants, but really it’s still recognizably George and, in George years in films, that’s still a lot younger than his actual age. Ditto Brad Pitt. Smiley by comparison is an ancient. Despite the fact that the most of the characters in the movie are older than your usual cinematic ensemble (which by today’s standards should be around 12) he seems older than all of them. He’s seen too much, done too much, and perhaps done too little that he’s particularly proud of. Unlike Clooney and Pitt who play their characters burdened with their (un)remarkable pasts, Oldman plays Smiley actually carrying his history with him throughout the film. The strain is there but he manages it with style, like you would expect an Englishman to do. Closer to home, Oldman’s Smiley is much like Juan Ponce Enrile’s performance in the current impeachment trial: wizened, peerless, dignified but still dangerous if not a bit batty. You know he’s capable of doing a younger man’s job if it came down to it.
Oldman should win the Oscar. If he does, that’s something that men should rejoice over. (It’s mostly women that really want that French guy to win, or Ryan Gosling if he was nominated.) If he doesn’t, then we’ll take the actor’s own stated personal (and shortest) prayer as our gospel: F**k ‘em.
