It hurts so damn much to lose Philip Seymour Hoffman. Strange thing to consider, given that movies (even difficult ones) are at least partially an escape, a leisure activity engaged in when we want or need not to occupy ourselves with the business of our lives. And they’re a lot longer than pop songs, and a lot more expensive to produce than novels, and a lot more time-consuming for a viewer to interact with and process (in the literal sense at least) than visual art, which to me at least makes it feel like more of an indulgence to make time in my life for them, to the point where I sometimes reproach myself for my cinephilia. But the best movies are the ones so artful, so beautiful, so sharply written and conceived and performed and what have you, that they’re actively worth the effort, the investment, the time that might have been spent doing something more difficult or altruistic or lucrative than sitting down to watch a movie. Some are impactful enough that they feel like major life events by themselves. The best of them stay with you and become part of your life in a way that makes them indispensable. And great actors do a huge amount of the work in making movies worth caring about and investing in—their creations can be so vivid, so rich, so revealing of truths about human nature, so *valuable* in so many ways that of COURSE we miss them when they’re gone. Same as with other great artists. It hurts as though we knew them. And if you’re like me, with a soft spot for the underdog and the iconoclast and the oddball, losing character actors hurts the worst—because their job is to create characters so real that it’s as if we DID know them. That’s what they do. So it sucks really really hard to lose Hoffman, who would have had who knows how many more indelible characters in him. It feels like he’s left an unfillable void, and I miss him like hell already. And it makes me think of James Gandolfini, and Dennis Farina, and Maximilian Schell, and Natasha Richardson, and Richard Farnsworth, and Juanita Moore, and Katrin Cartlidge, and Lupe Ontiveros, and Ossie Davis, and J.T. Walsh (to name only the ones I can immediately think of who’ve recently gone), and I miss them all too. They made the movies better, richer, more beautiful. Wiser uses of our two hours than if lesser actors had played their roles or if they had never existed. And so I am moved to remember them, and to salute the performers still living who encapsulated their ethic, their devotion to making the movies better. Many have marveled already at how Hoffman rose from unshowy character work to turn into something akin to a movie star, and not all of my favourites are likely to do that. But I love them all, and I’m so grateful for them. I’m talking about Patricia Clarkson and Ray Winstone, Stellan Skarsgård and Hope Davis, Charles S. Dutton and Samantha Morton, Isabelle Huppert and Delroy Lindo. Emily Mortimer and Paul Bettany, Alan Rickman and Gina McKee, Laura Linney and Steve Buscemi, Emily Watson and Luis Guzmán. Dylan Baker and Sally Hawkins, Viola Davis and Koji Yakusho, Peter Mullan and Molly Parker, Maggie Cheung and Rade Serbedzija, Jane Adams and Robert Wisdom, M. Emmet Walsh and Loretta Devine. Tilda Swinton and Daniel Auteuil, Graham Greene and Sandra Oh, Kelly Macdonald and Max von Sydow, Robert Carlyle and Celia Weston, Anthony Mackie and Olivia Williams, Alfre Woodard and Guy Pearce, Bill Nighy and Sharen Davis, Anthony LaPaglia and Olympia Dukakis, Shirley Henderson and Alfred Molina. Paul Giamatti and Marianne Jean-Baptiste, David Strathairn and Taraji P. Henson, Om Puri and Sarah Polley, Tom Wilkinson and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Ving Rhames and Charlotte Rampling, April Grace and Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Archie Panjabi and Stephen Tobolowsky, Edie Falco and Nasseeruddin Shah, Janet McTeer and Campbell Scott, Hiam Abbass and Gary Farmer, Shohreh Aghdashloo and David Thewlis, Juliet Stevenson and Jeffrey Wright, Imelda Staunton and Steve Zahn. Derek Jacobi and Julie Delpy, Giancarlo Esposito and Sarita Choudhury, Donald Sutherland and Anna Friel, Mathieu Amalric and Robin Wright, Pruitt Taylor Vince and Charlayne Woodard. Mary-Louise Parker and Elias Koteas, Anupam Kher and Lena Headey, Brendan Gleeson and Judy Davis, David Morse and Gong Li, Saïd Taghmaoui and Jennifer Ehle. Lena Endre and Bruce Greenwood, Richard Jenkins and Kerry Washington, Miranda Richardson and Timothy Spall, Jane Horrocks and Willem Dafoe. There are so very very many others that if I tried to list even just all the actors I know of who’ve left a personal impression upon me with one or another of their performances, I’d be here for the entire length of a movie. All of them have given performances artful, beautiful, meaningful enough that they made me glad to have spent the time I could have spent doing something else, something outwardly noble or productive, watching their movie instead. They bring art into the world, art great and true, in the spirit of PSH. I feel compelled now to honour them.
Posted on: Mon, 03 Feb 2014 23:03:19 +0000
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