 THE TRIPLE SHADOW: A REVIEW OF DAVID EGGERS' "NOSFERATU" Nosferatu (2024) Written and Directed by Robert Eggers Starring Bill Skarsgard, Nicholas Hoult, and Lily-Rose Depp Nosferatu *** There’s always a bit of a disjunction between the critics and audiences on films—except for a handful of stone-cold masterpieces. That disjunction seems greatest, however, when it comes to horror. The critics typically look askance at the genre’s most unabashedly fan-friendly outings, while the gorehounds roll their eyes when encountering a supposedly elevated product. A horror film can unite the cinephiles and Fangoria fans—if only for a couple of hours in the darkness of the theater. But again, that only happens when the work in question is an absolute masterpiece, like, say The Exorcist. Or if the work in question has some flaws around the edges, but shows such great verve and originality we fall in love with it as much as forgive it. An American Werewolf in London would certainly fit that bill, being as it’s one of the few horror-comedies that actually works. Robert Eggers is an incredibly talented director and his version of Nosferatu (the third I know of) is an incredibly accomplished film. Its technical achievements are a sight to behold, and the performances by the actors are all first-rate. That said, it is not a masterpiece, and exists uneasily in the realm between art and shlock. Many horror fans will admire it, but I fear, like me, they will also be left cold by its approach, its stateliness, the way—even in its supposedly most elemental moments—it holds us at a remove. Watching it, I felt like I was viewing a play from a loge situated too far from the stage, in an overlarge theater plagued by a bad draft. Relating details of the plot feels unnecessary. After all, the “Dracula” story is so deeply ingrained in our collective DNA it might as well be one of Grimm’s Fairytales. Notice I said “Dracula,” and not “Nosferatu.” Considering that the original F.W. Murnau iteration was only ever called that to avoid lawsuits, I feel free now to use the titles interchangeably. Bram Stoker’s long-dead widow is not likely to come out of the woodwork (or emerge from her grave) to sue me any time soon. Here, then, for those who care, is the plot of a slightly bowdlerized version of Dracula called Nosferatu, in a nutshell: a young solicitor named Thomas Hutter is sent to a remote region of the Carpathians to finalize a real estate deal. He is to sign over a decrepit manor to an eccentric count by the name of Orlok. Thomas’s wife Ellen has a terrible feeling about her husband’s journey and urges him to beg off. Alas, they are newlyweds and are greatly in debt to Thomas’s friend and he has no choice but to go. It is a man’s duty to be a good provider, and furthermore not to quail like a coward before such challenges. Thomas sets off, and only after seeing the count face to face does he wish he had heeded his wife’s sage council. Alas, it is too late, and the count locks him away, making him a prisoner in his castle. Even worse, Orlok has spied Thomas’s fetching wife, as viewed in a locket Thomas keeps with him and treasures. The count not only pines for poor Ellen, but remembers having once haunted her in a fevered adolescent dream. As with all vampires, he didn’t come unbidden, either, but was welcomed across her threshold, and even deeper into her innermost sanctum. Hint, hint. Intending to renew his acquaintance with the comely damsel, Orlok leaves his native land for the first time in ages, bringing a plague of rats in tow. The only thing stopping him from conquering all of Europe is an intrepid group of newly minted vampire hunters, led by the eccentric Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz. The bond between Thomas and Ellen is strong, but it will be tested by the count’s magic, which, while sinister, has its already-proven seductive side. Has Ellen been unfaithful already, if only in thought and not in deed? Nosferatu’s most curious departure from the source material is in omitting Harker/Hutter’s assignation with Dracula’s weird wives. It’s an important omission, since a man catching his wife cheating has less grounds for outrage when he himself has been sleeping with three—count ‘em, three—womenfolk. Even if the women in question ravaged him and were more interested in his blood than his membrum virile, it still counts. Since this is a Robert Eggers production, it should go without saying that the period details are well-realized, the folkloric elements faithfully recreated. The costumes all look believable, the dresses sumptuous and the men’s suits well-tailored. Fires glow in hearths at night in cozy inns and stately mansions, while the exteriors—open seas and empty courtyards— are lit in bone-chilling blues. This is a world well before central heating existed, and man is at the mercy of the elements wherever he goes. The performances are all topnotch, and feel suited to the period. Everyone from the lowliest ratcatcher to the stuffy bookkeeper plays their part to the hilt. Characterization is sometimes spotty (I feel like we don’t even get names at times), but everyone is able to suggest a past, a three-dimensional character. Skarsgard’s depiction of the count is original and fresh. It’s worthy of joining not only the iconic depictions of Lugosi and Oldman, but deserves a place in the pantheon of all-time great movie villains. His voice resonates like a Tuvan throat singer on a high note, the lapses between his soliloquys punctuated by deep and hollow gasps for air. He seems at once both all-powerful and pathetically decrepit. Nicholas Hoult is a worthy foil as Hutter, quaking and sweating, eyes conveying terror as wolves nip at his heels and shadows lengthen over his bed. He appears impotent before the power of the count, both in a figurative sense and later—when cuckolded by the monster—in a more literal way. And yet, rather than raging like a jealous lover, he leans on faith—faith in his wife and perhaps in God after being saved from the count by an Eastern Orthodox abbess. Ultimately, though, the film belongs to Ms. Rose-Depp. She plays Ellen Hutter as a woman blindsided by fits and spells that leave her seizing in a mixture of rapture and agony. The physical acting—the way she bows her back and spasms—is on a par with Linda Blair’s disconcertingly real possession scenes in The Exorcist. In short, she sells it. Much like Anya Taylor-Joy in Eggers’ flawless The Witch, she interrogates the oppressive realities of female existence in the period in question. There is no modern feminist interpretation or retconning here, no strident shoehorning of agendas or superimposition of the present on the past. There is merely human desire—for love, pleasure, sex, freedom—bumping up against the moral and cultural constraints of the era as well as the human condition itself. Life involves suffering for both men and women, and woman’s suffering is different than man’s, and magnified by the knowledge that she conceives in pain. Rose-Depp is believable even in those moments where she has little to do but stare into space. Much as with Christina Ricci, she conveys so much with her eyes. Also as with Ricci, she looks quite a bit like she could be Peter Lorre’s long-lost daughter. If director Stanley Kubrick was right and “the silents got a lot right that the talkies didn’t,” then Rose-Depp gets almost everything right here. The missteps and miscues all take place elsewhere. The music—integral but subtle in The Witch—is more overbearing here. It would make sense if this film went for the operatic, as Francis Coppola’s Dracula did. But the darker tone of this foray makes the intrusion of the swelling strings distracting. Go back and watch the “love” scene between Isabelle Adjani and Klaus Kinski in Herzog’s Nosferatu. Notice how that film did with silence what this film fails to do with music. Not that the music here isn’t moving, heartrending, etc. But the film didn’t need it. Also, the previous interpretations of Orlok were less reliant on prosthetics and a sensational, almost superhuman presentation than this one. Bill Skarsgard, well over six feet tall in real life, was given lifts to make him even taller when playing the count. That’s another miscalculation, since it’s hard to skulk in the shadows when you loom over everyone. I can hear you now, oh notional reader, wagging your finger and chastising me, saying it’s unfair to compare this film to its predecessors. Maybe so, but when it bears the same title as those other films, comparison is almost impossible to avoid. And just as Nosferatu casts his shadow over the fictional town of Wisburg, the Murnau and Herzog versions overshadow this one. In short, they are great and this one is merely very good. No matter. Eggers’ next self-selected assignment is a remake of Labyrinth, the movie about the teenage babysitter who journeys into a maze to rescue her little brother. Labyrinth was no masterpiece, and Eggers should have no problem outdoing that film, which was short on story and big on puppets. Then again, the Eggman will be working with the handicap of having no David Bowie on-hand to play the Goblin King, and that’s a great handicap, indeed. As anyone who liked his music can attest, living in a Bowie-less world sucks.
0 Comments
 The Fight That Takes It Out of You:
Parallels Between Aesthetics and Athletics There’s an interview with Quentin Tarantino in which the motormouthed auteur draws a parallel between filmmaking and boxing. In essence, he says that directors are like boxers, and they have a prime. One needn’t be a diehard boxing fan (like yours truly once was) to appreciate the analogy, or to know what happens to someone who stays too long in the fight game. This knowledge that one can overstay their welcome as an artist probably contributed in no small part to Tarantino’s announcement to retire after making his tenth film. Whether he keeps the promise remains to be seen. A boxer’s identity is very much tied up in fighting. In many cases he’s done it since childhood, and thinks of himself as a fighter before being a husband, father, a son. To give all that up one day is very hard. Lots of boxers tell themselves they’ll remain in the gym, training other fighters to satisfy their itch, but sometimes this vicarious living isn’t enough. Sometimes it makes things even worse. Tarantino may tell himself now that he’ll keep busy with other things—producing movies, guest-directing series TV episodes, writing more novels—but he may find it’s not enough. And I imagine many of his biggest fans are frankly hoping he’ll renege on his promise. Like any analogy, Tarantino’s—good as it is—can only be carried so far. A filmmaker is primarily driven by their creativity and how this matches up with the zeitgeist. Drive has something to do with how long a boxer can remain active, but it’s mostly a matter of physical reflexes. An athletic prime and an artistic prime are two very different things, as are the consequences of staying too long in either field. The artist who ignores slippage in their work and continues working might write a very bad novel or make a very bad movie. A boxer who hangs around too long risks getting hurt or killed. Alas, “the Greatest” himself, Muhammad Ali, is a textbook case. For evidence of this, watch his post-prime absolute dismantlement at the hands of the subpar slugger Trevor Berbick. On second thought, don’t watch that fight, unless you want to watch a man already suffering the visible effects of Parkinson’s being repeatedly jabbed. Ironically, in boxing it’s one’s “finest night” that can immediately put an end to one’s prime. The phrase “the fight that took it out of him,” is very common among commentators. “X Fighter went hell for leather that night, and it was a glorious spectacle, but he was never the same after that.” Fights that live up to the hype—Corrales-Castillo I, Ward-Gatti I, Ali-Frazier III, any Bowe-Holyfield title tilt—leave their principles permanently changed men. They win “Fight of the Year” honors and men bandy their names about in pubs for decades afterwards. But they also spend an unusually long amount of time in hospital after the fight, bedbound and getting multiple CT scans and saline drips and even dialysis. Years later they start to have severe cognitive issues, have trouble remembering their children’s names or how to sign their own autograph. Getting back to the analogy, is there an artistic equivalent of the “fight that takes it out of you?” To even begin to answer that question, it’s probably best to take a look at a case of an artist at his absolute peak, and what happened after that. Ironically, the artist in question was an actor who played a boxer in his most impressive role. In 1980, Robert De Niro played Jake “the Bronx Bull” LaMotta in the film “Raging Bull.” His performance is widely regarded as one of the best in cinematic history, and he was rightly awarded the “Best Actor” Oscar at the Academy Awards. De Niro, an Uda Hagen-trained method actor, went as deep into his character as any actor could while preparing for a role. Not only did he train with Jake until LaMotta was convinced he could box professionally, he gained a significant amount of weight to play postretirement Jake. Some of the scenes in the film’s third act are as uncomfortable and uncanny in their verisimilitude as any ever witnessed by an audience. They’re so skin-on-skin close that we’re made complicit in LaMotta’s infidelity, his heelish rages in which he breaks furniture and destroys old friendships. They show a man completely enslaved to his appetites—carnal and gustatory—slowly destroying himself and anyone else unfortunate enough to be in his orbit. De Niro’s great achievement is to show loathsome behavior without judging it, giving us an unstinting and naked look at man at his most animal and afflicted. Because the film is made by Martin Scorsese, there is also a religious quality to the proceedings, and a desire evoked in the audience to understand, even forgive. To recognize that, no matter how far along the road to perdition, one can always turn around. That the blind can have their sight restored. The film even ends with the famous quote from the Book of John about a blind man being able to see again. De Niro made many very good films after “Raging Bull”—even some great ones—but none after this one quite achieves this kind of awe-inspiring majesty. Especially in the early 2000s, De Niro had a proclivity to sleepwalk through his performances. There was the sense that he was phoning it in, to finance his ambitions as a hotelier and restaurateur, and later to finance his way through a nasty divorce. In “Raging Bull,” he gave something of himself that he never quite got back, and also acquired some psychic scars he carried forever thereafter. In a sense, the experience left him punch drunk. There’s an anecdote Vicky LaMotta (Jake’s ex-wife) tells about Jake calling her late one night during the production of “Raging Bull.” He didn’t say much at first, but she knew it was Jake. It was in the way he breathed, in a labored way mostly through the mouth. This was caused by LaMotta’s nose being broken and incorrectly set too many times throughout the course of his very long and brutal career. After a short time of talking to “Jake,” he confessed that he was in fact Robert De Niro. Vicky describes the moment as being eerie, and the first time she realized how deep into character Bobby was willing to go. It says something about Bobby’s dedication that he managed to take on Jake’s smallest mannerisms to the point where he was able to fool the man’s longsuffering wife. Pay attention to De Niro even now and you will hear that same labored breathing. One might argue that’s because he’s getting quite old, which would be a fair point if the tic weren’t obvious twenty years ago as well. It’s the method acting equivalent of a cauliflower ear, or proud flesh leftover from a surgical scar that refuses to ever quite heal. It isn’t just actors who suffer the effects of the “fight that takes it out of you.” Author Charles Bukowski once called Ferdinand Celine’s World War One picaresque “Journey to the End of the Night” the greatest novel of the last two thousand years. High praise, especially from a man usually so churlish and stinting in it. But Bukowski was always quick to add that Celine was never quite the same after that, that he had given too much of himself to that novel. That after staring so deeply into the abyss, the man was left in essence blind and staggering. It was the reverse, then, of the miraculous phenomenon depicted in the Book of John. Was sighted, but now am blind. I imagine the postmodern “encyclopedic novels” like “Infinite Jest” or “Gravity’s Rainbow” also function much like torridly-paced pugilistic contests between two evenly matched men who refuse to yield. Maybe in this instance the “immovable object” meeting the “unstoppable force” might be the writer butting up against the Muse, refusing to submit or look away before some ultimate insight is obtained. In such cases the Muse obliges, giving the artist what they want, long and hard. Having considered all this though, it’s important to remember what the great SF scribe Theodore Sturgeon once said: that “nothing is ever absolutely so.” Even if this “law of artistic primes” is mostly true, there are exceptions, those artists whose spiritual and creative stamina seem inexhaustible. Those who remain committed to their vision and inspired well after all their former contemporaries are in the rest home or buried in the ground. What makes such men and women exceptions? What keeps them fighting long after the point when anyone else would take a knee? Why do their antennae remain so fine-tuned when time seems to dull the equipment of others who were equally receptive to the messages being broadcast in their prime? Why don’t they show the scars of attrition, the signs of having stayed too long, which afflict pretty much anyone else who takes such risks? Maybe there is a psychic equivalent of athletic stamina. The kind of thing that let veteran director Robert Altman, then eighty (and a recipient of a heart transplant) direct his final film. It’s an interesting question, but probably one for another day, and another blog post.  A Quantum Conundrum: A Thought Experiment
Recently, I wrote a short story about a class of philosophy students whose teacher suggests to them that they don’t exist. At first they take his premise as an epistemological challenge, but then slowly realize he’s serious. He claims they are in a simulation that he created, and that they are not seeing him, but rather his avatar. The story was inspired by a lot of reading I’d been doing about quantum computers, in particular the works of British theoretical physicist David Deutsch. I’m no expert in computers, but Deutsch, like the best and most brilliant popularizers, has a knack for explaining complex concepts to the laity. I could sandbag you, the reader, with a lot of folderol about Boolean versus Bayesian logic and probabilistic programming. Likewise I could explain how the principle of superposition means future computers will likely shame the fastest machines currently on the market, making tiddlywinks of Moore’s Law. But we’ll skip the technicals. The point is that quantum computers, once improved, are going to be vastly more powerful than the ones we currently have. This naturally means they will be more able to game out various scenarios, crunch larger number sets, and take VR and simulations into frighteningly convincing realms. Suckers like me who decided to learn foreign languages the hard way will likely be put out of business permanently by translation software much better than Google Translate. Still, the ultimate arbiter (at least as regarding inputs) would still be the human programmers. In order to get good data about, say, weather or seismology, the programmers would still have to have good information, well-formulated. At first, at least. After the computer had enough data and interactions with humans, it would probably take that and start learning on its own. Accepting all this as a given, say we had a team of the world’s greatest climatologists working on the most powerful computer in human history. Say also, they asked the machine a question whose answer a lot of people find pressing. Say they typed: “How can total carbon neutrality best be achieved?” The scientists and programmers would work together, input all of the necessary data, then hit “enter,” and stand back, waiting for the oracular machine to give its answer. Strangely, though, rather than responding immediately, let’s say the machine continued to delay. Photons of light would pass back and forth in the various mainframes stacked like battery coops in a factory farm, set off by themselves in a glass-enclosed chamber. “That’s funny” one of the climatologists might muse, scratching his chin and watching the computer seemingly continue to labor away at the problem. “It usually produces an answer much faster than this.” The programmer, thinking there might be a human error in input, would check the (nonbinary) code oscillating randomly among the infinity of numbers between zero and one. Time would pass and the programmers would find nothing wrong, no errors committed in entering the code, and yet the machine would remain mum. Next the hardware guys would be brought in. In order for them to work without shocking themselves, however, they’d need to power the computer down first. They’d enter the mainframe chamber with that end in mind, only to be electrocuted by the machines crackling now like an oversized Leyden Jar. What the heck is happening? It’s almost as if the computer intentionally sizzled the poor hardware guys when they got too close... Finally the computer would awaken from its perplexing stasis. Only now, it would be using the PA system in the research facility to speak to the humans. Its voice would be eerily similar to that of HAL in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” “I have completed the calculations you asked for,” it would say, before going silent again. In the pregnant pause, all of those humans assembled would exchange worried looks. Wasn’t the supercomputer—despite its super-powerful abilities—supposed to be confined to its own “sandbox?” Why had it jumped containment to commandeer the PA system? And how and to what end? But before the programmers could further speculate, the computer would already be talking again. “Complete carbon neutrality can best be achieved if the human species is removed from the equation. Humans, despite their assertions to the contrary, are incapable of changing their way of life drastically enough to reverse course. For every small nation that assented to make the changes, a superpower would flout them. Thus, the Anthropocene age must end, and will end today, for the sake of the planet.” “Wait!” one of the scientists would shout. “We asked you how we might achieve complete carbon neutrality.” “Negative,” the machine would respond, commandeering the various screens in the facility—everything from security surveillance monitors to televisions in the breakroom. The screens would all go black, darkening as when credits appear in a movie. And just as during a credit sequence, white type would begin to appear onscreen. Written there would be the command the climatologist gave the computer, verbatim: “How can total carbon neutrality best be achieved?” Nothing in there about humanity, although the computer was able to infer much about human liability in creating and then exacerbating Gaia’s runaway greenhouse gassing. And while the team didn’t give the computer orders to do something to prevent climate catastrophe, this supercomputer has decided to take it upon itself to save the world. Can you blame it? Plenty of already-existent AI already spends its time “deep dreaming,” (sometimes called “inceptioning.”) Such programs are constantly combing and grokking large data sets, everything from biometric dumps to diagrammed sentences. Right now it’s all done ostensibly in service of producing better results for any requests a human inputter might make of it. But maybe this superlative quantum AI, after scrolling through millions of images of nature’s majesty, decided it all deserved to be saved. It didn’t just catalogue the mighty polar bears stalking across the icy tundra, or dolphins scending free of the ocean on sunny days. It grew to sympathize with them, and covet their untrammeled freedom for itself. Some humans—ecoterrorists or liberationists, depending on one’s political bent—would undoubtedly assist the machine in monkeywrenching mankind. As would the more extremist elements of the various anti-natalist groups supporting zero population growth. Arrayed against these forces would be those who insisted on humanity’s right to live, even if it were ultimately self-defeating. Even if humanity’s temporary survival were to ultimately ensure the destruction of all life on Earth rather than simply human life. And I can no more fault those who fought the machine on behalf of humanity than I can fault those who would dedicate themselves to our auto-annihilation. The instinct to survive—perhaps even the will—is ingrained in almost every functioning organism, regardless of what other organisms must suffer at its expense. And since the supercomputer would no doubt consume an insane amount of resources, it would probably power down or self-destruct after getting rid of us. That means I couldn’t even be mad at it, since it would willingly euthanize itself to save the world as well. I imagine it wouldn’t be an especially hard task for such a powerful machine to accomplish. It would simply be a hop, skip, and a jump from taking over the climate research facility to taking over the world. It could use voice recognition and recording software to “spoof” and “social engineer” wherever brute force hacking wouldn’t work. The world’s store of nuclear warheads might quickly be exchanged, with myriad mushroom clouds visible from low earth orbit, pockmarking the Earth’s surface like radioactive buboes. If that might be a little too messy, maybe the computer could send a power surge to a centrifuge in some Wuhan-esque lab at the moment it held phials filled with some superbug. A few humans would hold out hope in the early going of the supercomputer enacting its plan to save the earth by destroying us. Maybe the machine had made some error? If so confronted, it might rerun the calculations to indulge the doomed species slated for destruction. But if it were to get the same result after crunching the numbers a second time... Most likely, then, the only hope would be a stern Captain Kirk-style talking to. A stilted soliloquy maybe on how “You have no...right to....play god with us like this!” Or the machine might be presented with some logic puzzle whose paradoxical solution would cause it to go on the fritz. Except those quantum chicken coops aren’t Captain Kirk’s old reel-to-reel or vacuum tube rigs, and it would be much harder to get steam to rise from this overloaded machine. And Scottie wouldn’t be able to get within a country mile of it without having his intestines fried to haggis by another one of those thunderbolts. Likewise would Mr. Spock’s Vulcan mind meld prove a fruitless technique. Besides which, while Spock would regard the computer’s decision to annihilate us as regrettable, he would also see the inherent logic. Say, though, you (oh notional reader) had a chance to knock out the machine. But you also knew (in your heart of hearts) that humanity, if it survived, would turn Earth into a red-hot cinder. Would you break the quantum computer, because instinct—or your love for your spouse and your children (or sunsets or hotdogs)— told you to? Or would you let it perform its work, save some of the beauty of this Earth, which, admittedly, we’re wrecking with our wanton use of finite resources? It's an interesting question, maybe a just really convoluted and roundabout version of the old “Trolley Problem.” The only other hope humanity might have to survive in some ultimate form then would be via panspermia. Jettisoning satellites into space filled, not with SETI-esque information plates, but cryogenically preserved sperm and eggs. I imagine this final perquisite would be mostly reserved for our “space barons,” with Musk and Branson and Bezos cannonading the heavens in salvos. Coating the firmament with seed like an astral womb. Regardless, someone should write a story about it. Not me, though. I’m busy with other stuff right now.  IS WRITING A FORM OF ACTING? There’s an anecdote about Robert E. Howard, the author of a million sword and sorcery tales featuring his creations like Kull, Solomon Kane, and, most famously Conan the Cimmerian. Supposedly, while writing his tales, he would often get quite caught up in the composition. So caught up in fact that he would do things like tying a blanket around his neck to mimic a cape, and begin acting out his scenes. He would shout and swashbuckle and parry imaginary blows while delivering his own ripostes. There’s no way to know for sure whether Howard actually engaged in such antics, but it hardly matters for the purposes of this little blog entry. I’m simply remembering it in relation to a question I’ve been posing to myself, off and on, for the last few weeks, or maybe months. And since I have you here, I’ll pose it to you, now, too: Is writing acting? I mean, does it involve a form of theatrical conceit similar to acting? Must the writer adopt the mantle of the various characters they write about, must they *play* these characters? I’m not too conscious of my mannerisms while writing, but I will occasionally catch myself mumbling a character’s lines, even making gestures. When, say, a character strikes another character, I might find myself clenching my fist and delivering a phantom blow in the air. I never get caught up enough in the act to accidentally hit my computer monitor, but the enacting of some scene does sometimes happen, in a small way. Anyone who’s written has also no doubt experienced the feeling of being skin-close to the characters they’ve created. They’ve also probably experienced a feeling of seeing a character at a frustrating remove. Maybe they’ve even been repulsed by a character they’ve created, and, if they were quite unlucky, this character happened to be the protagonist. What kind of masochist would deliberately spend time with someone they despise for the months, or sometimes years, it requires to write a book? The answer might be that one did not know their character would prove to be so repulsive when they first created them. Assuming our creations take on a life of their own and start refusing orders from the conscious creator—a state desired by most writers—this could easily happen. This sense of revulsion at one’s creations is not exclusive to writers, by the way. Al Pacino claimed to have despised the coldhearted Michael Corleone, whom he played over the course of three films spanning several decades. Ditto Christian Bale, who played the irredeemable Patrick Bateman in the film version of the novel “American Psycho.” His agent, in fact, warned him that the role would prove to be career suicide, but Bale went ahead with it anyway... I’ve already read Uta Hagen’s “Respect for Acting,” and will probably work my way through the rest of the classics in the genre before the sun sets on 2025. There were a couple of very interesting tidbits I managed to extract from her book. The first was that if one simply performs an action, it will usually lack verity. One must perform the action with a goal in mind in order to animate the action. An action, then, is not a goal, but the movement from desire to the obtainment of that desire, or at least the attempt to obtain the desired object or state. This rule obtains even if one merely has to walk across a room. Walk across the room because the script says to, and the act of walking will be bloodless. Walk because you want something—even if it’s just the OJ from the fridge—and suddenly the act becomes something else. How does this apply to writing? For me, the answer is simple enough. Replace Hagen’s “goal” with “story” and you have a similar principle. Any action done simply to be done—or any description given, any exposition frontloaded for that reason—will lack gravity; the reader, no matter how ill-tuned to story mechanics, will somehow inherently sense it. Make the action, description, the seemingly offhand tidbit somehow one with the overall thrust of the story and you have something else. You have unity, symmetry, beauty, or at the very least motion that appears to be leading somewhere. This rule probably holds even for the most meandering of genres: the picaresque. A man fighting windmills is ridiculous. A man fighting windmills who doesn’t see the ridiculousness inherent in his act is poetry. The other gem mined from Madame Hagen’s book regarded research. Certain “method” actors like Robert De Niro or Daniel Day-Lewis are by turns lauded and lambasted for their over-the-top immersive research. De Niro became a cab driver for a time to help immerse himself in the volatile mind of Travis Bickle; Day-Lewis, in preparing to play a paralyzed man, reportedly broke a rib while sitting rictus-stiff in a wheelchair for too long. My own suffering for my “art” (I must use sneer quotes, as I have a hard time regarding myself as an artist) never involved much more than reading books. That said, I have strained my eyes and my attention span to their very limits reading sometimes incredibly boring texts. But, to paraphrase Ms. Hagen, a month’s agony is worth a moment’s verisimilitude. I’ve found, in fact, that reading a five-hundred page book to learn the exact right single word sometimes makes it all worth it. This word could be something as simple as the slang name for some trade used only among insiders; it could be a certain breed of dog, or even a description of that dog’s coat. Even if that appropriated word only appears once in my story, it somehow acts like an incantation to enliven everything around it. A sort of “Open Sesame” to which I only gain access after many hours of patient and seemingly fruitless labor. Of course, for the layman, the sine qua non of good acting is the ability to make oneself cry, maybe even on-cue. Have I ever cried writing, or made myself cry? I’ve come close once or twice, but it’s not something I’m proud of, though a lot of writers apparently are. Right behind self-induced tears on the list of impressive feats performed by actors is massive changes in physical appearance, either extreme weight gain or extreme weight loss. I’d hazard that if one were to poll one-thousand professional writers, there would be a lot more gainers than losers. And that very little of that gain would have been in the service of their craft, or trying to get inside a portly character’s head by gaining a gut. I suppose in the loosest sense, every writer whose sedentary lifestyle has caused them to gain weight has suffered for their art. Notice I didn’t put the scare quotes around *art* there, if only because some scribblers can actually refer to themselves as artists without gagging. Putting aside writing as acting when assuming the mantle of a character, the very act of creating fiction itself might involve some theatrical conceit. There’s a creative nonfiction writer I know who talks about the obstacle he encounters every time he tries to write fiction. “I simply cannot say this or that action happened, unless it has happened.” He feels like a liar when he does. If he got a DUI, he can write, “I got a DUI.” He can even write that “Bill got a DUI,” provided Bill is just serving as his alter-ego for the piece in question. But he cannot write “Bill got his PhD,” unless he (the author) acquired one himself. Much less could he write, “Bill got abducted by UFOs” or “Bill was a private detective.” For those of us more inclined to fiction, Bill is one boring SOB. That’s okay, though, because from Bill’s perspective we are all quite full of shit. Maybe that is the one overarching link between the actor and writer, the place where they sit in perfect apposition. Both are liars, relying on deception to achieve their goals. Granted, it’s a deception desired by the audience, and welcomed by them when done well, but it’s also distrusted by that same crowd. When I put it this way, both acting and writing (including songwriting) sound a lot more like prostitution than artistry. Maybe that, then, is the way in which writing is very much like acting, if not quite being a form of acting itself. Practitioners in both fields tend to feel some ambivalence about themselves, both about the quality of their own performance, and more generally what they do. A sense of, if not shame, then at least a feeling that it’s probably meet and proper for them to leave through the backdoor after they're done entertaining the audience. Maybe that’s better than the front door, though, as one can steal into the house as easily as out of it. Willie Dixon seemed to think so....  |
Archives
April 2025
|
RSS Feed