Good Actor, Bad Movie

Just got around to reading A.O. Scott's piece from Sunday bemoaning that, this time of year, we suffer "the spectacle of great actors appearing in bad movies". He offers as an example (with many others) Nicole Kidman's appearance in 'Just Go With It'. Scott says, "Is that Nicole Kidman, of “The Hours” and “Rabbit Hole,” towering over Jennifer Aniston and facing off against her in a high-stakes hula-dancing contest...?"

I think that's a bit of an over simplification. Nicole Kidman is a great actor to be sure, but JGWI is not a bad movie, as Scott puts forth. It gets the (intended) job done, and is doing very well at the box office. So, yes, if it's well-liked, by lots of people, who encourage their friends to see it, a given movie can't be all that bad, even if all the critics say it's horrible.

I think, in general, the same can be said for other 'good actor/bad movie' examples cited by Scott. Great actors, sure, but bad movies? Not so much. Unless, of course, they don't make much money. Then, they're probably, indeed, quite bad.

I liked this passage:

And it is what good actors bring to movies, even bad ones: discipline, conviction, the ability to help us suspend our disbelief by persuading us that they believe in what they are doing. The more preposterous the situation, the more impressive the feat of seeming to take it utterly seriously. There are other measures of excellence of course — emotional subtlety, psychological acuity, wit — but this kind of unwavering, fanatical commitment is surely a sign of greatness. You might almost say that greatness shows itself precisely in the discrepancy between the performance and the material. If that is true, then it is something like a mathematical certainty that the greatest actor in the world today is Nicolas Cage.

Nicely put. I mean, look at the above still from 'The Rite'. Could Anthony Hopkins be any more convincing? What focus. What craft. What discipline. However, despite his conviction, the situation and his character -- a priest hell-bent (as it were) with evicting the devil through exorcism -- is probably not preposterous enough to make Hopkins' acting in this particular movie all that great. It's just okay acting. So so. Ho hum. If he were playing a priest who had just busted out of hell in order to perform exorcisms, well, then, maybe...

Here's Nic Cage immersed in the moment in 'Drive Angry 3D'. Could he be any more in character? I've always been struck by it. Cage doesn't act, he inhabits, but not in that refined craftic way so often alluded to when critics praise this performance or that. He's more like a kid playing make-believe with a friend in the living room or backyard. To Cage, it's not a conceit in a screenplay, it's the real thing.

He's not acting in the technical sense, he's pretending. He's a professional pretender. It's like he really did escape from hell to avenge a murder and kidnapping, or really is following clues in a wild adventure to find a national treasure, and a film crew just happened to be there to capture the action.

If anyone provides what we need to suspend disbelief, it's Cage. If anyone regularly delivers disciplined performances in movies with preposterous plots, it's Cage. If anybody believes in what they're doing (no matter how silly), it's Nicolas Cage. As such, if anyone is a great actor, it's Cage.

As Scott says (as have many others) Cage never "phones in a performance." I think his fans love him for it.

If his movies get any more preposterous, Nic Cage will become the greatest living actor in the history of cinema sometime in the next couple years.

Poor Anthony Hopkins.