The Talented Mr. Hoffman
Last December we said goodbye to two movie legends, Peter O’Toole and Joan Fontaine, on the same weekend. Now, on another weekend, we lost two Best Actor Oscar winners, one (Maximilian Schell, 83) who had a full life and a long career, and another (Philip Seymour Hoffman, 46) in the prime of both his life and his career. One of the things most surprising and impressive about Hoffman is just how much he accomplished in so short a time: a dozen or so extraordinary screen performances in a little over twenty years. With his ordinary-fellow looks and less-than-Greek physique, Hoffman never appeared headed for the Best Actor Oscar, seeming more likely to be one of those great “character actors,” the kind of supporting player who, by his mere presence, helps big movie stars look like better actors. Or, if he wanted to, he could just steal a scene away from them through the sheer force of his imaginative, risk-taking commitment to acting.
I remember first taking notice of him in Scent of a Woman (1992), then being truly struck by his depth and range in Boogie Nights (1997) and The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), despite all the formidable actors in much larger roles in both movies. His promise was more than fulfilled with his Oscar-winning triumph as the title role in Capote (2005). Though I think the film is deeply flawed and highly overrated, I can’t fault a moment of Hoffman’s work. Not only is he eerily accurate in capturing Truman Capote’s speech and manner but he’s so alive in the mannerisms, never an impersonator, always a living-breathing thinking-feeling Truman. The quintessential supporting-actor Hoffman was suddenly an Oscar-winning lead. How sadly ironic that his main Oscar competition that year, Heath Ledger (for Brokeback Mountain), was another prodigious young talent who became a casualty of drugs.
Two post-Oscar films, both from 2007, are among Hoffman’s best yet haven’t been as widely seen as they deserve. Both were directed by giants—Sidney Lumet and Mike Nichols—who were directing great films even before Hoffman was born. Lumet’s Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead feels like the work of some young hotshot just out of film school. In reality Lumet was an 83-year-old celebrating the 50th anniversary of 12 Angry Men, his first feature. (Before the Devil turned out to be his final film, a most excellent swan song, and his best since The Verdict in 1982.) Lumet’s direction is so charged, both visually inventive and emotionally alert, turning this film into a satisfying cross between a juicy pulp fiction (featuring crime, lust, betrayal, and revenge) and a ferocious Lear-like family tragedy. Its tricky time structure—the flipping backward to cover other characters’ perspectives—is reminiscent of the noir classic The Killing (1956), as is the nastily entertaining tone. Hoffman and Ethan Hawke are brothers who plan to rob the jewelry store owned by their parents (Albert Finney and Rosemary Harris), but—no surprise—things don’t go as planned.
Hoffman gives a sly, strong performance as a messed-up man in pain, which includes drug use. He’s sometimes feverish, sometimes controlled, a bruised child trapped in a grown-man’s body, forever hating his father for making him feel so unloved. Hoffman plays a real-estate accountant with a life increasingly exciting and dangerous and shocking; this is no ho-hum day at the realty office. The film’s nearly operatic intensity is anchored by Hoffman’s deep immersion into his troubled, reckless character.
Charlie Wilson’s War is one of the smartest, funniest adult comedies of recent years, an end-of-the-Cold-War movie that’s so much more pleasurable and playful than it sounds. What might have been a Lions for Lambs type of political dirge was instead fashioned into a witty yet lowdown screwball comedy. It still has potency, certainly more than it would have if it weren’t such an enjoyable movie. The outrageous true story of a Texas congressman, played so superbly by a rascally charming Tom Hanks, follows this boozy, womanizing wreck, a politician who genuinely wants to do some good (fighting the Commies, specifically the Russians brutalizing Afghanistan). As a C.I.A. operative, Hoffman is hilariously caustic and shrewd, with a great under-his-breath line delivery. He is a terrific foil for Hanks; they become a prime comic team. At its best, and it’s never better than when Hoffman and Hanks share the screen, Charlie Wilson’s War feels like a contemporary Preston Sturges movie, about as high a compliment I can think to bestow upon it. Slick yet uncompromising, weighty yet seemingly weightless, Charlie Wilson’s War contains one of Hoffman’s top performances, nabbing him a supporting-actor Oscar nomination.
His third Oscar nomination (for 2008′s Doubt) and his fourth (for 2012′s The Master) were in the supporting category, even though both were earned for essentially leading roles. Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master may ultimately have been unsatisfying, even perplexing, but Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix are both sensational in it. Hoffman is utterly believable as a man building a so-called spiritual empire. In public he’s charming, elegant, and humorous, but he has an occasional angry streak. He also has some homosexual yearnings aimed directly at Phoenix, which include his vocal rendition of ”(I’d Like to Get You on a) Slow Boat to China.” He’s a charlatan with immense personality, a man with a gift for communication and persuasion. The Master is, after all, about power. And there’s Philip Seymour Hoffman as the title character, wielding his power. But there’s also the actor himself, at the peak of his own powers, a man who clearly has so very much more to offer American movies.
