Translate this Article...
I�ve always had a special affection for restrained, �minimalist� acting. Now don�t get me wrong, there�s certainly a place for histrionics (see Toshiro Mifune in any of his raging samurai roles), but the �passionate� performance nowadays is so often little more than Oscar-bait (or Goya-bait, or Golden Horse-bait, etc.) I hold in higher esteem the actor who�s more interested in making a good movie than in giving a good performance. Look at Meryl Streep�s Oscar-winning turn as Margaret �The Arch-Philistine� Thatcher in The Iron Lady; no seriously, look at it for me, because I haven�t seen it nor do I have any intention of doing so. But apparently Streep�s performance was impressive in what was otherwise generally regarded as a shit movie. I like how one of the trailers for The Iron Lady has not one, but two, explosions; I believe the first one depicts the sinking of the Argentine cruiser during the Falklands War and the second one depicts the IRA�s attempt to kill Thatcher with a bomb. So there are two explosions in Margaret Thatcher�s life story and both of them make the trailer. I suppose next we�ll have Michael Bay�s explosive biopic of Anthony Eden; think of all the shit that blew up during the Suez Crisis!
Once again, I see I�ve digressed. Back to histrionics. The quintessential histrionic actor is Charlton Heston, and his most histrionic moment is undoubtedly the famous �You blew it up, didn�t you? / God damn you all to hell!� scene in Planet of the Apes. So let�s take that as our extreme for hamming it up. On the opposite end of the spectrum, amongst the non-histrionic performers, we have two types of actor. First, there�s the non-professional actor, cast so as to deliberately avoid the pitfalls of overacting. These are the people who populate the films of Robert Bresson and Abbas Kiarostami. The other type is the professional actor who nonetheless knows how to demonstrate an admirable, almost icy restraint, and my favorite examples here are Buster Keaton and Takeshi Kitano.
 |
| Buster Keaton in Sherlock Jr. |
Back in his heyday, Buster Keaton was known as �Old Stoneface,� which I think is slightly misleading, because it would seem to imply that Keaton�s face was expressionless. In my experience, Keaton�s face generally does have an expression (albeit only one), but it�s a complex, evocative expression, and one full of great pathos. It�s most prominent characteristic is sadness, but it�s a varied sadness. Keaton can appear simultaneously to be both world-weary and resigned but also persevering. After all, the Buster Keaton character never gives up on pursuing the girl, and in all of his movies that I�ve seen, he always gets her. Another aspect of his expression is perplexity, or perhaps a general befuddlement at the state of the world and how it tends to treat him. Here is a man who surely thinks to himself, �I don�t understand it. I am a good, friendly person. If I don�t always have it in me to make positive contributions to the world, I�m certainly not having a negative effect. I am kind to all I meet. Why should someone like me have to suffer?� If I may make a sweeping statement�and you know I�m more than happy to do so�then I will say that Buster Keaton�s face conveys the pathos of the human condition. It�s a very existentialist face. His face doesn�t say, �Here we are now, entertain us,� but rather, �Here we are now, holy shit, what now? Why? Help me!�
As an aside, Samuel Beckett must have recognized the existential pathos in Keaton�s face, because he cast him as the star in his one and only film, 1965�s aptly titled Film. Clocking in at eighteen minutes, the movie depicts Keaton in flight from a pursuing movie camera. The joke�whether or not it was intentional, I can�t say, but surely Beckett had a sense of humor�was that Beckett had hired Buster Keaton�he of the famous, stony face�and yet for almost the entirety of the film, we only see Keaton from behind. It�s only at the end, when the camera finally �catches� Keaton, that we see his face. And it�s the same face as always, but we can project onto it fear along with the enduring sadness.
 |
| Buster Keaton and Samuel Beckett, liking each other. |
Sixty-plus years after Keaton�s greatest achievements (his films of the mid to late twenties) we can turn our attention to Japanese actor/director/screenwriter/comedian/painter/writer/talk show host �Beat� Takeshi Kitano. Unlike Keaton, Kitano has not one but two facial expressions. The first is impassive and inscrutable (and I don�t say that because he�s Asian�I�m not a racist and most Asians are just as �scrutible� as anyone else�but because his face is genuinely inscrutable and that�s part of its appeal) and the second is a creepy, half-hearted smile (made creepier following the motorcycle accident that rendered one side of his face partially paralyzed; the joke�in dubious taste�was, �How can you tell?)
 |
| Kitano, looking impassive. |
Now, when I say Kitano has only two expressions, I�m taking that partly on the authority of the French actor Alain Delon, who made a career out of playing it pretty cool himself (perhaps most famously in Jean-Pierre Melville�s Le Samoura� (1965). Following the release of Kitano�s 1993 masterpiece Sonatine (the best ever movie about yakuza hanging out at the beach and pretty much just chilling� in between killings anyway, but I don�t want to get into plot details here), a friend of Delon�s recommended it to him, saying that it seemed to have been inspired by some of Delon�s own movies. Delon saw Sonatineand didn�t know what to make out of it; his reaction was something along the lines of, �WTF?� (QDF? Quoi de foutre? Francophones, feel free to clear this up for me). Delon said, �[T]his is not an actor� and �he[�s] only got three facial expressions and he almost doesn�t talk on top of this.� And that�s where I differ from Delon: three facial expressions? If Delon saw a third expression flitting across Kitano�s face, then he should be generous and share his knowledge with the general public.
But Kitano is an actor and a wonderful actor at that and he uses his impassivity to great effect. Let�s look at his 1995 film Fireworks(Hana-bi), a beautiful and profoundly depressing film in which Kitano plays a cop who�s in debt to the yakuza, whose partner (Ren Ohsugi) has just been shot and paralyzed from the waist down, and whose wife is dying of cancer. In the scenes with his partner and his wife, the obvious emotion he should be feeling is sadness (with variations specific to each case, but sadness is the general category), and Kitano�sharp actor that he is�realizes that he doesn�t really need to do a whole lot to convey this. After all, of course he�s sad. Your partner�s been shot and paralyzed, how else would you feel, if not sad? So instead of gnashing his teeth and ripping his hair and screaming, �God damn the God damned bastards who did this to you!�, he maintains his composure, and his quiet sadness aches through all the more affectingly for it.
This impassivity is also great for the scenes where Kitano�s character engages in violence. There�s a famous scene where Kitano is eating noodles at a bar when two of the yakuza to whom he�s in debt sit down on either side of him and start to threaten him. They bully, they cajole, they try to get a rise out of him, but Kitano just sits there, scooping his noodles into his mouth, face emotionless, and this maybe goes on for a minute or two until, lightning-quick, and totally unexpectedly, Kitano takes his chop sticks and jams then into the eyes of one of the yakuza. It�s made all the more shocking because Kitano didn�t �act all over the place� in the lead-up to the assault. In this sudden violence, the viewer comes to realize that there are many layers of depth beneath the impassive surface of Kitano�s face, and all of this is conveyed without Kitano going into histrionics and basically telling the viewer, �I am angry, and here is what I plan to do about it!�
And it�s the ability to produce movies like Sonatineand Fireworks that show us why the school of �inexpressive� acting is so important. Because it uses inexpressiveness as a mode of expression, and sometimes for more effectively than actors who go out there and �emote.� Again, there is certainly a place for �actor-y� actors. I like variety, and I certainly would get tired of movies where everyone acted like Kitano. But Kitano has his detractors, and I think it�s important that we preserve a place in cinema for people like him, because their contributions are invaluable.
