: to divert, amuse
: to frolic
: to display
This past summer I started compiling an ongoing list of what are, in my humble opinion, the 500 greatest performances in English-language films. I've been slacking a little on this list lately, so I want today's post to feature some more selections.
Tommy Lee Jones
as Hank Deerfield in In the Valley of Elah (2007)
A flawed movie if there ever was one, Paul Haggis' follow-up to Crash is a slow-moving examination of a father's grief. The movie's major selling point - not to exclude moving, compact supporting turns by Charlize Theron and Susan Sarandon - is that the father is played by Jones, who brings his trademark cut-and-dry, streamlined extraordinarily subtle sensibility to the role of a wounded answer not getting the answers he wants. Jones' face here is a map of torment, and he underplays everything so powerfully well. He has some great moments here, none finer than we relates the meaning of the title to Theron's son. He might be clipped and terse, but Jones always lets you see the seething pain beneath the surface.
Jeff Bridges
as Ted Cole in The Door in the Floor (2004)
One of the most unique portrayals of grief in contemporary film, Bridges is absolutely extraordinary here. He's sort of funny - wandering around his sprawling Long Island yard naked. He's sort of mean - yelling at and constantly wheedling his assistant (Jon Foster). He's narcissistic. Uncommunicative. Closed-off. But when the script reveals the tragedy he and his distant, vaporous wife (Kim Basinger) have undergone, we start to understand what the character - and this great actor - is up to. He's a clown, a possibly irredeemable jerk, but his pain is real, and we realize that there isn't any blueprint to carry on in the wake of loss; Bridges essays the floundering, drowning spirit of a man who doesn't know what to say, how to love, how to live. His monologue about the death of his two boys is as moving as it gets.
Dorothy Malone
as Marylee Hadley in Written on the Wind (1956)
I had to plumb the deaths of Douglas Sirk movies to come up with at least one selection, didn't I? What other director consistently wrangled such stormy, windblown, fruity, compellingly entertaining/soapy scene-stealing work from otherwise overlooked, staid performers (read: Rock Hudson)? Malone won a Supporting Actress Oscar for her work in this great, ludicrous melodrama. She flirts, cavorts, whimpers, threatens, vamps, sulks, rages and schemes. Talk about Daddy Issues. In short, everything you want from a supporting actress.
I'll be back with a regular post tomorrow!
Images courtesy of:
http://www.moviesonline2012.info/wp-content/uploads/tommy_lee_jones_in_the_valley_of_elah_movie_image__1_-50af0716c8026.jpg
http://youritlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/bridges.jpg
http://www.movieactors.com/photos-stars/malone-writtenwind-6.jpg
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