Post by RhodoraO on Mar 5, 2017 20:31:53 GMT
When I read this article a few years ago, titled:
Christian Bale Is Our Least Relatable Movie Star
By David Marchese, d. 12 DEC 2014,
I had thought that the article was being a bit too critical. Reading this again, I realised that the author is just longing for more of earlier pre-Batman Bale and feeling a bit disillusioned with what Bale has become as an actor subsequently.
I whole-heartedly agree with the last wistful part of this essay:
The frustrating thing is that Bale can do so much more than what he seems intent on showing us. Early on in his career, he was a tender Laurie in Little Women. Before that, there was the immortal Newsies. (He can hoof it!) He played lusty vulnerability gorgeously in Haynes’s glam-rock spectacle Velvet Goldmine, and he was touching as Jamestown settler John Rolfe in Terrence Malick’s The New World. But these types of roles, especially in the latter part of his career, are aberrations. He’s just not interested in lighter stuff, and he’s said as much. A few years back, he noted that he has “no interest in ever attempting a romantic comedy” because “they never make me laugh.” Nor he, us.
Instead, it’s role after role of I am a serious man angst. Life, as Bale so capably portrays it, is about duty, sacrifice, struggle. But there’s more to it than that. There’s joy, silliness, romance. It would be wonderful if an actor as talented as Christian Bale could show us those things, too.
----
ON the other hand, I don't exactly agree with the author's critique here:
That’s why even though Christian Bale is one of our biggest stars, he’s also our most distant and unrelatable. He’s not interested in “normal” or approachable, and he’s certainly not inclined to share anything about himself in an effort to bridge the gap between us. Misguided or not, we have a sense of who stars are as people. Tom Hanks? Decent guy. George Clooney? Suave charmer. Tom Cruise? Maximally actualized lunatic. Christian Bale? It’s a blank.
It's not a blank: Christian Bale is the Master transformer. His accent work is always impeccable. His physicality just not reliant on weight changes, neither just on mannerisms and posturing but also on complete inhabitation of character. In American Hustle, we FEEL that this is a 50 year old man. We feel the weight of all the pressures around him combined with his heart condition burdening him down in various scenes. It's not Capital A acting: it's a total immersion, body and soul, into a stressed out man in his 50s. It was not his weight fluctuation that got him that surprise Oscar nomination that year, it was this absolute 'becoming' a much older man in spirit.
Sure, for me personally there have been a few times when I could take the author's criticism as valid. In last year's The Big Short, for e.g., I found Bale short of his usual complete becoming and his performance more reliant on outward mannerisms. However, I'm sure if that character had more screen time or was developed in a different way, Bale's inhabitation of that character would have have time to blossom on screen more naturalistically.
Similarly, Harsh Times left me quite cold and I just couldn't relate to that character beyond what was at the exterior. This, I see as my own idiosyncratic taste, however, for I know full well the role is constantly admired and often considered as one of Bale's best performances. Moreover, that role was not dependent on any outward transformation except for accent and haircut, and there were never any obvious tics to speak of.
These two are Bale's only roles which I personally found unrelatable in the way author speaks of. Certainly not the ones that the author himself selects to support his points.
In a previous paragraph the author brushes away all of Christian's post Batman work as the transformative type. He surprisingly relegates his naturalistic, charismatic, but of course, well-differentiated and nuanced characters in 3:10 to Yuma, Rescue Dawn, and Out of the Furnace to the gritty nature of those films. In only one of these Bale actually lost weight and became physical (eating works, catching live snakes, etc). The other two had no such demands and in all three, he held the screen confidently with fully fleshed out characters, each fascinating studies in their separate ways, yet also generous enough to give lots of space to flashier co-stars.
There is one key performance, the author completely ignores from this period and that's The Prestige. The role of Alfred Borden is the epitome of subtle, naturalistic acting as well as complete screen command while actually being the non-flashy counterpart to the showier performance. Without spoiling the film, his whole character arc depends on the slightest touches of character differentiations without any use of tics, obvious, mannerisms, posturing, and certainly no body transformations... not even accent work! These shades are so carefully realized in fact that they would be impossible to catch in first viewing and can only be distinguished by the viewers on a rewatch.
However, one does long for a romantic comedy level lightness from Bale, or a Wes Anderson style wacky humor (which Bale is more than capable of), or even a revisit to a musical... Let's keep the hopes up!
Christian Bale Is Our Least Relatable Movie Star
By David Marchese, d. 12 DEC 2014,
I had thought that the article was being a bit too critical. Reading this again, I realised that the author is just longing for more of earlier pre-Batman Bale and feeling a bit disillusioned with what Bale has become as an actor subsequently.
I whole-heartedly agree with the last wistful part of this essay:
The frustrating thing is that Bale can do so much more than what he seems intent on showing us. Early on in his career, he was a tender Laurie in Little Women. Before that, there was the immortal Newsies. (He can hoof it!) He played lusty vulnerability gorgeously in Haynes’s glam-rock spectacle Velvet Goldmine, and he was touching as Jamestown settler John Rolfe in Terrence Malick’s The New World. But these types of roles, especially in the latter part of his career, are aberrations. He’s just not interested in lighter stuff, and he’s said as much. A few years back, he noted that he has “no interest in ever attempting a romantic comedy” because “they never make me laugh.” Nor he, us.
Instead, it’s role after role of I am a serious man angst. Life, as Bale so capably portrays it, is about duty, sacrifice, struggle. But there’s more to it than that. There’s joy, silliness, romance. It would be wonderful if an actor as talented as Christian Bale could show us those things, too.
----
ON the other hand, I don't exactly agree with the author's critique here:
That’s why even though Christian Bale is one of our biggest stars, he’s also our most distant and unrelatable. He’s not interested in “normal” or approachable, and he’s certainly not inclined to share anything about himself in an effort to bridge the gap between us. Misguided or not, we have a sense of who stars are as people. Tom Hanks? Decent guy. George Clooney? Suave charmer. Tom Cruise? Maximally actualized lunatic. Christian Bale? It’s a blank.
It's not a blank: Christian Bale is the Master transformer. His accent work is always impeccable. His physicality just not reliant on weight changes, neither just on mannerisms and posturing but also on complete inhabitation of character. In American Hustle, we FEEL that this is a 50 year old man. We feel the weight of all the pressures around him combined with his heart condition burdening him down in various scenes. It's not Capital A acting: it's a total immersion, body and soul, into a stressed out man in his 50s. It was not his weight fluctuation that got him that surprise Oscar nomination that year, it was this absolute 'becoming' a much older man in spirit.
Sure, for me personally there have been a few times when I could take the author's criticism as valid. In last year's The Big Short, for e.g., I found Bale short of his usual complete becoming and his performance more reliant on outward mannerisms. However, I'm sure if that character had more screen time or was developed in a different way, Bale's inhabitation of that character would have have time to blossom on screen more naturalistically.
Similarly, Harsh Times left me quite cold and I just couldn't relate to that character beyond what was at the exterior. This, I see as my own idiosyncratic taste, however, for I know full well the role is constantly admired and often considered as one of Bale's best performances. Moreover, that role was not dependent on any outward transformation except for accent and haircut, and there were never any obvious tics to speak of.
These two are Bale's only roles which I personally found unrelatable in the way author speaks of. Certainly not the ones that the author himself selects to support his points.
In a previous paragraph the author brushes away all of Christian's post Batman work as the transformative type. He surprisingly relegates his naturalistic, charismatic, but of course, well-differentiated and nuanced characters in 3:10 to Yuma, Rescue Dawn, and Out of the Furnace to the gritty nature of those films. In only one of these Bale actually lost weight and became physical (eating works, catching live snakes, etc). The other two had no such demands and in all three, he held the screen confidently with fully fleshed out characters, each fascinating studies in their separate ways, yet also generous enough to give lots of space to flashier co-stars.
There is one key performance, the author completely ignores from this period and that's The Prestige. The role of Alfred Borden is the epitome of subtle, naturalistic acting as well as complete screen command while actually being the non-flashy counterpart to the showier performance. Without spoiling the film, his whole character arc depends on the slightest touches of character differentiations without any use of tics, obvious, mannerisms, posturing, and certainly no body transformations... not even accent work! These shades are so carefully realized in fact that they would be impossible to catch in first viewing and can only be distinguished by the viewers on a rewatch.
However, one does long for a romantic comedy level lightness from Bale, or a Wes Anderson style wacky humor (which Bale is more than capable of), or even a revisit to a musical... Let's keep the hopes up!