Let's All Say This Together in Case We Have Forgotten-Characterization is Why Actors Should Win Awards or: Why Christoph Waltz Deserves an Oscar

I love the glittery, hallowed, border-line kitschy pomp of the Academy Awards ceremony. The annual swagger-fest of self-love is always full of aesthetic delights and amusements; chock-a-block full of controversy, humour, ridiculousness, and genuinely heart-warming moments, it is ever entertaining. Stars, in all of their peacock-majesty, alight on the most famous red carpet in the world. This is where we, the fans, await; whether in person or sitting at home in our living rooms, we come to fawn, gape, admire and censure the entire whirring, colourful affair.
The experience is multi-faceted and highly individualistic; we all watch for different reasons. I love the dresses and the jewels--and the gossipy bonding opportunity shared with my mom. Yet, as a passionate cinema fan, ex-actress, and classic film writer, I come back year after year for that most elusive of things: a well-deserved win, one that is so right-feeling as to be virtually indisputable.
Last year, I was thrilled that Kate Winslet finally won a Best Actress statuette. She is my favourite actress (of my own generation, at any rate)--which makes the win personal, biased, and subjective. Her performance in 'The Reader' was certainly honest, sinewy, breathtaking. Her moment at the podium was , to most of us, long over-due. Yet, there are surely those who preferred another actress, another performance, for whatever mysterious, complex, or simple reason(s).
On this year's telecast, which airs on Sunday, 7 March, there is a single award that I am anticipating. Everything else can be shunted aside: the clothes, the accessories, the awkwardly long-winded acceptance speeches, all of the other golden accolades of the evening mean little next to this one presentation. Lifelong tradition or not, I am tuning in this year to watch Christoph Waltz ('Inglourious Basterds') walk away with the title of Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role.
Sure, it is seemingly easy to get behind the already awards-laden, critically lauded front-runner. He has won in his category at every major awards show of the season. Contenders rarely come this strong, especially when their performance is at the center of a popular commercial hit master-minded by the only director on the planet to enjoy rock-star like status. Yet, for all of this cache, for all of the silver-tongued words of praise, for all of the interviews, he remains largely unknown. He may be just below our consciousness, but his performance is not.
Occasionally, and to an entirely unpredictable pattern, an actor captures a character to scintillating, near-scientific perfection. You forget everything that came before, forget that you are watching a performance: you are deliciously in the moment. For a couple of hours, fiction attains primacy over reality. Being in the presence of a fully-realized character should be temporarily mind-altering. Waltz's urbane, gleeful, and horrifying Hans Landa does just that.
I do not worship without thought at the quirky, disheveled, disturbing altar of Quentin Tarantino. There is both much to love and revile in his work but when he gets it right, it is awe-inspiring. The script to 'Inglourious Basterds', also by Tarantino, is fantastic; the kind to make any writer envious.The bones of Hans Landa are laid out admirably, as scripted. Very little flesh-and-blood contribution from an actor would have been necessary to make him truly memorable; he was written that way. This makes Christoph Waltz's landing, and interpretation, of the role that much luckier for movie-goers.
In Tarantino's revisionist history, where hilarity and suffering cohabit in nearly every frame,Nazi Colonel Hans Landa is smooth, rotten-souled, honeyed, and terrifying. Evil has scarcely been more articulate. He's a hands-on, joyful killer of the innocent: the man clearly enjoys his work. There is no glimmer of redemption in this cold opportunist. Yet, Waltz as Landa mesmerises even as he terrifies. It is a rich, complex, brazen, center-of-the-spotlight performance. Many actors would have gone full-on ham with this role. Waltz, much more subtly, glimmers and thrives in a characterization that is startling; there is a sense of privileged acceptance, an acknowledgment of his great luck present in his brilliant performance, that is rare to see from an actor.
Hans Landa is, to my mind, the most fully satisfying film character in recent memory. This is not lionizing evil--he is chilling and too self-serving to have preserved even a breath of humanity. As such, he is appalling. It is not the role itself but the seamless, kinetic, unsettling inhabiting of the role accomplished by Waltz that deserves the most merit. A part as written, however promising on the white page, is like a master-less puppet. Though entertaining by itself, it takes talent, patience, and audacious manipulation by a professional to be brought to glorious, mobile, full-bodied life.
Timeless performances are often those that embrace the uncomfortable, the uneasy, the painfully humourous, the raw elements of human existence. Capturing even a sliver of that truth on celluloid happens too infrequently. When it does, it is nice to see it rewarded. This, readers, is why I will be keeping my fingers firmly crossed come Sunday. The Academy has a chance to get it beautifully, undeniably right. The occasional correct choice is, ultimately, what keeps us coming back for more.

Review:Apartment in Athens

Published just as the conflict it so intimately chronicled came to an end,'Apartment in Athens' was hailed as an important work that was sure to endure as a reminder of the very human nature of war. For good or for ill, the words of critics have no magical powers:they can merely thrust their opinions onto the reading public and hope for the best. Whether a volume sinks under the waves of oblivion or crests to lasting fame is entirely in the hands of the only gauge that matters:readers (and,to one extent or another, publishing houses).

That 'Apartment in Athens' was out-of-print for more than 30 years, republished by the New York Review of Books just a few years ago,is sadly anything but an anomaly. Popular in its own day, it was rather quickly forgotten in the affluent post-war culture of the Fifties. So much for icon status.Fortunately for twenty-first century readers, Glenway Wescott's tale of the desperately insular plight of a single, though tragically far from singular,wartime family is once again readily available.

The wrenching and understated realism of the drama is weighed on a minutely domestic scale that seamlessly nets the wide swathe of violence and upheaval, eloquently capturing the universal experience of war in the daily traumas and uncertainties of one Greek family.The setting of the action is as the title suggests--all but a few short scenes occur in the home of the once-comfortable Helios family.Their lives already dessicated by the death of their revered older son, the German occupation forces hardship after hardship on them.Their privations mingle with those of their neighbors until they are set apart as one of the families forced to provide room and board for a German officer.

For more than a year they house Major Kalter.The practical and psychological ramifications of living with the enemy are revealed in subtle, often mundane ways.The man that they easily come to think of as "their" German is,of course,more complex than his rigid adherence to protocol suggests.The lack of action in the first two-thirds of the novel serves to underscore the sinister tragedy when it finally comes.

For so much of Glenway Wescott's (1901-1987)career he was viewed as a boy wonder on the international literary scene--perhaps unfairly, given his immense and multi-faceted talent.Published in 1945, at the height of his powers, 'Apartment in Athens' gives us a subtle and fleeting glimpse of the richness he was able to develop in his maturation as an artist.

Reviewing My Collection-Passionate Minds by Claudia Roth Pierpont

One of the greatest blessings of being an Indie writer (which is every bit as cool as being an Indie rocker, I insist), is getting to write only on subjects that engender extremes of passion,interest or curiosity in my mind.Nothing short of fascination will induce me to pick up a pen or tap the keys.I've tried, and discipline in the service of money simply does not work for me.While my intellect is fecund, and the range of my appetites immense, I seem to return to the same core of pet subjects.I love history, I love writers, I love richly textured lives and I love reading.'Passionate Minds: Women Rewriting the World' by Claudia Roth Pierpont contains all of those requirements.

The dozen women profiled between the covers are a lively,forceful, and eclectic bunch.They were outsiders and stratosphere-dwelling superstars,conventional and ahead-of-their time,of enduring and fleeting appeal.They were all dedicated to their craft but pursued the muse in a thousand different ways. They would have made for interesting party-guests but probably wouldn't have gotten along,at least not past the first round.
Among the stamp-sized icons are Margaret Mitchell and Anais Nin.The former wrote the most colossal novel of her--or any--time."Gone with the Wind" is, I am sorry, not a great book, though its controversy still sets people to talking.No wonder,then, that it was more of a commercial success than Tolstoy, in his wildest Russian dreams, could have hoped to achieve.It made the diminutive Southern lady a star, for a time, in the same frenzied sense that movie queens are stars.
Anais Nin was a diarist and writer of erotica. She was, for a time, the paramour of Henry Miller, for which she is best known.Maria de Madeiros played Nin in the acclaimed biopic "Henry and June" (1990).Although she possessed artistic confidence,her real legacy is as a sexual icon.It is for both of those things that she is included in this critical study.Roth Pierpont structured the book around three themes:sexuality,religion and politics, which explains the strange and enthralling cast of characters.Mae West and Gertrude Stein,Doris Lessing and Marina Tsvetaeva have seemingly little in common.The author's complex and enlightening approach (and her acute biographical-critical break-down) to such disparate voices is refreshing and inventive.
Individually, they made interesting if not always tangible or measured contributions to literature.They often seemed to be working against themselves: it is no coincidence that many of the women were thorny specimens.Collectively,they are joined only by the incidental fact of vocation.To quote the biographer herself "These are lives in which success is hard won,retreat and even breakdown are common, love is difficult, and children are nearly impossible, lives in which all that is ever certain is that books and plays and poems are being written." I have difficulty in believing that anything has really changed.

REVIEWING MY COLLECTION:Alone!Alone! Lives of Some Outsider Women by Rosemary Dinnage

I was, by the account of every family member senior to myself, a cypher straight from the moment I gasped my first lusty breath.I was certainly a maddening, stubborn and temperamental child bent on having her own way at all costs, including the flat-out refusal to sleep, the latter with which I plagued my family from earliest infancy. I was also preternaturally shy and prematurely bookish, with my reading life commencing at age three. I was, most fortunately, blessed with a mother who encouraged me to be true to my quirky nature. Thus, while I grew up at odds with boring normalcy, I rarely worried about fitting in and was entirely impervious to peer pressure.The path of genuine, unencumbered eccentricity is still a hard one to trek but it is vastly easier to accomplish today than at any previous time.

'Alone! Alone! Lives of Some Outsider Women' focuses on the life journeys of more than 2 dozen individuals, many of them creatives or intellectuals in their own right or, in some cases, appendages or muses of well-known men. Rosemary Dinnage approaches her subjects with temperate illumination, understanding and breadth. She does not overstate things that she cannot know undeniably but presents her hypotheses with grace, thoughtfulness and skillful scholarship.

The women profiled came to inhabit their outsider status through paths varied and predictable; nor can their marginalization and relative isolation be perfectly, neatly pinpointed. With so many personalities,backgrounds and quirks under the magnifying glass of our attention, it is natural to gravitate towards certain of the women while remaining aloof from others.I have always had an affinity for Katherine Mansfield and an aversion born of bafflement for Simone Weil.Both writers were prickly, brilliant, erratic and self-important yet I feel a kindred spark to Mansfield's brand of egoism and sheer annoyance with Weil's inept self-sacrifice, which is full of its own brand of vanity.Although this book did nothing to change that bottom line, it did carve new nuances into my long-held prejudices, which is hard to accomplish.

She gives equal attention to the famous and the obscure, and to those who fall into the netherworld between those parameters.Painter and free-spirit Gwen John and diarist Alice James step,briefly yet unforgettably, out of the shadows of their famous brothers.Dinnage also profiles entire categories of women--including prostitutes and witches--which gives the book a wider imprimatur than it would have if it was limited to a collection of postage-stamp biographies. It becomes, in an informal way, a sort of sociological treatise on rebel women and their place, or lack of it, in society.

PHOTOS, TOP TO BOTTOM: ALICE JAMES,KATHERINE MANSFIELD

Capsule Review-"MAIN STREET" by SINCLAIR LEWIS

This article originally appeared in December 2004 issue of The Atomic Tomorrow. I am reprinting it here for Kate Gabrielle of 'Silents and Talkies', who loves Sinclair Lewis. Enjoy!!

Set largely in small town America in the second decade of the twentieth century, "Main Street" is a bold and unvarnished appeal on behalf of non-subversive individuality and practical feminism. Viewing marriage as something of a lark, and men as beings to be conquered, Carol Kennecott leaves her urban life behind to settle in the wilds of Minnesota, with her new husband, a doctor.

Artistic but insensitive, she sets out with a near-missionary zeal to bring culture to the inhabitants of Gopher Prairie. Initially tolerant of her odd ways, and her proud otherness, they are confident that she will soon soften her sharp individuality and learn to blend in, while she is arrogantly blind to the small yet genuinely artistic efforts of her neighbors.

We follow Carol, and her kindly ponderous husband, through a shifting mosaic of defiance, submission, flight, and compromise. She is not a heroine as such but a richly flawed woman; not always likable, she is deeply human. She grows and matures in the ways real people do, by starts and fits, with a sometimes imperfect understanding of what it is she is striving for, and working against.

The society that author Sinclair Lewis rails against,as opposed to that of Ayn Rand,his ideological opposite in the fight for personal sovereignty, is markedly our own. His ideals of individuality and freedom are attainable, though conditionally and at great cost, in this world. In Rand's novels, the only characters capable of achieving severance from the expectations of the world-at-large are such intellectually and physically superior specimens as to defy categorization as human. They are god-like inhabitants of a sordid, corrupt version of America; denizens of a fantasy universe of extreme and unthinking conformity.

Carol eventually finds a limited but hopeful place in the context of her chosen milieu, within the workings of fast-changing, modern society, where even the flawed, the weak, and the impotent can find ways to assert their uniqueness. That this is ultimately not enough to satisfy the spirit of humanity is the deeper truth that is hidden behind this story of one woman's struggle to adapt and thrive in an environment, and amongst people, she doesn't understand.

PHOTO: SINCLAIR LEWIS

REVIEWING MY COLLECTION: LIVING AUTHORS Edited by DILLY TANTE

I have a nerdy, abiding mania for several things. The one that has been with me the longest is my passion for reference books: dictionaries, encyclopedias, almanacs. Anything with the express purpose of imparting information and wisdom of a linguistic, geographic or historic nature sets my heart to twirling. As a writer, I also swear by all manner of odd and informative fact, trivia, date and biographical books. 'Living Authors'is the latter.

I picked it up around five years ago, from the discount purveyor Edward R. Hamilton Bookseller. I have scored some amazing finds from that catalogue but this has been the most used, appreciated and enjoyed.

It is a thick book, chock-a-block full of enticing, informative and brief biographies of, yes, living authors. The catch, which is exactly what made the tome so alluring to me in the first place, is that it was initially published in 1931.So, if you were hoping to read tasty tidbits about Dan Brown or Anne Rice, then this is not your volume. However, if you enjoy the works of some of the greatest writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, or want to discover lesser-remembered lights of that era, then it is well worth finding a copy. Mine is a 2001 reprint.

The book profiles nearly 400 authors, including a photo or illustration of each, as well as a description of their looks. You learn about their backgrounds, careers, and personal lives. While there is no gossip, there is trivia both odd and insightful to be found.

It has proven to be a handy, one-of-a-kind data resource for my columns and reviews, much-thumbed,and infinitely inspirational.'Living Authors' is the perfect book to flip open randomly, while sipping a cup of tea or lazing on the sofa. It takes you back to a time when the world was fertile with wordsmiths of every ilk who, even after separating the talent and the person, were bewitching, engaging and unique individuals in their own right.

Even if I had to eviscerate my collection, 'Living Authors' is one of the last volumes I would part with:it has a charm, approach and immediacy impossible to duplicate.

PHOTOGRAPH: Then-Living Author LOUISE BOGAN.

The Edge of the World-1937

The wind rings fierce in its desolation. Seagulls somehow manage to stay aloft, their cries barely reaching the ears of those below. Half-wild, dirty sheep, fleet-hoofed of necessity, have run of the fields and tor-sides and stone paths, their guard-dogs always within sight. Waves torment the rocks, spitting sea spray in all directions.

There is entrancing beauty to be found within the isolated fishing island's physical struggle with the elements. Born of green meadows, the cliffs drop off perilously to the moving water below. Houses, village buildings--even the kirk--are carved from the hillsides. Nothing in Hirta is separate from the earth or the weather.Everything that has been made from the hands of man is as tied to nature as the inhabitants are to their Lord and their Laird.

We first meet the final residents of Hirta, already a decade gone, as their memories move ghost-like through the village, treading down the path to shore. From this point, to the closing credits, we are given their story first-hand.

Although, elsewhere, it is the Roaring Twenties, the island is a living museum to the old ways. The residents have become increasing aged, as youth--particularly males--flee to the mainland as soon as they are able.It is a vast old folks home, where even the middle-aged, though infectiously hearty,seem older than they are.

Robbie, Ruth and Andrew's youth shines forth like a beacon. The trio of young-adults represents the best hope for the island's future. Robbie and Ruth are amicable twins, Andrew is best-friends with the former and betrothed to the latter.

The fate of Hirta itself has already divided the small community, with some favouring abandonment and removal to Scotland and others preferring to stick it out. The two young men are in strong disagreement. A lazy Sabbath afternoon turns quickly from camaraderie to a stand-off, resulting in a silly boy's bet that ends with death, feuding and broken promises.

Andrew successfully completes the wager by climbing, without gear, the tallest cliff on the island. Robbie plunges to a sodden death in the sea below. The entire village is plunged into mourning. It is a culture where a tragedy affects everyone, and where celebration is equally shared. There will be no wedding, only a funeral. Robbie's father, Peter Manson, delivers the funeral invitations orally, as he solemnly walks from house to house with the news that they already know.

Andrew leaves Hirta for a life elsewhere. He cannot stay so near to the woman whom he is no longer allowed to marry. Small dramas unfold herein,including the birth and sickness of Ruth's daughter, illegitimate but welcomed as a gift by every islander. The reconciliation of Andrew, Ruth and her father is expected but not forced. It is a small point of happiness in a film barren of either hope or a conciliatory happy ending.

It is Peter Manson who ultimately signs the letter of appeal that is sent to the mainland. His daughter and her family now safe off of the island, he prepares to depart along with the others. Families, their belongings and livestock are all en route to the boat that will take them away from their embattled but beloved island home. A girl shepherds her kittens into a basket, signs are torn from businesses, keys are turned in locks one last time. They are removing themselves wholesale from the only place they have ever loved because their way of life is no longer tenable in the modern world.

The end of the film is anticipated from the very beginning yet it is wrenching in the most unexpected ways. I held my fingers to my lips,actually biting my nails, as the last tragedy unfolded terrifyingly slowly. It plays out in real time, taking several minutes to occur.

"The Edge of the World" (1937)begins with a prologue, set in the year of its release. A party of three, two men and a woman, sail to the island on a day-excursion. One of the former knows the sad events behind the island's abandonment; it is he who starts the narration, giving us the story behind a tombstone bearing the inscription "Peter Manson-GONE OVER."

It is easy to imagine "The Edge of the World" as a silent film. The dialogue is appropriately spare, direct and passionate. Yet it is a logical step to think of how it would play if words were excised altogether. The cutting of the film would lend itself admirably to a silent feature: it moves quickly from scene to scene, allowing for no smooth transition. There is no time to mull things over and it is visually jumpy.The black and white cinematography is balm to the harsh landscape, resulting in something that is wonderful to watch. The Women of The Glasgow Orpheus Choir provide the mournful soundtrack to the drama, infusing it with the only other stimulus needed.

So many of the scenes seem like tableaux from an earlier cinematic era: fiddlers and dancers alike moving to a reel; Andrew's father clicking his heels together as he walks with a lantern in one hand, a pipe in the other; the old women of the village, sitting arow on a hillside, knitting for the newborn babe, while she is being rocked by her mother.

"The Edge of the World" is an endangered species: it is a film that crawls in your head and sticks there, for all of the best reasons. It is not memorable for violence, sex, or action. It is stark and visually stunning. Its story, inspired by real life events, is forceful, empathetic, unvarnished and understated. It improves with each viewing yet its impact does not become diluted.

"THE EDGE OF THE WORLD"-1937 Written and Directed by Michael Powell

Starring-

John Laurie

Belle Chrystall

Eric Berry

Finlay Currie

Niall MacGinnis

Grant Sutherland

and, in the Prologue:

Michael Powell and his wife Frankie Reidy

The photo is of the subtle, superlative John Laurie, taken during the production of a later film, "Happy Go Lovely".