‘The Actor’ Review: André Holland Saves Duke Johnson’s Surreal Thriller
While The Actor doesn’t reach its high ambitions, Duke Johnson’s surreal thriller mostly works thanks to a highly committed and nuanced performance from André Holland.
I don’t think it’s a secret that this critic is a massive admirer of André Holland’s work, from his best-ever performance in Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight to highly underappreciated appearances in Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All and, most recently, in Titus Kaphar’s Exhibiting Forgiveness. It should come as no surprise, then, that I believe him to be the best part of Duke Johnson’s The Actor, a highly anticipated directorial debut that NEON somehow buried and gave no theatrical release in Canada, only hitting a few markets during its (highly) limited run.
Now that the movie has been released on VOD in our neck of the woods, one is baffled that the Oscar-winning studio would bury something like this. While it certainly isn’t up to the standards they have built as a distribution house with the recent awards season sweep of Sean Baker’s Anora, the film isn’t the perceived disaster its sole trailer advertises it as, but a compelling surreal thriller that mostly works because of Holland’s committed lead performance. He portrays Paul Cole, an actor who, after surviving a vicious attack (visualized in black-and-white), wakes up in a hospital with no recollection of who he is and what his past life was like.
Paul attempts to find clues about his identity, going so far as to travel back to New York to get a sense of what his life as a burgeoning actor resembled before he lost all of his memory. As he finds out more and more about himself, Paul eventually decides that his past life might have been filled with regretful moments he wishes not to remember, and eventually gives up trying to make sense what he had, to rebuild anew with Edna (Gemma Chan), a woman whom he’s developed a romantic interest in in his “new” life, away from who he was to who he is in the wake of his accident. There’s a chance his memory could come back on its own if he gives it time, but Paul thinks it may not be the best idea for now.
It's hard to tell what part of the movie we’re watching occurs in real life or is a figment of Paul’s imagination, since its supporting cast, comprised of May Calamawy, Olwen Fouéré, Toby Jones, Asim Chaudhry, Youssef Kerkour, Joe Cole, and Tracey Ullman among others, play a bevy of bit parts, with some actors even playing two distinct characters in the same scene. Who are the people in Paul’s life if they look the same? He has no photographic memory of who his wife was and who his true friends are. All he remembers are some distinct characteristics, but nothing expressively tangible. Stuff like this seems plucked out straight from the work of David Lynch, yet, aside from Calamawy, whose small roles are more fun than the last, most of the supporting actors are pitifully wasted and have nothing of interest to do or say in what could be an incredible opportunity for character actors to flex their muscles on screen in a unique way.
They don’t even “unlock” something in Paul that he forgot, and the device ultimately feels like a missed opportunity to fully delve into surrealism and coalesce the bit parts deeper than “one actor playing five characters”, especially when its images and the “theatrical” mise-en-scène Johnson employs can do something fiendishly creative with its core concept. The entire movie was shot on a soundstage in Budapest and uses all of the old-school filmmaking techniques in the book: miniatures to represent the large-scale city of New York, rear projections when someone is in a moving vehicle, matte paintings, wipes, expressive, heightened lighting to punctuate a dramatic moment or Paul’s epiphany, moody shadows, and, most importantly, Old Hollywood opening credits.
These elements, alongside transitions from one scene to the next that sees the protagonist walking in total darkness only for another “set” to light up (as if he’s careening from one end of the stage to the other), add a true sense of theatricality to the movie, making it constantly engaging and dynamic, especially when most of the actors show their range from the small supporting roles they play. After all, acting is playing, and there isn’t a better movie released this year that’s a perfect demonstration of this, even if it wastes most of its cast for uninterestingly developed characters. Even the romantic relationship between Paul and Edna doesn’t work, notably because Chan adds little to no texture to her performance, whilst Holland is far too good to dabble in such imperfect material.
How Holland portrays Paul Cole is deeply moving, depicting a man who, we learn, shielded his vulnerabilities through acting and is now forced to reckon with them as he has lost all sense of self. This is fully realized during The Actor’s bravura television shoot scene, a sequence of two one-takes that prepare Paul’s return to acting, as he is set to play a “condemned man” on a live program (condemned, because he is condemned to forget who he is and will never be allowed to revisit his past). How the one-takes are staged feels like the apotheosis of Johnson’s visual approach, as Joe Passarelli’s camera always focuses on the artifice of cinema: showing the sets, the television cameras, the markers, how shadows are created once the director yells “action!,” the chaos of rehearsals, and so on and so forth.
For a while, this sequence seems a bit excessive, almost as if Johnson is indulging himself in staging a rehearsal sequence like Damien Chazelle did in Babylon, until it reaches its dramatic apex, through Holland’s repetition of “I don’t want to die.” This is a line he gives for the show, but Paul begins to feel it deep in his bones that he violently breaks down, knowing that he’ll never be able to find himself in the situation he’s in and is better off rebuilding what he remembers with Edna. Within that vulnerability, Holland shines so brightly that we end up feeling for his plight, especially when his performance always communicates with the stylistic flourishes Johnson throws at the frame, notably in how the expressive use of theatrical lighting modulates the different emotional underpinnings his character feels.
He's the only reason why the movie works so well, even if its ending seems to undo the pseudo-cerebral approach Johnson wants to undertake with his picture but seems afraid of going much deeper than a couple of ethereal images and quick fragments of Paul’s past life. Still, I appreciate a movie that doesn’t handhold the audience and give them a completely different conclusion than we anticipated, regardless of how underdeveloped most of the supporting cast is. As a technical exercise and demonstration of Holland’s acting prowess, The Actor more than shines. As a surreal thriller, it has the striking images but none of the execution to warrant Lynchian comparisons. Still, this does not explain NEON burying the film like this, especially when André Holland is one of the best actors (with a capital A) working today, looking to forge his own path as a singular talent. For that reason and that reason only, the film is well worth your time.