“The acting occasionally rises to the level of adequacy.”
--from A.O. Scott’s review of “Paranormal Activity” in The New York Times
What are the criteria that critics and audiences use to praise actors’ performances? When we notice that someone is giving a good performance while we are watching a movie, is this necessarily a good thing? If we are multi-tasking, and calculating Oscar odds mid-story, does that mean we are not fully immersed in the experience and are removed from it?
So what is the purpose of film acting?
I was a huge fan of the movie “Once,” and so I recommended it to an acquaintance, as something she might like. She hated it. As she was a serious student of acting, she found the performance of Markéta Irglová portraying Markéta Irglová to be so inadequate that she couldn’t enjoy the film. I conceded that perhaps someone else could have played the role of Markéta Irglová much better than Markéta Irglová did, perhaps a trained actress or someone who was naturally more relaxed in front of the camera. But her character had a lot to be tense and uncomfortable about, and so I interpreted the behavior as being the character’s, not an inexperienced real-life person struggling to act.--and anyway I was too moved by the entirety of the experience of watching the film to be distracted about whether Irglová deserved a Golden Globe or would make a good Lady Macbeth. She broke my heart within this story and it didn’t matter to me if she ever got in front of a camera again.
Was Philip Seymour Hoffman brilliant in “Twister”? Or maybe the right question is should he have been? He had a dinky role, and he came in was nondescript and pretty forgettable and got paid. He wasn’t “Philip Seymour Hoffman” yet. Would he have been as creepily unsettling in “Happiness” if he already had his Oscar for “Capote”?
Harrison Ford has often told a story about when he was a contract player playing a tiny role in “Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round.” A producer told him that when Tony Curtis played a bit part like that he made you know that he was a star. And Ford said, “I thought I was supposed to be a waiter.”
It is a good thing that we try to recognize, appreciate, encourage and reward talent of all kinds. And actors deserve it, whether they have trained their whole lives, or just have an extraordinary natural gift. They give us so much. But there are times when we just need an actor to be a waiter.
Which brings me to “Paranormal Activity,” a movie I admire. I generally agree with A.O. Scott, but I think he missed something important about the film in his casual put-down of the actors (above). I get the point that he thinks the film isn’t very good, but it is attracting huge audiences, and that’s intriguing. Why is that happening?
I believe the most important reason is that the film convinces audiences that the characters are real. I have no idea if this is due to the talent or lack of talent of the director, Oren Peli, and his actors, Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat, whether they did this purposefully, or whether they were trying for something else and achieved this effect entirely by chance. The result is the same: the film makes a direct connection with its audience. Perhaps it has to do with the character’s essential ordinariness.
From the audience’s point of view, Featherson and Sloat aren’t perceived as unknown actors—they are seen as “Katie” and “Micah,” real live people. You can say that the audiences are dumb to believe this, and you can say that I am dumb to believe this, but that’s one of the main reasons I go to movies, to get hooked by stories, however preposterous. And that’s why I was frightened, and that’s why the people in the theatre around me were watching while holding their hands in front of their eyes.
“The acting occasionally rises to the level of adequacy.” That’s it exactly! Nobody is noticing any acting going on at all. Sometimes you just need a waiter. For a film like this it’s better to have Katie and Micah playing these roles than to have stars. And this was the conclusion that Paramount came to when they abandoned their plans for a remake with “names.”
So what is the best acting in film? Sometimes it’s the kind of thing you want to give an Oscar to.
And sometimes you only know it when you don’t see it.
