Sometimes we forget that acting is a craft, and a difficult one at that. Actors become celebrities and then who they’re fucking becomes somehow more important than what they’re portraying. But acting, that grand game of make believe wrapped up in the fabric of basic human truths, is difficult. And great acting, well, that’s something almost otherworldly. It is making something out of nothing. In fact, acting may be the most basic of arts – to create using only our bodies and brains. No paint, no clay, no music. Just emotion.
But, like I said, sometimes we forget that amid the razzle dazzle and the gaudy glitz that accompanies acting. So it’s nice when someone like the New York Times magazine reminds us once again that acting is indeed an art – and a thing of beauty. Like they did with female tennis players, the Times has crafted an amazing multimedia package featuring 14 actors acting. The magazine asked the year’s best actors to “show us — in a few gestures and with a few props but without dialogue or story — what acting is. And here they are, striking some of the classic attitudes of cinema, turning their bodies and faces into instruments of pure, deep and enigmatic emotion.” In less than 90 seconds, all of them manage to transport us somewhere and make us wish no one ever yelled, “Cut!”
A look at a few of my favorites. See all of them here:
Noomi Rapace, Millennium Trilogy films
Jennifer Lawrence, “Winter’s Bone”
Chloë Moretz, “Kick-Ass,” “Let Me In”
Tilda Swinton, “I Am Love”
I can’t stop watching Tilda’s. I don’t think she is human, and I mean that in the best possible way.
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