NUMBER THREE. Benicio Del Torres, the Usual Suspects (dir: Bryan Singer, 1995)
It wasn't the first time I'd seen him, it turns out, but it was the first time I noticed him. How could I not? He walked onscreen like a thing from another world, with an undescribable manner and odd hair, speaking a language that didn't seem familiar at first, but by his last scene was not only comprehensible but somehow charming. Although the film doesn't hold up as well over the years as one might have hoped after its initial gangbusters impression, some things about it will always be great: Kujan's (Chazz Palmintieri) last, long moment of revelation is one, and Del Toro's strange and mumbling Fred Fenster is another.
NUMBER TWO. Ben Kingsley, Sexy Beast (dir: Jonathan Glazer, 2000)
This is a brilliant movie from a hundred different angles, from the gun-toting lagomorph to the bold use of a boulder as both plot device and central metaphor, from Ray Winstone at his tender best to Ian McShane, mutated into an evil, plastic action-toy version of himself. It's Kingsley, though, as the terrifying Don Logan, a pitbull of a man, so tense his muscular shoulders ride next to his ears when he walks, who steals the film. This is one courageous performance: a character who barks like junkyard-dog and inspires panic not just in the other characters, but in us, the audience, just by sitting down to have a drink and a chat, or by a simple bulging of his neck-veins.
AND THE BOLDEST PERFORMANCE EVER IN AN ENGLISH-LANGUAGE FILM GOES TO:
NUMBER ONE. Christopher Plummer, Royal Hunt of the Sun (dir: Irving Lerner, 1970)
...as the Inca god-chief Atahualpa in a nutball little epic based on the nutball little epic play by Peter Shaffer (Amadeus). The first 45 minutes or so of the film are fairly unremarkable, with Robert Shaw as an ambitious, blue-collar, no-bullshit Francisco Pizarro struggling to get an expedition together to scour the new world for adventure and treasure. It's not until Atahualpa is carried into the frame that things really get going. Originated onstage by Robert Stephens, the role was first played on Broadway by David Carradine opposite Plummer himself as Pizarro. As far as I know, there are no video records of those performances, which is unfortunate, as I'm dying to know how much of Plummer's Atahualpa rose up spontaneously from him and how much might have been inspired by those previous interpretations.
In any case, the Atahualpa of the film is one of the strangest beings you'll ever see. It's as if Plummer systematically stripped away every attitude, gesture, habit and conditioning force rising from European culture and tradition, which is a vast sea of stuff to wade through and purge, then stripped away any gesture or habit which might rise from living an everyday human life. This fellow, after all, is not only from a culture entirely separate from and unknown to the Spanish invaders, but a god, as well, with nothing to be gained from appearing in the slightest bit human. What kind of recklessness and guts does it take to make choices this crazy and extreme? You either succeed magnificently or self-combust in utter humiliation, with no possibility in between. And I'm still not sure which one holds true: is it brilliant or embarrassing? I tend towards a judgment of brilliance. In his first onscreen moments, this Atahualpa seems cracked, effeminate, ineffectual, weak, and fascinating to watch as he sniffs then licks the Bible, beckons with his pinky, and utters continuous and disconcerting crooning sounds like the Chief Blue Meanie in Yellow Submarine. By the end, when he offers to die for Pizarro because he is a god and will rise up from the flames reborn, it makes sense that even the sturdy materialist Pizarro starts to believe him, because we nearly do, ourselves.
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