truly wonderful retrospective by Matthew Zoller-Seitz in the immediacy of Philip Seymour Hoffman's unexpected death:
http://www.rogerebert.com/mzs/stay-funny-valentine-phillip-seymour-hoffman-1967-2014
Matt Zoller-Seitz said:
Think of how many Hoffman performances are memorable because you don't want to think about them for long because they make you uncomfortable, not in that phony undergraduate drama student sense, but because they tease out some buried truth about humanity, maybe about you in particular, often within the context of a character you never expected to connect with, much less identify with. Real honesty in acting is a rare thing. It comes from a mix of technique, emotional intelligence, and a rejection of vanity: a mix of qualities that causes the viewer to think only about the character, never about the character in relation to the actor playing him. Hoffman always valued that sort of rare, true honesty. That's why you kept looking at him even when you wanted to look away.
the above strikes me as the reason we're seeing such an overwhelmingly anguished outcry from fans and the film community at large. we're not patting ourselves on the back in self-satisfaction that we've done our good deed for the day by faux-mourning the loss of a beloved cultural figure. we are genuinely hurting at this loss, and no amount of cynicism will convince me otherwise...
after watching Charlie Kaufman's 'Synecdoche, New York' for the first and only time, i was left in tears, aghast, bewildered, confused, lonely, aching, and rapturous all at once. i was not the same person after watching that film, and that is not overstatement. great art is often transformative, and P.S.H.'s portrayal of Caden Cotard "tease[d] out some buried truth about humanity, maybe about [me] in particular, often within the context of a character [i ] never expected to identify with."
'Synecdoche' arrived in theaters in 2008. i missed out on it during its limited theatrical run, but finally got around to purchasing it on DVD in the summer of 2010, an important period in my life between my undergraduate and graduate educations. i have not put it back into the DVD player since then, and not because it isn't a truly magnificent achievement of both acting and direction. it is simply that such a film and such a performance cannot be casually watched. it is not background noise or escapism. in fact, it is a movie and a central performance that cannot be escaped. it hounds and haunts the viewer long after the end credits have rolled. it leaves you squirming in that life-affirming way that reminds us of our own humanity. as Matt Zoller-Seitz so beautifully articulates in his article:
Matt Zoller-Seitz said:
Throughout much of his early career, Hoffman played characters distinguished by an agonized and agonizing neediness. Sometime in the late '90s I joked to a friend that I hesitated to see any film with Phillip Seymour Hoffman in it, because he took so much out of me. I didn't really mean that I didn't want to see him in anything, of course; I was exaggerating my ambivalence, or revulsion, as a gesture of respect for his power as an actor. I meant that if you saw a film with Hoffman in the cast, you were probably committing to watch at least one character, Hoffman's, humiliate himself, or open his heart to to the wrong person, or to the right person at the wrong moment, or do or say something that would make me think of a person I'd really rather not remember, or fear becoming.
Hoffman knew how to locate us at our centers. he was a rare breed of actor in an age when such talents are fading from an industry that's less and less interested in making movies for adults...
R.I.P. P.S.H.