You’re fat, here’s a way of solving that. “We have commercials every 15 minutes on American television that say, ‘You’re lacking, you’re lacking this thing, you’re lacking this sensibility, you’re lacking this car, this soap, those teeth, whatever. That pandemic of male unhappiness could also be a result of rigid thinking about high expectations, and what used to be called the American dream. In Saving Private Ryan with Matt Damon and Ed Burns “Men don’t do that unless they’re in 12-step programmes, and I think that is Otto, and when he finally confesses and says ‘I want to tell you about the great love of my life that was taken away from me’, that’s the thing that embitters him, as opposed to thinking ‘Well, I had a wonderful love in my life and I could still linger on that’.” Why is that? One is because they don’t have any friends: they have superficial connections, but they don’t have that other guy they can talk to and say, ‘You know I’m really depressed right now, I think I might need some help’. And there might be a lot of reasons for this, but one is that you get into your 50s, and men feel as though they have not become the version of themselves that they saw. “I’ve read that, over the last few years, there is almost a pandemic of loneliness in America that’s hitting men in their 50s. This philosophy, Hanks reckons, tends to be self-fulfilling. Where Marisol insists on the importance of community, Otto leans towards Margaret Thatcher’s dictum that there’s no such thing as society. And when you hear it all you go, well of course, that explains everything.” Frederick, our producer, said that no one is a stranger once you learn their story, but Otto holds it all in until the last 15 minutes of the movie. “And what was beautiful about Backman’s novel and David Magee’s screenplay is that the unpeeling of Otto and Marisol’s back stories is the thing that brings us together. But look, you can get older and you can feel embittered because you feel you’ve been cheated out of something, or you can feel lucky that you have learned all the things not to do, what not to worry about, and I mean, do we dare call that wisdom? In this film, the audience finds out all that Otto has been through, and you have to show that. “Look I’m 66, and in the past I’ve often played somebody much younger than I should have been. “I think it’s liberating, to tell you the truth,” he says. He’s given up on life, is old before his time, and as an actor Hanks was not afraid to embrace the character’s age, and exhaustion. Otto is terse to the point of catatonia, and we only find out why he’s so bitter and withdrawn towards the end of the film, when he finally confides in Marisol. I think in countries like yours you remember them as if they were alive, it’s like you almost remove the tragedy of death along with it. You might talk about what they did, but you don’t continue the conversation. You’ll invest maybe in a montage of life, but then after that it’s avoid, avoid, avoid. “Yeah it’s just about the last thing you’ll talk about. In the US, says Hanks, things are different. I explain how death in Ireland also tends to be confronted head on. “In our culture,” she says, “with the Día del Muertos and all, there’s this fearlessness almost, you know, a not being afraid of fear itself.” Treviño, who has joined us, describes how in Mexico, death is seen as part of life. In a car, when people don’t use their turning signals, or something very basic, this sets me off in a way where even I have to stop and say, ‘Calm down, you know, you’re in a car by yourself!’ And what about people driving fast through the neighbourhood? Oh man, I wanna have a rock and throw it at them.” Then the second thing I say is, ‘Why would it work for me?’, and that means I am angry. “The first thing I say is, ‘Now let me get this straight’, and that means I’m getting angry. Does he have a hidden inner grump he could tap into to help him? The first thing that strikes you as you watch the film is the fact that Hanks is playing totally against type, inhabiting a person whose bitterness is palpable, and hasn’t a kind word to say to anyone. She refuses to give up on him, and their unlikely friendship forms the story’s backbone. Hispanic wife and mother Marisol (Treviño) is a force of nature, and sees glimmers of warmth through Otto’s frosty exterior. But it’s not enough, and Otto is in the middle of his first suicide attempt when he is rudely interrupted by his new neighbour. He makes daily patrols, chides neighbours for parking on the kerb and not displaying their residents’ permits. His wife has died, he’s been forced to retire and all he has to cling to now are the rules and regulations of his little housing estate.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |