Gary Oldman is a great actor, but can he also be a movie star? That`s the question posed by ”Criminal Law,” a thriller that received its world premiere this week at the just-concluded Toronto Festival of Festivals.
Though Oldman has excelled in a series of complex character parts in humbly budgeted British films-Sid Vicious in ”Sid and Nancy,” Joe Orton in
”Prick Up Your Ears”-”Criminal Law” gives him his first starring role in a major Hollywood movie. As Ben Chase, a young Boston attorney who is drawn into the dark imaginings of his client, wealthy serial killer (Kevin Bacon), Oldman is no longer just an actor. He must also be a romantic lead (as he falls in love with costar Karen Young) and an action hero (as he battles to save her life).
Oldman, a shy, sympathetic man whose soft British accent occasionally slips into a stutter, joked that he took the role ”basically because it was there and I needed the money. But it was also so different from anything I had done before-and that was interesting in itself.”
Part of the difference is that Ben Chase is an American. ”It`s a frightening experience for an Englishman to play an American in an American film. I can`t think of too many other people who have done it. Maybe Vivian Leigh (in ”Gone with the Wind” and ”A Streetcar Named Desire”), and she didn`t do too badly.”
”The accent was the least of it. I listened to tapes and I had a coach, but I seem to have a facility for it-it`s just technique. But the performance should transcend that. It`s the whole kind of gait you try to create if you want to make people believe it.”
Oldman is believable in ”Criminal Law,” and perhaps too much so. Out of his meticulous craftsmanship, he has fashioned a perfectly plausible American type-the sort of good spirited, morally earnest up-and-comer that Jeff Bridges might play-but somehow the performance lacks the imaginative scale necessary to bring the largely formulaic substance of ”Criminal Law” to life.
It might seem odd that a man who can be credibly described as ”the greatest actor on this planet”-as festival director Helga Stephenson introduced him from the stage Thursday night-can give his least satisfying performance in material that seems at first absurdly simple for an artist of his gifts. But there is a difference between creating a finely observed character-as Oldman does superbly in Colin Gregg`s bittersweet British comedy ”We Think the World of You,” also shown at the festival-and creating a vehicle for the fantasy identifications of a wide audience, which is what
”Criminal Law” requires. If it`s true that not all movie stars can act, it`s equally true that not all actors can be movie stars. It`s a difficult transition, and Gary Oldman will need a little more time to make it.
Shirley MacLaine is unquestionably a movie star, though she, too, is facing a time of transition. In ”Madame Sousatzka,” the Toronto festival`s closing presentation, the glamorous MacLaine plays a 60-ish teacher of classical piano, so deeply buried under layers of frizzled hair, ill-applied makeup and rattling costume jewelry that the kids in her London neighborhood call her ”Dracula,” and she no longer bothers to turn around.
The real MacLaine, who remains as radiant as her red hair, explains Madame Sousatzka`s ”absence of cosmetic vanity,” by quoting Bette Davis`s advice: ”Take the character parts as soon as you can, and you`ll work for the rest of your life.”
According to the actress, when she first received the script from director John Schlesinger, ”I didn`t have the total conviction that I wanted to go this far this soon. When I had my first meeting with John, I put on a pair of tight pants and a blouse with a Peter Pan collar, just to look young. But I could tell right away he thought I was too young for the part, so I spent the next 40 minutes trying to look old.” MacLaine put 25 pounds on her dancer`s body for the role (”which I loved doing”) and, because her character is a pianist, cut her fingernails short (”and that`s commitment”). The transformation, however, wasn`t entirely physical. Referring to the
”new age” beliefs in reincarnation and ”channeling” that she has outlined in her books, MacLaine said, ”I`m not interested in any advice I might get from my guides on how I should play a part-that`s something I already know.”
”But acting involves channeling in another way. The character played herself out through me. She had become an entity in herself through the thought collaborations of John Schlesinger and myself. I got her back problems, I got her habit of compulsive eating and I become nervous and demanding, just like her,even when I was off camera.”
When the filming was completed, MacLaine said, the character returned from whence she came. ”I felt her departure when we were making the last close-ups. My throat suddenly went dry because Sousatzka had gone.”
Whatever its sources, MacLaine`s Sousatzka remains a star turn of the classical variety-a performance that has less to do with technique and observation than with sheer force of personality.
Even under Madame`s industrial strength eye shadow, MacLaine remains MacLaine-darting, impulsive, sharp-and hers is the kind of bigness the movies like.
