PERFORMANCE PERSPECTIVES

“Mystery Alaska”
THE POWER AND POWERLESSNESS OF EMOTION

Directed by Jay Roach (The Spy Who Shagged Me) and co-written by David Kelley of Elly McBeal fame Mystery Alaska is a pleasantly entertaining and socially responsible sporting film set in a small town. It has sensible things to say about the world we live in and it wryly observes the idiosyncrasies of small town life. It is peopled by believable well-rounded characters created through capable and intelligently based performances.

Solid Performances
RUSSELL CROWE is a good actor and he is well cast in this role. He is very solidly built and it’s believable that he has the ability to be a strong competitor in this very physical sport. These qualities however are basically genetic – is the actor tall enough, fit enough, good looking enough, tough enough or coordinated enough to play the role.

So what about his other acting choices?

Many Good Choices
The character of John Biebe is introduced to the audience in a very simple and effective way. We quickly and clearly get the image of a loving pro-active father, a sensible helpful partner and a caring member of the community – all this is created with very simple brush stokes. This is plainly a character we are going to like and the simplicity of RUSSELL’s choices save the opening from being an obvious cliché. It is not lazy acting either. RUSSELL has worked diligently at his skating skills. Further more he has made a point of getting to know his motorized snow ski very well (he looks absolutely comfortable at the controls) and he can turn on the ignition without even looking thus convincing us that this is something John Biebe has done thousands of times.

The ending is also played with great simplicity and effectiveness. In the middle of the story, however, on a few occasions RUSSELL chooses to portray the emotional side of the character. These are opportunities RUSSELL appears to enjoy taking for at times he follows a similar path in ‘The Gladiator’. Maybe they are choices aimed specifically at the more commercial end of the market and if that is the case they appear to work well for he is in the queue for an Oscar for Best Actor which surely indicates a significant level of approval. But this approach raises the old argument of the real story telling value of actors indulging in purely emotional outcomes and this film illustrates this point in a very clear way.

To Emote or Not To Emote.
In one scene by the graveside of an old friend John Biebe is plainly and reasonably very emotional. RUSSELL can bring tears to his eyes in a very convincing way and so the believability of the performance is not in question.

What is interesting to assess is the story telling value of this choice for RUSSELL lets the emotional content of the performance swamp his character’s sense of purpose. Maybe it could be argued that this was the intention of the sequence - to show John Biebe as an emotional man. If that was the case then this goal was completely achieved in the first second and a half of the scene and thereafter nothing else happened. There was no journey for the character, who for example may have struggled to not be emotional but ultimately had to succumb to his real feelings or who was so determined to help the community through their grief that he chose with difficulty to suppress his own. In this scene John Biebe was simply sad – and that is where it rested. Consequently for me the emotional connection with the character and the scene was none existent. And any growth in an understanding of the character was also minimal.

In contrast however later in the story “Skank” Martin (RON ELDARD) who is the teenage town stud has to make a significant apology for his sexual athleticism. This young man, in his endeavour to do what he believes is right, has to come to terms with undermining one of the few things he knows he can do well. His struggle to fulfill this chosen task is in fact very moving and when he walks away at the end of the scene we know something significant has happened for all the people caught in this story. A journey has been commenced. The characters are traveling on with appropriate difficulty and we are moved by their achievements. Here the emotion is not inert but an appropriate response to an honest struggle with the difficulties of life.

These two scenes bring an interesting commentary to an on going performance process debate.

BURT REYNOLDS can also sometimes lean towards the emotionally obvious. However the rest of the cast stick to the simple and unadorned with great success. Hank Azaria is terrific, as are all the women. It would have been easy to exploit the small town issues and limit the women to fairly predictable roles but the honesty and integrity with which the female actors and characters deal with the issues that confront them is one of the strengths of the film. Full marks to Mary McCormack and Lolita Davidovich.

So next time you confront the opportunity to play a scene that has an emotional outcome make sure you decide what is most important – the character’s journey or the emotion itself.

February 2001

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