PERFORMANCE PERSPECTIVES

"The Wonder Boys"
AN ESSAY ON RELAXATION

This film can be favourably compared to American Beauty because it is another successful film about a mid-life male in crisis.

MICHAEL DOUGLAS, in what is a departure from his usual image, plays a gentle academic with writer's block.

In "The Wonder Boys" he creates with consummate ease an engaging, complex and thoroughly believable character. And it is the ease with which MICHAEL achieves this performance which is one of it's noteworthy aspects. There is no striving for excellence here. And yet excellence is achieved.

There are numerous wonderful surprises for his character as the story unfolds. These terrific 'moments of surprise' are played without any apparent stress on the part of the actor and yet they are never 'thrown away'. To say that they are 'milked' is to also use an old theatrical term that would not satisfactorily describe their success, for these moments are not pushed for the benefit of gaining a response from the audience. They are explored and heightened perhaps - but always kept with in the parameters of the character's interaction with the circumstances.

The element I found exhilarating in this performance was the simple trust MICHAEL DOUGLAS had in his choices and in the outcome of his process. So at no stage is there any sense of the actor working - only the character experiencing. The result - a wonderful truthfulness.

Overall MICHAEL DOUGLAS has created a very relaxed character through a very relaxed performance.

The ending of "The Wonder Boys" succeeds solely because in the final scene MICHAEL manages to elegantly explore the simple truth of his character's current state of mind. This moment is of course about the resolution of his story. And a significant amount is conveyed, on this occasion, through the character's genuine and complete relaxation. This is something that the actor cannot fake. An actor needs to be completely at one with the story, the character and their own choices to achieve such a level of relaxation. MICHAEL DOUGLAS achieves these goals completely.

And FRANCES MCDORMAND yet again displays that she is 'the complete actor'. She also slips through her scenes with consummate ease. It is a constant trademark of her roles that one never tends to be aware of her acting process. She is always so completely and purely in the moment that all one sees is the 'character'. No actor's tension is present here. In the world of a character created by FRANCES MCDORMAND there is no such thing as an actor - only an 'inter-actor'. What higher praise is there?

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