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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
As the terrifying villain at the center of "Sexy Beast" the English actor obliterated himself -- and invented an entirely new character.
Mar 21, 2002 | There is a moment near the beginning of last summer's "Sexy Beast" where you witness the miraculous brightening of an unhappy man. As bad guy Don Logan, a terrifying Ben Kingsley is getting ready to talk retired associate Gal Dove into returning to London for one final, "risk-free" heist. With a bottle of beer in his hand, Logan takes a seat on one of the lawn chairs on the patio of Gal's Spanish villa. The sun is shining, the sky's a vivid blue and his face registers a look of perfect contentment as he puts his beer on the table. For a career gangster who takes his job as seriously as Logan does, there may be no greater heaven on earth than the Spanish sun, a cold beer, an old friend and some decent work.
The look quickly disappears; his happiness is fleeting. We'll only see him content once more in the movie. For like Greek myth, "Sexy Beast" can be summed up in one sentence, one that Kingsley utters on the DVD of the film: "Once upon a time lived the happiest man in the world, and the gods send to him the unhappiest man in the world." Naturally, Kingsley's character is the unhappy man, and Gal, Ray Winstone's lazy sloth of a retired gangster, the happy one. Gal once served nine years in prison, and he's got every reason now -- a beautiful wife and a lovely life -- to stay out of the slammer. Don won't accept a no.
The plot might sound clichéd, but the film turns out to be not a gangster story as much as a character piece that demands dimension and depth of both Gal and Don. Kingsley gives the kind of needling, terrifying performance that could make an actor's career, if his weren't already legendary. Logan's a flesh and blood Rumpelstiltskin, a limitless repository of childish rage. Twenty years ago, Kingsley, now 59, won an Oscar for his moving portrayal of Mahatma Gandhi. This year, he deserves another Oscar, for best supporting actor. His Logan is the polar opposite of Gandhi. Or, to repeat a phrase that got passed around a lot last summer, he's the "anti-Gandhi."
Yet Kingsley's chances for winning are slim. Obviously, any artistic contest is by nature subjective, and demands the kind of apples to oranges comparisons that get jurists -- and critics -- in trouble. Of the five best supporting actor nominations, Kingsley's strongest contenders are fellow Englishmen Jim Broadbent ("Iris") and Ian McKellen ("Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring"). Although multiple Oscar holders (Tom Hanks, Jodie Foster, Kevin Spacey) show that the Academy is willing to reward an actor more than once, other considerations are at play. For one thing, neither McKellen nor Broadbent have gotten the little statue. Also, with older actors, the Academy has a habit of awarding a cumulative Oscar for lifetime achievement, rather than a given role (remember Judi Dench's Oscar for a few lines of queenly dialogue in "Shakespeare in Love"). That could easily come into play here: This is the first nomination for 53-year-old Broadbent, and in 1998, Roberto Benigni ("Life Is Beautiful") beat 63-year-old McKellen for the latter's chilling performance as director James Whale in Bill Condon's "Gods and Monsters."
To make Kingsley's odds even more dismal, "Sexy Beast" was released in the United States ages ago -- early last June -- long before the Oscar-bent, Christmas releases of either McKellen's or Broadbent's studio pictures. The British production had largely disappeared from domestic theaters by the end of summer, and 20th Century Fox didn't release the DVD until March 12, just a week before Academy voting closed. Despite critical acclaim for smashing genre conventions, Jonathan Glazer's first feature film has not received any other Oscar nods. And with other key nominations for "Lord of the Rings" and "Iris," New Line and Miramax are -- predictably -- saturating the trades.
But leave politics aside, and Kingsley deserves the prize. As Don Logan, he delivers a solid, nuanced and integrated performance. Of course the same can be said of McKellen's Gandalf, or Broadbent's endearingly befuddled, doting husband. Yet only Kingsley has eliminated himself so entirely from his role. There is no compassion in his mournful, Gandhi eyes; when Logan narrows his gaze, he's only sizing up how much aggression to apply. It's a physical talent: Kingsley makes himself bigger than anyone else in the film, even though he's smaller than the people he terrorizes. And there's even something more in the role, and it's what pushes Kingsley's performance into Academy territory. You could argue that with Logan, Kingsley has invented an entirely new character type.
