Leonardo DiCaprio, talent without personality
Among the various stars (not many, as there are few who can hold such a qualification without staggering after a few years) that cross the always helpless, hypocritical and slippery firmament of today's Hollywood, one of the most requested, bombastic and, for many, prestigious, is that of a blond boy, with blue eyes, born in that same city 35 years ago, of a German mother and Italian father, who since the age of five has been working in the tough North American audiovisual business, and who has managed to build a reputation for professional and committed ecologist.
He is a charismatic and talented performer, but in the opinion of the one who writes this, without the personality of the greats of his trade, and with an ambition that is almost always much more developed than his instinct, which he often leaves in the gutter. , to give free rein to what is known, in the jargon, as 'over-acting', when in reality it is nothing else to interpret in an obvious way. But in the cinema, an actor, precisely, what he does not have to do is interpret. And in that this downright heartthrob is a specialist.
Interpret / Live
They say that during the filming of 'It Should Happen to You', the almost unknown Jack Lemmon (one of the greatest performers that cinema has given, without any doubt), who was beginning a career that would be legendary, ended up fed up with the director, one George Cukor. Apparently they were just repeating the same take over and over again, and in each one of them Cukor praised Lemmon's talent, hardened in a thousand television series and a few stage performances, but asked him to perform a little less. In the end, Lemmon exploded and said, "Mr. Cukor, I'm going to end up not playing at all!" To which the great actor director Cukor replied, "We're starting to understand each other, boy."
In the cinema, the actor should not interpret the way he does in the theater, if not quite the opposite. The camera is a register of the actor's lie (that is, to pretend, to “pretend”), to such an extent that the only remedy is to live the sequence in a total way, with overwhelming sincerity. Theatrical tools are useless, that's why many famous theater actors failed in cinema (many others succeeded because they understood this great truth). DiCaprio is a smart, gifted, and self-demanding actor, but he doesn't always realize that he is acting in an obvious and often crude way.
His first breakout role was in "Who Does Gilbert Grape Love ?," one of the best-finished films of the often cloying Lasse Hallström. He was then nineteen years old, although as has always been the case, he looked a lot younger. It was the first of his three Oscar nominations. His character was much more than the classic delayed melodrama. He knew how to endow it, by dint of instinct, with a humanity and depth that were very difficult to impress on this class of characters. A remarkable performance.
However, this pretty boy did not know how to choose successive roles well, including the highly praised, and epidermal to the core, 'The Basketball Diaries' (here they called 'Diary of a rebel'), in which many saw an actor of race , but that was the first symptom of an interpreter unable to live the sequence. Of course, his poses and his energy were unlimited. He was eager to show what a good actor he was, and he followed it up with the pitiful 'Quick and Dead' or the absurd 'Romeo + Juliet', in which he was more of a pretty face than anything else.
An actor of pure instinct
But he was lucky to meet his guru, Robert DeNiro, in the interesting 'Marvin's Room', and there he was noticed by Martin Scorsese. However, I consider that his best role is that of ‘Titanic’, the least feigned, the most natural, in which he was more himself, without being one. There he was, in my opinion, the truest DiCaprio, who lived the sequence to the fullest, without worrying about astonishing with tics learned from an actor. A pity that he did not continue in that line, and signed to star in the unfortunate 'The Man in the Iron Mask', one of the worst adventure films of recent times, in which he played the divine divo, and forgot that he is actor.
But it had already become a planetary star, and with ‘The beach’ it met a bump of the kind that only stars can experience. Of course, the paparazzi followed him wherever he went, even to that lonely beach. There's nothing in that movie bullshit that is saved from burning, not even the usual efforts of the ever-dedicated DiCaprio. However, Scorsese arrived, and everything changed. So much so that he only starred in seven more movies in the first decade of this century. Four of them from Scorsese. And I have to say that as much as I admire the American director, I don't understand his fixation on this actor.
In the first of them, ‘Gangs of New York’, the gulf between him and a truly great actor like Daniel Day-Lewis is so clear
, which is scandalous. All that in DiCaprio is pretense, cunning tricks of a seasoned actor, wasted energy, in his opponent is true, cloudy and disturbing truth. It is not understood how an expert director of actors as Scorsese, who helps his young actor to be more than he is, fell into the error of confronting a flyweight with a heavyweight. If DiCaprio had used his acting instinct, which is powerful, the distance would have been less sensitive.
Scorsesian actor
Having learned his mistake, he had no obvious rival in "The Aviator," but it was also clear that DiCaprio was not the right actor to portray a personality as complex as Howard Hughes. In his disclaimer, it should be added that this decade has not been very successful for Scorsese, as his overflowing personality has become more and more watered down, almost dissolving and becoming unrecognizable, but the leading actor in his films will also be guilty of this. Scorsese's best role has been in 'The Departed', but it's not exceptional either. It shows too much that this actor tries to dazzle, that he wants to be a great actor, win the Oscar, and is drowning in his own effort.
But there is something worse: in many moments of his works for Scorsese, and especially in 'The Departed', it seems that he is imitating Robert De Niro in an irritating way. I am not exaggerating, that the reader check if he wants the most intense moments of that film and he will see a younger copy of the mythical actor so quickly sold out. The gestures are the same, traced. They are also similar in the lamentable ‘Blood Diamond’, the interesting ‘Network of Lies’ or the self-indulgent ‘Revolutionary Road’, in which the same thing happens to Winslet as with Day-Lewis: there is no color.
In addition, turned into his own producer (something positive to take charge of his own career, but also a limitation), he serves himself roles such as that of the adventurer of 'Blood Diamond', a vehicle for his personal appearance disguised as a movie committed, with whom he hopes, one day, to win the Oscar, a search that has truncated the careers of many talented stars, obsessed with a golden bald man who, more than giving, takes away prestige. Now, we look forward to his 'Shutter Island', again with Scorsese, and Nolan's new film, 'Inception', which looks like one of those strokes that certain viewers eager to have their neurons turned upside down with intrigue so much. twisted and bizarre. I don't think they change my perception of him.
But you never know.
