An opinion on the great actor that is Brad Pitt, consecrated despite his beauty
This is the great year of the actor, who shines in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and in Ad Astra: to the stars. And he did it by still being the most beautiful of his generation.
In a recent interview with Quentin Tarantino about Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, director Paul Thomas Anderson recounted an anecdote about the role of Brad Pitt and one of the character's compositional difficulties: a stuntman can't be such an actor. beautiful like him. How then to conjure up that documentary evidence, his condition of beauty?
The nice question can be read as trick, while beauty is not always associated with talent. Wasn't it in Thelma & Louise, where Pitt plays a radiant young man, the first moment of universal recognition?
In 1991, it never occurred to anyone to say that a colossal talent stood out in the Ridley Scott film.
Four years later, Pitt had already faced various roles: he was a cowboy, a vampire, a serial killer and also a madman in Terry Gilliam's magnificent 12 monkeys, for which he received an Oscar nomination. At this point, his versatility spoke volumes.
He was beautiful, no doubt, but he had also shown what a good actor must show: sensitivity and intelligence, which is not only played within a role, but also in the roles that are chosen throughout a career. In this sense, Pitt's career choices are respectable and, at times, unexpected.
This year he belongs to her. Two important films have him as the protagonist. In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood he plays Cliff Both, a stuntman for a relatively famous actor. The character's past is doubtful and the present seems circumscribed to the fate of the actor he replaces in the stunts.
The other outstanding film is Ad Astra: To the Stars, by James Gray, an exceptional director, whose first science fiction film will not be among his best. In this film, Pitt is a traumatized astronaut on a mission related to the destiny of humanity.
Unlike Tarantino's film, in this the whole story has him as the main protagonist, and it is not an easy task, because the film's narrative choices make him a mere omniscient reader on repeated occasions, brooding over transcendental and therapeutic themes.
An actor never demonstrates his greatness in isolation. Acting is reacting, and that is why Pitt shines when he interacts with his dog in Tarantino's, when he secretly accompanies DiCaprio's character, and when he doesn't know whether or not he's hallucinating in the presence of hippies. satanic.
In those scenes one of his great virtues can be guessed: the timing for interaction and the gradual work on emotional and expressive nuances.
That is why in Ad Astra his interpretive capacity is turned on when he has him in front of Donald Sutherland and Tommy Lee Jones: his virtue as an actor lies in the back and forth. That's why he shone in Fight Club, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and in Tarantino's latest.
Mysterious paradox: the most beautiful of his generation does not exercise dramatic narcissism and surrenders completely to his job when he feels the solidarity strength of others.
