100. All right, I've finally found a use for this blog, that of dedicating myself to the 100 Greatest Performances I have ever seen. Now, this is as of April Fool's Day 2006, so any films I see after this (like say, La Dolce Vita or 8 1/2, both out from Netflix, even though I cannot bring myself to watch them).
So, these are my personal canon (I hopefully will interrupt this blog with some other interesting asides). There are performances on this list that I 'm not even going to begin to argue are the greatest acting pieces ever made, but they are my favorites. So now, perched out at Number 100, I have the child pictured above, post his infamous flight aboard the bicycle.
Steven Spielberg has always had good luck with actorly youth: Dakota Fanning in War of the Worlds, Drew Barrymore in E.T., those Jurassic Park kids, and then there's one that will show up later in this countdown. However, it is Henry Thomas who manages to capture that elusive sense of wonderment that Spielberg desperately clings for in all his movies. He used that ultimate actorly tool (the eyes) to instill both sadness and determination with his newfound friend E.T. Freddie Highmore wishes that he could equal the heartbreaking subtlety that Thomas brought to his Elliot. The entire rest of the cast, even the adorable Drew Barrymore, are caught up in the earthly problems of looking into the beauty of E.T., but also knowing that reality would set in and the alien would return home. It is only Thomas who believably, every time you watch this remarkable adventure, transends Spielberg's rather formulaic plot (I love Spielberg, but you always know where he's headed). Sure the effects are magnficient and that John Williams score is epic fancy, but it is Thomas, his whimsy, his utter hope, who makes E.T. so heavenly.
(For those of you who want to catch a more adult Thomas, make sure to see the beautiful Legends of the Fall, one of those epics that got lost in the mid-1990s, but is surely one of the best post-Golden Age Westerns).
1 comment:
I also adore Henry Thomas! but I was always afraid of ET. thanks for telling folks about Legends of the Fall. he was so good! that scene where, well, his last one during the war - ugh! - tears at the heart strings!
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