Some
actors, usually among the most gifted, bring out resentment in me, best
explained as feeling invaded, manipulated by their intensity into responses
inherently unearned by characters they are inhabiting. Dustin Hoffman is one
(as he marvelously parodied himself in “Tootsie”). Meryl Streep is often
another (check “The Iron Lady”).
Danes’
Carrie Mathison takes it all to a new level. Contrary to universal acclaim for
her portrayal of a bipolar CIA agent, I find the performance disturbingly out
of sync with the manipulative vehicle in which it takes place.
What
we are talking about here is not over-acting but a mismatch of genres. As
Hoffman’s Tootsie might put it, how juicily realistic can an actor playing a
tomato in a commercial be?
In “Homeland,”
veteran hams like Mandy Patinkin and F. Murray Abraham are doing their familiar
schtick, while Danes is often acting in
another universe. It’s easy to understand why viewers might be fascinated, but
my ancient movie-loving mind is disoriented.
“I
think the more whole you are as a person—the more integrated—the deeper you can
go into scary territory,” Danes tells John Lahr in the New Yorker. “It’s just amazing that we have a means of doing that
safely. What better thing is there? It’s so cool to get that much more of an
understanding of what it is to be a person.”
No
doubt, but get Carrie back on her meds, please. And bring back Damien Lewis’
classically understated British embodiment of Brody soon to sooth our nerves.
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