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Big Brother: Ben and Casey Affleck
"Boring, complacent and criminally lucky to have got away with everything so far." That was David Thomson's scathing verdict on Ben Affleck in his "Biographical Dictionary of Film" in 2004.
It was Ben's "annus horribilis": the year that his planned wedding to J-Lo fell apart. The year that saw him Bounce back from the mortifying Gigli debacle with two more back-to-back duds: Surviving Christmas and Jersey Girl. He was considered such box-office poison his cameo in Elektra wound up on the cutting room floor. But as Thomson implies, and at the risk of coming over all Sharon Stone, this run of bad luck wasn't any more than Affleck deserved. In 1997 he'd hit the jackpot with his pal Matt Damon when their script Good Will Hunting became a pretty good potboiler in the hands of director Gus Van Sant and producer Harvey Weinstein. The movie was embraced by the public as much for the way Affleck and Damon's Cinderella story seemed to mirror the onscreen fairytale. Here were two bit part kids from Boston who were suddenly the toast of the town, squiring glamorous movie stars and taking home the Oscar. Damon played Will Hunting in the movie, but it was Affleck who was anointed film star material. He was tall and good-looking, a more obvious leading man than Matt.
Too obvious: he was the hot young thing in Michael Bay's Armageddon, Sandra Bullock's foil in Forces Of Nature, doing Mamet-lite in The Boiler Room, courting Gwyneth Paltrow in Bounce and Shakespeare In Love, up to no good in Reindeer Games (aka Deception) and finally scratching some measure of paydirt in Pearl Harbor, Changing Lanes and The Sum Of All Fears. It's not just that most of these picks didn't work commercially; it's that with just one or two exceptions they had no ambition outside that realm, and Affleck himself was bland and boring in them, leaning so heavily on that casual cocky charm of his that he practically falls over himself. Compare these choices with the work Damon came up with in the same time-span: Saving Private Ryan; Rounders; The Talented Mr Ripley; The Legend Of Bagger Vance; All the Pretty Horses; Finding Forrester; Ocean's Eleven; Gerry; The Bourne Identity. Not all hits, to be sure, but clearly choices made with an eye for potential and range. A failure like All the Pretty Horses can help you grow. A failure like Bounce is just a waste of everyone's time. That said, Ben Affleck does seem to have learned from his cumulative disappointments. He's retained a healthy sense of humour, often mocking himself and his many flops. He took a lengthy sabbatical after Surviving Christmas (coinciding with marriage to Jennifer Garner) and while I wouldn't propose Smokin' Aces or Man About Town as evidence of a new seriousness of purpose, his performance in Hollywoodland was a career best. It is surely no coincidence that he was playing a frustrated actor who found celebrity for work that he despised. And now there is Gone Baby Gone, his first feature as director, a gripping and thought provoking thriller, and proof of the intelligence and ambition that was there all along had we but known it. It also involves a gift of a part for kid brother Casey.
There are only three years between the two Affleck boys (Ben is coming up to 36 in August), but Casey looks markedly younger - critics talk about his "baby face". He's shorter and physically slight, and while he's handsome enough he's not imposing like Ben. Casey has been around almost as long as Ben. Look closely, he's in Gus Van Sant's To Die For (1995), Chasing Amy and Good Will Hunting. He was in two American Pie movies and Ocean's Eleven through Thirteen. Still, unless you saw Van Sant's loopy Gerry - with Matt Damon - he didn't make much impression on audiences until The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. He was that coward, of course, a role he nabbed after half a dozen auditions, and for which he played up his runty qualities - the whiny voice and callow pallor. Casey worked so well in Assassination precisely because he wasn't a movie star. Things come easily to movie stars, but life is a series of uncomfortable negotiations for Ford; deals he can never quite seal. He is De Niro's Rupert Pupkin in The King of Comedy, toting a six-shooter and more than likely to put a hole in his own foot. It became a film about hero-worship, the desperate love-hate relationship the fan has with his idol, and the stream of humiliation and embarrassment such a loaded dynamic involves. Who knows if Casey's feelings for his older brother fed into that performance, but it was one of the richest we saw in an American film last year.
Too bad critics and industry bodies didn't know where to put him: in the Best Actor category, or Best Supporting? In fact Affleck had as much screen-time as Pitt, but we're not used to seeing subservient, morally compromised stooges like this at the center of our films; it's so much easier to identify with charismatic outlaws like Pitt's. There's a similar tension in Gone Baby Gone. In Dennis Lehane's novel private investigator Patrick Kenzie is well into middle-age. In casting his brother, Ben has lopped at least ten years off the character, but the change is all to the film's benefit. The story becomes a proving ground for the untested, wet-behind-the-ears detective; it's a grueling experience that leaves him scarred with self-doubt. Ben taps his brother's insecurities - Kenzie is humiliated and patronized almost as much as Robert Ford was - but only to show us his true mettle, the anger and resolve underneath.
Whether Casey will go on to enjoy stardom only time will tell (he has the lead role in Ridley Scott's next movie). It's already clear that he's not going to follow Ben's lead and grab for the obvious, and it seems obvious he's not about to put himself under the paparazzi glare either. In that respect he's learned from his brother's mistakes. Let's give Ben his due, though. He could so easily have decided to play Patrick himself. For once his instincts served him well. Tom Charity Titles related to this articleRelated/similar articles
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