Great Performances: ATONEMENT

Paul Marshall: the creepiest character on film.

Atonement is not a particularly great movie.  It's not bad movie, precisely, either.  It's worth the price of a rental. Not worth the price of a movie ticket.

Except that the approximately seven total minutes of screen time that feature Benedict Cumberbatch's Paul Marshall make it worth many times the price.

Paul Marshall segues through simple pompous bore to creepy older man inappropriately 

Perfectly mannered bore.

aroused by the presence of a nubile 13-year-old girl to child rapist. It's a performance so perfectly nuanced in every moment, so disturbingly real, simply so perfect, you are compelled to watch it over and over again.

It is, in a word: stunning.

The YouTube video is a mash-up of Cumberbatch's scenes.  The most compelling, the nursery scene, begins at 1:34.   It's quite worth watching the first minute thirty-four, however, to see his perfect moment-by-moment development of the character. Benedict Cumberbatch is an actor who plays the entire performance in

Hiding something.

every scene. 

Even in the very beginning, when he is introduced, his turn away from the lovely adult sister of his friend, from the light to the darkness, the wiping of his mouth presage something unsavory, someone hiding something essential about himself.  Someone who lies.

Later, in the schoolroom, you at first see him come alive, from bore to nice warm man. For a few moments.  It's the offhand and completely inappropriate "Nice slacks," that cue the viewer that something dangerous has gotten into the nursery.

The scene is most famous for Marshall's line telling the girl how to eat the candy bar.  But it's the thing a few seconds before, the sudden discomfort, the hand to his mouth, predator becoming aroused evident in his body language and expression.  Fleeting.  

This is the thing Cumberbatch does to jaw-dropping perfection. Immense talent is not enough. An actor has to have extraordinary courage to allow himself to play lust for a child.

Possibly the real problem with the rest of the film is that no other character in it is as compelling as Paul Marshall.

And while all the others are certainly fine actors, once the viewer sees Cumberbatch give this perfect performance, once he has made Paul Marshall this fully- dimensional, technicolor presence, everyone else seems pale by comparison.

Paul Marshall's story, the movie that happens off-screen, is so much more interesting.  

I believe you can rent the whole movie on YouTube. Do so. 

Great Performances: Starter for 10

Srsly, dude?  

Starter for 10 is where you want to start talking about Benedict Cumberbatch's greatest performances?

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Yup. Because Patrick Watts was intended as a bit of comic relief in a film thought to be a vehicle for James McEvoy to become a teen-heartthrob. Which worked. Sort of.

Rebecca Hall - as "Rebecca" 

But the immensely talented Rebecca Hall and the stunning nuanced performance that maintained the intended broad-comedy dimension of his character by Benedict Cumberbatch, hijack Starter for 10.  In the years after one has seen it, very little is recalled of anything McEvoy did, while Patrick Watts' moments of humility and leadership, bravado and foolishness are cleanly etched in our memory banks.

Patrick Watts

The young Cumberbatch might have wished he'd been offered the part of the decidedly not posh Brian Jackson, scholarship student and romantic lead.  Perhaps if they had, it would have become a breakout hit in America and earned more than $200k.  

But the potential for the great performance was in Patrick Watts, not written to be three-dimensional or heroic or an icon of character that often accompanies what is sometimes called "good breeding."  Patrick Watts has valor.

In the moment when Watts has to put doing the right thing ahead of ego or status, we see the struggle.  It's not written and cannot be directed.  It is simply happening inside of Watts and seen on the outside of Cumberbatch.  It's so subtle, yet so perfectly delivered, one begins to suspect a form of actor/audience telepathy at work.

Benedict Cumberbatch gleaned recognition and awards from Hawking, which he did around the same time.  And that is, quite obviously, a brilliant performance.

But rising to the challenge of that portrayal is, in fact, simply to be expected.  To bring the same dedication, depth and intensity to something Cumberbatch could have phoned-in and his audience and director probably been as happy with, is what defines greatness in an actor.