My Top 50 Favourite Movie Characters: #25-1
Sep 08 '04
The Bottom Line The Bottom Line has always been partial to any character played by Timothy Bottoms. Go figure.
#50-26
25. Phil Connors
played by Bill Murray in Groundhog Day (1993, dir. Harold Ramis)
If it weren't for the supernatural situation he finds himself in (Groundhog Day repeated ad nauseum, until a Lesson is Learned), Phil Connors would be just another blowhard jerk in a forgettable comedy. But he's been given a chance to experience some growth, and to go through some stages of life (the suicide phase, being one shining -- if morbid -- example). He's been given a chance to grow up. Filter all this through Bill Murray's irresistable brand of smarm, and you've got a concoction that doesn't see its shadow.
24. William "Bill the Butcher" Cutting
played by Daniel Day-Lewis in Gangs of New York (2002, dir. Martin Scorsese)
In a roundabout kind of way, I resented "Gangs of New York", for being just another in a long line of movies where the villain is more interesting and more complex than the hero. Leo DiCaprio's moralistic Hamlet-type is no match, in terms of sheer magnetism, for Day-Lewis' neo-Claudius. The latter man is a racist with an agenda, a sociopath with a butcher's knife, and a leader of men with a glass eye. If he was only around for the scene where he wakes DiCaprio up, draped in an American flag and a story about his past, Cutting would make this list. The rest is just gravy.
23. Matthew Poncelet
played by Sean Penn in Dead Man Walking (1995, dir. Tim Robbins)
I think it's easy to put on a ridiculous pompadour, some flashy facial hair, and a prison uniform, and tell your audience that the character is a psychopath. I think it's much harder to don that same costume, and then proceed to gain some of the audience's sympathy, even in the face of a subject (i.e. the death penalty) that they may not agree with, political or religiously. Matthew Poncelet is a murderer, and yet we are compelled by his story, and his character, until the first drop of poison is plunged into his veins.
22. Tuco Benedito Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez
played by Eli Wallach in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (1966, dir. Sergio Leone)
We know what the Good is. And we know what the Bad is. Heroes and Villains are easy cinematic tropes to understand, because they are traditionally so simple and elegant. The Ugly, on the other hand, is a messier bit of business. Is he Hero, or Villain? Obviously, Tuco fits into neither category. Nor is he an anti-hero. He is just a man, a human being, trying his best to survive in a Civil War-era West, while doing it with style and humour to spare.
21. Traci Lord
played by Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story (1940, dir. George Cukor)
Romantic comedies have told us, over and over, that the smart, bright, beautiful girl begins life by falling for the handsome soulless playboy. As the story moves along, she realizes that it's the hard working pulled-himself-up-by-his-bootstraps type who really deserves her love. "The Philadelphia Story" turns this conceit on its head, by giving us not one but two handsome playboys, complete with souls, and having our heroine fall in love with both of them. An inconceivable situation, unless Katherine Hepburn (the ultimate smart, bright, beautiful girl) is the one doing the falling in love.
20. Jules Winfield
played by Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction (1994, dir. Quentin Tarantino)
In a jheri-curl wig and stark black suit, Jules Winfield preaches down the barrel of his gun. He preaches about redemption, vengeance, tyranny. But he never really understands the meaning of his words. His transformation, from unthinking hitman to conscious human being, is akin to a Buddhist achieving nirvana, or a lover achieving orgasm. On top of all this, Jules spits out the Tarantinofied dialogue as if he was born saying it, and burns all kinds of cool into the celluloid.
19. Royal Tenenbaum
played by Gene Hackman in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001, dir. Wes Anderson)
He's a racist, a liar, an absentee father, a shyster, a crook, a hyperactive case of arrested development, and, worst of all, a disgraced lawyer. But Royal Tenenbaums also has longings -- for the family he left behind, for the wife that for some reason never divorced him, and for the life he once lived. There is no greater moment of self-realization in cinema than when we are told, after having admitted that reuniting with his family has been the best six days of his whole life, "Immediately after making this statement, Royal realized that it was true." Classic.
18. Annie Hall
played by Diane Keaton in Annie Hall (1977, dir. Woody Allen)
It would be easy to point to the Woody Allen persona, as being the focal point of all Woody Allen films. But I see that persona as more of a caricature than a character, a comedian transplanted from the stage to the streets of New York. Annie Hall, in the film that took her name for its title, is a bit more complicated than that. She is smart, funny, sexy, and stylish, but still growing as a person. She latches on to a man smarter than she is, and does her best to become the person he wants her to be. And ends up becoming a person she wants herself to be. Plus, she says "la-di-da" a lot, and I find that so cute.
17. Harry Lime
played by Orson Welles in The Third Man (1949, dir. Carol Reed)
I often think that whenever anyone mentions the fact that Orson Welles plays Harry Lime, it should come with a spoiler warning (look at me, not heeding my own advice). For the man doesn't show up on screen until the film is about two-thirds old. And up until that point, we the audience think he's dead. From the first time we see Welles' moon face, lit brightly amongst the shadows, till he leaves us for real this time, Harry Lime is a fascinating portrait. He's an old friend of our protagonist (Joseph Cotton), yet we can never truly trust his motivtations. Plus, he's got that great twinkle in his eye during the whole "cuckoo clock" speech.
16. Butch Cassidy
played by Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969, dir. George Roy Hill)
Butch Cassidy, as he appears in this movie, is not a smart man, nor is he a wise man. But, for some reason, he is able to attract a group of people around him ("The Hole-in-the-Wall Gang") who are, mostly, willing to go to the wall for him. For one reason: charisma. It's a perfect example of a character proving just why the actor playing him is a movie star. Paul Newman's laid-back charisma shines through every moment, and acts as a perfect compliment to the shy cool of Robert Redford's Sundance Kid. I'm still waiting for the Butch Cassidy Film Festival, which I think should be along any day now.
15. Dr. Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter
played by Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs (1991, dir. Jonathan Demme)
If you had asked me five years ago, Hannibal Lecter would probably be a lot higher up on this list. But his appearances in "Hannibal" and "Red Dragon" have sullied his image. Still, there's no denying that every time I watch "Silence of the Lambs" I get chills up my spine. Even the first time we see him, looking clean and trim standing in the middle of his cell as he greets a startled Clarice Starling, is enough to give me the creeps. A perfect introduction to a perfectly-portrayed killer
14. Joe Dick
played by Hugh Dillon in Hard Core Logo (1996, dir. Bruce McDonald)
I was talking about charisma a couple of spots ago. Hugh Dillon, who had relatively little acting experience when he appeared in "Hard Core Logo", gets by on his charisma. It's a character that takes his nom de punk seriously, preferring to go through life acting the dick-role then being an honest-to-goodness friend. Though, despite his best intentions, he manages to pull that off as well. With his mohawk and ripped jeans and propensity for spitting in the face of even his loyal bandmates, Dick is a punk frontman par excellence (that's two bits of quasi-French already; too bad the Hard Cores never make it to Montreal). And his last act of defiance, though melodramatic and over-the-top, never seems unreal, given what we know about the man.
13. Marty
played by Natalie Portman in Beautiful Girls (1996, dir. Ted Demme)
In its March/April 2002 issue, the late and lamented "Book Magazine" picked its 100 Best Characters in Fiction Since 1900 (one of the other inspirations for this list, truth be told). Lolita, from the book that bears her name, clocked in at number 14. Which is interesting because she's really just a snotty little girl, with no real imagination or wit about her. She's nothing more than an object of desire. Marty, on the other hand, is a lot more than that. Even though one character rightly calls her the "neighbourhood Lolita", that's simplifying the matter. She's a Lolita with a brain, and a ridiculously old soul. She manages to seduce Timothy Hutton's piano player prodigal son, even though she's not fully aware what seduction really means. And she manages to jump up and down in the snow, wearing snowpants and pigtails, in a way that reminds you she's really just a little girl.
12. Dignan
played by Owen Wilson in Bottle Rocket (1996, dir. Wes Anderson)
At a time when most of our twentysomething movie characters were indulging in self-aware ironic angst, Dignan came along and blew them all out of the water. Dignan is a man with a crewcut, an orange jumpsuit, and a mountain of ambition. Sure, his ambition is misguided; he thinks that robbery is the ticket to the American Dream. But he still manages a level of innocence, of purity, and of sincerity. He's the kind of complexly absurd creation that'll answer the question, "Why is there tape on your nose?" with the excited non-sequitur reply, "Exactly!" And have the audience know exactly what he means. If only we all had a bit of Dignan's drive, the world would be a better place.
11. Mr. Orange
played by Tim Roth in Reservoir Dogs (1992, dir. Quentin Tarantino)
Amongst Quentin Tarantino's vast menagerie of hoodlums, Mr. Orange finds himself at the top of the heap because…
**SPOILER WARNING**
…he's operating on several layers at once. On the surface he's a green thief, who's found himself attached to an experienced crew readying themselves for a diamond heist. Later, he's the same green thief, only with a bullet in his belly and his blood all over the floor, trying to come to grips with the fact that he's about to die. Underneath all that he's an undercover cop, working his first sting operation, trying to look like a green thief. And underneath that, underneath his tough-cop bravado, he's a scared little boy, trying to prove to himself that he can indeed play the Serpico role, if need be.
**END SPOILER WARNING**
It's all very complex, and all very stylish. And all made a little unnerving by Roth's not-quite-right accent, which only adds to the layers.
10. Crash Davis
played by Kevin Costner in Bull Durham (1988, dir. Ron Shelton)
A lot of my frustration with Kevin Costner stems from the fact that he was once just so damned cool. Case in point: Crash Davis. He may be a career minor-leaguer, and a long-time loser, but he's still got the cool-guy strut, and the cool-guy wit that movie stars are made of. He looks authentic when asked to be a baseball player (no mean feat), and even more authentic when asked to be a seducer of intelligent women (no mean feat, to the extreme).
9. Julie de Courcay
played by Juliette Binoche in Blue (1993, dir. Kryztof Kieslowski)
Julie is a woman who, in the film's first scene, loses her husband (a renowned composer) and daughter in a car crash that also puts her in the hospital. The rest of the film follows her as she endures the grief that envelops her. We never know what Julie was like before the crash; we only know the walking zombie that she becomes afterwards. Though we are given brief, subtle glimpses into her past, to help understand the woman she once was. Most affectingly, though, is the realization that her family's death has somehow freed her to be the woman she was meant to be. Even though it took a horrific event, she is now out from under her famous husband's shadow, and a more complete woman. I find that fascinating.
8. Norman Bates
played by Anthony Perkins in Psycho (1960, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
Though he doesn't show up until the film is half over, and is the impetus for one of the clunkiest explain-the-film denouements in cinema history, Norman Bates is one of Hitchcock's most chilling creations. Played with choir-boy frailty by Perkins, the monster hidden within only comes out in select moments (yes, the justifiably-praised shower scene being one such moment). His steely glare and cipheric personality slowly fall away, as an investigation zeroes in on him. It's a measure of Perkins' portrayal of Bates' likeability – after all, he's really just an overgrown boy, innocent but damaged – that makes you root for him to get away.
7. Marge Gunderson
played by Frances McDormand in Fargo (1996, dir. Joel & Ethan Coen)
Like Norman Bates, Marge doesn't show up on screen until "Fargo" is well into its story. But when she does, you immediately wish she was guarding your snow-covered town. Whether she's puking in the snow, puffing her husband up by admiring his stamp-painting skills, or happening on a tableaux of wood-chipper mayhem, Marge never loses that Midwestern wide-eyed optimism, that need to get the job done, and that take-things-as-they-come fatalism. And she does all of this while with child. She's ultimate mother/protector/comic-hick figure.
6. Kikuchiyo
played by Toshiro Mifune in Shichinin no samurai (1954, dir. Akira Kurosawa)
All of the seven samurai were grand creations. But Kikuchiyo stands out for several reasons. First, he is played by Mifune, Kurosawa's alter ego and muse. Second, he's often the film's comic relief (in a 3.5-hour-plus samurai epic, a little comic relief goes a long way). Third, he's an athletic dynamo, riding horses and wielding his katana as if he were born doing so. And lastly, he's the one whose past we get the best glimpse of. It's a complex past that ultimately defines his motivations in the most surprising of ways.
5. Randle Patrick McMurphy
played by Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975, dir. Milos Forman)
In Ken Kesey's book, McMurphy was merely a device, an opportunity for the Chief to re-examine his own existence through the prism of a rebel. In the movie, due in no small part to Nicholson's unparalled charisma (there's that word again), McMurphy becomes the focal point. He is instigator, father-figure, protector, radical, revolutionary, and Bull Goose Looney extraordinaire. He's a grand comic creation (witness the knowing wink he gives to those gathered, who all think he's been lobotomized), and, later, the ultimate example of a wasted life.
4. Max Fisher
played by Jason Schwartzman in Rushmore (1998, dir. Wes Anderson)
Max is like Dignan, that other Wes Anderson creation from 8 spots back, in several key ways: he's ambitious instead of apathetic, wrong-headed while still being well-meaning, and downright funny. The key differences are these: Max is 15-years old, still in school, and, let's face it, kind of a prick. Many have claimed that it's Max's inherent unlikeability that keeps them from loving "Rushmore". I'd argue that it's just this reason that makes the movie such a revelation. You can't root for Max to consummate his lust for a teacher at the school, or overcome the power of his steel-magnate best friend. But in the end, somehow, you do. And when he doesn't achieve either of these goals, it winds up being okay. "At least nobody got hurt," he says, by way of explanation.
3. Lloyd Dobler
played by John Cusack in Say Anything... (1989, dir. Cameron Crowe)
In his book "Sex, Drug, and Cocoa Puffs", Chuck Klosterman unapologetically blames John Cusack for most of the romantic problems in his life. As the argument goes, Cusack's most enduring creation, Lloyd Dobler, has given every male of the past 15 years an almost impossible standard to live up to. Lloyd is caring, sensitive, romantic, and charming. He's off-beat, but not too off-beat to be weird. And he's got athletic skills to pay the bills. I suspect it's a reasonable goal for every male of my generation to aspire to Lloyd Dobler-ness. Though it's probably not fair to blame John Cusack when that goal proves unreachable.
2. Michael Corleone
played by Al Pacino in The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, and The Godfather Part III (1972, 1974, and 1990, dir. Francis Ford Copolla)
Premiere's list had Brando's Vito Corleone in the top spot. Which is fine, for anyone simple-minded enough to think that Don Vito is the Godfather referred to by the film's title. In reality, the trilogy is about his son, Michael. As played by Pacino – in what would become the template for his greatest work: quiet reserve punctuated by flashes of well-placed anger – Michael undergoes one of cinema histories most epic character arcs. At the beginning of the first film he is a college boy just returned home from the army, innocent and hopeful that the legitimate world has a place for him. By the end of the third film he is an aged Don, unsure of his place in the new world, and ravaged by guilt over the things he's had to do to stay on top. It's basically a 10-hour character portrait, justified by the complexity of the man at its centre.
Alright, so we're finally at the top spot. Before I reveal my choice for Favourite All-Time Movie Character, I thought we'd play a little guessing game. Can you figure out who numero uno is, based solely on some of his/her most memorable quotations?:
.
.
.
.
.
.
"I was, uh, one of the authors of the Port Huron Statement. The original Port Huron Statement. Not the compromised second draft."
.
.
.
.
.
.
"Strikes and gutters, ups and downs."
.
.
.
.
.
.
"So he thinks it's the carpet-pissers, huh?"
.
.
.
.
.
.
"You mean coitus?"
.
.
.
.
.
.
1. Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski
played by Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski (1998, dir. Joel & Ethan Coen)
Simply, The Dude. Forever, The Dude. Always, The Dude. It strikes me as curious that the Coen's wrote The Dude with Jeff Bridges in mind; curious because, before it, he was probably best known for "Tron", or the shock jock from "The Fisher King", or "Starman", or Duane Jackson. Or even Beau's brother, or "Sea Hunt's" son. Now, he's best known as the alpha and omega of burnouts, besting the Bills, the Teds, and even the seminal Spicolis of the cinematic world.
That being said, the reason why The Dude resonates so much with me is that he's so obviously not just a stoner. "Obvious" is maybe too strong a word, for the first time I saw "The Big Lebowski" I thought he was quite one-dimensional. But it's a movie, and a character, that reveals itself slowly, peeling away more and more layers every time you watch it/him. He's a man with a past, and a man with a future, and to know that is to understand him completely. I'd love to see a "Lebowski" prequel, where we catch up with radical Jeff during his college years, or a "Lebowski" sequel, where we find The Dude and Walter still bowling, still making each other crazy, and still getting into wacky adventures. Though never ever taking them seriously.
As the Stranger, our addled narrator, puts it, "I don't know about you, but I take comfort in […] knowin' he's out there, the Dude, takin' her easy for all us sinners." So do I.
USELESS APPENDICES:
Actors with 2 entries:
Robert De Niro
Bill Murray
Paul Newman
Orson Welles
Directors with 2 or more entries:
Wes Anderson (3)
Joel & Ethan Coen (3)
Martin Scorsese (3)
Quentin Tarantino (2)
Performances that won the Academy Award:
De Niro as LaMotta
Fonda as Thayer
Hopkins as Lecter
Keaton as Hall
Leigh as O'Hara
McDormand as Gunderson
Nicholson as McMurphy
Characters that also appeared on Premiere Magazine's list (rank on their list/rank on my list):
Norman Bates (4/8)
Annie Hall (6/18)
Charles Foster Kane (12/27)
Randle McMurphy (14/5)
Hannibal Lecter (15/15)
Travis Bickle (22/30)
Marge Gunderson (27/7)
Michael Dorsey/Dorthy Michaels (39/29)
Jules Winnfield (44/20)
The Dude (55/1)
Lloyd Dobler (72/3)
Tony Manero (76/31)
Bill the Butcher (83/24)
Harry Lime (93/17)
Characters by Decade:
1930s 1
1940s 3
1950s 1
1960s 4
1970s 6
1980s 8
1990s 20
2000s 7
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
mfunk75
|
 - Top 500 |
|
Member: Mike Stone
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Reviews written: 218
Trusted by: 145 members
|
|
|
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.