Thatter for life

It’s been nearly two years and I still can’t believe that Take That actually performed Wait aka the best non-single off their best ever album. Also -  I love Mark dancing to Satisfied more than I should.

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I bring this up because it was Keanu Reeves’s 54th (!!!) birthday the other day and I got thinking not just about his career, but our cultural understanding of him. Specifically, I thought of a line from the TV show Community where Abed is trying to figure out the enigma of Nicolas Cage and asks, “Is he a good bad actor like Keanu Reeves? Or a bad good actor like Johnny Depp?”

1. Our Dorian Gray

I’m going to make it clear up front: Keanu Reeves is not a bad actor. In fact, I think he’s a great actor. But this taps directly into the problem of what we consider “good acting” to be. For example, if we were to imagine the perfect ideal of an actor, we’d think of someone like Daniel Day-Lewis. Someone who works tirelessly to “become someone else.” To disappear into the role so deeply that we don’t even see the actor, but just this other person before us. They’ll use “the method” to stay in character at all times. They may even use tricks to achieve some manner of transformation, hiding behind prosthetics or makeup.

But these are mere tools that depend on the skill of the craftsman using them, and it’s often posture and cadence that really do the heavy lifting. So what we are really talking about here is not so much a question of good or bad, but the concept of “range.” It prompts questions like: How many different kinds of people can the actor be? Can they do comedy? Can they do drama? Do they have the ability to truly become someone else? To be anyone and make it convincing?

Keanu Reeves in The Day the Earth Stood Still. Allstar/20th Century Fox

Truth be told, I don’t care about range all that much because it turns the evaluation of acting into a meta-game where we go, “Look how much that actor is not like how they are in real life!” Or, “Look how much acting they had to do!” These things are certainly impressive, and we also do them because they are simple way of “measuring” the acting. But, ultimately, they have very little to do with the actual affectation of what’s happening on screen. And certainly nothing to do with how much we actually care about it. In the end, it doesn’t matter how much range the actor has; there are better questions we can ask. Such as: Does the character convincingly bring the moment itself to life? Does the moment of drama work in the film? Are you moved by it?

If we’re being honest, Keanu Reeves has not always been successful at this. A lot of it goes back to his ‘90s heyday where he blasted into public consciousness as the sweet-hearted and achingly-dumb Theodore Logan from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. But as an emerging teen heartthrob, he soon found his way into a number of British period films like Dangerous Liasons, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Much Ado About Nothing where he couldn’t help but seem…out of place. It’s important to note he wasn’t so much “out of character” as he was just very convincing at playing the young heartthrobs and lunks he’d been cast as prior. It came down to his unmistakable, ‘80s brand Hawaii-California cadence. As my friend Damon put it, “His biggest ‘failing’ is that he is too modern for period pieces.” No matter what he brings to the emotion of the role, it just couldn’t convincingly work. And it was this juxtaposition, along with the idea that he was mostly playing dumb teen characters, that largely informed the idea that he was a “bad” actor.

With those porcelain good looks, that long hair and that inescapable stoner way of talking we could only think of him as that one type. But, within that perfect sweet spot, he had a lot more range than people gave him credit for. You find the core of it in his early films like Parenthood and River’s Edge, but particularly his work with Gus Van Sant in My Own Private Idaho and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. In these, he was definitely that young impressionable teen, but there was something else underneath it. A raw vulnerability. A genuine substance. You always felt like his characters were doing their best under certain limitations, as Keanu was in turn. And there was something genuinely empathetic in that.

Ione Skye and Keanu Reeves in River’s Edge. Allstar/Hemdale

People also forget that when Reeves got rebranded into an action star it was not a super easy thing for the public to buy. We were still coming out of the over-muscled, high-body-count era of Schwarzenegger and Stallone. And suddenly here was this sensitive, skinny, cool guy who could convincingly play some football, but also listen to poetry with open heart. And with Point Break and Speed, he didn’t just appeal to the masculine fantasy, but his star power became incredibly popular with women as well (hence being then picked for romantic comedies like A Walk In The Clouds). But as his star power grew, his personal inclinations kept skewing toward the sci-fi genre he loved. He had a couple of non-starters in Johnny Mnemonic and Chain Reaction, but then…The Matrix.

It was both a surprise mega hit and cultural revolution. And he was really perfect for the role of Neo, too. At once a quiet zen master and simple everyman, he could channel the broad archetype and sell you on the entire conceit with one very well-timed “whoa.” More importantly, he genuinely took the time to get really, really, really good at Kung Fu. Which people forget was not something that showed up a lot in American action films before then (now it’s in every movie). But Reeves was the first, and two Matrix sequels later, he was one of the most convincing action stars on the planet. I don’t use that word “convincing” by accident. It’s the single most important word when it comes to acting. And with the action, you were utterly convinced that Reeves was the real deal at martial arts. He could kick your ass and take names. This is something that he would later take to another level with the John Wick films. Really, watch his behind-the-scenes firearms training here:

So many people watched this and shouted, “He really is John Wick!” But that gets at a whole interesting dynamic. With movie star personalities, we always think actors are who they are on screen. We think about the detached cool of Humphrey Bogart or the charming wiles of Audrey Hepburn and we think that’s who they really are. We imagine acting must be easy for them. That they were just going about their day and someone with a camera just happened to catch it all. But, of course, it’s not like that at all. The ability to put yourself in some completely unnatural environment, with cameras and crews standing around, and then say the lines you’re supposed to memorize, and THEN be natural, is one of the most difficult things to do on the planet. So to be “yourself” or “have a personality” on screen is something that takes a colossal effort. And with that understanding, I’ll happily argue that what Reeves does is pretty singular and remarkable.

It goes far beyond convincing fight scenes. Reeves is one of the few actors who can do effortless cool and yet be genuinely earnest at the exact same time. His personality is solid, almost as if he’s built from the earth. He’s not some motor-mouthed charmer, but you still buy him in romantic comedies because you believe that inherent decency. You buy his kindness, but you also buy the ways he’s withdrawn. Maybe even a little haunted. He doesn’t lash out at you with those feelings, he always lets you in. Which makes him one of the most internal yet giving actors around, and also makes the occasions he plays someone scary feel genuinely unnerving.

We get so caught up in the meta-game of judging acting that we completely miss the solid dependability of what Reeves brings, as well as the emotional range within his singular persona. It reminds me of a brilliant thing Pauline Kael said about acting, and I’m paraphrasing, but the important thing is that “when he talks, I believe him.” And when I look at Keanu Reeves, our seemingly ageless Dorian Gray of modern cinema, I watch the way he kicks butt, the way he stands tall, the way he carries his sadness and guilt and the way he cracks that charming as hell smile…

Boy, do I believe him.