A career in three acts: The movies that define Joseph Gordon-Levitt
A love-struck teenager, high school detective and abuse victim. While Joseph Gordon-Levitt might be better known for his later roles that were crucial within the cultural zeitgeist, I haven’t seen an actor’s career begin with choices as bold and daring as his.
After making his start in Hollywood as a child, starring in commercials for Cocoa Puffs and Pop-Tarts, the beginning of Gordon-Levitt’s career was fairly unsuspecting, given the nature of the projects he later starred in.
Since then, Gordon-Levitt has cultivated a staggering body of work, collaborating with directors such as Christopher Nolan, Aaron Sorkin and Steven Spielberg, constantly proving himself to be one of the most committed and passionate actors working today, with a ridiculously loaded resume that speaks volumes of his dedication towards the art of filmmaking.
But how does an actor go from a Pop-Tart commercial to a Greg Araki film? Today, I’d like to look at three specific projects that shaped and springboarded his career, showing him to be a fearless performer from the very beginning.
10 Things I Hate About You (Gil Junger, 199)
10 Things I Hate About You, released in 1999, initially appeared to be a simple teen rom-com. Directed by first-time director Gil Junger (who admitted to reading a Filmmaking for Dummies book during production), the film is a modern adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, following a romantic and slightly naive teenage boy called Cameron (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who instantly falls for the most popular girl in school, Bianca. However, he soon discovers that she’s been forbidden from dating and becomes involved in an elaborate scheme to win her over. The film’s now cult following was a complete shock to the people who made it, with it being heralded as one of the greatest rom-coms of all time.
Even though it’s a fairly sweet and simplistic story, the film is so widely loved and cherished today because of its sharp script, rapid wit and humour, feminist subversion of conventional story tropes and an excellent ensemble cast, with scene-stealing secondary characters played by the likes of Alison Janney, a sex-obsessed teacher intent on finishing her adult novel, Gabrielle Union, a classically cutting mean girl and Larry Miller, the balding and slightly shrill father of the Stratford sisters.
However, what truly sets this apart from other teen movies is the sweet optimism and romanticism of its main characters, with Gordon-Levitt’s character embarking on a wild goose chase of potential possibilities for him to win the affection of Bianca, learning another language (“I learnt French for you!”) and manipulating the sleazy head of the football team into essentially buying time for Cameron to spend with her. While this performance wasn’t dramatic or disturbing, it did put Gordon-Levitt in the spotlight and allowed him to backtrack on this image with his next project by doing something completely unheard of.
Mysterious Skin (Gregg Araki, 2004)
Mysterious Skin, directed by Gregg Araki in 2004, is simultaneously harrowing, beautiful, electrifying, and haunting. Araki is known for his involvement in the New Queer Cinema Movement, with his first features, Nowhere and Totally Fucked Up, proving him to be an unrelenting and intoxicating new voice in cinema. And when Mysterious Skin was announced, people were perhaps surprised to see Hollywood sweetheart Joseph Gordon-Levitt as part of the cast.
The film shows two parallel plotlines, one of a teenage boy called Brian, who is obsessed with aliens and the presence of UFOs, and another teenage boy called Neil, a gay sex worker who begins to process a childhood trauma. However, both storylines slowly start to merge, and the boys discover the horrible truth that they were both sexually abused by their softball coach as children.
The film is highly demanding of Gordon-Levitt, journeying through his character’s denial, repression and coping mechanisms that were developed to protect himself from the pain of this horrific truth. Gordon-Levitt is the embodiment of the most raw and visceral form of vulnerability, taking us to the absolute limits of what we can handle seeing on screen as he untangles a web of memories that are barely distinguishable from dreams and nightmares.
Gordon-Levitt’s performance in Mysterious Skin is completely breathtaking. His ability to delve into the darkness and somehow still find an endless spectrum of colour within the darkness, shades of both light and dark, elevates the film to new heights.
Brick (Rian Johnson, 2005)
After his seminal performance in Mysterious Skin, Gordon-Levitt then starred in Rian Johnson’s Brick a year later, a high school adaptation of the modern film noir. Gordon-Levitt plays Brendan, a teenage detective trying to discover who murdered his girlfriend, breaking into various cliques and parties in his determined quest to find the truth.
The film is characterised by its innovative and sometimes jarring editing style. Special effects are used to heighten the disturbing dream-like nature of the story world, with smash cuts, trippy fades, and some scenes being played backwards or at different speeds to create the effect of things moving more quickly than they really are.
Rhian Johnson creates a rich visual style that both pays homage to the conventions of the film noir genre while throwing all the rules out the window, which is also achieved through the dialogue style. Gordon-Levitt seamlessly adapts to the film’s elaborate and unnatural way of speaking that exaggerates the absurdity of Brendan’s quest, finding himself in a maze of complications that leave your head spinning, wishing that it would all just resolve itself just so his character can finally have a good night’s sleep.
After his work on Brick, Gordon-Levitt has continued to make subversive and interesting choices that showcase the full spectrum of his talent, starring in Inception, Lincoln, The Trial of the Chicago 7, and 50/50, never ceasing to surprise, and always bringing a new level of bravery, risk, and intuition to each performance.
