“The highest complement”: The best transformation Tom Hanks witnessed in a movie
The art behind any excellent performance usually revolves around inhabiting a character in a certain way. It’s easy for any actor to fall into a schtick where they show up to cash a paycheck with the most base-level attitude about things, but the true artists are the ones who let the character live inside them before the director yells “ACTION”. And while Tom Hanks has always taken his films incredibly seriously, he could always appreciate when someone could completely immerse themselves in the world they created onscreen.
Granted, it’s not like Hanks wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty when preparing for a role. He had gone through an entire body transformation when he got into shape for Cast Away, and even when working on roles he could have easily phoned in like Toy Story, he made sure that he was giving 1000% in that vocal booth, to the point where he considered it one of the most exhausting roles he had ever played.
But transforming into someone else can also be a double-edged sword. While Hanks’s performance as Colonel Tom Parker in Elvis left many people feeling cold, it had less to do with his performance and more with the prosthetics. Hanks’s nice-guy persona never catered to villainous roles like that before, but seeing him in that kind of fat suit made him look like a cartoon character next to Austin Butler.
In the old days of cinema, though, audiences needed something far more practical than a fat suit to get the job done. The true artists always knew how to either film from different angles to indicate an actor’s transformation, and while Francis Ford Coppola was more invested in practical effects in the 1970s, what he did with The Godfather was nothing short of revolutionary when it came out.
Aside from the fact that every one of the violent sequences in the film looked real, having Marlon Brando slowly age throughout the entire movie is far more engaging. It made sense to bring in Robert De Niro for The Godfather II to play the more hot-headed version of Don Corleone inching his way up the family totem pole, but from the middle-aged man at the beginning of the movie to the final scene of him in the garden with his grandchildren, Brando makes everyone feel like they knew this guy personally.
And when Hanks sat down to watch the movie again, he felt that Brando’s journey throughout the film was up there with the all-time classics, saying, “He ages so far and you don’t even notice the differences in the hair and makeup. It’s not so flashy. The ageing of Don Corleone from the very first scene in that movie towards the end, where he’s an old man working in his garden. I didn’t realise until I started working in motion pictures that because you don’t notice it, that’s the highest complement you can give.”
The subtle differences in his appearance does certainly help the film, but the true power behind the scenes is how Brando plays up the aged-up parts of himself. Seeing him in his back garden tending to his plants could be looked at as one of the easiest things in the world, but because he’s supposed to be much more decrepit, the way that Brando carries himself gives the impression of someone that is grown far too tired of his life.
So when you see him finally meet his end basking in the sunlight, no one looks at him and sees someone trying to be an old man. He may not have been the most upstanding person in the film by any stretch, but throughout its runtime, audiences could see a man live a full life and feels content when he finally lets go.
