The “fascinating” performance Eva Green called the best of all time: “Genius”
Throughout cinema, there are some performances that are so powerful they’re instantly written into history. They’re staggeringly good. So good that no one can deny the star-making magic surrounding the actors in them. Eva Green has had a few, but in her eyes, none beat this one moment that went beyond being good and became fascinating.
Fascinating is a perfect word for something like this. The aim for every actor in every performance is surely to disappear into it. The audience doesn’t want to be aware of the A-list name playing a part. Instead, they want to be immersed in the world of the film and have anything else drop away. The purpose is to be a complete chameleon, lost inside a role in a way that abandons the self.
But the ability to do that, and to do it well, is fascinating. Especially if that role is completely out of the realm of humanity or who the actor is, the ability to shake off one skin and seemingly put on another is a baffling ability, a true skill and a sign of pure talent in an actor.
For Eva Green, the most vivid moment she’s ever witnessed came in the form of one of those undeniably iconic performances. “The Shining,” she said, “I was obviously terrified when I discovered it.” Like everyone else, her first response to Kubrick’s horror was fear, but with every rewatch, the nuance and greatness came out more and more, especially when it came to the leading man.
“By dint of seeing it again – Nicholson is so hilarious in his madness,” she said, picking out the specific way that Nicholson plays Jack Torrance, the caretaker, losing his mind in the solitude of the Overlook Hotel. It’s a horror performance through and through as Torrance turns murderous against his own family, but Nicholson makes it even more than that. There’s charm to the character somehow, devilish charm. There are also moments of real dark humour, conveyed even in the smallest moments of his face.
For Green, it’s all in the eyebrows, saying it all comes down to “his game of eyebrows and grimmace he fully assumes.” She also chalks it up to the pure mania of the character, adding, “his jubilation ending up triggering in me real laughs.”
Sure, some of that is written into the original novel where Stephen King wrote Torrance to be this twisted, manic man, but with a baseline charm. But anyone who’s seen the film knows how undeniably perfect Nicholson is in the part. It’s a perfect sum of parts; the actors’ creepy smith or his thick but moveable eyebrows arching into an image of pure evil or madness, or simply the way the Nicholson manages to disapear into the character as Torrance descends further and further, yet all the while staying grounded enough to sprinkle in moments of humour that catch the audiences off guard.
It’s a pure horror movie, but Nicholson doesn’t play it straight like that. Instead, he keeps so much in the mix, and that’s what blew Green away, stating, “his comic genius in the film is fascinating.”
