Why Franz Rogowski is the most exciting actor working today
After his rage-fuelled karaoke performance of Chandelier by Sia in Happy End, directed by Michael Haneke, Franz Rogowski quickly found his own niche within the film industry by working with the cinema’s most elusive auteurs. His performances are marked by a certain feeling of transparency and fluidity, with a background in dance that allows him to add an expressive physicality to each movement and create an otherworldly screen presence.
Rogoswki is able to capture a feeling of opaque vulnerability and child-like wonder in films such as Bird and Great Freedom, baring the depths of his soul as though every thought and feeling he’s ever had is sitting just beneath the surface. He appears to be the kind of performer who is entirely unbothered by what other people expect of him, selecting each project in a highly considered way that perfectly reflects his talent but is also completely surprising, curating a body of dynamic and effervescent work that mirrors his own mysteries.
However, it was after watching one performance of his in particular that I became especially awakened to his genius, becoming enamoured by the deeply calculating, manipulative yet frustratingly charming character of Tomas in Ira Sach’s 2023 film Passages.
Passages follows the lives of Tomas and Martin, a gay couple living in Paris whose marriage is thrown into a state of flux when Tomas begins an affair with a woman. It is one of the messiest threesomes I have ever seen on screen, trumping the chaotic hedonism of The Dreamers and Jules et Jim, perhaps due to Rogowski’s performance as a destructive yet blissfully unaware narcissist who wreaks havoc on every life he touches.
While Tomas is an emotional terrorist in every sense, we somehow still feel intense pity and care towards him as if he were an innocent child, with Rogoswki imbuing a sense of fragility into his character that makes him come across as being completely oblivious to how his actions affect other people. He seemingly lives in a permanent state of naivety that distances him from the impact of his decisions, as though his mere existence causes emotional explosions without even trying.
Like many narcissists, Tomas pulls people in with his sparkly ability to make people feel special and seen just for being noticed by him, with everyone being drawn towards a person who is so self-assured and free-spirited. Initially, he seems to be the life and soul of every party until we start to interpret people’s reactions to his presence in a different way and see him in a wholly different light. Rogowski exercises a masterful level of subtlety and innocence in his performance that allows the audience to slowly peel back the layers of his true self and allow him to be exposed for who he truly is. But despite eventually seeing him as a selfish and parasitic force that ruins the life of nearly every person he forms a relationship with, we still see him through this lens of pity and sadness as the reasons for his behaviour begin to dawn on us.
While messy and hard to be around, Tomas is a person who has had his own needs neglected and been made to feel as though he has to behave this way to keep people in his life, with the final shot of Tomas on his bicycle hammering in the sad reality that his true nature is equally as destructive to himself as it is to everyone else. Rogoswki carefully blurs the line between creating someone we both despise and deeply sympathise with, feeling intense sadness at the prospect of such a glittery person who cannot maintain any relationships as a result of his own crippling insecurity, which he hides with a masterful facade of almost overwhelming confidence.
After his recent performance in Bird, playing a mysterious and ethereal man who flutters around and protects the innocence of a child who is thrust into a very adult situation, Rogoswki has cemented himself as holding a similar power in the film industry – bringing an indescribable sense of play, lightness and haunted truth, torturing audiences with his ability to exist within a million conflicting multitudes.
