Woody Harrelson picked out the finest performance of the 2000s
You can pry and probe at the subtleties of what makes a great actor, indeed I have, but the one glaring key is a degree of inherent likability. Woody Harrelson has that side of things all sewn up. Apart from great comic timing, beautifully understated emotion, and the clever knack of making it seem like there are endless asides to his story, perhaps the overriding pinnacle is that he is simply a pleasing presence to see on screen.
He is also an actor who has delved into a huge array of roles. Comparing Woody Boyd in Cheers and Sheriff Bill Willoughby in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is impossible. These variations imbue each subsequent role with greater depth. It is true that a character should always be more than the mere story that they are part of—a great actor brings a life beyond the lines to their cherished role. That was certainly on display in the performance Harrelson crowns as one of the greatest of all time.
When asked to pick out the acting pinnacle of the 2000s by The New York Times, Harrelson mused, “What is it that really makes a performance compelling? I guess it’s just the degree of vulnerability, maybe?” He then went on to champion the display that hit this fabled ground more than any other, explaining: “That guy in The Lives of Others, phenomenal. Ulrich, I mean, brilliant. And then he died after that.”
Ulrich Mühe played Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler in the 2006 german classic The Lives of Others that went on to win ‘Best Foreign Language Film’ at the Oscars in 2007. The performance saw him take on the role of a secret service agent in East Berlin, 1984, tasked with spying on a writer and his lover. His undertaking becomes complicated as he gradually grows more and more obsessed with their lives.
While that is a compelling story – one that has been rehashed in various thrillers and novels – the majesty of Mühe’s work was that hidden in the lines of his face was the truth that the more he revealed about their lives, the more you began to wonder about his own. The mystery gradually became Mühe’s own obsession rather than what he hoped to garner from his mission. That subtle and compelling inversion is the purified product of, as Harrelson puts it, expressive “vulnerability”.
In truth, Mühe had been privy to such prying practices himself. He had grown up in a divided Germany and remembered the rigours, wringing them out in his role. “I remembered,” was all he said of his preparation. Then, tragically, he died of stomach cancer shortly after his work finally became lauded globally following a career as diverse as Harrelson’s own.
Thankfully, the vulnerability-filled-air of his performance will live on, it’s hard to forget lines like this, uttered with unerring humanity: “An innocent prisoner will become more angry by the hour due to the injustice suffered. He will shout and rage. A guilty prisoner becomes more calm and quiet. Or he cries. He knows he’s there for a reason. The best way to establish guilt or innocence is non-stop interrogation.”
