| |
Battle acts - The Boston Globe
It's Method actor vs. movie star when Daniel Day-Lewis and Leonardo DiCaprio face off in 'Gangs of New York'
By Wesley Morris, Globe Staff, 12/15/2002
The last time anybody in a movie theater heard from Daniel Day-Lewis was in ''The Boxer.'' He turned in a blistering performance as an ex-con trying to shed his Irish Republican Army skin, then poof, he was gone for five years. Leonardo DiCaprio was missing for less time - two years. But if some estimates are still reliable, he's the most famous man on earth. So his two feels like five.
Friday, Day-Lewis and DiCaprio both return, and in the same movie: ''Gangs of New York,'' Martin Scorsese's ultraviolent re-creation of the 19th-century battlefield that would become lower Manhattan. At nearly three hours, the picture flies like a bat out of hell. Day-Lewis is William Cutter, or, as his intimates know him, Bill the Butcher, the knife-throwing, glass-eyed, racist strong-arm of Tweed-run City Hall. He begins the film with a machete in one hand and a meat cleaver in the other (putting both to ghastly use), and the now-legendary tale from the film's Italian set is that Day-Lewis was never really Daniel. He was Bill.
DiCaprio plays an Irishman called Amsterdam, a flinty young punk who, as a child, saw Bill impale his father, and 16 years later is frothing for revenge. Bill is crazy, but Amsterdam has been driven mad.
The entire process of making ''Gangs'' exposed DiCaprio to areas of himself he was surprised to learn were there. For Day-Lewis, it was another stint in the isolation chamber that is Method acting. DiCaprio's approach to all the darkness and insanity in this movie was to put it away in his locker when the dismissal bell rang.
''I've never been the type of actor that has taken home with me anything from my character, like a lot of actors that I've worked with,'' says a whipped but wired DiCaprio, his hands buried in the pockets of a track jacket zipped up to his chin. ''I can't embody the character 24 hours a day. And if I did, I'd go crazy. I'm just not set up that way.'' He has what he calls spurts of extreme focus, where he's absolutely committed to being in that moment. ''But when I go home, I do my homework, I think about what I'm gonna do the next day, think about new ideas. But I'm not still in the accent. I'm not Amsterdam when I go home.''
This experience would make Day-Lewis batty. He needs the familiarity of the character he's inhabiting, even if it's a guy whom you'd know better by his trail of dead - like Bill. His philosophy has an all-in-a-day's-work ring.
''I don't know if it demands any more juice than you'd give to any other thing,'' he says. ''It may be a little more unsettling in some way because you have to discover and unleash what you don't always have control over.'' But he gets off on the loss of control. ''Curiosity allows you to indulge in those things, and as perverse as it may sound, that's part of the pleasure. And it's also quite liberating; even if it's only an illusion that we create for ourselves, we're experiencing the world through a different set of eyes.''
If you look past his aviator jacket and that shocking haircut(so short), Day-Lewis has a demeanor you associate with certain saints or Magi - soft-spoken, serene, completely beatific. You don't really want his life story, you want his blessing. It's impossible to imagine that the person across the room is capable of wiping out entire militias with cutlery. That, obviously, is the tricky thing about Day-Lewis's Method acting. It robs people of the ability to confuse him with his characters.
In ''An Actor Prepares,'' Konstantin Stanislavsky, the father of what is known as the modern Method, goes on at length about the inner preparation an actor must undertake to get to the bottom of a role. An actor ''may never despair and never relinquish this main purpose - to love his art with all his strength and love it unselfishly.'' DiCaprio's approach sounds more environmental.
''Everyone really benefited from the sets that were built and the fact that we felt cocooned by this tiny little place,'' he says. ''It was like we were immersed in this science-fiction world that was part of our history. People often ask me if, while I was in Rome, I ever learned any Italian. And I say, `No, I was in New York.' And it was the truth. We felt like we had our own little neighborhood, and we felt a part of that world.''
If you listen only to the media reports or have seen only ''Titanic,'' it would be pretty easy to dismiss DiCaprio as a Hollywood brat. You might even wonder what the big deal is. But he was an Oscar nominee before he was a YM cover boy. ''Titanic'' is his only unqualified hit movie, and it brought him an overexposure that dwarfed his intense work in movies such as ''This Boy's Life,'' in which he sparred with Robert DeNiro, or ''Marvin's Room'' in which he sparred with Meryl Streep.
The Day-Lewis-DiCaprio card seems like an ''Ultimate Fight Championship'' bout between the Method actor and the movie star. But DiCaprio chafes at the notion of being bigger than his job.
''That's one of the biggest misconceptions about me,'' he says. ''Ironically, `Titanic' turned out to be the biggest movie of all time, one of the biggest love stories ever. Somebody on the street who didn't know anything about me would probably think, `What a calculated move.' But it was truly just another experience that I wanted to have as an actor. All this stuff just kind of happened. It was out of my control.''
Day-Lewis, himself an objet des paparazzi back home in Ireland, understands DiCaprio's predicament. ''Believe me - and I know it is an obvious point to make - movie stardom has been thrust upon Leonardo. He is first and foremost and always has been for many years a very dedicated actor.'' DiCaprio calls his ''Gangs of New York'' experience the most focused he's ever had, so much so that to dredge up the pain required for one scene, he beat himself silly. ''I came in the next day, and the makeup artist was pretty taken aback because the whole side of my head was bruised.''
But DiCaprio says he learned a long time ago that suffering for your art should be a requirement. ''Pain is temporary. Film is forever.'' (And with that, he caps the year with two very good and very different performances in two very different movies. On Christmas day, America will wake to find DiCaprio in Scorsese's film and in Steven Spielberg's caper film ''Catch Me If You Can.'')
Part of his concentration on ''Gangs'' had to do with the seriousness Day-Lewis fostered. ''He definitely embodied the pathos of who Bill was throughout the entire course of making the film, '' DiCaprio says. ''He was the essence of Bill the Butcher, but I never felt like he was unapproachable. A lot of people may think that you can't talk to extreme Method actors, that they're in character all the time, but I have to tell you that all of that was infectious - when all the people around you are so committed to what they do, and so focused, you are the same way.''
Utmost solemnity is the only way Day-Lewis can work. Go on and name a Daniel Day-Lewis comedy. ''I'm just fearful of people who talk too much on a set,'' he says.
The incidental education in technique he's given his costar has won Day-Lewis another lifelong fan. When a publicist came into the room with a couple of ''Gangs of New York'' posters, she wanted to know if Day-Lewis would autograph them. They were for DiCaprio's mother.
Top of the Page
|
|