Stream It Or Skip It?

The Actor (now streaming on Hulu) brims with potential: Underrated actor Andre Holland in the lead. The first live-action feature from director Duke Johnson, who co-directed strange and memorable stop-motion drama Anomalisa with Charlie Kaufman. An adaptation of a Donald E. Westlake novel, Memory. Supporting turns from Gemma Chan, Tracey Ullman and Toby Jones. And what’s best described as an unusual narrative, that doesn’t follow the typical rules of our recognizable reality. As ever, the individual pieces are incredibly promising, but do they all come together in an emotionally and artistically satisfying manner? That’s always the question, isn’t it?

THE ACTOR: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Yes, that’s a very Rod Serling voice we hear over the opening of this film. Consider the tone set. Paul E. Cole (Holland) awakens in a hospital in a fuzzy haze somewhere in Ohio, sometime during the mid-century period, his memory scrambled and/or riddled with blank spots. Yes, this is a less-than-ideal situation, especially the Ohio part. Could it be worse? How about if Toby Jones is there, telling our guy “adultery is illegal around these parts” in his signature subtly aggressive and off-putting tone? Yep. Definitely worse. Toby Jones will pop up repeatedly in this movie, too, playing multiple roles, as will several other character actors, because this is a Nothing Quite Makes Sense world – or, to put it in movie-knower terms, a Lynchian Dreamstate. And there will be little reprieve from it.

It seems Paul was clobbered by the husband of the woman he shtoinked. He’s an actor in a touring production, and the implication is, he often finds a lady in whatever town he’s in to shtoink. Key phrase, whatever town he’s in. He doesn’t know and it isn’t made clear but he needs to get outta there soon but he doesn’t have the cash for a bus ride home to New York City although he does have enough to get to the small burg of Jeffords, which is probably in Pennsylvania, not that it really matters. He gets a job in the shipping department of the local tannery. Rents a room from a friendly woman (Tracey Ullman, in one of a few roles). Meets a somewhat beguiling woman, Edna (Chan), who’s somewhat beguiling because she wears a clown costume on their first quasi-date, and she says it’s Halloween even though it doesn’t seem to be Halloween since she’s the only one who seems to be celebrating it.  

Paul compensates for his memory loss by writing key pieces of information on scraps of paper and pinning them up in his room. Things come and go in his mind seemingly at random. Rhyme and reason are seeds that find no purchase in his poor noggin. He appears to fall in love with Edna, and she with him, but consummation of any sort is waylaid by his need to figure out who he is and/or was and/or will be. He’s unmoored and stands at a crossroads: Stay in Jeffords and start over and live with the mystery, or return to New York and try to resume his old life by piecing bits together. He opts for the latter, and has awkward interactions with friends, an ex, his agent, a doctor and, once he resumes working, every single person on the set of a TV show. Is Paul trapped in some kind of heck? Sure seems to be some kind of heck.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Thematic similarities of Mulholland Dr. and A Serious Man bubble up on occasion, with tonal similarities to the Kaufman films Johnson collaborated on, Anomalisa and I’m Thinking of Ending Things.

Performance Worth Watching: Holland proves more than capable of carrying a challenging film like this, where character beats are in odd time signatures. You’ll just wish he had more opportunities to show us Paul’s heart and soul.

Memorable Dialogue: Edna: “People always talk about happy endings. I think beginnings are much happier. You still have the whole movie ahead of you.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: One thing Paul sort of remembers about his old self is, he has great taste in jazz. So appropriately, the soundtrack during a key third-act sequence buzzes with a freeform skronk, generating an uncomfortable sense of tension with no real crescendo or resolution. And that’s The Actor in microcosm, where the entire narrative, told from the point-of-view of a man living on constantly shifting sands, is just off.  

Of course, that’s intentional. Johnson sows seeds of discomfort, but with a degree of thematic opacity that’s about as frustrating as his protagonist’s predicament. It plays out like you really need a smoke and you have a cig but you don’t have a light – for both the character and the audience. It feels noncommittal, as if it needs to lean heavily into the strange or go subtler in order to be more memorable or funny. Sometimes, Paul’s reality hints at being a metaphor-laden dreamstate, but it’s vague and a little shallow, his experiences a blasé frustration fugue, of a type the Coen Bros. might concoct if they had a more David Lynchian storytelling aesthetic. But this fugue never achieves much dramatic intensity.

Johnson loads The Actor with ideas, ranging from struggles with identity to mid-century Midwestern mores, the artificial components of ourselves, the routines that make up our lives and, to a degree, racism. None feels fully explored, however, although we can go even bigger than these broad themes by observing that Paul is trapped in a the-only-thing-that’s-certain-is-uncertainty philosophical loop. Visually, Johnson employs surreal transitions and ersatz settings to toy with the idea that we’re all just actors on the stage of life, but the film ultimately feels more like an unfinished philosophy essay with too broad of a thesis and not enough specificity and detail to draw us in. The filmmaker ends the film on an ambiguous note, hinting at sad irony or a happily ever after, but despite Holland’s commitment to character, Johnson never sets the emotional hook. Benefit of the doubt: This seems to be what the director is going for. Whether it’s a properly satisfying or provocative experience for us is a different matter.

Our Call: It’s easy to appreciate The Actor’s ambition – on paper. In reality, the film never finds its rhythm or dramatic momentum. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.