From an ax-wielding killer to the benevolent Batman, Christian Bale plays the gamut, with fire and intelligence
By Chris Garcia, Austin360.com, December 1, 2006
AMERICAN-STATESMAN FILM WRITER
Between June of last year and this past weekend, I have watched nine movies, in theaters and on video, starring Christian Bale. And it has forced me to wonder: Why isn't this actor bigger than he is? Why, really, isn't he huge? Because Bale, at this moment, is the most exciting film performer of his generation.
Ask the rabble, friends and family about Bale and you'll get nods of detached approval, the obligatory swoon from women (and men) and the infrequent gush of how good he was in "American Psycho" and "Batman Begins." No one, it seems, objects to any of his performances or to him personally (his choice of films, conversely, is arguable), and yet no one talks about Bale the way one does about a Damon or DiCaprio.
If you haven't admired or swooned over Christian Bale, you should be soon.
He's been in seven movies in the past three years and has another Batman on
the horizon.
This is understandable, if unjust. Except for "Batman Begins," in
which a mostly whispering Bale reinvents the Dark Knight for a gloomier zeitgeist,
Bale's movies haven't enjoyed the box office bonanza of a mainstream blockbuster.
And, subjectively speaking, he lacks the conventional cornfed cutes of some
of his fellow Gen-X acting peers. Instead, the actor, born in Wales in 1974,
possesses a lean, tall, almost avian handsomeness that radiates its own sexual
heat. Just ask my Mom.
Unlike Jake Gyllenhaal — a promising performer still in his acting infancy — Bale doesn't glean glory from hunking about in the pages of People. He works, and the plaudits he earns are for his art. He's the real thing, a rightful actor's actor: passionate, risk-taking, serious, self-possessed. His performances bristle with intelligence, simmer and often explode with feeling. His intensity can cauterize the screen. Bale, in short, is dangerous.
Since mid-2005, Bale has been on a spectacular tear: "Batman Begins," "The New World," "The Prestige," "Harsh Times" and the upcoming "Rescue Dawn," which a few lucky souls caught in October during a sneak peek at the Austin Film Festival. The variety of the roles — a superhero, two British gents, a street hood, a prisoner of war — and the virtuosity he brings to them is something rare.
Scoot back a bit and you will witness the fast efflorescence of Bale's talent in the course of a 20-year career and some 30 features. His discovery role was in Steven Spielberg's 1987 war epic "Empire of the Sun," in which the 13-year-old Bale plays a rich British boy who is orphaned in Japanese-occupied China during World War II and winds up in a POW camp.
Certainly profiting from Spielberg's mastery of directing children, Bale evinces the nuanced variations and poise of a veteran actor. With a fluid, almost kaleidoscopic range of emotions, he glides from a happy pampered child to a dazed Oliver Twistian urchin, and then a plucky avatar of youthful resourcefulness. His investment in the performance is fierce. Even against the imposing John Malkovich, little Bale holds his own.
Bale scratched teen pinup status playing Jo's spurned suitor Laurie in 1994's "Little Women" and persuasively stretched his Shakespeare chops as Demetrius in 1999's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," in which he spoke with his native Welsh accent, something increasingly rare in his work (he plays a lot of Americans).
Continuing this genteel streak, Bale played Jesus in the forgettable 1999 television movie "Mary, Mother of Jesus." And then he played the devil.
Bale's portrayal of yuppie serial killer Patrick Bateman in Mary Harron's "American Psycho" remains a tour de force of artistic daring. Bale nailed the role, hard, not playing the character so much as chiseling him into shivering existence. His Bateman ripples with inner psychological turmoil, now oozing oily smarm, now crumbling to hysteric pieces, and in between murdering people with axes and chainsaws.
The movie is jammed with moments of bravura acting, but two are especially haunting: Bateman's droll exegesis of the Huey Lewis song "Hip to Be Square" as he coolly and methodically prepares for human slaughter, and his climactic meltdown, when it seems like a chorus of schizophrenic voices are ripping his soul apart.
Bale rightfully earned media attention for his performance, but it was fleeting. What should have been his breakout role failed to make him a superstar. That's largely because few people wanted to see an almost rated NC-17 horror show with (ironically) no big stars.
Bale returned to the sociopathic, yuppie-as-monster in John Singleton's "Shaft," invoking Bateman's toxic strain of macho, rich-boy entitlement. In these parts, to which Bale attaches a razor-lipped malevolence, his face and hair have a greasy sheen and his teeth are too white, jutting like chrome fangs. He buzzes with menace, grimacing, flashing those teeth and making lizard faces.
This is an aspect he is very good at, and one he returns to, with varying shades, in this year's mediocre "Harsh Times" — which has Bale playing a preening East Los Angeles thug who drops lingo such as "dawg" and "homey" — and the problematic 2004 indie "The Machinist."
Bale pulls a stunt performance in "The Machinist," dropping to an skeletal 120 pounds on his rangy, 6-foot-2-inch frame to portray a mentally ill man who hasn't slept in a year and is slipping into a kind of "Twilight Zone" insanity. He looks wretched, as if all of his muscle has been scraped from the bone. This is even more shocking when you recall his muscular poundage in "American Psycho" and "Batman Begins." Here he has the bony head of a chicken and a pipe-cleaner neck.
Though the movie doesn't work as the hip and grisly psychothriller it aspires to be, Bale gives a coiled, internal performance that you can't stop watching.
Physical transformations don't qualify as acting, and they don't guarantee a compelling picture. Bale also embraces dangerous degrees of scrawn in Werner Herzog's war thriller "Rescue Dawn," but it's his fiery performance as a pilot captured by the Viet Cong, crisply negotiating the line between preserving one's sanity and flipping out, that makes the film one of the year's best.
If the measure of a great actor is his devotion, courage, wit and spontaneity, Bale has arrived. He's fresher and more unpredictable than Matt Damon or Jude Law, coming closer to the indie-movie surprises provided by performers such as Ryan Gosling and Jeffrey Wright. There's a score of top-notch young actors working and making excellent films, including even such obvious names as Ethan Hawke, Colin Farrell and Brad Pitt.
But every once in a while, one of them, such as Bale, stands out as revelatory. He shows us new things and stretches our world with the sheer force of originality. He does the near-impossible: He makes watching movies exciting all over again.
cgarcia@statesman.com; 445-3649
Six essential Christian Bale movies:
1. 'American Psycho' (2000)
2. 'Rescue Dawn' (2006, not yet released)
3. 'Empire of the Sun' (1987)
4. 'Batman Begins' (2005)
5. 'The Machinist' (2004)
6. 'The Prestige' (2006)
Where to see recent Bale films
•'The Prestige' is playing at the Arbor; 'Harsh Times' is playing at Tinseltown 17
•'Batman Begins' and 'The New World' are available on DVD
Ten more Generation X actors worth watching
THE STARS
1. Robert Downey Jr. (Must-sees: 'Two Girls and a Guy,' 'Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang')
2. Edward Norton ('Primal Fear,' 'Fight Club')
3. Leonardo DiCaprio ('What's Eating Gilbert Grape?,' 'The Departed')
4. Jude Law ('The Talented Mr. Ripley,' 'I Heart Huckabees')
5. Jamie Foxx ('Ray,' 'Collateral')
THE SHOULD-BE STARS
1. Peter Sarsgaard ('Boys Don't Cry,' 'Shattered Glass')
2. Ryan Gosling ('The Believer,' 'Half Nelson')
3. Terrence Howard ('Hustle & Flow,' 'Crash')
4. Jeffrey Wright ('Basquiat,' 'Angels in America')
5. Mark Wahlberg ('Boogie Nights,' 'Three Kings')
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