Ben Affleck may be one of Hollywood's A-listers, but he's not quite respected as an artist. More precisely, he's not often celebrated for being a performer, having otherwise received plenty of acclaim for his work as a director and producer. Just look at his awards history. He's gotten very little love for his acting skills but won two Academy Awards, for writing Good Will Hunting and for producing Argo. Had he been nominated for directing the latter, as it was widely expected, he'd probably have added another little golden man to his collection. It's difficult to feel bad for the fellow, but, at the same time, Affleck's reputation as a subpar actor isn't completely warranted.
While it's true his range is narrow, when cast in the right role, Ben Affleck can be quite impressive. You'll find no better example of that than 2006's Hollywoodland…
Allen Coulter's crime drama is a riff on noir tropes and Hollywood History. It portrays the real-life mystery surrounding George Reeves's suspicious death in 1959, by focusing on the efforts of a private detective who's trying to uncover the truth. Throughout the investigation, the seedy underbelly of tinsel town is slowly revealed and the film presents a peculiar sort of character study, using the echoes of the dead to illuminate the souls of the living. In that respect, it's similar to Otto Preminger's Laura, only there's no convoluted resurrection and the romantic undertones of the 1940s classic are made into a homosocial obsession.
While the premise of the film borrows much of its themes and tropes from the noirs of old, its style is tediously sterile. The tragedy of the actor who played Superman on TV is embalmed in various shades of brown, gray and lifeless beige, the cutting is perfunctory and the compositions follow the same line. Structurally speaking, Hollywoodland is more Julie & Julia than Laura, alternating between protagonists in a way that only serves to emphasize how uninteresting one story is in relation to the other. In the case of Hollywoodland, this qualitative contrast is only exacerbated by the cast.
As the investigator, Adrien Brody is perfectly fine, but he never manages to make the introspection demanded by the script into something that's interesting to watch. Ben Affleck, on the other hand, plays Reeves with such seamlessness that one has no other choice but to stare open-mouthed at this feat of perfect casting. George Reeves was never a performer lauded for his acting talent. Examining his filmography, we see hints of charisma, but his overall presence is mainly marked by shallowness. His performances were surface-level exercises, skin deep characterizations that dazzled but rarely convinced. In other words, George Reeves was an actor very similar to Ben Affleck.
The symbiosis of role and performer is rather startling in its success, especially when Hollywoodland's second protagonist is asked to present us the brittleness of Reeves as a celebrity. During one of his first scenes, Affleck makes a show out of the stunted playacting that his character indulges in. For this Superman of the small screen, acting seems to be mainly about striking poses and he turns that into a little game of seduction. A beautiful woman asks him to be a hero and he looks in the distance with a soft frown, she asks him to be stoic and he draws a straight line with his mouth. In Affleck's hands, such a moment is funny but there's a hint of sadness behind it all.
Maybe it's not sadness, though, maybe it's emptiness. This TV star seems unable to see a brightness in his future, placidly whining about his fruitless career and doomed love affairs. Reeves' charm may make him the center of attention but it's hollow, his smiles have no genuine mirth behind them and his eyes are dead inside. Take the cameras away, remove the audience and we get a man suffering from chronic dissatisfaction, an insouciant brat that feels entitled to more than what life offers and is never happy. Such an attitude could be insufferable to witness, but Affleck somehow makes it into something that's fascinating to watch, peeling the arrogant matinee idol façade one layer at a time.
These pathetic depressed men, sleazy but handsome, those who can easily seduce but don't satisfy, are a specialty for the actor. Apart from the melancholic wonder of George Reeves, his best performance is probably in Gone Girl playing a similar breed of entitled guy, one who we disdain and pity in equal measure. For the David Fincher flick, he got no awards buzz, though he came close to a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Hollywoodland. His work is certainly more interesting than 60% of the 2006 Oscar line-up. At least, he got nods from the Globes and Critics Choice Award and even won the prestigious Volpi Cup at the Venice Film Festival.
