| As we prepare for 'The Da Vinci Code,' we honor the quintessential all American actor: Tom Hanks
By Kathleen Murphy
Special to MSN Movies
The same year Tom Hanks got his first Oscar nom for "Big" (1988), he tackled the role of an aspiring stand-up comic in a bomb called "Punchline." His Lenny Bruce wannabe should have buzzed with neurotic, approval-hungry energy, the fuel that drives funnymen to "kill" or "die" gig after gig. But hipster-edgy eluded the curly-mopped, cherubic-faced Hanks. The boy was just too much at home in his own skin.
That's always been Tom Hanks' comfort zone. Boy and man, comic cutup and serious actor, he's embodied the kind of American Everyman who raises decency to an art. Although he was raised in California, Hanks' distinctive voice still twangs and drawls with a kind of flat Heartland sincerity -- and this 6-footer's got your high school English teacher's pudgy and unbuffed physique. Both Hanks and longtime friend Bruce Springsteen are guys who look like us; their art consistently taps into our collective memory of hometowns, old friends, lost dreams.
We're used to antiheroes who dance in and out of their conflicted identities, but Hanks -- like the great Spencer Tracy -- acts from a central core of quiet integrity, strength, practicality. In comedy or drama, his characters aren't animated by irony or cynicism or existential angst; they're ordinary Joes, gifted with a saving sense of humor. Hanks' heroes mostly lack the time or the inclination to wonder about the meaning of life. Being alive is meaning enough.
In his 26-year career, Oscar's tapped Hanks twice and three Emmys have come calling to boot. Hollywood's All-American Boy has matured into an authentic avatar of down-home Yankee vitality and virtue and sometimes, violence. Who better to play, in the much-anticipated "The Da Vinci Code," a professorial Sam Spade hot on the scent of a mystery that could shatter Christianity forever? But before we go god-hunting, let's pay tribute to Tom Hanks, actor and sometimes director.
"Bosom Buddies" (cross-dressing TV sitcom hit, 1980-1982)
Hanks has just gussied up in drag for the first time, a tasteful little pastel number accessorized with a chiffon scarf. "Buffy" looks like a great galumphing girl just off the farm. Setting eyes on "her" leggy blonde roommate skinning down to a dance leotard, Hanks throws himself across and over a couch with klutzily single-minded lust. He's pure boy: That hilarious physicality might as easily be inspired by the sight of a puppy or a new bike. Hanks' facility with accents (see "The Ladykillers" and "The Terminal") is already evident: His collegiate cross-dresser segues from Valley Girl nasal to a pitch-perfect De Niro riff: "You talkin' to me?" And it's to die laughing when Buffy and best friend "Hildegard" (Peter Scolari) perform their morning ablutions: bewigged, smeared with shaving cream, bare-chested for pecs exercise -- two "queens" bellowing and boogying away to "Macho Man"!
"Splash" (1984)
"Splash" overflows with the joyfully gymnastic glee that made Hanks' sexual slapstick in "Bosom Buddies" and "Bachelor Party (1984) so hilarious. When Daryl Hannah's adorable mermaid swims into his life, Hanks' too-serious workaholic goes all jiggy with happiness. Once, when his mystery girlfriend goes missing from his apartment, he zooms down the hall, presses elevator buttons on opposite walls, then literally freezes midway between the doors, a lovesick sprinter primed to take off in two directions at once. But it's Hanks' whole-hearted faith in the logic and power of fairy-tale love that keeps this delicate comedy-romance from going gooey or too grim. The discovery that the love of his life is a fish only momentarily dims the wattage of the wonderfully boyish grin and soulful gaze Hanks turns on the Tinker Bell for whom he becomes an aquatic Peter Pan.
"Big" (1988)
This Ray Bradbury-ish tale of a 10-year-old who wishes himself into a 30-something body could have been a bit creepy. But Hanks delivers wholesome mirth, deftly balancing the inner boy with his outward appearance. Ogling his miraculous transformation in a mirror, Josh is all comical prepubescent curiosity, plucking at chest hair appreciatively, then stretching out the waistband of his boxers to check what's happened below. There's no greater demonstration of Hanks' bedrock sweetness than the moment Josh touches a woman's breast for the first time. Simultaneously child and man, he conveys disbelief, reverence, curiosity and even a sense of the absurd -- but not the slightest hint of juvenile leering. A little further on in their relationship, when the smitten lady asks, "How do you feel about me?," he responds to that very grown-up query by turning away in boyish embarrassment -- "Oh, wow!" -- then lunges back to paste her with his comic book ... twice.
"Philadelphia" (1993)
Only Hanks and Denzel Washington salvage some dignity from this overrated message-movie, full of cartoon saints and villains who lock-step through a predictable script that shamelessly milks cheers and tears. As a gay, AIDS-infected lawyer, hounded by those who once counted him a valued colleague and friend, Hanks powerfully foregrounds the clear-eyed, principled young man he once was and refuses to play emblematic victim. Watch how Hanks keeps a death-grip on his dignity, as Denzel's ambulance-chasing attorney systematically moves office photos and knickknacks out of his visitor's "infecting" reach. Blown off by his last hope for representation, Hanks pauses for a moment in the street downstairs: In close-up, his blasted face is that of a lost soul, a casualty frozen in a stream of indifferent humanity. By the time the onetime courtroom hotshot takes the stand, his hair's gone gray and his skull has taken on the fragile look of impending death. But Hanks channels the voice of a young idealist when he testifies with low-key passion, "I love the law ...it's quite a thrill when justice is being done."
"Fallen Angels" (1993)
Hanks has pulled an unadvertised Eastwood, acting and directing during the last decade. He debuted as a director on early '90s TV shows such as "Tales from the Crypt" and "Fallen Angels," helmed the sweet-natured feature film "That Thing You Do!" (1996) and has won at least one recent directing Emmy for an outstanding TV miniseries. In "Fallen Angels" (available on DVD), the mesmerizing "I'll Be Waiting" pairs Marg Helgenberger with Bruno Kirby in a smooth-as-ivory-satin story about a gorgeous gangster's moll, waiting in a swank hotel for the boyfriend she ratted out to show up and take his revenge. House-dick Kirby looks pretty downscale, but he's good enough to finesse a gang shootout to save the lady. Hanks handles this moody little noir like a veteran: The final shot pulls away from the lighted dial of an old-time radio, tuned in to silky big-band music, and withdraws very slowly down the long lounge where Helgenberger's world-weary femme fatale reclines -- perhaps forever.
"Forrest Gump" (1994)
A whole bushel full of Oscars can't turn the saccharine, CGI-heavy "Forrest Gump" to gold, but it could have been pure schmaltz or geek-show queasy, absent Hanks' performance. No wink-wink, nudge-nudge ever mocks Gump's molasses-minded, sweet-souled Zelig as he wanders through late 20th-century American history. Always a little furrow-browed, like a kid preoccupied with a challenging puzzle, Hanks' holy fool expresses his bon mots in a slow, sing-songy drawl and never seems to notice the worms in his chocolates. He's Pee Wee Herman sans perversity, too good to be true in a parable engineered to spin feel-good, cotton-candy notions about Life: In a scene of rare emotional realism that recalls "Big," the child in Forrest Gump recoils, becoming physically ill, when the love of his life places his hand on her breast. Not to worry: Magically, a couple of reels later, the two hit the sheets without a hitch.
"Saving Private Ryan" (1998)
You can still glimpse a bit of boy in haggard Captain John Miller, an Everyman who leads a company of young World War II soldiers on a gloriously absurd mission: Save the last of a mother's four sons, the others already casualties of war. When his much-loved medic, foolhardy in battle, finally gets himself killed, Miller takes refuge among some rocks, a great hunk of metal scaffolding leaning over him. There, everyone's moral mainstay breaks down, weeping like a child -- but keeping a careful eye out to make sure his men aren't infected by his terrible despair. When his tribe of sons goes savage with grief, turning on one another and itching to blow away a German prisoner, the onetime school teacher unconsciously creates a battlefield classroom, to quietly talk his boys back into their civilized skins. "How will I tell my wife about a day like this? Every man I kill, the further away from home I feel." Skirting sentimentality, Hanks makes us believe in this decent American, anguished and terrified (his trembling hand a dead giveaway), but steadfast in common-sense leadership -- battle-shocked, but clear-eyed and courageous in his commitment to "family." Even at the end, facing an oncoming tank, the dying Miller just keeps on firing his pistol, not because there's any chance of killing the behemoth, but because it's what a soldier does.
"Cast Away" (2000)
A FedEx "fixer" religiously obsessed with controlling time and circumstance, Hanks races through his life -- and love -- until his plane crashes on an uninhabited tropical island. Cursed with all the time in the world and no time to lose, this unlikely survivalist slows his can-do energy and ingenuity down to a crawl, painstakingly figuring out how to produce Stone Age necessities: shelter, food, fire. We're with the practical Hanks every inch of the way, sharing his primal exhilaration when, after days of effort, he strikes a spark from tinder. A half-naked, pooch-bellied Adam, he dances madly on the beach, shouting at the indifferent night, "Look what I have created! I have made fire!," singing "C'mon, baby, light my fire!" Battling both the fear and the allure of death, Hanks' caveman counters the Big Dark by dreaming up a bloody-faced deity called Wilson, which he pairs with his guardian angel (a photo of his fiancée). It takes major acting chops to carry a nearly silent movie, especially when your co-star is a volleyball! What other contemporary actor could have made us so viscerally identify with his modern-day Robinson Crusoe?
"Road to Perdition" (2002)
A dark-dyed gangster movie by Sam Mendes ("American Beauty"), "Perdition" disappeared without a trace, despite its visual splendor and terrific performances. In this Greek tragedy about fathers and sons, Hanks plays an expert hit man, a tightlipped, unflappable specialist in death who serves and loves Paul Newman's Irish gang-lord. In a '30s fedora and voluminous wool overcoat, exuding banked violence, he looks his full 6'1" height for the first time. When Newman's jealous son slaughters his family, Hanks plunges into America's Heartland with his surviving son -- committing himself both to fatherhood and patricide along their bloody "road to perdition." Like traditionally sunny actors Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart before him, Hanks turns out to be awfully good when he goes bad. And if this actor's gift is his ease in his own skin, here he conveys a conflicted soul hunkered way down in the cave of self. His gunsel dad is like a photographic negative of "Saving Private Ryan"'s Captain Miller, a sanctioned killer responsible for many sons.
"The Terminal" (2004)
Another Robinson Crusoe -- this time marooned in an airport (his country's in the throes of a coup d'etat) -- must find shelter, food, friends and even evolve from sign-language to speech. Somehow Hanks nails a certain Middle European look: A bit doughy and pasty-skinned, Viktor may have been short-changed on a healthy diet, but he's got dead-pan dignity and stubborn honor to burn. Stanley Tucci's cold-hearted Customs official, constantly surveilling and tempting the Krakovian castaway, is this small world's two-bit "god," omnipotent, kind until it no longer suits him. Tucci explains to the non-English-speaking immigrant that he's "fallen through a crack," weirdly illustrating Viktor's dilemma by smashing an apple down on a bag of chips. Pelted by a barrage of potato chip shrapnel, Viktor never moves a hair or alters his expression of courteous attention, fixed in the face of arrant lunacy. Steven Spielberg's "The Terminal" recalls the best of silent film comedy -- Tom Hanks as the Little Tramp! -- when jokes weren't expressed in verbal vulgarities but through physical action, expression, silence itself.
What is your favorite Tom Hanks' performance? Write us at heymsn@microsoft.com
Kathleen Murphy currently reviews films for Seattle's Queen Anne News. A frequent speaker on film, Murphy has contributed numerous essays to magazines (Film Comment, the Village Voice, Film West, Newsweek-Japan), books ("Best American Movie Writing of 1998," "Women and Cinema," "The Myth of the West") and Web sites (Amazon.com, Cinemania.com, Reel.com). Once upon a time, in another life, she wrote speeches for Bill Clinton, Jack Lemmon, Harrison Ford, Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro, Art Garfunkel and Diana Ross. | |
