The Great Acting Blog: “Simple Cinema Is The Actor’s Friend’
This week, I had the sheer joy of watching not one, but TWO Hong Song Soo pictures at the theatre. Nobody’s Daughter Haewon was the first of his films to ever receive a UK theatrical release. The double wammy happened because he made two films this year, and the second, Our Sunhi, is playing as part of the London International Film Festival, and I got to see both. His films are hard to find even on DVD, so this double bill has come as something of a miracle. For those who don’t know his films, they are characterised by a minimal aesthetic; not much movement of the camera, long takes, very little blocking of the actors and, crucially, scenes that are pared back to their essentials so that what looks at first glance to be a casual slice of life, is in fact a carefully orchestrated universe – everything contained within it carries meaning. The acting tends to be simple and reserved, interspersed with occasional, intense, emotional outbursts and scenes of drunkeness.
During my efforts to understand his work better, I stumbled upon an interview with him which contained the following: –
“I think an actor does a good job when what the movie wants from the actor is something that he or she can feel comfortable doing. If not, it’ll make the actor shrink back, depend on memory and calculate”.
By “comfortable”, Hong Sang Soo means allowing actors to work using their own creative metabolism, letting them find their own rhythm. This is why again it is important for the actor to have enough space within the production to create, so that they can give their own shape to the performance, rather than being shoehorned into a performance somebody else wants them to give. In the case of Hong Sang Soo, he often uses long takes without cutting, rarely moving the camera even, but simply recording the actors passively as the scene unfolds. As with so much in minimal cinema, the results create a situation similar to that of the theatre, where the actor is able to pursue a single line of action for the scene, without being rudely interrupted by camera set-ups.
When he says; “if not, it’ll make the actor shrink back and depend on memory and calculate”, Hong Sang Soo means that they will not be relaxed enough to live in the moment, they won’t commit to the moment and so will not create afresh. Instead, they will produce effects in an effort to try to manipulate the audiences view of them and so protect themselves – ultimately what the actor will offer in this instance, is falsity.
Later in the interview, he says that it is the director’s job to create a situation whereby the actor can feel comfortable in order to do their creative work. It’s not unreasonable to assume that he pares back his films in order to create the conditions he thinks are best for the actors to do their best.
Simple, pared back cinema perhaps offers better possibilities for great acting because it gives more focus and space to the performances. Movies with fast cutting, big action and special effects are less actor-orientated, rarely in fact demanding great performances. Contemporary cinema is dominated by the latter kind of film, which may help to explain why so much of modern acting is so bland.
Simple cinema is the actor’s friend.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.