'The Actor' Review

Ryan Gosling was once set to star and Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind writer) produces. And yet, you probably haven’t heard about The Actor, a surreal adaptation of Donald E. Westlake’s noir novel Memory. After almost two years of post-production, distributor NEON quietly released the film to a limited theatrical release and then on-demand shortly after. Is it deserving of such treatment?

The Actor stars André Holland as the titular character Paul Cole who finds himself in a strange, small town without memory. He is guided only by notes and vague recollections to his home in New York City. Along the way, he falls in love with a mysterious costume designer (Gemma Chan) who may be the key to his happiness.

The film is largely about identity, which has been a recurring theme for director Duke Johnson: his last and currently only other feature project was the Academy Award-nominated Anomalisa, co-directed with Kaufman. In that film, the protagonist (voiced by David Thewlis) was stuck in a world where every other person looked the same.

In The Actor, Cole finds himself running into the same actors playing different parts. The “troupe”, as they are called, includes Toby Jones (Captain America: The First Avenger), Joe Cole, May Calamawy (Moon Knight), Tracey Ullman, and others. They symbolize how the protagonist, through his memory loss, goes through changes in role or identity. On paper, it sounds great. In practice, it does little more than add to the eerie theatrical artifice. The acting varies in quality, but it is also challenging to judge when much of it is intentionally contrived.

After an opening incident, we become increasingly clued into the idea that Holland’s character was not the best person before his amnesia. There is something here for the faithful about how sin can distort our own sense of identity, forcing us to reckon between ourselves at our best and worst. The script admittedly never does much with that concept, but it is there.

Unfortunately, it is not hard to see why NEON buried the film. Creating a dreamlike atmosphere is a tricky balance, which many directors have failed. When it succeeds, it is usually because there is some semblance of reality in the fantasy. Producer Charlie Kaufman’s films usually get this right. We believe many parts of the worlds of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Being John Malkovich or I’m Thinking of Ending Things. The Actor never contains reality, only deeper layers of dream.

There is also a difference between dreamlike and messy. Because events just sort of happen, most of the dramatic propulsion leaks out of the story. At some points, the screenplay by Johnson and Stephen Cooney wants to be like Memento but most of the time hews closer to a smaller-scale Synecdoche, New York. Gemma Chan might be the biggest victim of the mess. I am still puzzled over the exact meaning of her character. A painfully anticlimactic ending does not help either.

It is not hard to see what attracted big names to The Actor. Duke Johnson fully swings for the fences, but, by and large, misses. Just like Megalopolis last year and any number of other divisive auteur-driven films, there is something admirable in it. Making a hazy and off-putting adaptation of a lesser-known noir novel is not the most commercial play. A cult following developing would be unsurprising. It is safe to save until then.

The Actor is now available to watch on VOD