Philip Seymour Hoffman: Loved (and touched) by the Gods of cinema

He wasn't glamorous, he wasn't sexy, he was just a very fine actor, respected by the directors he worked for, profoundly admired by his peers.

Philip Seymour Hoffman had an untimely death to a damned drug addiction, but his magnificent legacy, despite a relatively short career, is here to stay.

I discovered his real talent rather late, despite having seen him perform in numerous short roles as an immaculate supporting actor. It wasn't until I saw him in 2008 movie "Doubt" in his compelling, awesome role as Irish-American priest Brendan Flynn (alongside screen legend Meryl Streep) that I fell head over heels in love with his commanding gesture and his captivating voice. 

The last time I had the chance to watch him in a movie theatre was in "A Late Quartet" in the role of Robert Gelbart, the second violinist who is unsatisfied with the secondary role he plays within the quartet.

Yesterday "Dias the Cine", the entertaining film news programme on RTVE, dedicated 9 minutes to his life as an actor by making a quick review of his most memorable roles and scenes (in English with Spanish subtitles, thank God!), along a career that spanned for almost 13 years. 

D\'edas de cine - 06/02/14

Last week Luis had suggested posting an entry on our blog on which we could discuss which is Philip's best film / performance. I wasn't too sure that was feasible, but I changed my mind after watching Dias de Cine. So I'd like to talk those of you guys who may, one way or another, have admired Hoffman's prolific work into choosing his roles / scenes you like best and what a better way than by embedding my own choice here.

Personally, after giving it some thought, I have to go for this amazing tour de force in "Doubt" between the always great Meryl Streep, playing the domineering school principal of a strict Catholic school, who believes the jovial, open-minded priest performed by Hoffman has molested one of the students. Sheer acting at its best!

So come on folks, send me your comments and fave scenes and I'll insert them on this post. I guess you can find them yourselves rather easily on YouTube (try this link), like I did myself. If you can't, just tell me and I'll do it for you.

Sara Collantes:

I'm perfectly aware that this isn't Mr. Seymour Hoffman's best performance but I simply love this film!! The Cohen brothers always create a great variety of colourful characters in their films.

In this case, one of these characters is Brandt, the personal assistant of Mr. Lebowski, played by our beloved, deceased actor. Thanks to this kind of roles he turned into a luxury supporting actor. Philip Seymour Hoffmann always disappeared into his characters, and it isn't easy to find an actor who can give life to a character without remembering others he'd played before.

Luis Sanchez:

I'm glad you changed your mind, José Luis!

In fact, I have already written about Philip in my post about the film '25th Hour', but he deserves more attention than that. So, as I promised you, my selected scene from him comes from a very good movie, which is actually a great adaptation of one of Patricia Highsmith's novels, 'The talented Mr. Ripley', with Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law and our dear Philip Seymour. 

In my fave scene, he has a tense 'face to face' with Damon ...

And I'm sure the rest of you guys have seen many of his movies, so come on and send in your comments and scenes ;)

Maite Garcia:

It  seems to me a simple and lovely suggestion to honour Philip Seymour Hoffman so I would like to provide another of his brilliant performances. In truth I was not a fervent supporter of this artist until I saw his amazing acting in "Before the devil knows you're dead". In this film, he plays the role of an ambitious man (Andy), desperate to obtain easy money in order to afford his luxury way of life (travels, drugs, etc.). Andy, together with Hank, his guileless little brother (played by Ethan Hawke), plans to rob a jewelry shop; not a regular one, but actually their parents' business. 

I love this movie because of the way it is shot: an evasive , fragmentary story full of feedbacks and flashbacks. Undoubtedly, director Sidney Lumet’s ability to achieve such an energetic film at the age of eighty has to be recognized. Nevertheless, Ethan Hawke and Hoffman are the key to the narration, as they maintain a continuous dynamic: the aggressive, strong man against the passive, weak one; their superb performances are the highlight of the story, as you can see in the scene below:

It is a really hard moral thriller, so you feel completely devastated at the end of it. However, it is a highly recommendable movie, which I hope you will watch and enjoy it. 

Maite Garcia: Nosferatu, a film by Murnau

Photography revolutionized the world of art owing to its characteristics: veracity, instantaneous results, etc. This amazing medium promoted the emergence of the cinema, whose essential base is the image in movement. Cinema has become a kind of art which is so typical at present. 

I declare myself as a cinema lover. Not only do I like a good script or moving performances but also I am very interested in the esthetic resources the cinema uses to tell us a story (its shots, frames or camera movements). So for that reason, I wish to talk about Nosferatu, a silent film directed by German filmmaker F. Murnau in the 1920s which I saw this weekend and really surprised me. Despite the fact that the movie is so old, it established a lot of keys in relation to horror movies. 

It is not the first film in which a vampire appears. However, it was the first one to be inspired by “Dracula”, whose author is Bram Stoker. In spite of changing the names of both the main characters and places, the story was suspiciously similar to Stoker's novel; that's why the widow's writer won a lawsuit to destroy all the copies. Fortunately, the destruction was not complete and nowadays we can still enjoy this masterpiece. 

Though Nosferatu belongs to German expressionism, this film introduces a few changes in this movement. Pictorial scenographies (which we could also see in “The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari”) were abandoned so as to use scenes shot oudoors to evoke reality. Nowadays, horror films (“The Blair witch project”, “Rec”, “Paranormal activity”) use that resource to achieve more effectiveness. At an esthetic level, the carriage's scene must be mentioned, shot at a fast pace as a photo negative in order to announce that something terrible is going to happen. In fact, Stanley Kubrick included a similar sequence in “The clockwork orange” (Kubrick used a Durango 95 car instead of a carriage). It is important to analyze the illumination, because if someone is savage like Nosferatu, the light will be rough and dark. In contrast, victims and innocent people will appear against a soft light. Moreover, the shadows suggest the presence of the vampire, and also his death when they are destroyed. The use of a low angle is also remarkable in order to emphasize Nosferatu as the most evil paradigm.

Issues like the conflict between good and evil, and love as the only salvation are constants in this film. A great deal of the critics believe that these values are used in a metaphoric sense to reflect the fear Europe felt about the Nazi threat. We can relate this feeling to a dramatic scene where we can see a huge outburst of rats jumping off a ship to spread diseases. In this way, rats “prepare” the reign of Nosferatu. The vampire represents the darkest part of human heart as well; in fact, that reason leads him to his own destruction, when he stays / is staying with Ellen (his victim) and the sun is rising. This feeling has nothing to do with the desire associated with love, which is the main difference between Nosferatu and subsequent works by Tod Browning (“The mark of the vampire”) and F. F. Coppola (“Bram Stoker’s Dracula”). 

This movie is a great example of a horror tale but maybe it is also a journey into our evil, dark side personified by Nosferatu, the vampire. This monstrosity represents an interruption of the concept of “sublime”, which is defined as the observation of fear from a safety position, from a distance that allows our enjoyment. I believe Murnau breaks the distance and limits in quite an innovative, suggestive way so that his resources or techniques remain in modern films.

Thanks Maite, well done! I admit I have vague memories of Nosferatu, which I must have seen years ago. Perhaps I should have a go at it again after reading your post! In any case, I've found this clip of the film, actually the very beginning of it, so that your classmates get a taste of what this old movie looks like.