Too great to be good

There's nothing inherently wrong with an actor's choosing to give a stylized performance rather than a naturalistic one. But if the performance fails -- as this one does -- then it comes off as an act of vanity, a flashy turn instead of one that casts steady illumination. Day-Lewis is an extremely cerebral actor, given to painstaking preparation for his roles: For "The Last of the Mohicans," he spent time living in the wild, building canoes and tracking and skinning animals. While filming "The Ballad of Jack and Rose," he lived apart from his family, ostensibly to help him slip more credibly into his role, that of an ailing, island-dwelling loner. Day-Lewis is reluctant to talk about process: "It's not that I want to pull the shutters down," he told the New York Times Magazine in an interview late last year. "It's just that people have such a misconception about what it is I do. They think the character comes from staying in the wheelchair or being locked in the jail or whatever extravagant thing they choose to focus their fantasies on. Somehow, it always seems to have a self-flagellatory aspect to it. But that's just the superficial stuff. Most of the movies that I do are leading me toward a life that is utterly mysterious to me. My chief goal is to find a way to make that life meaningful to other people."

That's an astute quote, and a telling one. The painstaking preparation Day-Lewis undergoes for his roles is the sort of thing people usually associate with Method acting. The common misconception about the Method is that it simply means an actor "becomes" his character. And as one of my colleagues always points out: That's not acting; it's schizophrenia. The Method is actually far subtler and more complex than even some imaginary notion of "becoming" a character might imply, demanding (among other disciplines) that an actor strive to create a recognizable reality based on his own experiences and observation of the world. He must also draw from his own personality as the source of all psychological truth. None of that necessarily has to do with living in the wild for a few months or intentionally separating yourself from your family (although, of course, if an actor is going to be filmed building a canoe, it's better if he looks as if he knows what he's doing). In any case, the second part of Day-Lewis' quote suggests that the most obvious ways an actor might prepare for a role may not be as important as the more nebulous, subterranean ones. Whether or not Day-Lewis is strictly a Method actor (and in practice, at least, the definition is often hazy), when he says, "Most of the movies that I do are leading me toward a life that is utterly mysterious to me," he's cutting to the core of how great acting happens: He's all but affirming that truth can be reached only partly by technique, not by technique alone.

But because the mechanisms of performance are so delicate, an actor can understand how great acting happens and still fail to deliver it. As articulate as Day-Lewis is about his craft, he's blind to the fact that in two of his most recent performances -- in "Gangs of New York" and "There Will Be Blood" -- he has, metaphorically, confined himself to that wheelchair. His performance in "There Will Be Blood" is wrought, not felt: It shows the grit of discipline and forethought but lacks spontaneity, fire, life. In that New York Times Magazine article, Day-Lewis revealed yet another telling detail: He prefers the James Stewart of the sunny Frank Capra pictures to the darker, more recessed characters Stewart played later, in Anthony Mann westerns like "The Naked Spur" and "Winchester '73." Maybe if Day-Lewis had connected with those later Stewart performances, he'd have found a key to the heart of Daniel Plainview.

The final scene of "There Will Be Blood" features an act of horror played as a miniature screwball comedy. But even this scene comes off as more absurd than operatic; it's overly pleased with its manufactured grimness. In these last moments of the movie, meticulously calibrated for maximum shock and dismay, Day-Lewis slouches toward some penultimate revelation, but he's crippled in a way his Christy Brown never was. As he sputters the movie's most memorable, and most idiotic line, "I drink your milkshake!" he's loving the moment, not living it.

As Konstantin Stanislavsky, the grandfather of Method acting, urged, you must love the part in yourself, not love yourself in the part. Day-Lewis portrays Daniel Plainview as if he were playing to a mirror, not an audience. The character's self-loathing comes off, paradoxically and unintentionally, as a manifestation of an actor's self-love. Day-Lewis, one of the finest actors we've got, has every reason to love himself, but not at the expense of his audience. When he comes to us emotionally naked -- as he did in "My Left Foot," "In the Name of the Father," "The Ballad of Jack and Rose" and any number of other performances -- he's as resplendent as a king. But caught in the trappings of supposed greatness, he's just an actor, a puppeteer pulling a series of color-coded strings to make us think and feel. Our job is to pretend we don't notice the tug, and to fool ourselves into believing that we don't expect more from him.