Beauty vs Beast: Gyllenhaal x 3
Friday, July 31, 2015 at 12:51PM Who is with me in missing Jason's Beauty vs. Beast column? He's been offline a lot this month. So here's a Beauty vs Beast in his honor, training our eyes on the one and only Jake Gyllenhaal. Or, rather, the Jake Gyllenhaals as he's versatile.
Therein lies the twist. It's All-Beautiful Jake (Brokeback Mountain & Love & Other Drugs) versus Beautiful & Beastly Jake (Donnie Darko & Jarhead) versus All-Beastly Jake (Southpaw & Nightcrawler). Who gets your vote? Ready? You're always ready for Jake. So go... Vote and Comment. Pound your keyboard so hard that you wake Jason up and he returns to us next week to resume his series.
Previously on Beauty vs Beast...
Janet Leigh's Marion Crane beat Anthony Perkin's Norman Bates by a slim but still surprising 55% of your votes. Your love blindsided us. Jason and I both thought it would turn out differently given that Norma Bates is an immortal villain and Marion Crane is well, dead and buried (or, rather, submerged) but y'all are so predictable when there's an actress involved. Hence this week's all male challenge. There's no actress to win your automatic vote. However will it turn out?
Reader Comments (23)
I think that Beautiful Jake will win this poll at The Film Experience...in the same way that there are certain states that always vote blue.
I voted for Beautiful Jake. What can I say, I like pretty boys!
I still think Donnie Darko might be his best performance...
Though I have not seen all of him, but that still stucked in my head the most.
I really like Jake but he does not register as a movie star, and I am surprised that he (and Ryan Reynolds, et al.) continues to be given so many chances to be a leading man. A woman would not be allowed to headline that many films and not have them do well (unless her name is Nicole Kidman, who also has difficulty connecting with audiences but still surprisingly gets a lot of film work).
Had to vote for Beauty. Brokeback Jake...I just can't quit him!
It's time for a frontal, Jake!
Jono-I feel like comparing Jake to Ryan Reynolds is tantamount of swearing in the High Holy House of Cinema.
And beautiful Jake, always.
I actually think Jake would do really well with rom-coms, with a Rachel McAdams, Alicia Vikander, Emma Stone, Chris Pine or Tom Hardy (either with a man or a woman, it's 2015). The script would have to be good, but he is so lovable and that element does not seem to get put out there enough (either in his choices or what studios want to put him in). He doesn't seem like a violent person, more like a man who wants and needs to be kissed a lot.
I've not bothered seeing Jake's DeNiro-esque attempts at physically and psychologically changing himself completely in each of his last few roles. Didn't interest me when Christian Bale went down that road, either.
This is a rather tough one and I'm not sure honestly. My three favorite performances of his go across all three (Brokeback, Brothers, Prisoners) and I don't know where you put Enemy. I guess middle.
Don't make me pick please.
Donnie Darko is still my fav so I picked beastiful.
Brian -- but you MUST. i agree that there's choice things in all three fields which is why i did it.
Jono --Ryan Reynolds? Jake has more talent in his fingers alone.
His best performances may be in the beastiful range, but gosh he does beautiful so well. Hated the film, but Jake in Love & Other Drugs? WOW.
I compromised and picked Beauty and the Beast. But really all three.
I still don't understand, though, why he needed to shave that lovely chest for "Southpaw". Are boxers more manly with shaved chests?
Fine Nathaniel. I pick Beaustiful.
Any Jake any day, Really. ^^
Nathaniel...you are also a sweet friend. Cute post.
Although undoubtably overrated on this blog (he's not THAT amazing), Jake is still a very fine actor, especially in the right role.
"Brokeback Mountain" is one of those movies that I will only see once because how utterly depressing it is, and I felt that way even before the tragic passing of Heath Ledger. That said, the shot of Jake driving away in the pick-up truck quietly sobbing is one of those scenes that always stick with me. I remember at around the same time Anna Nalick was hot for two seconds and she had a song called "Wreck of the Day"
Driving away from the wreck of the day
And the light's always red in the rear view
Desperately close to a coffin of hope
I'd give anything just to be near you
Ugghhh that movie breaks my heart.
Also, I loved when he hosted SNL and he was in the first ever 'Bronx Beat" sketch! I could watch it over and over.
I'd take all three and convince them to triple penetrate me.
Jono, that's a poor excuse to push Jakey into cable gay porn. Y'know the reason is the same for non-tentpole Gosling and Phoenix: The budgets are so low, and/or overseas reap enough.
P.S. Jono, you "really like Jake" yet keep pulling the same "Reynolds=Gyllenhaal" narrative as on Datalounge, to camouflage your animosity for not being able to "out" the man from years of hyperbolic gossip (none of whose hate-stan "writer-bloggers" brigade, suddenly have Any New Tea -- now that Jakey is living in their actual neck of woods? Is it because these writers have no access to the socialites circle, or won't rescind on their long-held stance as highly reductive and agenda-serving wank material?)
"Headline that many films": as in Maguire, Portman, Hathaway, Witherspoon aren't even saddled with the boxoffice results, when they had higher/co-billing than Jake in the worst flops? Is being exposed to Bullock and Denzel's huge fanbase, the same as putting Pena and Ledger into driver's or shotgun seat? Did Jake keep at RIPD, even Self/less (nevermind a Child 44), after Green Lantern? Or pack it up and stick to <10M budgets (involving roles that alienate BOTH the gays and fraus, simply by not retreading the same uncomplicated ingenues always available in online streaming?)
Why pretend to compare him to a woman at all, when most of his career before Southpaw, were mostly of a white man at mercy of women, his fellow men, and only lately explicitly malevolent or deeply dysfunctional white men in 4 roles of the last 3 years - endangering minorities and all who surround him? How are his role choices protecting the status quo of screen male ideals?
You have continually taunted Jake for not upholding heterosexist values in his "appeal" as an image-commodity, then turned around accusing him as beneficiary from heterosexism (to veil your homophobic edict-fantasy of "closet shaming", when not shaking a fist along with Mark Harris' lazy generalization), despite:
1) his budgets are already B-list if not lower (and still the profit ratio are in different tier from Kidman's!);
2) few of his roles are clamored for by shining white knights like Wahlberg, Pine; nobody's continuously measuring those guys IN EVERY NEW ROLE THEY TAKE, against the "feminized bottom" Jake is pigeonholed with from both gay and straight -- the same notion even gays in this comment section extol in their idealized, "romantic" vision of Jake G as Ledger's/Mine-Too "cum receptacle"!
What Grantland really needs, is a think piece on the complicated, steps forward/back endless "tango"-cum-character assassination (whether in real life or onscreen), of the Image Persona/Commodity that is Gyllenhaal, by both straight and gay since 2005! And yes, that means October Sky, The Good Girl, non-shirtless End of Watch, and his theater work (which received a curiously effusive praise from a long-time Jezebel commentator last month, about 2002 Jake!) or anything not explicitly "gay bottom" would be irrelevant (or as Richard Lawson always tweeted, any DEVIATION from the "gay bottom", must be taunted, mocked for not adhering to his bathroom wank material!)
"are boxers more manly with shaved chests?" is another example of the "Question the Fag/Gay Bottom".
Boxers from movie history and real life (did anybody gay watch the MayPac fight?), are seldom questioned about shaving their body hair. But Gyllenhaal is head to toe a fetish serving the gay id and gaze ('Thanks Ang Lee' shoulda been a meme!) Anything and everything becomes a question of Jake's "authenticity" (or lack of) in HETERONORMATIVE sexuality, masculinity (*must* be inborn unlike femininity can be freely PERFORMED, CREATIVELY REINVENTED), and identity (or plural) as a contentious public property of "discourse" (the cottage industry of gossip, and social media standing-festooning, notwithstanding.)