2000: The year of Joaquin Phoenix's ascension
Sunday, May 9, 2021 at 8:20PM In preparation for the next Smackdown Team Experience is traveling back to 2000.
More than two decades after the fact, it's interesting to look back at a specific artist's career and denote the exact moment when their trajectory changed. In the moment you can sometimes see that a turning point is happening, but it's only when looking retroactively that the true magnitude of some events becomes apparent. In 2000 one actor's meteoric rise to stardom shines brighter than all others. It's fair to say that it was the year of Joaquin Phoenix's ascension…
Like his brother, River, Joaquin started acting from a young age. His first theatrically released feature was 1986's SpaceCamp, when the actor was still credited as Leaf. Upset at his given name for not following his siblings' naming norms - River, Rain, Liberty, Summer – the young boy had fashioned himself a new moniker. Regardless of such bouts of insecurity, brotherly love, or youthful folly, Joaquin Phoenix was, from the very start, a remarkable performer. I, for one, find him positively awards-worthy in Ron Howard's 1989 Parenthood. There's searing honesty to his portrayal of a mercurial pre-teen, a shot of naturalism that bounces off Dianne Wiest's Oscar-nominated work as his mother with remarkable potency.
Watching them together is glimpsing a calcinating family farce that's unlike anything else in that movie's tapestry of facile humor. That wasn't the only outstanding performance he delivered in youth. While the 90s saw a general decrease in the actor's work for a variety of sad reasons, there was still much to admire. Just look at his corrupted innocence in Gus Van Sant's To Die For. Part of why Nicole Kidman's Suzanne Stone pops so much is that we can see her maniacal nature contrast with Phoenix's bruised youth. Adding a note of astringent naturalism, mumbling authenticity, to arch fare was something of a Joaquin Phoenix specialty during these early years
Still, these were all roles easily eclipsed by the great thespians showboating alongside them in the same films. Furthermore, the foul taste of tragedy, the shadow of a fallen brother's greatness, tended to dim the actor's prospects as a star. That changed when, in 2000, a trifecta of psychosexually charged roles allowed Joaquin Phoenix to win the attention of critics and audiences alike. By the end of that awards season, he was an Oscar nominee and the male muse of a rising American auteur. From then on, the aughts were a decade of growing prestige, escalating popularity, artistic challenges met with fearless commitment. He didn't always succeed, but it's interesting to see him try, nonetheless.
The film tryptic that changed Phoenix's fates is exemplary of that erratic quality as well. The first 2000 title to premier would be the actor's best achievement of the year, his first of many collaborations with director James Gray. The Yards concerns itself with a tale of criminal life in a corrupt world, telling the story of a recently released convict who finds himself tied to a web of lies, murder, and financial manipulation in contemporary Queens. It's one of Gray's many resurrections of 70s style American dramas about urban despair - stories of men who give in to the darkness and the women they drag along with them, kicking and screaming into oblivion.
Phoenix plays Willie Gutierrez, the protagonist's old buddy, an almost fraternal figure whose choleric gloom spreads over the film like a virulent infection. In some ways, he's been broken by this criminal cosmos long before we ever set eyes on him, making the character something of a shadow, a dark storm of inarticulate angst that's as foreboding as it is pathetic. There's a wild threat to his introspective presence, a whisper of incoming violence that, once manifested, results in The Yards' most affecting passages. The pairing of Gray and Phoenix would go on to make much better films, but there's already an admirable grandeur to what they achieve here.
The actors' other 2000 characters share Gutierrez's malignancy, gloomy disposition, and lack of emotional literacy. However, the performances that result from such similar models are very different, representing antagonistic approaches to the same self-destructive type. By far his biggest financial, famous, and awards-y triumph up to that point, Gladiator finds Phoenix interpreting Emperor Commodus with campy abandonment. Despite some excellent performances spread throughout his filmography, Ridley Scott isn't what one would call a great director of actors, and that's obvious while watching Gladiator, where every actor feels like they're working on an incompatible wavelength, tone, and dramatic solution.
If Russell Crowe achieves Oscar-winning glory by tapping into the scenario's po-faced seriousness, Phoenix does the opposite. Viperous to the core, his Commodus is a villain who wouldn't be out-of-place in the 50s Sword and Sandal epics that strongly influenced Gladiator. It feels weird and wrong for this movie, though it's not necessarily a bad performance by itself. AMPAS certainly thought he was great, nominating him in the Best Supporting Actor category. I was not too fond of Phoenix's first brush with the Academy Awards for years, but recent re-watches made me appreciate his inchoate venom more. If anything, Gladiator might have benefitted from following its villain's example, embracing the self-indulgent melodrama of the premise instead of squelching it under an inconsistent pretense of historical realism.
Suppose The Yards is an example of Phoenix finding his footing with an inspired director, and Gladiator is an uncompromising mismatch of performer and project. In that case, Philip Kaufman's Quills is a bit of both. The actor is miscast as a pious clergyman trying to rule over an insane asylum in post-Revolution France, feeling way too haunted from minute one. Following the text of Doug Wright's play, Phoenix's Abbé de Coulmier must go through a violent transformation, both corroded and viciously liberated by repressed desires and a society shaped by oppression. Incapable of telegraphing this arc, the actor feels like he's already at the endpoint of his character's evolution when we first see him. Sanity, order, serenity come off as puerile masks rather than a edifice that's brought down by the Marquis de Sade's influence and the church's cruelty.
Unlike Gladiator, Quills sees Phoenix trying to make himself fit into an inappropriate role. The particulars of the character's dilemmas may be hard to parse out in the performance, mixed to the point of abstraction. Still, the interior turmoil is there, as brazen and lacerating as anything suggested by Wright's original play. As stated before, that's one of Phoenix's greatest assets as an actor. Even when he fails, there's usually something fascinating to observe. No wonder both directors, audiences, critics, and others were so besotted by Phoenix when he emerged as one of Hollywood's most promising young actors. That promise was fulfilled and, even though I can't say I love all of his recent work, I still consider myself a fan.
What's your opinion on the actor and his 2000's output?
Reader Comments (34)
I think he's an "interesting" performer, but on a career merit level, I'm not sure I like he has an Oscar win. If Adam Driver was the only person in that field that could have upset Phoenix (and there's every indication that's the case), I'd have preferred Driver taking the win.
His performance in the Master is as great as Daniel Day Lewis in There Will be Blood, and is the best in 2012, and I fully understand he has no chance to win for that kind of character.
Very interesting take on Phoenix's big year. I need to rewatch Gladiator but I loved him in Quills. I think he's truly one of our finest actors. He gave arguably the best leading male performance of the decade in The Master.
Supposedly him and Streep are filming Ari Aster’s latest Disappointment Blvd. this summer!!
His absolute greatest performance for me is the one he gave in Two Lovers.
in my opinion he recieved his first nomination for the wrong movie, he deserved it for The yards.
I haven't seen Quills in its entirety so I can't really state an opinion on that performance. I'm not really fond of Gladiator as a film but he is excellent in that yet The Yards is where he's starting to come into his own.
LOVE him, and first loved him in Gladiator, which I also love.
Lots of love all around for this guy, one of my favourite actors and I’m glad he has an Oscar (even if I wouldn’t have nominated him last year). Seems very likely to win another, with a Sean Penn-style trajectory,
Not a fan of The Master or his performance in it, but I love him when a director focuses and reins him in (like in Her, Walk the Line, You Were Never Really Here, Two Lovers, Quills, The Sister Brothers, even Joker, to name a few).
Nobody caught "AMPAS (...) nominating him in the Best Supporting Actress category"? :)
Real Commodus was far more extreme and unhinged than the film version which is actually attempting to give him some Freudian exude and some semblance of logic what he is doing. It would have been fun to watch Pheonix shoot heads of ostriches in the walk around with club of Hercules he occasionally used, rename all the months after himself, deal with his sisters and their husbands trying to pretty understandably plot against him (he had several and he wasn’t rumored to have a relationship with them, I think they got that from Caligula) and have hundreds of conqubines and he strangled in his bath by his gladiator trainer (Commodus was the real Gladiator of the events, he broke all social norms to fight in the arena because he loved it so much). And those things I mentioned are actually all confirmed by historical records by eye witnesses like Cassius Dio, statues like him dressed up as Hercules with the club, edicts with the months etc. There are rumors of far crazier things like him acting surgeon and cutting people and wanting to burn a slave alive over a tepid bath as a child and his father Marcus Aurelius pretending he did but not actually doing it (in a case of terrible parenting of it happened).
So what I am saying that Commodus was Joffrey to 10th decree and Joaquin would have been great portraying those scenes.
Such a disappointment that YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE was just too "alternative" for him to get any traction with Oscar. Among many contenders, that for me was his greatest performance. Oh well, at least he got the Cannes prize for it.
And to think the writer of this article has a greater ascension than Phoenix ahead of him!
This was a surprise but interesting to read,I get from this piece Claudio your not a huge fan I always find him very watchable but i still think his To Die For performance is more worthy of a nom than his Richard Burton playing to the back row Gladiator performance,I think Connie Nielsen is the only worthy nominee from that film and maybe Oliver Reed.
The Master is his sole best performance and should have won him the Oscar,fine in Joker but the film is off putting.
Love Phoenix, and love him in all 3 of these (and To Die For). Nice to see this appreciation.
Claudio - this is fantastic !
On another note as you are all in smackdown mood ... and I can't get it out of my head --- I rewatched "Billy Elliot" yesterday - MY GOD why did Jamie Bell not get an Oscar nod ??? I always remember he was great - and I've seen this gem a few times (which still holds up so well 20ys later) BUT Bell literally blows your mind ... !!!!
... don't look at me, I still think Phoenix won an Oscar for an easy role, in front of the absolutely masterful performance by Banderas in Pain & Glory.
Chinoiserie, you stole my post!
As a confirmed history nerd I was also very disappointed that they didn't try to use incidents from the real Commodus' life for the film. He was absolutely out of control and his capers are so much more interesting than what the Gladiator filmmakers thought up, which was basically a rehash of Peter Ustinov in Quo Vadis. Does Hollywood just ignore history out of habit? Didn't they realize they were throwing away something brilliant to just deliver the same old crazy Roman emperor chiches? I'm not much of a Joaquin Phoenix fan - especially his godawful performance in The Master, but he has his moments. My favorite performances of his are in Her and Inherent Vice. He was hilarious in the scene where he watches Josh Brolin eat a frozen chocolate covered banana. That scene alone should have earned him an Oscar nomination. I also don't even object to his work in Joker, but the film itself is quite offensive to me
That phone call scene in Parenthood with Phoenix and Wiest is devastating. They killed it.
My favorite performance of his is HER. I think that was his most technically challenging. He had to act opposite nothing - just a voice in his ear - but he sold that relationship. It was incredible.
Yep, mine too. And perhaps "Her" is actually the best movie he ever starred in.
I haven't seen absolutely everything he's done (e.g. haven't seen To Die For or The Master), but Walk the Line is my favourite performance of his so far. I think he's charismatic, full of heart and soul, and perfect for what the movie needs. It's beautiful work.
Imagine thinking a mediocre performance in a mediocre movie like Marriage Story was more deserving of the Oscar than Joaquin Phoenix Raw and fearless performance in Joker😒
I’ll forever be annoyed he won for Joker out of all his performances.
Good actor but please no more pro cow speeches
A wonderful actor who makes interesting choices.
A friend of mine says he's hugly: hot and ugly.
Can y’all calm down? Any other writer here is just as good.
And if anyone deserves an Oscar for Marriage Story, it’s Scarlett.
Joaquin DESERVES to win for The Master over boring ass Lincoln.
Olga: If that's pointed at me, to clarify: No, I don't think EITHER Driver or Phoenix should have won based solely on the performances they gave or the careers they had. Both were going WAY too hard on deeply flawed material. But: Neither Banderas or Pryce really had a chance and Leo wasn't getting a second that soon. So if it's down to Phoenix or Driver, and thinking about their broader career to break a basically a tie of disinterest? Yeah, Driver would be my preference.
He was excellent in Her (as was Amy Adams, one of her most fully-realized supporting turns). He should've won for that.
Phoenix is a brilliant actor with incredible range. This may have been the year of his ascension, but his 2010's work is a piece of art. His turn in The Master is quite possible the best lead male performance of the past decade, and his performances in The Immigrant, Her, You Were Never Really Here, and Joker are not only Oscar worthy, they are all win worthy. He's a masterclass all his own.
He was genius in The Master, should've won the Oscar. Very good actor in general, but, boy, he acts so strangely, like he's asking for a backlash.
Volvagia: I disagree, Joaquin tottaly deserved it that year, maybe Banderas was the only one that was on par with him but Joaquin was equally good, i know some people hate the movie, but it won the Golden Lion for something, and the judges were not some film students, were respect Directors that know their craft.
Love him so kuch and I think he's the greatest actor of his generation. I don't find him acting strangely at all in his real life, he is extremely passionate about the earth, and fights for animal rights. He isn't about being phony in Hollywood and doesn't care for all the celebrity hype.
I had a typo on my above post. I meant to say "much" not "kuch", lol.