You make a splash with your acting debut — but then everything that comes after is a little disappointing. A film that came out more than 10 years ago is mentioned in every interview as your “best” work. There’s the unspoken assumption that you have just not lived up to your potential.
That's one way to sum up the career of Leonardo DiCaprio, who 11 years ago catapulted onto the big screen in two quirky films (“What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?” and “This Boy’s Life”). It was quite an introduction. DiCaprio was nominated for a best-supporting actor Oscar for his role as the mentally disabled Arnie Grape for the former film. DiCaprio so fully embodied the role of Arnie that it was hard to believe that he wasn’t mentally disabled himself. At the time of the Oscar nomination, DiCaprio was a mere 19 years old. Early comparisons to Brando and De Niro — his costar in “This Boy’s Life” — still follow the now 30-year-old actor. But the question remains: Has DiCaprio lived up to his early promise?
With his latest film, “The Aviator,” the story of Howard Hughes, all signs point to a firm yes. It’s a role that plays to all the actor’s strengths: his on-screen charm, his penchant for playing troubled men, the ability to virtually disappear into a role. DiCaprio’s typically complex performance in the film just might garner him his second Oscar nomination.
It’s been a bumpy road. For me, watching “The Beach” and “Total Eclipse” back to back was an exercise in masochism. DiCaprio hasn’t made many films in the past 11 years, but the choices are quite a combination: some good, some awful, and some so campy that you can’t help but chuckle at them.
A man who loves biopics
If there’s one thing you can say about DiCaprio, it’s that he loves biopics. He’s now portrayed such well-known figures as Howard Hughes, Jim Carroll, Arthur Rimbaud and Tobias Wolff, as well as con-artist Frank Abagnale Jr. His upcoming projects include a biography of Alexander the Great — though after seeing Colin Farrell hamming it up in “Alexander,” I can only hope he’s rethinking that choice — and “The Good Shepard” which tells the life story of one of the founders of the CIA, James Wilson.
It’s easy to see what would appeal to an actor about playing a historical figure. DiCaprio recently told Vanity Fair that he is an actor who loves to do research and that he’s fascinated by history (and even “Titanic” is vaguely “historical”). Roles based on real people might seem weightier to the actor. It’s as if those parts let him dig deeper to create a fuller character. When you look at a great biopic, like “Raging Bull,” it’s hard to argue that a biopic can't be a truly satisfying film. But the “Raging Bulls” are rare commodities. More likely, the script is going to stumble into one of the many biopic potholes.
Columnist Alfredo Azula discussed the problem with biopics in length in an earlier article, but I will add this: For me, the problem with a movie like “The Basketball Diaries,” is that it reduces the lead character to one aspect of his personality — in this case, a drug addiction. That’s how the script reads and that’s how DiCaprio plays him. And frankly, it’s just not that interesting.
Similarly, “Total Eclipse” is only interested in the poet Rimbaud as an absinthe-swilling loon. But where are the writers in those stories? The script doesn’t demand that DiCaprio play either of these roles as people who have to function in the world — and yet they’re writers, so obviously they did. What’s great about “The Aviator” is that it forces DiCaprio into the difficult position of having to portray Hughes as both eccentric and functional. He can’t simply indulge in the man’s quirks and oddities. After all, Hughes is still running his company and still has to attend those Senate hearings. This combination of the eccentric and the functional is the very thing that makes DiCaprio’s performance work.
Since DiCaprio obviously likes biopics, my advice is to either make sure he does them of less famous people — as he did with “Catch Me If You Can” and “This Boy’s Life” — or to make sure the film doesn’t try to tell the story of the person’s entire life. “The Aviator” only tells a chunk of the Hughes’ story. This stops the audience from simply regarding the film as one man’s descent into madness.
Still, I would also make a plea that DiCaprio consider the fictional. At least once in a while.
Don’t be De Niro
Despite Scorsese’s direction and a wickedly fun performance from Daniel Day-Lewis, “Gangs of New York” was a thumping bore. A large part of the problem is that DiCaprio buried his on-screen charm. This doesn’t mean that his character should have been “likeable.” Day-Lewis was exuding charm in the same film and yet there was nothing likeable about his character. The movie has other flaws, but watching it again, I wondered why the lively DiCaprio — who even managed to make the cliché-ridden script of “Titanic” somehow work to his advantage — played the role like such a cold fish.
These days, every serious young actor wants to be thought of as a De Niro type. (Meanwhile, of course, De Niro himself is making films like “Meet the Fockers” and voicing a shark in “Shark’s Tale.”) On a recent episode of “Oprah,” DiCaprio named De Niro as his favorite actor, which is great, but in “Gangs” it almost felt like the DiCaprio was trying to play him. De Niro does brooding and menacing almost better than anyone — and it’s fun to watch him do it. But for the boyishly disarming DiCaprio, it just doesn’t work. Not even with the extra facial hair.
Conversely, however, in “The Aviator,” it’s easy to buy DiCaprio as Hughes, because he gets to be charming. Those boyish features work to his advantage. He doesn’t seem like a boy dressing up as a man — as he did in “Gangs” — instead he seems like a man using his boyish attributes to his best advantage. In this case, in order to woo famous actresses. DiCaprio is always going to look younger than he appears (for an actress this would be a blessing); he might as well use that to his advantage and stop trying to bury it. A movie like “Gangs” seems like a direct reaction to “Titanic.” It’s obvious that DiCaprio doesn’t want to be some lightweight leading man. Well, thank goodness, but Johnny Depp (another boyishly handsome actor) has proven that you don’t have to try to turn yourself into De Niro in order to be considered a “real” actor.
A smart actor
There’s no denying DiCaprio has talent. He also has smarts. He’s worked with some of the best directors around: Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Lasse Hallström, Woody Allen, James Cameron, Baz Luhrmann, Agnieszka Holland, Sam Raimi. And though these collaborations haven’t always produced great films, it’s still nice to see an actor be as choosey as DiCaprio.
He also doesn’t do tons of press — every interview I’ve seen promoting “The Aviator” seems to be almost a carbon copy of the Vanity Fair article, as if DiCaprio decided well in advance just how much of himself he cared to share with the media this time around. You won’t hear him talk about his personal life. It’s a wise move. In these post-Bennifer days, no one wants to find themselves cooked by that kind of spotlight. It’s also admirable that he was able to wait out the post-“Titanic” backlash, doing only a handful of films — and none of the roles he played remotely resembled the carefree Jack Dawson.
It almost seems like the best thing that could happen to this still-getting-better actor is that the Academy ignore his great performance this year. Let him stay out of the spotlight for a bit longer. Let him discover the beauty of a good script — maybe one written by someone like “Eternal Sunshine’s” Charlie Kaufman — that will give him the sense of discovery that seems to ignite his passion as an actor. He may not be Brando, but there’s nothing wrong with simply being Leonardo DiCaprio.