Nominees for the Best Actor Oscar in 1983:
- Dustin Hoffman, Tootsie
- Paul Newman, The Verdict
- Peter O'Toole, My Favorite Year
- Jack Lemmon, Missing
- Ben Kingsley, Gandhi
Many believed the slight, soft-spoken English gentleman would silently fade to black, and join a rather long list of one-hit wonders.
And for quite a while it seemed as though Kingsley would disappear, with only a few small but noble efforts in subsequent years: Betrayal (1983), Turtle Diary (1985), and Maurice (1987).
And then the saint became a sinner. The man who would be Gandhi forever, shed his skin as the zen-like saint and climbed into the skin of a zen-like sinner, in the form of Meyer Lansky in Bugsy (1991); delivering Mr. Kingsley his second Oscar nomination, for Best Supporting Actor.
Death and Sexy, Sand and Fog
Mr. Kingsley took his new found dirty soul and joined another artist with complicated morals: Roman Polanski; playing a man who may or may not be the brutal monster Sigourney Weaver claims him to be, in the criminally forgotten political thriller Death and the Maiden (1994).
In 2002, Ben Kingsley received his third Oscar nomination for his shockingly over-the-top and insanely entertaining performance as a psycho gangster in Sexy Beast.
Kingsley's Oscar nominated performance as an Iranian immigrant working harder than most toward the American Dream in The House of Sand and Fog (2004) is his very best work. Although absent moral ambiguity, Kingsley's character in many ways combines the noble stature of the good with the human frailty of the bad that marked most of the men he has played.
ELEGY (2008)
In Elegy, Ben Kingsley plays a famous man who struggles with the toll his life of sin may have had on his family and friends, when suddenly confronted with an unexpectedly complicated relationship with a beautiful young student, played by Penelope Cruz.
Based on novelist Philip Roth's The Dying Animal (2001), and admirably translated by screenwriter Nicolas Meyer, Director Isabel Coixet (The Secret Life of Words) delicately handles Roth's sometimes abrupt displays of male hedonism.
One of the many pleasures to be found in Elegy, as in most novels by Philip Roth (The Human Stain, American Pastoral), rotates around a central male-bonding relationship that will provide the main character an opportunity to express his feelings (or confusion) about life and love. Dennis Hopper turns in a nice, understated performance as a poet, and Kingsley's sporting partner.
Kingsley shares his only semi-stable female relationship with Patricia Clarkson, who is strong as always (with a rare nude scene at age 50; and wow, does she look great). As the poet friend says, Beautiful women are invisible; we're so dazzled by the outside that we never make it inside.
Of course, at this point, after having won an Oscar for her great work in Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), there's little surprise in finding Penelope Cruz in yet another excellent role, delivering more layers to an ever-expanding repertoire.
But, alas, Ben Kingsley's search for the better part of himself is what compels us; and in Elegy we find a man still unsure as to where his true nature lies. And it's not just the beauty of women that Kingsley can not see, but the beauty of his estranged son (Peter Sarsgaard) as well; and in a seamless climax that only a master storyteller like Roth could pull off, the beauty of all the people around him will come together, symbolized in a single picture, of a dying woman.
Martin G. Wood - M.G. Wood is a writer of screenplays, film and literary reviews, and poetry. M.G. Wood can often be found ...
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