‘The Actor’ Review: André Holland Is Astoundingly Good in This Dark Cinematic Dream

Of all the things we forget in life, dreams may be the most frequent. No matter how much you journal or try to find ways to cling to these subconscious fragments, they always seem to slip away as we re-enter the waking world. It’s then interesting that, for all the ways it populates the films we conjure up, only rarely does cinema truly capture a sense of this half-remembered dreaming. Too often, it’s made overly literal and less hazy even as this is what defines so much of our lives. However, this makes the works that successfully tap into this all the more special to dream with. 

“The Actor” is one such film. A captivating portrait of a man who can’t seem to remember who he is and may not ever be able to, Duke Johnson’s live-action feature debut is an enrapturing film that speaks in this language of half-remembered dreams before descending into something closer to a nightmare. The result is a funny, melancholic and ultimately resonant experience that shows how it is precisely in the dream-like where life’s truths can be teased out. In this case, the man dreaming is Paul and, as perfectly played by the always great André Holland, he is attempting to answer a question both simple yet vastly existential: What kind of guy are you? 

Well, Paul is not so sure of that. You see, he is initially certain that he was an actor from New York who was traveling around with a troupe of performers. The only trouble is he may have unknowingly had a liaison with a married woman in a hotel room that her husband was not too happy about and, after kicking down the door, led to him striking Paul in the head. It leaves the poor fellow with amnesia and little else to guide him through life. Still, Paul is determined to make enough money to leave the fictional small town of 1950s Jeffords, Ohio, to get back to New York where he hopes to reclaim his memories, his life and his very identity. But when he meets the kind Edna, played by a terrific if slightly underutilized Gemma Chan, he’ll begin to wonder whether he should stay. What if here is who he is more than where he was before?

Based on the novel “Memory” by Donald E. Westlake, a rich text all its own that was published posthumously, Johnson’s adaptation refreshingly doesn’t offer up any neat answers to these questions as he instead embraces the more ephemeral and beautiful emotional uncertainty at the story’s heart. It’s not about making sense of things, but about finding a way to wade your way through the things that don’t. While Johnson is no stranger to this more audacious style of storytelling, having co-directed the spectacular 2015 stop-motion film “Anomalisa” with Charlie Kaufman, there is still something different he is playing around with here. Part of this is formal as he makes his solo live-action debut, but there is also something more uniquely slippery to the experience. Scenes will fade into each other, with darkness subsuming Paul as he goes from one place to another, in often stunningly surreal fashion as the film boasts excellent production design by Paulina Rzeszowska and mesmerizing cinematography by Joe Passarelli. The film is without any more conventional narrative progression as the element that matters most is the emotional journey Paul is on as he confronts his forgotten past and tries to find his future role.  

In this journey, Johnson not only carves out vibrant visuals, but he remains committed to the feeling that all is but a dream. Though the places we bounce around to are different, many of the cast are the same and the anxieties that are grabbing hold of Paul are not abated by what he hopes to be familiar haunts. Indeed, the only thing he discovers is a haunting sense that the person he was before and the place he was in was not a good one. This reaches a pinnacle in the film’s standout scene where he must go perform on a television show in a small part that takes on a more sinister tone as he seriously contemplates his own potential self-annihilation. It’s one of many tough scenes to pull off as it juggles varying tones and keeps you off-balance, but Holland rises to the task in each of them. In his piercing eyes, we see a yearning for a place to be happy and loved just as there is fear behind them that he may not ever be able to find it. 

So what kind of guy is Paul? He’s a man lost, but he’s also a man found. He’s an actor trying to hit his mark, read his lines and play the part he believes he’s meant to play in life. In Holland’s hands, he’s also a man realizing that there could be something different for him. For all he can’t remember and the tragedy of seeing him forget things over the course of the film, it’s in a final embrace of sorts that it draws you in close one last time. If films are going to ask us to dream with them, there ought to be more that look and feel like what Johnson delicately achieves here.    

“The Actor” comes to theaters starting March 14.

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