Skip to main content

Jonathan Pryce: An Enviable Acting Genius

I first came across Jonathan Pryce while watching 'Glengarry Glen Ross'. He was there in a scene with Pacino where Pacino, playing a real estate salesman's character, tries to convince Pryce, his prospective client about buying a USD 500,000 property. Pryce was there in the film for only about 20 minutes and still in a film clouded by the presence of heavyweights such as Ed Harries, Pacino, Alec Baldwin, Alan Arkin, Kevin Spacey and Jack Lemmon, he leaves an indelible mark on viewers' psyche. I have written this past sentence on basis of my memory which at that time dictated Pryce was a lightweight. I'm comparably enlightened now. Jonathan Pryce was never a lightweight. Like Pacino, stage had always been his preference and cinema, only a means for playing bills. His protruding eyes and angular figure were never fit to make him a bona fide movie star in Hollywood but he has become a very respectable stage giant in USA and UK. TV was also never his media but in a move to defy his inhibitions, he signed up for Game of Thrones Season 5 to play the mercurial and very controversial 'High Sparrow', the head of Faith Militant who has so far rendered all the tacticians of King's Landing clueless. What a brilliant casting decision!!!!

When I decided to explore more about Jonathan Pryce after getting a chance to watch him at the top of his game in GoT, I came across his two films that looked fascinating. One was Terry Gilliam's 'Brazil', starring also Robert De Niro, a cult, sci-fi film that was said to be inspired by George Orwell's seminal work '1984'. Other was a biopic of Eva (Evita) Peron who was the first 'first lady' of Argentina and till this date, she has divisive opinions of political commentators about her but ask the Argentinians and they will tell you how much Evita meant to them. Two-three lines are not going to do justice to Eva's personality and contribution to modern Argentina and so I shall advise you to WIKI/Google her. Madonna (yes, the singer Madonna) starred as Evita in it and she was probably my primary influence for watching this film. Pryce has acted as Juan Peron, the thrice President of Argentina and as crucial a figure to Argentina as Eva if not that 'revered'. His restrained and authoritative performance as a former military lieutenant (and also a colleague of Che Guevera and Mussolini) turned democratic head of Argentina matches the charismatic presence of Madonna's Eva in the movie. Both these movies and many unmentioned here are a testament to Pryce's scorching talent as a stage-trained actor who most importantly knows how to act and if you have already watched him in GoT, I believe you would follow up on these picks.

See you!!!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Love and Friendship

Friendship is an aspect of life that’s not controlled by its beholders. Ideal friendships, well they are the things of past now. Many a times we have seen our parents or their parents talking about their old great friends and how amusingly they tell us about their bonding, the moments they spent together and we see a ‘priceless’ twinkle in their eyes…..that’s something which is missing from modern friendships. There are terms & phrases like ‘yaar tu to apna bhai hai’, ‘yaar tu to ghar ka aadmi hai’ which even today invoke something very beautiful inside our hearts but we all know that the feelings underneath them are ‘hollow’, they are just mere words, ‘emotionless’ and ‘impassive’. Well who am I to comment on such an indefinable ‘qualitative’ perspective? I’m one of you, those wretched creatures that are still in need of true, great friendships. Well I certainly can’t say that I haven’t got friends. I’ve got friends, plenty of them in fact, and some of them are real great. I s...
1 comment
Read more

Racing Extinction (2015) : A Commentary

It's really hard to switch on to a different language from the one you have constantly been tinkering with. I grew so accustomed to writing in Hindi in last few days that it started dawning on me that I might never be good again with my English. So this is a tester, ladies and gentlemen. Yesterday, one of my movie group friends, an American by nationality, questioned my fondness of documentaries. I specifically wrote in one of my columns that documentaries demand your unwavering attention and once you gave 'that' to them, you are rewarded much more handsomely than a proper, narrative, fictitious film. My reasoning for believing so is that a documentary is an experience of a creative process. It doesn't get made to 'entertain' you. They are there to reveal something to you. They teach you something. You get overwhelmed by them. 'Racing Extinction (2015)' was one such documentary. I watched it in last couple of days. I couldn't complete it in one ...
Post a Comment
Read more

What Virat Kohli Could Learn from Sourav Ganguly's Career

This IPL season might be dubbed as 'Kohli's IPL' in years to come. He is unarguably the best exponent of white-ball batsmanship going around. However, for someone like me who places a great emphasis on longest form of Cricket i.e. Test Cricket, until and unless he proves himself in seeming and swinging conditions of England and New Zealand (I believe in him and thus shall wish him luck), I shall still rank him behind Kane Williamson and Joe Root. Just to make sure I'm impartial to this debate, I put my favorite cricketer of all time i.e. Sourav Ganguly behind Sachin, Sehwag, Laxman and Dravid when it comes to rank him in FAB FIVE of Indian Batsmanship because he simply wasn't as good as them in test cricket. Many call him a very good test cricketer and maintaining an average of 40 in test cricket from the very beginning till the very end signifies their reasoning but still, he fell short of 45/50 that makes a batsman statistical behemoth in purest form of Cricket. ...
Post a Comment
Read more