The importance of being Albert

I woke up this morning -- just 15 minutes ago, in fact -- to the news that Albert Finney had died.

I wouldn't ordinarily have been prompted to eulogize most other British thespians of Finney's generation, which is to say, great Brits that we would still think of as "thespians." But I feel like Finney had a special place in my heart in a couple ways. I don't even really know what I'm going to say here, but I'll just start typing, and whatever comes out will suffice.

I first knew Finney from what would probably come to be my least favorite of his film roles. When I was very young, I became acquainted with the actor as the title character in Scrooge (1970). Although he plays a cantankerous old man, Finney was only 33 at the time he made it, which now seems like a miraculous transformation indeed. He was also only ten years into his career; that a casting director would think of such a relative newcomer and spring chicken for such a role seems to be a testament to his abilities.

This was also my first introduction to Dickens' A Christmas Carol and was my staple for a handful of years as they played it on TV every year at Christmastime. As soon as I had another option -- 1984's superlative adaptation of same starring a more age appropriate George C. Scott -- I recognized the shortcomings of Ronald Neame's film. It's a tonal odd duck as it's a musical (though not a very good one) and Finney does a fair bit of what I would call mugging. Less generous would be to say that he often seems like he's touched in the head, his face contorting in ways I now think of as the mannerisms of a stroke victim.

Hey, just because this is a eulogy doesn't mean I have to praise every element of the man's career. But don't worry, everything's rosy from here onward.

Over the years I saw and really loved Finney in a number of other roles. The mobster Leo O'Bannon in Miller's Crossing, who holds his own against the would-be assassins who breach the sanctity of his home. Ed Masry, the crusty yet paternalistic attorney who serves as a reluctant crusader alongside Erin Brockovich. Edward Bloom Sr. in Big Fish, my favorite Tim Burton film of the last 20 years, whose recollections of his life made my tear up in that finale at the lake.

But the role for which I cherish Finney is one most people have probably not seen, and cannot currently see.

In 1995, in my final year at college in Maine, I had what I have come to think of as kind of a seminal experience in the fine-tuning of my development as a cinephile. I had a car on campus for the first time as I lived a 20-minute drive away in an idyllic but remote house with its own little stretch of beach outside. The car also enabled me to really discover Portland, also about a 20-minute drive away, which hadn't much called out to me without the car, when I had basically everything I needed on campus.

Portland had what I think of as the first arthouse cinema I ever frequented. In digging on the internet I now find it was called The Movies on Exchange Street, though that doesn't seem quite right. (It was definitely on Exchange Street so I guess that has to be it.) It appears to have closed in 2010. In any case, it was directly across from what I think of as the first upscale coffee shop I was ever aware of, which I would visit after seeing movies there. I guess 1995 was a pretty formative year for me.

In my memory I visited this theater at least a half-dozen times, but a college senior is a busy guy and it was probably only twice or thrice. And the only film I remember I remember having seen there was A Man of No Importance, starring Finney. (The film was actually released in the UK in 1994, but it didn't make it to Maine until 1995.)

It's a story set in 1963, about a gay Dublin bus conductor played by Finney. He's closeted of course. His real passion is community theater, where he oversees the mounting of Oscar Wilde plays (hence the title, a play on The Importance of Being Earnest). He's got a meddling sister (Brenda Fricker), a young woman at risk in the cast of the play (my crush on Tara Fitzgerald was born here), and a young customer on the bus (the dashing Rufus Sewell, also first met here) on whom he's got a secret crush.

The story proceeds in small gestures and is about how this man hides and fails to hide his "love that dare not speak its name," featuring great cruelty as well as great kindness in among the rest of the cast. It's a beautiful little portrait of imperfect little people who mean to put good into the world, for the most part.

And Finney is absolutely key to its sizeable emotional impact. He's kind and gentle, but also with a fair bit of reckless spirit that throws itself into a world that isn't ready for it and won't always return that kindness. It was here that I think I truly learned the kind of performer we had in Finney, and what he could bring to the movies he appeared in.

Like Finney himself now, it's pretty much impossible to see A Man of No Importance, as far as I can tell. I'm not doing a current check of its availability, but I've checked numerous times over the years, and it's not available in any format that is remotely accessible. I think at one point it might have been available for like $100 in the wrong region. I have a region-free DVD player now, so maybe I should check again because that price has probably come down ... if it's possible to find it at all.

I said I didn't know where I'd go with my eulogy to Albert Finney, and indeed I went on an eight-paragraph tangent praising one small movie that no one has seen. My point in doing that, I think, was to give you a picture of the kind of experience I had when I first really came to appreciate this great actor. It was at my first arthouse theater followed by my first designer coffee. A Man of Importance, in a very real sense, was the progenitor for my appreciation of independent film, which could be the reason I remember so many of its details even though I haven't seen it since the mid-1990s. (I did get my hands on a copy of it at some point for a second viewing, but that was on VHS.)

The man who we lost yesterday was at the center of that, and he will always hold a fond place in my heart.

R.I.P., Albert.