Mild spoilers for The Critic.
The last line of Anand Tucker's The Critic is spoken by Ian McKellen's titular theater critic with an ominous look heavenward: "I won't be here forever."
That is certainly true of McKellen the actor, who at age 85 is still sharp as a tack in terms of his craft, but we know that can't last for more than another decade, optimistically. For a contemporary like Anthony Hopkins, who was not nearly as good in another movie I saw this week (Mary), the window of professional effectiveness may be all the shorter.
And so it occurred to me that another generation of great British thespians may soon be lost to us, and also caused me to contemplate who may take their place.
Since we cinephiles seem to group like with like, I've been informally grouping great British thespians for some time now. The original group of approximately contemporaneous great British thespians that I identified were one generation above this one, and were led by the likes of Laurence Olivier, Peter O'Toole, Alec Guinness and Ralph Richardson. The one I lump in with them who is still alive, meaning he probably more appropriately belongs with McKellen and Hopkins (and Patrick Stewart while we're at it), is Derek Jacobi. Throw in Malcolm McDowell if you like as well.
It isn't as clear to me who will succeed the current generation of senior citizens, though I have some thoughts, as you might expect. And one contender I might not have considered is in this very movie, his presence in it alone being one of the things that bolsters his candidacy.
See, it's not just being British and reaching a certain age that makes you a contender. I'd argue that while Michael Caine passes the smell test in many ways, he also misses it in important others, like his general lack of engagement with classical material. You have to gravitate toward a certain type of movie, and a certain type of role within that certain type of movie, one that emphasizes the character's refinement, social class and education level.
And Critic co-star Mark Strong seeks out such work with regularity and reliability. Yes, he also appears in more traditional Hollywood fare -- but then again so do McKellen and Hopkins. You can't play Gandalf and Magneto and be considered only a devotee of projects that would have played well on Masterpiece Theatre.
I'm still not sure Strong is a perfect fit. For one, I think he might be too handsome. These thespians would traditionally have achieved their renown on the basis of their skills, not their looks. Then again, none of these actors profile ideally for one specific template. You might call Oliver one of the OG distinguished British thespians, and he was considered dreamy as hell.
Perhaps a more obvious match would be someone like Kenneth Branagh, older than Strong and some of the other candidates I have yet to mention, but not really in the McKellen/Hopkins generation either. Although he exists more as a director than an actor these days, there may be no actor more associated with the regular portrayal and interpretation of Shakespeare than Branagh, and that makes him sort of the prototype for distinguished British thespianhood. Similar tweeners in terms of their age might be guys like Ralph Fiennes and Gary Oldman.
Candidates closer to Strong's age would be guys like Michael Fassbender and Benedict Cumberbatch, but then we really would be throwing out the criterion of not being conventionally handsome. It's likely that fewer actors are gaining that initial foothold nowadays without having traditional movie star looks to go along with their talent.
Lest you think you need to be male to be a distinguished British thespian, this movie also contains an example of the female version of the acting group I've been profiling here.
Lesley Manville has a small role in The Critic, and though she is a relatively recent addition to my personal awareness of British actresses of a certain age, I do now think of her alongside women like Judi Dench, Helen Mirren, Emma Thompson, Fionnula Flanagan and Julie Walters.
Because grouping these women together is a more recent thing for me, I may not be observing the splits between the generations as closely here as I do for the men. For example, Manville is a full 22 years younger than a member of this group who recently left us, Dame Maggie Smith, though I do still lump them together, even though there is obviously a gulf between their respective talents.
The Critic also contains one candidate to succeed this older generation, though she's imperfect enough that I suspect she makes a better jumping off point to discuss other contenders than an actual contender herself. That's Gemma Arterton, who has never particularly wowed me, but has steadily gained my respect over the years.
More obvious contenders who are more or less in her generation -- or at least, clearly not in the older generation just yet -- include the likes of Kate Winslet, Helena Bonham Carter, Olivia Colman and Kristin Scott Thomas, though I suppose at age 64, the latter is with Emma Thompson if she's with anyone.
I suspected The Critic, which I watched on the plane to San Francisco instead of Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World when my laptop would not charge despite being plugged into the outlet between seats, would primarily provide grist for the mill as a contemplation of my own profession, even if McKellen's character judges plays rather than films. Indeed, there is a little there to touch on, and now is as good a time as any.
McKellen's Jimmy Erskine gets up to a fair amount of no good in this movie, but none of it emanates from him in a vacuum. Unless, that is, you consider it to be "no good" for a critic to tear a person a new one, and resort to insults it is impossible not to take personally, just because that person happens to be bad at acting. Jimmy is the sort of old school critic who relishes the vitriol that he believes entertains his readers, and because he has always been protected by the newspaper that employs him, he expects to be able to continue delivering such vitriol in perpetuity, entirely free from personal consequence.
Of course, the death of the man who originally hired him, who had always been his champion, is a reminder that nothing is permanent, least of all his immunity from sacking. This critic had enjoyed a lifetime of indulgent mud slinging when the slinging of mud was required, and never believed it would be necessary to compromise his voice or his unflagging commitment to personal honesty in order to stay employed.
When his job is actually threatened, though, he's staring the void in the face, contemplating for the first time not only what it would mean to no longer be a critic, but what it would mean to no longer be alive. For Jimmy, they are one in the same, as he refers to this hypothetical unemployed version of himself as "walking death."
I wouldn't say I am as close as (name) is to being out of a job, with the other notable difference being that I don't really get paid to be a critic, other than seeing movies for free. I control exactly how long I'm doing what I'm doing, at least for now.
But every time I do consider giving up the Sisyphean life of the critic -- I'd once thought of stopping at 500 reviews for ReelGood, though I'm now up over 600 -- I also stare that void in the face. And I know that if I stop being a critic now, I may never be a critic again, or at least not for a brand as reputable as the one I currently write for. The recent removal of all the reviews that I and the other critics wrote for AllMovie -- which still probably requires its own post at some point for me to properly grapple with -- is just another reminder that the opportunities for critics are shrinking, not expanding. If you've got your hands on one such opportunity, hold onto it for dear life.
Because it's hard to know if my generation of distinguished film critics -- British or American or Australian or otherwise -- will even have successors.
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