Ethan Hawke’s latest film is the “anti-Biopic” Born to be Blue, about jazz trumpet legend Chet Baker. Directed by Robert Budreau, Blue is an attempt to capture the essence of Baker by eschewing the facts and penetrating the myth of the man.
Hawke plays Baker during a period of Baker’s career when heroin addiction had cost him the ability to even play the trumpet. Ethan Hawke, by his own reporting, has never taken heroin. But it’s not hard to imagine the actor finding inspiration in his own life to prepare for the part. Hawke, now 45, is close in age to Baker during the period of Blue. (the film opens in 1966, when Baker was 37. It’s unclear how much time passes). Hawke was a success at a young age, followed those years up with steady high-level creative output.
The past few years seem to signal a new stage in the actor’s career. He’s taking more roles than ever (IMDB lists 14 credits for 2014 -2016). He’s also pushing past the soulful, emotional roles of his early years, past the masculine adult roles he has played in the last decade, and moving squarely mid-life, rear-facing parts. He’s shaken off the kid-qualities that have always accompanied the handsome-goatee-and-blue-eyes appeal, and settling into distinguished stage, looking back at his own career in roles that necessitate such a rear-view perspective, both as a director (Seymour: An Introduction) and actor (Boyhood, Born to be Blue).
Hawke is an actor known for his intensity and commitment to a part. Which doesn’t mean that his filmography jumps from highlight to highlight. His filmography hovers in the space between Hollywood fringe and indie unknown, between critical darlings and pile-on level disasters. And, despite his occasional critical favor, Hawke has never been a box office draw (his highest grossing film to date, according to Box Office Mojo, is Dead Poets Society). Which is all to say, despite his fame and critical success, I think Ethan Hawke is an underrated artist.
Though it sometimes gets lost in bad role choices (*cough Cymebline cough), that artistry has been on display right from the get-go. Here are five early Ethan Hawke films to make the case.
Dead Poets’ Society - 1989
Hawke’s first part was in 1985’s Explorers, notable today mostly because it was the debut film of Hawke and co-star River Phoenix. Despite its cult following, Explorers isn’t particularly memorable (probably because it was never properly finished).
But Explorers helped Hawke land the 1989 drama Dead Poets’ Society. Hawke starred alongside Robin Williams and Robert Sean Leonard in Peter Weir’s drama, and like most films starring Robin Williams, his presence dominates (overwhelms?) the movie.
But Poets’ is the first role of Hawke’s career that found him inhabiting the shy, quiet persona with an emotional wellspring sitting just beneath the surface. His most oft cited moment in the movie comes at the end, when “Oh Captain My Captain”s the now banished Williams. But his work shines particularly in the group effort, palling with kids who make him uncomfortable, hoping to find his place among peers.
Dead Poets’ Society is not a great movie. It’s beloved by many, and though the film might be a miss for Weir (a bit too on the nose), it has something indefatigable in spirit that keeps it alive.
Hawke demonstrates here his ability to contain depth and passion under a silent gaze, which would define the next phase of his career. It made him a brooding Gen X star in Reality Bites, but served him better in ensemble roles like A Midnight Clear and Alive. (A Midnight Clear, by the way, is a superb film. A powerful, vastly underrated ’90s film). All of these roles won Hawke critical praise, including Reality Bites, despite that film’s middling attempt to win MTV viewers by openly pandering to their every cliched interest. But in none of them was he as good as he was Dead Poets‘ Society.
Before Sunrise - 1995
A year after Reality Bites, Hawke would team up with a director who would turn his soulful presence into one of his career defining roles. In 1995, he starred alongside Julie Delpy in Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise; the first of three in the series, and the first of 7 films he has made to date with Linklater.
Hawke and Delpy played Jesse and Celine, strangers who meet on a train in Austria, spend a day and night together in Vienna, then part ways. The story is the stuff of young romantic dreams, but the reality as Linklater shoots it is as much melancholic as it is joyful. Finding the girl of your dreams on a train in Europe might not be all its cracked up to be when the sun starts rising.
The characters are vividly created by Linklater and his writing partner, Kim Krizan. And Hawke and Delpy turn Jesse and Celine into an unusual screen couple: strong-minded, long-winded and equally matched. The silent soulfulness is on full display in the Before series, which has Hawke longing for a woman with every impulse he can muster, and her returning the feeling. Hawke manages in Before Sunset to be that chimera of male acting: an engaging listener on camera (though Delpy is a fascinating, creative monologuer, which surely helps) who is neither a “work in progress good guy” nor a jackass.
In the two sequels (2004’s Before Sunset and 2013’s Before Midnight), the foursome of Hawke, Delpy, Linklater and Krizan have gone on to turn Jesse and Celine into a richly imagined 21st century couple that cuts no corners for the benefit of audiences.
Gattaca - 1997
In 1997, Hawke took another role that would start a long rewarding partnership, starring in Andrew Niccol’s debut, the science-fiction drama Gattaca.
Gattaca marked an important first in Hawke’s career: it is the first time he played an adult. Well, eventually. He plays the young man, too, but by the end of Gattaca, Hawke’s playing a mature self-actualized adult. The slacker, Gen X label that Hawke wore in his early career (and would linger for another few years) was encouraged in part by the actor’s look, the goatee and long hair and the unkempt scruff (a look Hawke steadfastly maintains despite it being 2016).
In Gattaca, Hawke is as neatly trimmed and serious as everything else in Niccol’s clean-obsessed future. And it turns out Hawke cleans up sharp. As natural born baby in a society run by genetically designed humans, Hawke is paired with designer babies Jude Law and Uma Thurman. Law played the brash bitterness of bad luck and Uma Thurman continued to intrigue audiences with delicious guile.
But there’s no denying that Hawke made the most of that meal, turning in a stoic, Orwellian lead turn: emotionally effective, while being as bare on the surface as his cool costuming. Watch the moment of realization Hawke’s Vincent has as he boards his ship off of earth. Yes, the moment is a bit on point, but Niccol trusts Hawke to handle the weight of the departure and the loss it represents. It’s a beautiful moment of acting.
Hawke would be directed by Niccol twice more: in 2005’s underrated Lord of War, as an Interpol agent chasing an international arms dealer (Nic Cage), and in 2015’s Good Kill.
Training Day - 2001
If Gattaca was the movie that Hawke first played adult, Training Day is the film he first played a macho man. Antoine Fuqua’s cop drama paired Ethan Hawke against Denzel Washington in a match-up that was unlike anything that Hawke had done previously.
I remember when Training Day was advertised, back in 2001. There were more than a couple heads being scratched at the casting of Hawke as the rookie badass cop. But it turns out that he was up to the task. From the opening moments of the film, when Hawke turns off his clock with ninja-like reflexes, it’s clear that this is a different outing from the actor. He carries a physicality that he hadn’t shown before (in other roles where these men were present, like The Newton Boys, Hawke always played the boyish one). What was previously a silent and soulful stare here became hardened and distrusting glare.
Like Dead Poets’ Society, Training Day is not a great film. 15 years later, you don’t hear many folks reminiscing about Training Day. Though it is destined to remain in the film annals at some level as Denzel Washington won an Oscar playing the bombastic bad-cop Alonzo, who turns into a monster before the day is done. But the work that Ethan Hawke does in Denzel’s shadow is perhaps just as accomplished. Watch the extra half-step he picks up as he constantly trails Denzel through the streets, or the disbelief at what he sees, not just in his eyes, but his shoulders. It’s a surprising bit of acting in a solid, if forgettable, movie.
Tape - 2001
It turns out that 2001 was a banner year for Hawke. He released his directorial debut, an arthouse flick called Chelsea Walls, about the New York landmark Hotel Chelsea and the artists and weirdos who call it home. He also reprised his role as Jesse for a one-scene appearance in Richard Linklater’s Waking Life. Then, a month after Training Day hit theaters, Tape made its way to indie cinemas around the country.
Another Richard Linklater picture, Tape is a the three-actor one-room drama starring Hawke, Uma Thurman and Robert Sean Leanord. Shot in six marathon days, the film is an elaborate trap, laid by Vincent (Hawke) against his old friend Jon (Leanord) to win an admission of guilt in front Amy (Thurman).
Watch how Hawke watches the others, noting their reactions to his words and to each others. He moves constantly, but strategically, ahead of the others because he is in control of what’s taking place. There’s a mania to his performance, but one that encompasses the quiet Jesse from Before Sunrise as much as the physical Jake from Training Day. There are better films in the Ethan Hawke ouvre than Tape; but this little movie is perhaps the best work that Ethan Hawke has ever done (or Uma Thurman, honestly).
The next year, 2002, Richard Linklater started shooting his 12 year long film project, Boyhood. He would once again turn to Hawke, to play Dad, and it’s not an overstatement to say that in 2002 Hawke entered the adult phase of his career. Over the course of the Boyhood shoot, Hawke’s career would solidify and he would make some of the best films of his career (Before the Devil Knows Your Dead, Before Midnight), earning three more Oscar nominations, one for acting (Boyhood) and two for writing (Before Sunset, Before Midnight). He also started making mid-budget genre films, some of which are quite good (Assault on Precinct 13, The Purge).
He would, in short, build a reputation as an actor capable of inhabiting a range of masculinities, soulful and brooding yes, but also darkly unknown and psychotically unhinged.
This year, playing Chet Baker in Born to be Blue, it’s easy to see the actor entering yet another phase of his career, wearing his age and experience rather than his youthful looks and submerged emotional palate.
There’s a piece of footage on Youtube, of Linklater and Hawke discussing Tape on the film’s 10th anniversary. During a discussion of the intensive nature of the film-long days of shooting with cameras rolling for 9 hours or more-there’s an aside when Hawke wipes his face and, exasperated, says, “it was just so much acting.”
You can’t find a better description of Hawke’s performances. He’s an actor and he wants to act. The moment calls to mind another interview Hawke gave, later in his career, after the rise of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the superhero takeover of Hollywood. Asked about whether he’d like to participate in that kind of job, Hawke said ,”It’s a tremendous amount of time in your life where you’re working, and you’re not acting.”
And that’s it. When I think about the career of Ethan Hawke, the only referent that I have is acting. That’s not unique, perhaps, but in the age of franchise commitments, and the commitments those commitments entail, it’s worth celebrating an actor whose primary concern for the craft of acting is having the chance to do just that.
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