R.I.P. Sidney Pollack

"Director, actor and producer Sydney Pollack -- who died Monday, at age 73 -- made some terrific movies and some that were not so hot. But his death represents a loss the meaning of which isn't immediately apparent, at least not until you start fitting it into the context of what mainstream Hollywood filmmaking used to be, and what it has become.

Pollack was a filmmaker who believed, even past the time many others had given up, that you could make a good mainstream movie about a serious subject, and he believed -- right up to his last few fiction features, the highly imperfect but well-intentioned pictures "The Interpreter" (2005) and "Random Hearts" (1999) -- in making movies for grown-ups, pictures that at least attempted to tell adult stories. Even when it became not just unpopular but almost untenable to do so, he continued to put his faith in the strength of a script and the quality of his actors' performances.

But in the past 20 years or so, Pollack has been a strong presence in the movies even when he wasn't behind the camera. In recent years he's meant more to me as an actor than as a filmmaker, but that's in no way a denigration of his career: Even in a small role (and even in a bad movie) Pollack would often be the guiding spirit of a picture. He'd show up on-screen and, sometimes with just a single line of dialogue, become a flashpoint for everything that makes us human, a way of recognizing bits of ourselves even in a character who may -- we think -- be nothing like us. That's not a negligible contribution to the movies; it's representative of everything that keeps us going to the movies, period.

In Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut," Pollack should have been scarcely believable as a sleazy zillionaire who runs a sordid sex ring. But even though Pollack is an inherently warm presence in any movie, warmth isn't the same as likability, and his performance in "Eyes Wide Shut" reminds us of that: Pollack has always played people, not qualities (greed, lust, what have you), and even though you or I may not know what Pollack was really like as a human being, it's always been clear that he's found the key to each role deep inside himself: His performance in "Eyes Wide Shut" stings even more because it's Sydney Pollack up there: a man who ought to be considered a monster also has a face you can't help trusting.

The list of wonderful Pollack performances, including his turn as a crusty, seen-it-all lawyer in "Michael Clayton" (which he also produced), is too long to detail. He has often been marvelous in his own movies, including, of course, his performance in "Tootsie" as the agent who keeps the ego of Dustin Hoffman's title character in check. But I feel bereft knowing that he will never again pop up in some otherwise dismal picture, as he did most recently in "Made of Honor," as Patrick Dempsey's addicted-to-marriage dad. Pollack had crummy lines, including some dumb sex jokes, but the performance is ultimately so tender and so carefully shaped (despite the fact that it consists of only a few scenes) that, 10 years from now, I know it's the only thing I'll remember from the movie.

One of my favorite Pollack "movies," which also includes a Pollack performance, is the spot he did for Cingular that used to run in theaters before movie showings, reminding audience members to turn off their cellphones. In this miniature masterpiece, Pollack barges into a kitchen and interrupts the babbling phone conversation of a clueless kid. Pollack berates the guy for his "performance": How are we supposed to believe anything he's saying? He has no conviction, no energy, no soul. The spot is brilliant for the way it parallels the absurdity of a filmmaker directing real life with the annoyance of a ringing cellphone throwing us out of a movie. But the spot is wrenching for another reason that didn't occur to me until after I heard of Pollack's death: It underscores the fractured relationship between the old way, the Pollack way, of making movies (with care) and the new way of watching them (with one eye on your lit-up cellphone, in case your buddy happens to text you from a party or a bar).

Pollack, in his performances and in many of the movies he made or produced, always had faith in what movies, and the people in them, could be. His legacy, dropped in our laps at a time when mainstream filmmaking is in trouble if not in crisis, is a challenge to us not to lose faith. And, at the very least, to silence our cellphones and pay attention to what's in front of us".
Source: www.salon.com

Remember Sidney Pollack in this slideshow from nytimes.com