Robert Pattinson in The Devil All the Time: Fascinating is not synonymous with good.

Watching the trailer for Netflix's latest "The Devil All the Time" was pretty much like watching the movie, it was slow moving, with all the accoutrements of a great hillbilly epic, and symbols of a prestige movie, but none of the feeling. For a movie with so many frail, vulnerable, and doomed characters I never got close to being choked up, crying or feeling really any feeling, I just watched morbidly as the movie did. Character after character is introduced as unceremoniously as they are dispatched in a very "pay attention to how little attention we pay to these characters sort of way save for one very peculiar Robert Pattinson, who enters into and departs from the movie and the church like the wind from "Something Wicked This Way Comes". I have written about Pattinson before and he is an outstanding young actor. I Iove his willingness to be an avatar for the idea of shooting for the moon and at least falling amongst the stars. I love his imagination and how it allows him to go beyond the borders of self exploration and find something that looks as if it came from a wholly new dimension. Yet, in light if his recent tear of “Whoa, what is he doing?" performances I’m beginning to ponder the line between being unique, and being a peacock, mesmerization and wonder, and skill and service, and how Pattinson's performances inform our ideas about acting. Everytime Pattinson reaches into that abyss he's pulling back something new and strange and interesting, and its possibilities for revelation excites the spectator so much that like Dr Hammond in Jurassic Park we stop asking vital questions about the performance, like “what if what comes back has no regard for the material, the character, or even your co- stars?” What if it eats them all and swallows them whole? Watching what Pattinson does in “The Devil All the Time” interesting and engrossing though it may have been, I was not sure it served the script nor his co-stars, many times I was left confused as to what was going on like watching a magician who waves his hands about and recites incantations with no magic trick it ended up as much a novelty to his co stars and the work as it wass to the audience. There are those who applaud the idea of it, Pattonson being in a completely different movie than everyone else, and I understand where it comes from, because in specific context this can be wonderful, but it is not a one size fits all concept. For me whatever the “different” movie you’re existing in has to be a movie that still firmly exist within a similar context as the one you're actually in, or even rather that it must still serve the movie you're in and your co-stars. If it serves the script and the folks you work with by making their performances better and confrims your unmatched brilliance in comparison by happenstance so be it , but if not then it is simply upstaging and it is selfish whether it is intentional or not. Pattinson is amongst my favorite young actors working, but coherency matters and two of his most recent roles provide ample evidence to an issue by comparison In the first, David Michod's “The King” , I liked the performance, but it was also a very good performance. It was committed, but wild, fun, but as well crafted as it was unorthodox, and it made sense. It was informative to the characterization of the dauphin as this maladjusted, immature, self important wanna be. The rapping of the fingers, the posturing, the almost crooked way he sits in his chair. The luxurious way he moves, and yes even the accent felt like they all pointed to one thing… imitation by an imitator, a fraud…

In The Devil All the Time, Pattinson arguably does slightly better with the accent, but there's less information, less fun and more gestures to sell you on what's happening externally rather than internally, like when he tastes the sauce from a plate of food. There's narration meant to tell you what’s happening but Pattinson is just going rogue, and sure its intriguing, but there was nothing revealing about this moment in time. Exposition by Tom Holland's Arvin later in the car gives us the most likely motivation, but it's not backed up by Pattinson who makes it so mysterious it could’ve been any number of things, for instance that maybe he actually found the food distasteful. I sat on it awhile, when I am troubled like this I like to think about similar scenes with similar “asks”with actors who practice similar styles, see if any answers reveal themselves in the contrast. This time, I thought of what I think qualifies as a similar scene in Mary Herron’s modern classic “American Psycho" -the business card scene..

There is narration and exposition in both the pot luck dinner scene in The Devil All the Time and in the business card scene in Anerican Psycho that allude to something internally going on, and the actors are both inherently interesting and intriguing, and both scenes one way or the other have at their core an implied jealousy, but in one the actor (Bale) is providing the subtext that deepens and enlivens the script. An unnerving energy seeps from behind Bales eyes, it’s in the trembling of his hands, the pursing of the lips. Bale looks like a prisoner becoming ill after staring jealously out at the sun from inside of his cell. On the other hand Pattinson sucks on the juice as the narrator says he “swished the juices around followed by the feeling of a sermon coming on” and I, A: have no clue what is going on -whether it tasted good or bad, or decent even, or B: That he feels a sermon coming on. Pattinson tastes and I see nothing, Im not even sure he tasted it, and then he just glides along acting and performing various gestures with seemingly no rhyme or reason, so that when Tom Holland's Arvin storms off into the car trying to console his mother after she was insidiously berated (again mostly by the script and not Pattinson) implying that what Pattinson just did was out of jealousy I don’t feel anything. I cannot join in with Arvin's frustration of anger, because I was genuinely confused by it all. I normally feel when I’m watching vile characters be vile on screen. I couldnt here because it didn't feel connected to anything emotively, because what I saw felt like a one man show going on in the middle of an ensemble scene almost completely disconnected from most anything that was going on, and it continues throughout the movie, in a car scene, in his final scene, Pattinson gesturing, and provoking but irrespective of anything the movie was asking or needed from him. I remember reading Stella Adler saying these words in her book “The Art of Acting" - “Truth in acting is truth in circumstances and the first circumstance, the circumstance that governs everything is Where am I" - and I remember thinking “YES!”. I believe it applies here, I believe even beyond the circumstances that exist in the presence of the character, their exists the circumstances that exist in the presence of the actor. What movie is this? Who am I working with? What are their circumstances? What is this movie about? Some of the issues I have lies with some questionable choices by Campos who seemed to me to be interested and disinterested in his actors at precisely the wrong times. Lines and words that deserve close ups are shot from afar or at best at mid distance. The writing also fails almost all of its actors, even as as it is telling a compelling story. The script did not, does not look empathetically or compassionately at its characters, which is okay inside the context of the film, but not outside. Inside the characters can be callous and disconnected, outside we must be made to care and be connected. The scripts mistakes are especially clear in its especially cruel treatment of its women, whom it fails in almost every way that matters. It dispatches and discards them without a care as to who they are, what they want, and subsequently why we should care. They are simply props, canvases upon which men’s disdain for self and god can be painted in blood. It wants so bad to show us it despises the evil that men do, as well as religion and God it puts it characters through hell to prove it, at the cost of story elements and good characterization. Still, the great weight of what goes on or wrong with Pattinson lies upon Pattinson, even if clearly hes being encouraged by lacking. Everything about Pattinson ’s Pastor Teagardin that matters comes from exposition not Pattinson's performance, because as others have remarked it is as if hes acting in a completely different movie.

There are ways to do this well, I feel like Laurence Fishburne is delightfully confused about what movie he’s in John Wick 2 and 3. He thinks it's Shakespeare in the Park, not a zany wild action movie, and yet it lives completely within the context of the film, and hell, maybe John Wick is Shakepseare, and Fishburne calls attention to that through himself not by calling it purely to himself. The performance supports that as well as many other of Wick’s needs, and those of his co-stars. Dare I say it compliments and improves upon them, and the franchise has been all the better for it. Here its more like Pattinson saying “I got my life preserver on I dont know what the rest of you are gonna do?” Pattinson makes himself look good, but also places himself on an island. I was fascinated yes, intrigued yes, but I wasn’t moved. Actors should not be applauded for merely being interesting. Acting is always an act of service ether to society or self or crew. It’s a collaborative effort that involves connecting actions and emotions that spring forth from the work, and then return to reflect upon the work, and to escavate the truth. It is not merely ostentatious oration and flailing for the purpose of captivating with no motive or objective and no service to anything but the actor . Being interesting is not enough, and fascination alone should not be synonymous with good, after all tantrums too are fascinating, but are they good? I ask the same here.