Robert Pattinson Imagined something far outside the Paradigm in Netflix's The King

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I measured Robert Pattinson's performance in the Timothee Chalamet vehicle "THE KING" not by good, great, or bad, but by it's willingness to border all three. I don't know what to make of his accent. His posturing, and histrionics could be viewed as overacting, and yet is that not a fair assessment of the intention? Is the dauphin not meant to be a wannabe? A boy posturing as a man, as a killer, as a leader? The film sure does spend a lot of time speaking explicitly and implicitly about the difference. About growth, and stunted growth. Disfigured growth caused by outside interference. In most storytelling especially that of a western tilt , the hero must have a mirror image, the villain, someone who is almost exactly the same except less. Usually by way of depth of journey. Where a hero continues to grow beyond, a villain simply stops, remaining undeveloped, repeating similar tactics and schemes meant to undermine the hero, but also to mask their own willful defiance of their own inadequacy. Is the dauphin not such a man. A grand fool, who spends a great deal of his screen time trying to prove the same in his chosen adversary. Pattinson brings this to life in ways both organic to his own artifice, and in ways that portray his craft. His posture is a bit stunted. He sits and stands as if their is a hump on his back, huddled under the weight of his insecurities. His opening scene has the energy of a child; the fingers tapping on the box, the poor posture in his chair, the robes seem almost too much for him. He jostles about in his seat, it is Impertinent, impatient, giddy, and mischievous.

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His performance is uneven, slightly off kilter, like his accent falls and it rises, it fails and it succeeds, it's silly, and it is deadly serious. The great actor and coach Uta Hagen highly respected imagination in an actor, she thought it one of the most important tools in our box, but I don't know that collectively we respect it as much as we should. We have arrived in an age of acting closer to Hagen's version of acting than that of Stanislavski or Adler, but it lacks one of her core tenants imagination . Which is funny because with so many actors in roles that live outside the realm of reality, playing captains of America, and strong men who can pull down helicopters by the will of their biceps it's very sad and somewhat tragic that their imagination does not reach the heights of their play, and their surroundings. Here though is Pattinson, creating something altogether unrecognizable. Something we are not used to seeing in this age, or in the way most actors play people from it . Something that pierces the boundaries of our collective perception of what the performance of a persona from that time feels like. It stands out from the rest of the film because everyone else is so clearly displaying more of a regard for that time. No doubt Michod's film is a lot more modern a take than usual, and its historical reverence has a lot more in common with Sophia Coppola's Marie Antoinette than it may seem on its face, but Pattinson's performance is not merely modern it's outrageous. Precisely what we need more of in acting. The unsure, the unsettled, the ridiculous, the unmitigated gall to REACH dammit! Knowing full well that you will come well short while in the presence of an entire audience. To that I say Bravo Robert, encore Robert, ENCORE.