Star portrait on the programme of Örökmozgó cinematheque in August
 Robert Benton: Kramer VS. Kramer - 1979 11 KBytes |
"When you are older you will realize that there is no truth. There are only heaps of shit,
sorry for the expression. These are put into layers, one is on
top of the other. Life is about choosing one of these and if you
grow up you can choose one as well."- explains his son, the
`eternal little man' in a torn jacket in the film called Hero.
(1992) Then he heard a woman crying for help, because her
daughter fell into a lion cage. As the people standing there
could not move and there were no attendants near, LaPlante goes
to help the little girl in trouble.
American films in the beginning of the nineties show with pleasure the eternal value of the human being behind the masks of little people. LaPlante is not a cynic as much as Forest Gump was no idiot. However for the superficial viewer this is hardly apparent. |
Hollywood's getting into the `little men's world' does not make an apology of the family-as it did in the beginning of the eighties, yet it tries to awake in us, again and again, that we are all individuals. Quoting Kosztolányi, we are "separate individuals". It is not by chance that this problem came to the forefront of thinking since the media and the trades connected to them nowadays compete in trying to uniform us.
Dustin Hoffman got two Oscar awards for playing two typical little men in the last two decades. In the film called Kramer VS. Kramer (1979) he played a man who became a devoted father who likes his son very much, from a man who thought only of his career. In the film called Rain Man (1988) he played Raymond, a man who, in spite of his illness he can move even his brother, played by Tom Cruise, who seems often selfish and insensitive.
His characters are not even intellectual James Bonds as in Woody Allen's films. They are typical ordinary characters and there in lies their specialness. From this point of view it is really excellent how Hoffman plays the man between the nonconformist, former super hero Sean Connery, and his son. Although he has no doubt about his limits, he always acts in petty way as for instance in the film called Family Business (1989).
Who would look up to a man who wants his son to go to the university and who does not want to robber a bank? Nevertheless, without him the world is incomplete. He is also worth a hug.
Besides the `eternal little characters' becoming inseparably attached to him, he has another ability, creating the other half of the Hoffman-myth, that he is able to transubstantiate. Being an excellent Lee Strasberg- student he belongs to those actors who think that before acting a character the actor must give himself up entirely to the character he plays as much as he can, he almost has to live within it.
For this attitude he could thank for Robert Ribman's congeniality, who gave Hoffman a role in the film called The Journey of the Fifth Horse. For this role he got the Obie award from the critics-it is the Tony award of the off-Broadway plays.
"Dustin has ability to put aside his ego and to become the character he looks for."- declared Ribman. The legends about his ability to change, he proved in his further roles: at the age of 33 he acted the very young and the 121-year-old Jack Crabbet in the film called Little Big Man (1970). In the story of the film Tootsie in 1982 he acted a man, who has to change into a woman to get the wished role in a soap opera. With hard and legendary work in another film called Rain Man he played an autistic.
Of course the fact that his talent could be shown in The Journey of the Fifth Horse was more important than Ribman's words of appreciation. He had great success on the stage with his next role in Eh? By Henry Livings, and what is more, Mike Nichols (Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf?) was among the audience and asked Hoffman to play the main character in his next film called The Graduate (1967). Nichols got the Oscar award for the Best Directing and Hoffman broke into the films from theatre.
The biggest role he entered fully into the spirit of was as Dustin Hoffman, the actor. As a beginner waiting for theatre roles he used to work as a sandwich man, or collected money for children suffering from muscle consumption, but he always chose only the most ideal roles for himself. He refused the one sentence roles or the ones he felt unworthy of his talent. But when he did get work he always got to arguing with the directors. He had his own opinions about the heroes that he was to portray, because he was a personally like his heroes and was not a professional medium. His private life was subordinated to his career. He expected first foremost a peaceful life from his family, so that he could work successfully. He had only two wives. The first one was Anne Byrnel, who together with the children were always taken to the distant shootings. Was it accidental that they divorced when Hoffman was shooting Kramer VS. Kramer? However, he could not bear loneliness for long and married Lisa Gottsegen, who was far younger than him. "I feel that I live also when I do not act."- he courted Lisa, who soon had to realize that her husband, in spite of his wonderful words likes living mostly as an actor. She accepted this.
As an actor he can change his age as he likes, but he will be 60 this year. From this point the actor, who made big characters from `little men' seems really little- the same as us. Yet he is not. As long as films exist he will always be the little big man: Kramer, Raymond and LaPlantee!
