The Biopic Decade

By Crispin Sartwell

 

Since, like everyone else, historians are idiots, decades have names: the "Roaring Twenties," the "Gay Nineties," or simply, "the Sixties." We are halfway through the zeroes, and it is not too early to try to figure out how this decade will be remembered, as our memories of it slowly disintegrate along with the minds that house them, leaving only the ghost essence of a single phrase. 

    There are many characteristic aspects of our epoch, all of which fit together beautifully and any of which could wind up as the emblem of an era: anti-depressants, detention facilities, Harry Potter, Harriet Miers, cowardice.

     On the other hand, "the Zeroes" could stand alone, the trace of a pure annihilation. This is an era of emptiness, meaninglessness, an awful yawning, blank, gaping abyss of an era, the era of nothingness, negation, naught: the Big Goose Egg: the decade of Jessica Simpson and John Kerry.

    But in the final analysis, what makes a decade the decade that it is, is whatever makes the people of that era the people they are. And what makes us the people we are can be summarized in a single word: "biopic." No life is too degraded to be reinterpreted as a big-screen extravaganza, replete with Academy Award nominations, swelling orchestrations, and recovery programs.

    Everyone who lives in this era must wonder: what would the movie version of my life be like? Who would play me? How would my life look when bloated to many times its normal size and then crushed flat as a pancake?

     The question of who would play Crispin Sartwell is one that has tortured my imagination throughout the decade. I used to think it would be Brad Pitt. Then I thought perhaps George Clooney could capture my rugged masculinity and the dignity with which I am aging. But as the years go by, I seem to look and act more and more like Judy Dench.

    Indeed, most people in our era try to become the person that would play them in their biopic: that is the means by which we generate our inmost essence, our authentic identities. I spent the early years of the decade trying to simulate Mr. Pitt's hair and beard stylings. These days I devote myself to reproducing Dame Judy's funny sing-song accent. It's supposed makes me seem intelligent.

    But for all of us who live in the Era of the Biopic, the question of who would play us ultimately boils down to a single phrase: Jamie Foxx.

     Jamie Foxx was incredible as Ray Charles. He truly became the father of soul; his every twitch and tic leaping off the screen and beating you bloody with its sheer virtuosity. Or rather, since we will now be unable to think of Ray Charles without thinking of Jamie Foxx's astounding performance, Ray Charles has become Jamie Foxx retroactively, his luminous recordings an almost-convincing simulation of the Ray soundtrack. Thus the biopic swallows not only a single decade, but all of human history, now rendered into tiny narrative loops.

     Jamie Foxx was even more amazing in Walk the Line; it was as if he were trance-channeling the spirit of Johnny Cash. Every tiny glob of sweat was applied meticulously, and gave you the amazing illusion that Jamie Foxx was in withdrawal. But Jamie Foxx never withdraws.

     Jamie Foxx was incomparable as Truman Capote, as Joan of Arc, as Mahatma Gandhi, as Edward R. Murrow, as Eva Peron. And he was the first to truly exploit the method-acting possibilities of playing Russell Crowe playing John Nash, or Geoffrey Rush playing Peter Sellers playing Inspector Clouseau.

     But the moment when Jamie Foxx gave his name to an era was the moment he accepted the role of Seabiscuit. By the end, I believed that Jamie Foxx was a horse. And his singing!