No Time to Cry

Underwater mooning: wilson (Philip Seymour Hoffman) mourns his wifeâs death.

Philip Seymour Hoffman on the tough task of playing a grieving man who won’t grieve.

by Sam Adams

The words "famous" and "character actor" normally go together as well as peanut butter and engine oil, but Philip Seymour Hoffman has managed to make himself the most recognizable chameleon in American movies. From the sniveling factotum of The Big Lebowski to the lugubrious Lester Bangs of Almost Famous, Hoffman immerses himself in his roles until there's nothing left; apart from a certain doughy vulnerability, it's hard to sift out the common denominator in his roles, the essential core that might bear the makings of a star persona.

If it's hard to separate the man from the work, it might be because, for Hoffman, work is an all-consuming endeavor; he's said that acting is "like carrying luggage upstairs in your mind." In addition to providing Hoffman with his first bona fide lead, Love Liza -- written by Hoffman's brother Gordy and directed by longtime friend Todd Louiso -- gave the actor one of his most exhausting challenges yet. Playing Wilson, a Web designer who retreats from the suicide of his wife by huffing gasoline, required him to spend the entire film in a state of profound, barely evolving grief, laced often with anger and rarely with understanding. "It was very tiring, and very hard to do," he says, "but ultimately, that's the movie I wanted to make."

Love Liza is nearly as hard on its audience, and more than one reviewer has slapped it with the "feel-bad" charge, one that Hoffman not surprisingly bristles at. "Well, better not go see Hamlet, then," he deadpans. "Better not go see Macbeth." But he admits the movie's not easy to take, intentionally so. "Being around somebody who's in that state is never easy, even in real life. To have that experience watching the film is what the film's about. All of us are going to go through what Wilson does in our lives; maybe not suicide, but all of us are going to have someone we love deeply die. And at those moments, the reality that we might not be easy to hang around with is, I think, incredibly profound, and incredibly moving."

Wilson spends most of the movie trying to decide whether or not to open his wife's suicide note -- or, really, postponing the decision altogether. It's a potent metaphor for the initial acceptance of loss, and when, finally, he does open it, you get the sense that a long journey has only just begun. "A lot of films take grieving, or loss or depression, and compress it, so before the movie's over, you can tell the person's probably gonna fall in love again, or be happy again, or whatever," Hoffman says. "This film is basically telling you, no, that's not what happens. It's funny, people will think there's actually a lot more emoting [in the movie] than there is. The tough thing to watch is that he's not releasing all that much, except in these odd ways. That's what interested me about the script. The film wasn't about him going, oh boo hoo hoo, oh my god, my wife's dead. The film was a real specific exploration of what somebody does to not go boo hoo hoo."

(sam@citypaper.net)

Love Liza opens Friday at Ritz Bourse. See Sam Adams’ review on p. 28.