Ukraine wins again. And playing 'The dumb clown'

The assumption that Brothers will be released in early December was strengthened today when IMDb put up the date of 4 December as the release date for Brothers. Rather intriguingly, and strengthening the realisation that Ukraine is the place to be for all Jake fans from now on, the other dates were also removed and Ukraine was given the much earlier screening date of 8 October. Finland has faired less well with 5 February.


Contrasts

It has not escaped my attention that, thanks to the glimpses we saw this week, the Prince of Persia has a bit of action in it. Not only will Prince Dastan be required to leap, ride, disrobe, fight, chase, run, disrobe, climb, smooch, disrobe, he will also have to yell a lot. This contrasts with much of Jake Gyllenhaal's earlier work in front of the camera in which, as Jake has said, the meaning is in the pauses and in the ellipses.


Donnie Darko rarely made eye contact with the camera, ours was a world that he could not reach, but in Moonlight Mile, Jake's Joe had very little to say. And that presents all sorts of problem to an actor: 'A lot of my job in the film was just listening... and to prepare to listen is hard.'


Jake told the Herald News in 2002: 'To watch it [Moonlight Mile] is strangely dreamlike, as if I wasn't even there... `Cause I wasn't even really there until the moments that I had something to say. It's a really weird thing. I can't really describe it. You can't prepare listening.' To the Star Trubune: 'I'm trying to keep everyone else afloat... I spend all my time listening to the other actors. And I found that very difficult to prepare for. When you talk, you break down your lines the night before [filming]. But you can't do that when you're just listening.'


And, in the Boston Globe, 2002: '"I didn't arm Jake with a lot of words for the first half of the film," Silberling says. "He has to be a little bit of a silent movie star." Agrees Gyllenhaal, "Brad cast me primarily because he said I was very similar to him, so we didn't rehearse too much. It's a certain kind of role. It's basically a lot of listening, and he would guide me where I needed to go. I was just the dumb clown."'


Some years later, for Rendition, Jake had to arm himself again with the difficult skill of silence: '[Influence for Rendition] Richard Burton in The Spy Who Came In From the Cold," he says with a laugh, only to instantly adopt a more serious demeanour. "I'm not kidding. I learned a lot from that performance about how to play a guy who's invisible. And who's silent."


'I think, if I've succeeded in the role, I've become somewhat invisible. It's not hard in the cast [of actors] that I'm among [chuckles], but that was my intention, I think. This is a guy who doesn't really want to be seen, and doesn't really want to be dealing with his life.'


'People have said to me, 'All the characters you play, you can really read everything going on on your face.' I wanted to play a part where you didn't read anything, you know. Where he's almost invisible and functioned, like in apathy rather than emoting.'


But we should never think this skill of Jake's is easy or casual. Yigal Naor: 'It was beautiful to work with Jake,” he reveals. “ I’m double his age – I have a son his age - and what really amazed me is his kind of silence, his way of letting things go through him without pushing anything. He goes so deep into himself and has this way of searching for his truth. He’s fighting for every feeling, even the slightest glimpse of the eye. He is a great cinema actor.”



Includes pictures from IHJ.