Pilgrimage second impressions: This one’s for Richard Armitage [no spoilers]

No altercations in the theater tonight apart from those on screen.

Since Armitage is the reason I came here in the first place:

I was thinking about why people are going to want to see this despite the violence. And make no mistake, he’s involved in some of the most violent scenes, and at least in some instances, the most interesting looks on his face appear while he’s committing the violence.

For this film, a lot of it lies in his eyes. He’s got the strut / trudge of the medieval knight down well, and there’s an argument for the jaw, and the arrogant masculinity that all of it combines to create, and maybe also the physical tension; even when he’s calm it often seems like he’s seconds from becoming explosive. But in the end, it’s gotta be the eyes. He’s often watchful — in two key scenes the camera looks at home looking at someone else’s conversation — and it’s instructive. There’s the way he can suddenly look incredibly outraged when all he’s done is open his eyelids a fraction of a millimeter and immobilize the rest of his face. I have no idea how he does that.

But most importantly, there’s this way — and I noticed at least three times in the film — that he simultaneously looks inward and outward. I can’t think of a good way to describe this. But as he’s speaking and looking out toward his interlocutors, and conveying emotion that way, he seems at the same time to be looking inside himself, musing around his words, not with any kind of regret, but with a sort of awareness of himself. When I notice him doing this, at least, I just cannot make myself look away. It’s like when he looks into himself, he sucks me into looking into his internal state as well, and I’m mesmerized, and then I realize I’m looking into something that’s actually quite unattractive, and there’s a jolt, there, too — a realization that I’m somehow caught looking at him looking at himself.

~ by Servetus on April 28, 2017.