deeplyshallow // feels like far

feels like far

When I am asked what my favorite Western is, I’m always stumped. I have two. They both happen to star Robert Redford, and neither is a traditional, old-Hollywood cowboy flick. Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid is comic and desperate and wonderful. That’s one. The other is Jeremiah Johnson, a very quiet movie about a man who leaves modern civilization behind to become a trapper, and spends his life mostly alone, just living it. You don’t get many movies like this one.

Sydney Pollack has never been a favorite director of mine, though he’s made many movies I respect and enjoy. But Johnson, from the first time I saw it — I was in middle school, and it was shown as part of a history class — made such an impression on me that I’ve always given Pollack’s films a chance. This has mostly been rewarded (3 Days of the Condor is a fine example), though there have been a few disappointments as well (Random Hearts).

On Memorial Day Sydney Pollack died of cancer. His first directing credit came in 1961, an episode of a TV show called Cain’s Hundred. I’m sure nobody remembers it. It’s completely unfamiliar to me. Pollack was twenty-six when he directed that episode. He was seventy-three when he passed away. The New York Times summed up those nearly fifty years like this:

Pollack’s career defined an era in which big stars (Robert Redford, Barbra Streisand, Warren Beatty) and the filmmakers who knew how to wrangle them (Barry Levinson, Mike Nichols) retooled the Hollywood system. Savvy operators, they played studio against studio, staking their fortunes on pictures that served commerce without wholly abandoning art.

From the Times again, in 1982:

“Stars are like thoroughbreds,” he said. “Yes, it’s a little more dangerous with them. They are more temperamental. You have to be careful because you can be thrown. But when they do what they do best — whatever it is that’s made them a star — it’s really exciting.”

Sometimes, he added, “if you have a career like mine, which is so identified with Hollywood, with big studios and stars, you wonder if maybe you shouldn’t go off and do what the world thinks of as more personal films with lesser-known people. But I think I’ve fooled everybody. I’ve made personal films all along. I just made them in another form.”

The last time I saw him act was in Michael Clayton, which deserved a better ending than it was given, but was right up Pollack’s alley. He was a sucker for movies about corporate and political intrigue. The movie was right up my alley, too. Pollack’s performance in it was about what I had expected as soon as I saw his credit onscreen: he was gruff and commanding and a solid presence, but you almost never noticed that he did his job extremely well, because he never flashed or glittered. Pollack accomplished a rare feat just before his death, as well. 2008 marked the fiftieth year of marriage to his former acting student, Claire Griswold.

It’s odd to find myself writing about him, because I never went out of my way to see his movies. I hardly remember watching Tootsie when I was a kid. I might be the only person I know who really hated Out of Africa. But when I read this morning that he had died, it surprised me how much I wished I wasn’t reading the story. There are public figures who you know you’ll miss when they go, because of the impact they’ve had on you. There are those whose existence you’re aware of, but whose passing won’t really affect you one way or another. It’s the ones like this, the ones that catch you unaware, that make you wonder, a little, at the idea that you can be influenced by a person and never notice.

Jeremiah Johnson is a goddamn wonderful movie, and if it was all Sydney Pollack ever did in his career, it would still have been a worthy career. It wasn’t all he did, but I’m sad to say there won’t be any more. Suddenly I regret never having paid more attention.