Bill Murray's being, and you can see it in his eyes.
What other actor can so successfully do over-the-top nutty and deadpan at the
same time? And as he's gotten older, he's pulled himself in, closer and closer
to that quiet center.
At heart, Murray's an anarchist like Groucho Marx: Even when he's playing the unctuous
cheerleader in, say, "Meatballs" or "Stripes," you don't feel he particularly cares
about the outcome of the story (i.e., whether he and his charges actually
succeed at their plot-assigned task); it's all about putting on a show. His
show. And, like Groucho, he's also a quick-change artist, slipping from ersatz
earnestness into ironic commentary into whatever pose will allow him to continue
riffing on the scene.
From the beginning, Murray possessed an uncanny ability to make an entire
movie play his straight man. He's both in the movie and apart from it,
conducting a satirical running commentary on the artifice of it all -- the plot,
the characters, the whole construct that is a movie -- and pulling the audience
into a private, conspiratorial relationship with him.
In other words, we love the knucklehead. In honor of his latest, "City of Ember," here ya go: "Deconstructing Murray."
(Fox Walden)
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