As he nears 80 later this year, John Lithgow’s range and versatility has catapulted him to an A-lister that can also work more comfortably in roles for character actors.
At the start of career, he seemed unlikely to be anything but a character actor with that receding hair line, 6-foot-4 stature and a face that can go from jovial and friendly to menacing and dangerous quickly. But just like Gene Hackman, he seemed to come about in the 1970s when the idea of a Hollywood star was changing to reflect “real people.” He burst on the scene in the 1980s playing a government fix-it man, who murders people without a qualm in Blow Out. And then switched to playing a former NFL player now living as a transgendered woman in The World According to Garp.
That role brought him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor as well another nomination in the same category in the following year for his brief role as a Midwestern banker who has an affair with Debra Winger’s character in Terms of Endearment. Lithgow did the role while he had a break in filming as the fire-and-brimstone pastor in the ludicrous Footloose. And then he also played the frightened passenger claiming to see a gremlin on the side of a commercial jetliner during a thunderstorm in The Twilight Zone: The Movie.
His abilities to switch back and forth from nice guys like the father in Harry and the Hendersons to total scumbags like the Eurotrash criminal in Cliffhanger who shoots his own girlfriend because he’s now the only helicopter pilot shows his talent. Also that year he played a Ben Bradlee-style editor in The Pelican Brief who managed to deliver some no-nonsense humor to the role.
And then there was his Emmy award-winning role as an alien creature disguised as a human in 3rd Rock from the Sun. He often plays very manic and animated characters, who are sometimes good and sometimes bad but all watchable. And that what makes his performance in The Rule of Jenny Pen another memorable role.
Lithgow plays Dave Crealy, an elderly man at a care home in New Zealand, who has become the bully. He steals food from the other patients and terrorizes them. Dave has gross rotting teeth that would make Austin Powers throw up in his mouth. He carries a hand puppet he calls Jenny Pen on him at most times. He’s managed to terrorized the residents because he knows what he can get away with and knows the staff are overworked and overwhelmed having to deal with frail and invalid people.
It’s strange how when people get older, we seem to often baby them and treat them as inferiors. Many of them have serious health issues which make their abilities to stand up and fight back to Dave impossible. One day, a new patient, Stefan Mortensen (Geoffrey Rush), is admitted. He was once a high-powered judge but suffered a stroke and mostly is confined to a wheelchair now.
And when he arrives, he becomes a new victim to Dave’s bullying. Dave kicks him repeatedly under the table. He later rushes into Stefan’s bedroom at night and throws a jug of urine on him. It seems neither Stefan nor his roommate, Tony Garfield (George Henare), a former rugby player, can get the staff to believe them.
I don’t want to tell more because Lithgow turns Dave into one mean-spirited son of a bitch. But it’s also an eye-opener of the abuse that can happen in care home. It’s not all pleasant old people sitting around watching old movies. A lot of them probably have fond memories of when they were younger. Others were probably put their by the kids who couldn’t or wouldn’t care for them. Not everyone ages gracefully.
And all it takes is a bad heart attack, stroke or even bad eye sight, and a person spends the rest of their life in a home where the staff may not be too friendly or considerate. I remember when I had to go cover something at a care center, an staff member was screaming at a woman in a wheelchair until her supervisor recognized me. I wonder how they act when people aren’t around. My ex’s father was in a VA home and got a black-eye but they didn’t know where from. Another media in Oklahoma over a decade ago ran stories on abuse in these homes with the main photo a poor woman bent over in a wheelchair as she was strapped to it so she wouldn’t fall it.
Apparently not much has changed since Geraldo Rivera exposed the Willowbrook State School for their treatment of people over 50 years ago. For a bully like Dave, it can be a paradise where he can get away with everything. And the patients he terrorizes are worried about how they will be viewed or unable to even tell the staff what has happened. During one scene where Dave really goes too fair, he attempts to sexually assault an invalid woman while her blind invalid husband can only hear and wonder what’s happening unable to do any.
Rush’s role is most reactionary. But it’s nice seeing him take on such a role. Like Lithgow, he is able to switch off being playing good guys and bad guys. And there’s also a feeling that maybe this is some penance for the elderly judge for sentencing that was too extreme or not fair enough.
Both actors are great in the roles and a recent interview they did for CBS News shows just how well they get along. Sometimes actors will avoid each other during filming to create tension for roles like these. However, it does work any better when they’re able to play off each other like a perfect duo. They don’t have to be besties off-screen but they can read each other and play their roles perfectly.
This is basically a low-budget horror thriller. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Sometimes, the best movies are when veteran actors like Lithgow and Rush are able to cut loose more in movies where they know it’s not going to affect the box office that much. That being said, Stephen King, himself, has praised the movie as one of the best so far this year.
And with a nice hype-man like that, you know you got a wonderful little thriller on your hands.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 