Page 205 - Flaunt175-diana

From the roots to the garden. Is the garden already grown when we are born? And we are just to be molded into an idea of what Mother Earth or our elders want through acculturation? Those baby tears are not tears of helplessness but tears of sadness at being pulled from the truth? “We’re on the wheel again,” the baby muses, “darn it.”
Speaking of tears, we dive into the anguished waters of the New England-based film that landed Hedges his Oscar nomina- tion. This seems to be where everything changes. The emotions really deepen, at least in what the script allows. Meaning: these are no longer bit part extras, this is a full-fledged oak tree, hun- dreds of feet high in the air.
The performances start to uncover a crystalline presence on screen. We can’t help but remember the first time we saw it in Manchester. It’s the scene where Hedges sobs in front of the refrigerator. It’s a medita- tion on all of us. We have been there at some point. Maybe that’s what gets you an award like an Oscar—the undeniability of the moment. The kinship of the third-eye and heart space of life. The acting and earth world stands still.
It was a scene Hedges felt was particularly strange and enigmatic. The crew is wrapping for the day. Time is dwindling. Grips are hungry. Everyone’s tired. But something isn’t fully formed. Hedges recounts that Casey Affleck requested more time for Hedges to do the scene. And thankfully he did. The truth thereupon was born. The truth of Hedges being powerful in performance. His intuition teem- ing with exactitude of emotion.
And how long will it
take for one to tap into one’s intuition? Perhaps as long as
it takes for the tree to realize it doesn’t have to go anywhere to be found.
But, thinking of Hedg-
es’ work, how does someone so enchanted by joy play such heart-rending performances? Maybe that’s the key, actually. The joy allows for the darkness. An interplay of emotions is invited in when the doorway of joy is open and honored.
“I think our culture has an obsession with becoming worse to get better,” Hedges allows, “Maybe it can be measured very sim- ply, in that you can tell when somebody is in an unnecessary cycle of suffering when it’s the same problem over and over again. But if it’s new suffering and different challenges, then it’s probably grace. If you haven’t evolved past the same problem, then you’re probably stuck.”
What’s the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
“I had a meeting with Ben Stiller for a film once,” Hedg- es continues, “and he said that when he casts a movie, the performances are done. Once he casts the actors, it’s out of his hands. I think that’s true. To some extent, the day you sign onto a project, no matter how hard you work, your work is done once you step into the room. The ceiling is only as high as what you’re capable of in that moment in life.”
Karma comes to mind. The part picks you. The parts are already inside of you, swimming around somewhere in your subconscious, waiting to be unearthed or blossom like springtime
flowers. All of the fruits of nature stored in the warehouse of epigenetics.
And Hedges has the DNA, which we spoke of earlier, in terms of filmmaking. His is quite rich soil, particularly through the lens of his father, Peter Hedges, filmmaker, playwright, and novelist / screenwriter of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape—which famously starred, of course, Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio. “The most natural thing in terms of stepping into my career was my dad,” Hedges says sweetly, “going to his film sets, reading his scripts, hanging out with his producers. Maybe it was kind of a joke having me as an 8th grader give notes on
a script, but he always wanted to listen to what I would say.
WILLY CHAVARRIA top. Groomer: Amy Komorowski
It felt like I grew up in the language and understanding of what filmmaking is.”
Hedges makes living and acting feel so natural. Maybe he’s onto some- thing, again, with his new film French Exit—opposite Michelle Pfeiffer. A film that reads like a love letter to naturality. The quietude and thunder of family, as well as its intimacy and disassoci- ation crank the cylinder as wealth vanishes and bonds are forged or fractured.
Scenes from French
Exit are quiet, yet charged. Two actors dropping into the depths of the roots of capability. They stand in
the kitchen. Nothing and everything is happening at the same time. It’s like that feeling you get with a friend or spouse that you’ve known for so long and words aren’t really necessary. Just let the energy converse.
Pfeiffer and Hedges then speak. Slowly. Gently.
This isn’t acting, after all. How could we call this acting? That would be a lie. This is living. And what more do we ask for of our artists
than to show us the truth of how we live? Humans turned to trees on screen. Trees don’t lie. All of them are linked. If one tree loses nutrients, the others send help. French Exit finds the artistic equivalent of that.
How lovely to have a supportive family, a complex family. How much we can learn from the interweaving of nature. From trees. “When it came time to be in the room with casting direc- tors, it was like I was hanging out with friends,” Hedges remem- bers of the film. “I think most actors don’t have that. They come in with a folder of headshots, and they come in as foreigners. The gift of my inheritance is that I came in as family.”
Family has made the work so good.
A bird, a tree, a blade of grass, a drop of dew.
Give him some lines, he becomes it.
Hedges flies like the particles of dandelion wishes cast into the air. Will the wish come true? That’s nobody’s business. We just get to watch.
Like nature, we watch. We grow. We witness. Beyond joy. Beyond sadness.
Witnessed from the trees. A sun settles, filters through. Leaves falling, falling, suspended and serving a complex pur- pose, similar to the tears that occasionally spill from the ‘actor’s’ sky blue, joyous eyes.
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PHOTOGRAPHER: CHRISTOPHER SCHOONOVER. STYLIST: MUI-HAI CHU. GROOMER: AMY KOMOROWSKI AT THE WALL GROUP. STYLIST ASSISTANTS: CONSTANZA FALCO RAEZ AND MADISON DOUGLAS. GAFFER: TYLER KUFS. VIDEOGRAPHER: JONATHAN SCHOONOVER. VIDEO ASSISTANT: AARON LANDUCCI.