From Edward Cullen to Bruce Wayne, and in the middle there is everything. And all the rest is a series of great roles and great authors: Lawrence d’Arabia, Cedric Diggory, Luigi Delfino of France and then Cronenberg, Herzog, Nolan, Gray, Eggers and, lastly, Bong Joon-ho. It can be said that Robert Pattinson’s career is a “silently build”, Niccolò Fabi would say, since the British actor, born in a neighborhood in the south-west of London, succeeded in one of the most complicated companies for those who do his job: shake off the Twilight vampire label.
The film series that launches a very young Pattinson – just 21 years old – on the world market, leading him to participate in five films between 2008 and 2012 and cashing over $3.3 billion worldwide. After years, the London actor remembers that role with affection, as he told GQ, especially for the particular moment in which he was: “At the time I lived on my agent’s couch, I went to the audition but just before I turned him crazy. My agent said to me, take the Valium, it’s in my bathroom.” Pattinson also played a role in another of the most famous sagas in cinema, in the film Harry Potter and the fire chalice (2005), as Cedric Diggory, one of Hogwarts’ magicians. Director Mike Newell chooses it, considering it: “born for that role, since it possessed the typical British elegance and the face as a good student.”.
But before retracing his story, let’s make a leap to the present day, on the occasion of the exit to the room of Die My Love, by Lynne Ramsay, in the Italian theatres from tomorrow. In the film, along with Pattinson, he features Jennifer Lawrence, in a dramatic love story with unexpected twists. For the British actor – in recent years with increasingly extravagant characters – interpreting this role “it was quite difficult, since after so many phenomena from bark it is not easy to interpret a normal person”, he admitted to ComingSoon.
He who defines himself as a “incapable” on Cosmopolitan, continuously tested by an impostor syndrome he has spoken of several times. Yet, after Twilight, Pattinson finds a visionary director on his way: David Cronenberg. He owes the authorial turn of his career, which took place with two main roles: Cosmopolis (2012) and Maps to the Stars (2014), both directed by the Canadian filmmaker. In Cannes, during the presentation of Cosmopolis, Cronenberg did not send them to say: “Twilight was a journey accident for him.” And then he added: “Robert is an extraordinary actor, who before that film had already faced important evidence. He became his own pop despite.”.
After Cronenberg, the trail of committed films continued, allowing him to better see his talent. Starting from Werner Herzog with Queen of the Desert (2015), a film about the life of British archaeologist Gertrude Bell. Pattinson is General T. E. Lawrence and plays alongside Nicole Kidman and James Franco. Then comes Anton Corbijn who, to tell the story of the friendship between photographer Dennis Stock and James Deen, chooses Pattinson and Dane DeHaan respectively, in the film Life (2015). Within two years, between 2016 and 2017, two other directors were noted: Brady Corbet and James Gray. With the first film The childhood of a leader, a little successful film inspired by the life of the writer Jean-Paul Sartre; with the second, instead, participates in lost civilization, another true story about a British explorer looking for an ancient lost city in the Amazon.
Between one role and another, Pattinson also lends his face to famous advertising campaigns, Dior on all. Because if it’s true that with Twilight it had become an icon for teenagers, over the years its transgressed look, sharp look and a hairdressed in grunge style really conquered everyone. Until he became Matt Reeves’ new The Batman (2022). From Keaton to Kilmer, from Bale to Affleck, Pattinson’s pronounced jaw was the last in order to hide behind the mask of the Dark Knight. And that same mask the actor reminds her of Esquire as one of the most intense objects of her career: “I still remember today the scent of Batman’s mask that I had in front of my nose for 12 hours a day. I keep it in a basin, at home, and when I lift the glass to smell it, it traps me like the first time.”.
But before Bruce Wayne, there are other authors who tested Pattinson’s polyhedrity. Starting with the Safdie brothers, who entrusted him with the role of a wild and explosive brother in Good Time (2017), a very tight metropolitan thriller between robberies, adrenaline and compulsive rhythms. Then comes the collaboration with Robert Eggers in The Lighthouse (2019), alongside an amazing Willem Dafoe. Surrounded by the dark depth of the open sea, Dafoe and Pattinson are two guardians of a lighthouse on a remote island: the best premises for a film that digs in human interiority, between ancestral impulses, torments and claustrophobic psychological drifts.
Also worth mentioning is the only collaboration between Pattinson and Christopher Nolan in the intricate Tenet (2020). Here he dresses up the shoes of a mysterious agent who works alongside the Protagonist (John David Washington) on a mission to gut an enemy from the future. Also in this case the actor stands out for his ability to play with the face, with silences, giving manic attention to the physical and emotional details of the characters.
And it is precisely to the details and nuances of its expressions that also relies on in Mickey 17 by Bong Joon-ho. In the film he plays multiple versions of himself, especially when on the screen we see the two apparently identical copies of Mickey 17 and Mickey 18 appear. In a 3D-printed mirror and clones game, the actor once again shows its great versatility. And it’s a bit of a metaphor for his career: Pattinson/Mickey 17, to become what is today, he had to kill in the years Pattinson/Mickey 18 (read: Edward Cullen). And he did it not to deny the past, but to assert that in his career it could have been many different things.
L’articolo Robert Pattinson: anatomy of a rebirth proviene da SentieriSelvaggi.
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