If I were strolling around Paris and happened to notice Jeremy Irons sipping red wine at Les Deux Magots, which he and wife Sinead Cusack were actually doing a day or two ago, I wouldn’t say a word. I would discreetly glance in their direction and move on, although I would probably wonder why Irons was even there, given the presence of rube tourists and the general absence of coolness.
But if I’d been waved at and somehow invited to sit down and chat (bizarre as that sounds), at some point during the conversation I would lean over and suggest to Irons that his most penetrating screen moment, in my humble but long-held opinion, is a non-verbal one.
I’m speaking of a silent passage in Louis Malle‘s Damage (’92) that I described three-plus years ago. [See directly below.] Excerpt: “Irons’ wealthy politician, having just arrived home, makes himself a drink and strolls into the living room. He takes a sip and looks around, and the expression on his face says everything — unfulfilled, unchallenged, drained.”
With Imprint’s 2023 Bluray of Damage now out of stock and even unpurchasable from the usual scalpers and with no apparent HD streaming options, it can be stated that Irons’ two greatest filmed performances — Dr. Stephen Fleming in Damage and Jerry, a sly literary agent and a marital cheat, in David Jones and Harold Pinter‘s Betrayal (’83) — are un-purchasable, un-rentable and unviewable in 1080p high-def, much less 4K. Which is ridiculous. A film that can only seen in standard 480p is all but extinct — a fossil.
