In yesterday’s “Pam & Tommy: Justice Is Served” piece I registered a distinctly negative opinion of (a) the Pamela Anderson character as written (the series is based on reported fact), and (b) Lily James portrayal of Anderson. My impression, I said, was that James had made Anderson seem like “the emptiest Coke bottle in Los Angeles.”
In the comment thread, Ankler columnist Jeff Sneider said, “Nope, you’re wrong. There’s plenty of depth to her performance. Her wanting to be a better dramatic actress. Her wanting to be a mother. Her sense of violation, and re-violation when she has to undergo an invasive deposition. Totally wrong on this one. End of story.”
And then “cinefan35″ accused me of being a bit of a lunkhead, claiming that my “Achilles Heel” as a film reviewer “has always been your complete inability at times to separate performance and character.”
HE response: “I generally don’t want or care to distinguish between character and performance. The all of it is the all of it. Either the blend of these two classic ingredients ‘makes the sale,’ so to speak, or it doesn’t.
“The main idea in any kind of film (including comedy) is that we all have our reasons and rationales, and at the end of the day a compelling character or personality will amount to a certain spherical universe in terms of choices and flavor and all-around behavior. But if the spherical thing isn’t there, it’s a problem.
“If I find a character to be less than recognizable or insufficiently filled out, then so be it.
“Seth Rogan and Nick Offerman may be playing oafs, but they’re also playing human beings.
“Monica Vitti may have played a pair of somewhat lost and distant and alienated figures in L’Avventura and L’Eclisse, but she was also playing actual, tangible, recognizable women. Vitti conveyed a certain reality and particularity that was undeniable.
“Lily James and Sebastian Stan (as Tommy Lee) are playing a kind of deluded, lightweight, over-pampered and mostly appalling celebrity life form that I find vaguely odious for the most part, Anderson’s sincere affection for Rodgers and Hammerstein songs excepted.
“Anderson may want to have kids and become a new incarnation of Jane Fonda (a dream that is obviously impossible given her lack of talent and self-awareness as a person) and yes, her sense of discomfort and violation when the shit hits the fan is real and a little sad, but on the other hand how FUCKING DUMB do you have to be to marry an obnoxious, tattooed blowhard cretin like Tommy Lee?
“In terms of what James (who really, REALLY rubbed me the wrong way in Rebecca and The Dig) is putting out I’m mainly getting a thin and insubstantial broth mixed with an all-but-clueless character…a feeling of ‘there’s almost no there there.’
“Plus there’s the ‘actual Pam Anderson humanoid’ factor.
“Who gets married to a much older but rich, still swaggering, bona-fide street character like Jon Peters and then bails out of the marriage after 12 days, calling it a ‘bizarre lunch‘? Ask yourself that. Meditate on that.”