While his roles haven’t lived up to the standard of the parts he was getting 10-15 years ago when he was a young rising star, Adrien Brody continues to have one of the most compelling faces in movies, and while his famously prominent nose captures the attention at first, our gaze is soon drawn to his eyes, which have a whole lot going on, to say the least. His Oscar win for The Pianist was an appreciation in no small part to the level of expression he was able to capture without seeming to reveal much of anything, eyes that expressed less than his hands could do on a piano.
My favorite Brody role, with his take on Salvador Dali in Midnight in Paris coming in at a close second, is his brief appearance in The Thin Red Line as Corporal Fife. I’m not sure he says a word in the entire sequence of shots that feature his, but his face is unforgettable. It’s hard to even describe in words, but if there’s one word that would capture it best, that would be fear. Just outright terror in the face of war. And it’s the kind of crippling terror that doesn’t even require us to know what he has seen or what’s passing through his mind in that moment. We’re instantly empathetic to what he’s feeling. At least that’s the kind of impression it’s had on me since seeing it. It’s a shame he hasn’t had the opportunity to turn in work like this in the years since.
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