“Miss Julie” (2014)
Liv Ullmann‘s recent adaptation of Strindberg‘s famous examination of the sado-masochistic cruelty of rigid class systems is the film on this list least likely to ever get seen by a huge number of people. Perhaps it’s the nature of its stage origins, or the ostensible “worthiness” of the project, or perhaps it’s because the film is so bruisingly effective as to be almost overpowering. But that’s an enormous shame, as the film is incontrovertible proof that Farrell has an immense amount to give, not as a movie star, but as an actor in this most actorly of enterprises. Featuring a force-of-nature Jessica Chastain and a more muted but no less intensely committed Samantha Morton, the film would nonetheless simply topple over without a strong performance from Farrell. Opposite two of the best actresses of his generation, he needs to reach heights (and plow depths) we have probably never seen from him before. Miraculously, he does, which makes “Miss Julie” a towering powerhouse of performance, so much so that the sheer intensity is shattering, occasionally almost too much to witness. Farrell plays Jean, the servant and foil to Miss Julie (Chastain), the insecure yet haughty lady of the manor in which he works. At first he’s the butt of Julie’s frivolous and mean-spirited games of social one-upmanship, but gradually the tables turn to reveal Jean’s subservience as an act, or at least as only half the story, as his manipulative and exploitative side bubbles then roars to the surface. It’s such a psychological high-wire act, unfolding with such austere formal commitment (usually in claustrophobic, locked-off medium-shot interiors) as to become almost unbearable, but if Chastain’s is the titanic performance, Farrell’s is the iceberg on which Julie wrecks herself —all the more lethal for how much is concealed.
See Also: It’s such an outlier in Farrell’s filmography that it’s hard to know where you’d go after “Miss Julie,” especially since if you like Farrell in period duds, the further options are mostly things like the terrible “Winter’s Tale” and the immensely disappointing Robert Towne movie “Ask the Dust,” along with WWII-era tales “Hart’s War” and “The Way Back,” none of which we can wholeheartedly recommend. Your best bet would be to spool back a few centuries to Terrence Malick‘s “The New World,” (beware you don’t overshoot and end up at “Alexander”) though it’s apples and oranges to “Miss Julie” in every other way.
“The Lobster” (2015)
It’s a little unfair to put a film on this list that most will not yet have seen, but frankly there are not going to be many opportunities to talk up Yorgos Lanthimos‘ brilliant “The Lobster” that we don’t take. Also, it felt impossible for me to ignore, as this is the tipping point title after which I consider myself a genuine Farrell fan. The lead here, David, is an extraordinarily difficult role to play —while the other supporting turns can show up briefly and be relatively one-note (though the tremendous cast invariably do a lot more with them), it falls on Farrell’s shoulders to negotiate the film’s rhythms throughout its two very different halves. However, playing the audience surrogate in this bizarre world which is still one in which David himself must feel relatively at home, Farrell is somehow consummately believable. And he is also twistedly, deadpan funny in only the way that someone in on the joke and yet playing it straight-faced can be —witness the beautiful, deeply hilarious hesitation when David is asked to define his sexuality. Much was made of Farrell’s “dadbod” paunch in the film and his willingness to transform his physical appearance, but it’s his psychological transformation that really deserves praise; he has rarely before been convincingly cast as an everyman, as though the ineffable fact of his charisma makes such a thing a struggle. But Farrell, who can be prone to overacting, using those beetly eyebrows to telegraph emotion like semaphore, underplays here perfectly: he tamps his starriness right down and beds into this off-kilter world just as wholly as he beds into his comfy body. And so this role feels like the missing puzzle piece to an acceptance of him as a complete actor: we don’t just root for him because he’s the hero or hiss at him because he’s the villain, we are him. Even within this most absurd world, Farrell is compellingly, touchingly ordinary and it makes “The Lobster” his most extraordinary role to date.
See Also: There’s not a lot comparable to “The Lobster” in Farrell’s (or anyone’s) filmography, but to see him ugly up to more grotesque effect, you could always check out “Horrible Bosses” which is fun enough until it loses steam, while the black comic vein of Lanthimos’ film is maybe closest to a more surreal take on Farrell’s collaborations with Martin McDonagh (“In Bruges” and “Seven Psychopaths”) inasmuch as it’s close to anything at all.
These are by no means Farrell’s only good roles, but in addition to those recommended as alternates in the list above, Michael Mann’s “Miami Vice” deserves a shout out —not just because it’s an unfairly maligned movie, but because Farrell is good in it, rustling up palpable chemistry with love interest Gong Li, if not with co-star Jamie Foxx. His first big post-breakout role in Steven Spielberg’s “Minority Report” is also a strong turn; Peter Weir‘s “The Way Back” is a bit turgid, but Farrell’s borderline psychotic character is one of its livelier elements; while more recently he was enjoyably off-the-leash in the schlocky “Fright Night” and more controlled in tasteful supporting roles in both Scott Cooper‘s “Crazy Heart” and John Lee Hancock’s “Saving Mr Banks.” Of his rising-star phase films, “The Recruit” with Al Pacino is surprisingly ok, and while “S.W.A.T.” is pretty dumb, it functions fine as mindless guilty-pleasure fun. For the next eight weeks or so, he’ll be on your small screens as volatile cop Ray Velcoro in “True Detective”; long-gestating serial killer flick “Solace,” with Anthony Hopkins and Abbie Cornish, is due to bow at some point this year too; as will the terrific “The Lobster,” so any way you look at it, 2015 has all the makings of a banner year for the star. Hope you enjoyed this whistle-stop tour, feel free to tell us your favorite Farrell role, which if any gave you your Damscene conversion moment, or why I’m way off base about any of above, in the comments below.