A moment of silence, please — I have truly depressing news to report. Long years of eating English food have wreaked havoc upon the visage of an Oscar-winning desi actor:
Ben… Kingsley… plays… FAGIN! Aww yeah! That’s like Samuel L. Jackson as Ravana or Hanuman vs. the Rock. (And I think we know which one wins.)
Kingsley hams his way through an Oliver Twist revival by pedophile filmmaker Roman Polanski due out this month. Charles Dickens meets a suitable boy — the paid-by-the-word weepies collide in copyright-free drama nirvana. But seriously, after the melo-hungama of Dickens, surely Ben-ji could find it in his heart to pay Bollyrespects?
Polanski struggled with the eternal, Shylockian question of ‘who is a Jew’:
Born in 1837, Dickens’s Fagin The paid-by-the-word weepies collidewas larded with ethnic stereotypes from his first appearance as “a very old, shriveled Jew… Alec Guinness, in David Lean’s 1948 version, spoke in a droning lisp and appeared with hooded eyes and an enormous prosthetic hook nose… it also resembled anti-Semitic caricatures in… Nazi Germany. At a theater in Berlin the audience was so offended by Fagin’s characterization that it rioted… in Carol Reed’s 1968 film version… he played with gay stereotypes, mincing his way through “Pick a Pocket or Two” and twirling a frilly pink parasol in “I’d Do Anything.”
Kingsley’s model for Fagin was the proprietor of a junk shop in Manchester… “I used to stare up at this man who had teeth like a horse, a very, very grimy face, and he wore an old coat, on top of an old coat, on top of an old coat, on top of heaven knows what, and it was tied ’round the waist with rope.” … when his little brother asked the shopkeeper for a Penny Black, one of philately’s rarest treasures, the man softly crowed… “Ohhhh, yer askin’ for the moooon! Yer askin’ for the moon!” [Link]
Then suddenly we’re into Tarot cards:
… “I think we have to destroy the stereotypes and replace them with archetypes… My struggle with Fagin was to present the Collapsed Father.” [Link]
I admire dramatic range, the protean morphs, more than the artful dodgers who play only one role, themselves. Beneath the fakey beard, Big Ben looks like he’s having a ball. Please, Sir, may I have some more?
Sony rides its off-kilter Trajan horse to the cinemas on Sep. 30. Watch the trailer. Here’s the official site.
His best role was in Sexy Beast
” His best role was in Sexy Beast”
It was. Recently, in “House of Sand and Fog”, he also did a great job.
He has done some goofy movies too, one with Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts, “The Conspiracy Theory”
Yes! Superb performance. I wonder if Toral saw that movie. Doubt it.
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blockquote He has done some goofy movies too, one with Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts, “The Conspiracy Theory”
That was the other Bald Brit(tm) … Patrick Stewart. Kingsley and Stewart get mistaken for each other quite often.
Perhaps Shree Kingsley could have taken a few lessons from apna Bollywood people
He looks like one of those monsters in the Lord of the Rings or that gimp who helps Frodo get to the magic mountain and then wants the ring and is conflicted and dies in the end.
Indians claim ben kingsley but ben kingsley has never returned the favor.