But I do long for a different Tom Hanks. The actor in whose eyes you could see absolute wonder and joy in Big Love, absolute humanity and compassion in Forrest Gump, extraordinary pain and resolve in Philadelphia and loss and love in Sleepless In Seattle. Silly, heartbreaking, sentimental – all essential Hanks, all essentially alone.
Hanks has done some of his best work alone. Remember the shape of his performance in Cast Away? Hanks spent roughly a third of the movie’s 2 hours, 23 minutes alone on a tropical island, creating a symphony of silence.
Where is the hero we knew we could count on even before he made those movies? The Apollo 13 Hanks? The Saving Private Ryan Hanks? Even his ruthless hit man-father in Road To Perdition, one of the darkest characters Hanks has done, was played with such a steady hand that you trusted him to do the right thing when it mattered. How much do we believe in Hanks? He was No. 1 on Forbes’ list of most-trusted celebrities in 2006, the last time the magazine checked, even beating out Oprah.
I wonder why Hanks isn’t getting better movies. It should be his time. He’s our Jimmy Stewart, a heartland guy, good people. As a reader recently put it to me, Hanks remains one of “Hollywood’s gentler souls”. That’s what most moviegoers love about him. Edging toward 53, Hanks is the boy next-door grown into an ordinary Joe of a man that we could imagine talking to over the backyard fence.
He’s got, as my mom would say, a nice face, open and honest. What he doesn’t have is the swooning looks of a Brad Pitt or George Clooney; the chiselled hardness of Tom Cruise; the defiant aloneness of Denzel Washington; the crazed passion of Mel Gibson or the eclectic dramatic moves of Johnny Depp or Robert Downey Jr.
So is it Hollywood then or Hanks? Probably a bit of both. The passing years have moved him into acting’s middle-earth, just shy of hell, that place between headlining a movie and the rich character standing slightly left of centerstage. That’s not to say he can’t do both. It’s just that the rules of the town are more interested in another Angels & Demons than in Saving Private Ryan.
The actor is still a big movie star, still averaging 13 movies a decade as he has since the 1980s. He has proven economic power.
Maybe the actor has simply grown tired of the movie game. He’s certainly not creatively dry, having a hand in producing some of television’s most ambitious projects, including the extraordinary performance piece that is HBO’s Big Love and mini-series that embody high-minded quality: John Adams, Band Of Brothers and From The Earth To The Moon.
Occasionally he tries his hand behind the camera, directing (and writing) an episode on his TV projects here and there. He’s dropped into a few smaller movies, cameos for friends and relations. And maybe there’s something in development that will allow him to be exceptional again.
But second acts are always the hardest, the meat of a movie, a career, a life. I hope for a strong one from Hanks. I miss him. You know the one I mean.