★★½              By Ambrose Vok                    September 11, 2089

Five minutes into The Mephisto of Manhattan, we are introduced to the film’s main character. This comes as the culmination of a strong in media res opening where we begin in the midst of a protest outside New York City Hall, and in a long take move inside the building to its even more chaotic commotion. Reporters, staffers, and activists are running around as a bill of apparently considerable magnitude is about to be voted on. We follow a staffer through the hallways until he meets his boss, a city council member who is visibly stressed and nervous. The staffer and councilmember continue walking through the building, the staffer coaching his boss on what to say and what not to say before they finally arrive at an office. The councilmember takes a deep breath and walks in. It’s a dark room with a single window at the back that a man stands staring out of. We only see his back as the councilmember carefully steps forward and thanks the man at the window for seeing him. No response. The councilmember begins talking about conversations he’s had with other members of the council in which they’ve agreed to make certain concessions in order to vote down the bill. Again, no response. Finally, the councilmember asks that the man at the window reconsider his position. The man at the window turns around, walks to his desk, and stands over the councilmember. At last, we see his face, the rugged face of Henry Desmond Tootsley with a quiet ferocity in his eyes. He smirks a little, and says, “Uh-hyurr a fu-u-u-ny ghuy, Rico.” I nearly spat out my coffee.

Everyone I can find insists that this accent is accurate. Historians point out that Phineas Pittmore, Tootsley’s character on whom the film focuses, was born on one of the Texan colonies in Finland, and thus would have indeed had the characteristic jumpy drawl. Linguists and dialect coaches claim this is the best version of this accent they have ever seen in film (I don’t know what exactly they would be using as a basis for comparison aside from perhaps Jared Leto’s final performance as the voice of the chicken in the remake of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest that took the title literally). People point out Mr. Tootsley’s pedigree as a three-time Oscar winner and insist that he would not have taken up such an accent if it were not true to the character. I don’t buy it. One can come up with all the rationalizations they want for why this accent was in the movie, but that doesn’t change the fact that this character is supposed to be a scheming, soulless mastermind whose most popular nickname, the one which gave the film its title, literally compared him to the devil, yet it is near impossible to take him seriously when he chokes out every line with the voice of Goofy in the middle of a heroin overdose.

Henry Desmond Tootsley is one of the most celebrated actors of our generation, revered for his total commitment to all variety of roles, and for his constantly taking up the greatest physical, mental, and emotional challenges the craft of acting can provide him with. He has certainly challenged himself here, challenged himself to make convincingly intimidating a character who talks as though all his vocal cords had been ripped out and put back together with Scotch tape by a dog trying his best. This is not an exercise in disappearing into a character and fully immersing the audience within the world this character is master over. This is an exercise by Mr. Tootsley in getting the audience to applaud and marvel at his own performance. This is the tyranny of a single ego over the good of the entire project. Some submit to that ego and point out how he hides a layer of vulnerability and fear behind his steely, authoritative exterior, how his emotional breakdowns at key moments in the film feel particularly raw by dint of how hard his character is vainly trying to keep himself together. But I cannot get past the character’s accent to think seriously about any other aspect of his psychology. This performance is an absurd stunt to see how far the worship of a diva actor will go. I am unimpressed. The emperor has no clothes.            

What I must acknowledge about Mr. Tootsley’s performance, however, is that in a certain way, it worked. Watching the film, I was entirely focused on his performance and nothing else. I have spent almost no space in this review discussing any other aspects of the film or the artistry of the people who worked on them. I have not mentioned the film’s wonderful editing, which traverses its nearly forty-year timespan with fluency and steadiness, such that the aging of the characters and the New York they live in feels neither sudden nor surprising. I have not mentioned the strong performance from Demetrius Otterburg as Phineas Pittmore’s longtime rival Ezekiel L. Valentine, where he displays an earnestness that gradually morphs into spite and obsession as he gets betrayed and humiliated by Pittmore time after time. I have not mentioned the art direction that traces a clear line between the early-century feverish metropolis of New York and its current form as a mere playground for the ultra-wealthy, while at the same time secluding Pittmore further and further from the city he shaped. Henry Desmond Tootsley wanted the film to be all about him, and he succeeded. So much the worse for the film.