Elijah Wood
Performer for Our Time
FOREVER YOUNG
(1992)
EJW's Performance
|
|
Elijah Wood Performer for Our Time FOREVER YOUNG EJW's Performance |
|
FOREVER YOUNG (1992) |
|
|
|
Spoiler
|
Edward C. Patterson, site owner |
|
|
Alert
|
||
| After starring roles in Paradise
and Radio Flyer, Elijah Wood took second billing in Forever Young,
and no wonder. This is Mel Gibson’s film. The work put Elijah Wood, at his
own admission in later years, in a precarious position. He had to rely on
improvisation, as his part is short-scripted, and even more precarious,
he had to play a kid. He considered leaving the profession during
the making of this film. That would have been a sad thing for all. You might
say, Elijah was eleven years old playing an eleven year old—that’s perfect
casting. Except, every Elijah Wood role to date and most of the roles that
followed, although he was chronologically the correct age (a kid), he had
to play and inhabit characters with very adult problems—Separation (Paradise),
Adult abuse (Radio Flyer), Guilt (Avalon), Mass murder (The Witness), Death
and a monster Cousin (The Good Son), A bad script (North) and Facing a Harsh
Existence (The War). In Forever Young, Nat Cooper’s biggest problem
is adopting Mel Gibson as a father figure. And with Mel’s big blue eyes,
Elijah’s big blue eyes were relegated (on purpose) to second fiddle. Some
hotshot child actor was not going to upstage gorgeous Mel Gibson. So, for
all practical purposes, Elijah Wood in Forever Young was cast against
type. The challenge was just delivering the part and collecting the salary.
That being said, Elijah Wood does a bang up job in this very sweet, sentimental film—a favorite with the luncheon crowds. It has a strong plot line and flow. It’s well directed—Mel Gibson is great and the supporting cast delivers the goods. Elijah is—well, he’s just a kid. We see him with his friend eating Twinkies, riding a bike and joking with his Mom. All smiles. All popped eyes and lots of front tooth space. When Nat finds Daniel’s capsule, the audience knows whats inside, so Elijah really needs to work hard to show terror and yet, funnel it into energy instead of wimpy moans and groans. He does a lot of running and shouting. He nails the kid thing quite well. Elijah is given very few riveting or even pivotal scenes. But when Elijah Wood gets his teeth into something that shows his mettle, he shines. This first happens when he encounters Alice in the library. He’s interested in her. But, "I’m in the library on a Saturday. She’ll think I’m a geek." When he compliments her on her dress, he starts off well —"Alice—nice dress." Then ruins it with "Looks like wallpaper." "Bitchin’ nail polish—looks like blood." Finally, the random book he grabs to show he’s in the library to read, is Little Women. The scene is meant to be comic relief. But Elijah Wood knows it is also meant to show that Nat has a real deficiency—the lack of a father figure to guide him in the subject of girls. He plays the scene as far from the kid as possible. No trains, planes or racing cars. There’s genuine hormones running. Especially at the end when he declares— "I am a geek." (Money shot). Elijah Wood, for the next stretch of the film, becomes punctuation. One cute scene, when he slices the onion and cries, allows Elijah to give us his agony face. But in a comic setting. Of course, Elijah knows not to slice the onion, but to chop it up like an Attila the Hun on a good day. On the roof, Nat asks Daniel for advice about girls. It’s a nice scene. But this reviewer got snippets of two future images—the opening of The War, with Stu Simmons sitting in the tree, and the older Elijah as Jones sitting on the roof in All I Want/Try Seventeen. The next big moment for Elijah is when he climbs a tree and sings to Alice. Again, it’s comic relief, of the sweetest kind, because he delivers the song "You are my sunshine" with real warmth and ardor. We laugh at the kid (maybe with a little ahhhh how sweet), but we hear the adult beneath. Nat has taken the advice of the man who is quickly becoming his father-image. This is underscored, when Elijah gives Daniel the jacket. The jacket is an important symbol. When Daniel wakes up after 50 years, he snaps at Nat’s jacket. It’s Nat’s jacket that allows him to find the Coopers. Now, Nat gives Daniel a new jacket, as a son would give a father—a protection from the cold and from the wind. In return, Daniel teaches Nat, like a son, how to fly. The Tree House scene, where Elijah learns to fly is similar in content to Radio Flyer, Elijah’s other 1992 film (beside the riveting short The Witness) and has some future reminiscence to The Bumblebee Flies Anyway (2000). However, the tree house flying scene, with the help of storm and camera angles is quite convincing. Mel and Elijah work well together feeding off each other’s imagination. The viewer is really convinced that they are flying. Elijah’s importance in the film fast-forwards again until the climatic scene when he is a stow-a-way on Daniel’s stolen (borrowed) plane. In this instance, Nat needs to fly and land a real plane and he does it. Again the jacket comes into play. "What the heck are you doing here?" Daniel asks. "You forgot your jacket." Daniel smiles, and Elijah gives us another money shot, a smile that exudes I love you Dad. Landing the plane is very exciting. Even though there’s not much of a character for Elijah to inhabit, he does inhabit the moment and we do sit at the edge of our seats. "Watch the Horizon," Daniel says as he slips into old age. "Watch the Horizon! Watch the Horizon! O Crap!" And when the plane is stopped just inches from the house, Nat gets the ultimate paternal approval— "Show off!" —but not the culminating point of the movie, which goes to Daniel and Helen (as it should). Nat becomes a symbol at the films end—a three hanky, matinee tear jerker. He walks off with the old couple—cadence. Bravo. Roll the credits. Elijah Wood’s performance in Forever Young is first class, despite his own assessment of the role and his abilities. Some critics call it A step back for the child actor. But, I feel they miss an important point. The roll of an eleven-year-old kid played by an eleven-year-old-going-on-twenty actor is hard. Yer told to be cute and smile and play and frolic. Despite that, Elijah showed that he knew the character and took every chance to milk his scenes. He also showed he could be subtle—I call this punctuation. Elijah Wood was able to develop that subtlety to a master’s pitch in later films, particularly one of his best performances as Patrick in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, where his character is almost a Where’s Waldo personage. But his acting talent fills every scene he is in, almost in and believe it or not, not in. Amazing. I believe that as early as Forever Young, Elijah learned that he could punctuate a film and still make a difference. And here’s the bottom line. Is Elijah Wood essential to the film Forever Young? No, he’s not. Was Elijah Wood essential to the success of the film Forever Young? Absolutely. When the general public is asked about Elijah Wood, they remember three things—Frodo Baggins, Radio Flyer and Forever Young. I for one am glad that in his next film The Adventures of Huck Finn he gets to play the most adult child in American literature; and his days of playing a kiddy kid were over. Even so, he still never made the mistake of playing a child in a children’s picture. Only adult films for the prodigal talents of Elijah Wood. |