Why I love Daniel Day-Lewis’ performance in The… | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

Why I love Daniel Day-Lewis’ per­for­mance in The Last of the Mohicans

15 Jul 2017

Words by Sam Bowles

Close-up of a serious-looking man with long dark hair, holding a device in his hand against a blurred natural background.
Close-up of a serious-looking man with long dark hair, holding a device in his hand against a blurred natural background.
He’s nev­er been bet­ter than in Michael Mann’s his­tor­i­cal epic.

Fol­low­ing the announce­ment that über-method man Daniel Day-Lewis is hang­ing up his act­ing spurs – his last film will be Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phan­tom Thread – thoughts inevitably turn to which roles this cel­e­brat­ed screen actor will be most remem­bered for. You could make the case for his Oscar-win­ning turn as dis­abled artist Christy Brown in My Left Foot, or as ego-the-size-of-Texas oil­man Daniel Plain­view in There Will Be Blood.

Then there’s his turn as Czech doc­tor Tomas in The Unbear­able Light­ness of Being, which prompt­ed Pauline Kael’s mem­o­rable descrip­tion of Day-Lewis in the New York­er as a mus­cu­lar tooth­pick”. Per­son­al­ly, I will always love his all-action por­tray­al of fron­tiers­man Hawk­eye in Michael Mann’s The Last of The Mohi­cans.

The film opens on three Mohawk tribes­men charg­ing through the forests of mid-18th cen­tu­ry New York State. The man lead­ing the way stands out not just for his speed but also his eth­nic­i­ty – he’s unmis­tak­ably a white man in Native Amer­i­can dress. This is Hawk­eye, adopt­ed son of Mohawk leader Chin­gach­gook. Every­thing about him reveals a man at one with his envi­ron­ment: his grace, his dri­ve, his sin­gle-mind­ed intent. An off-cam­era war between the British and the French for con­trol of the Amer­i­can colonies is rag­ing, but Hawk­eye and his com­pan­ions’ focus is unwavering.

Life and death are being decid­ed else­where, but this is no dif­fer­ent. The Mohi­cans are hunt­ing elk and their liveli­hood is at stake. Nat­u­ral­ly, it’s our hero Hawkeye’s job to make the kill. And with at least a minute to reload a flint­lock rifle, it real­ly is a one-shot kind of deal. The cam­er­a­work by Dante Spin­ot­ti (who also worked with Mann on Heat and The Insid­er) is stun­ning, and cap­tures the moment of aim­ing-to-shoot in three dif­fer­ent frame sizes: first a long shot tak­ing in the whole of Day-Lewis’ phys­i­cal­i­ty as Hawk­eye rais­es his enor­mous rifle with cal­cu­lat­ed pre­ci­sion; then clos­er on him from the waist up; then tighter still, just his face and the gun. Rack focus to the muz­zle as it fires. And in the moment of death, as the ani­mal drops to the ground, the music cuts out.

It’s no acci­dent that Day-Lewis looks so at home with a weapon in the wilder­ness. We’ve all heard the sto­ries of his com­mit­ment to prepar­ing for roles. With The Last of the Mohi­cans, this involved learn­ing to sur­vive in a for­est: trap­ping and skin­ning ani­mals, mak­ing fires, fir­ing guns on the run. On a Blu-ray extra Day-Lewis explains, There’s no wast­ed expe­ri­ence if in the dis­cov­ery of it, you’re becom­ing at ease with it.” It’s not sim­ply about learn­ing to load and fire a gun in the wilder­ness, it has to be con­vinc­ing, it has to look like he’s done it a thou­sand times before. When Hawk­eye shoots that elk, we feel the character’s expe­ri­ence and exper­tise. He’s done this before, and he’ll do it again.

Such ded­i­ca­tion to immers­ing him­self in each role invari­ably leads to great per­for­mances, but there is a down­side to this approach: what to do when film­ing is over. Day-Lewis has spo­ken of this come­down peri­od as one of bereave­ment”, a sit­u­a­tion in which no part of you wish­es to leave that char­ac­ter behind.” This helps to explain the fre­quent­ly lengthy breaks between projects and his cur­rent wish to call it a day. Of course, it’s not the first time he has appeared to walk away from acting.

Day-Lewis famous­ly took semi-retire­ment’ in the late 90s, at one point train­ing as a cob­bler in Flo­rence. Was he secret­ly prep­ping for a role? Appar­ent­ly, he just real­ly likes shoes. Day-Lewis returned to act­ing for Mar­tin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, but there’s some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing, almost roman­tic, about an actor will­ing learn new skills, a new craft, for their own sake rather than for a spe­cif­ic part.

The word now is that Day-Lewis plans to throw him­self into dress­mak­ing, hav­ing fall­en in love with fash­ion design while research­ing Phan­tom Thread. But, as with shoe­mak­ing, one can’t help but won­der if this will prove to be just a lengthy hia­tus. This is a man who loves to learn new things, often becom­ing new peo­ple in the process. Ulti­mate­ly, an actor always needs an audience.

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