The Actor, draped in the aesthetic of the golden age of Hollywood, could, on the surface, be mistaken for having more style than substance. Yet, the film does a masterful job of interweaving gripping performances and darker themes that go deeper than glitz and glamour, resulting in a moving drama that subtly explores themes of human connection and life purpose. It’s better than the overused critic term “a love letter to cinema”; instead, it is a beautifully honest letter to the human condition.
The Actor is a crime mystery directed by Duke Johnson (Anomalisa) from a screenplay co-written with Stephen Cooney. The film is based on a novel written by author Donald E. Westlake in 1963 that was published posthumously in 2010 under the title Memory.
The movie follows the journey of Paul Cole (played by André Holland), who is stranded in a mysterious small town with no memory of who he is or how he got there. Without a sense of identity or purpose, he starts from scratch, courting a local costume designer named Edna and working at a local factory.
Paul soon finds out that he is a semi-successful New York actor. As bits and pieces of his past slowly emerge, he attempts to reclaim who he once was, but time is slippery, appearances can’t be trusted, and it’s unclear which of his identities is real. Movie magic runs rampant in The Actor, anchored by grounded performances, making for an intriguing mystery that is ultimately a character study.
At face value, you could take the film as simply a thriller with the ultimate goal of discovering if there is some major “twist” to be had. Is Paul really losing his memory? Can we trust everything that is happening around him?
The film indeed leans into this by incorporating filming techniques that play on the viewers’ senses. The cast is small, but you wouldn’t believe it as there are many characters. That’s because much of the cast plays multiple roles.
The scenes transition often (beautifully) from what would seem like the real world to movie sets without much acknowledgement from the characters when it happens. Paul’s struggle is our show to witness. Paul is (perhaps) an actor, but his actual stage is that of life and how he chooses to live it.
You do not often get a film that invites the audience to actively watch and pay attention to all the details. Director Johnson dares you to question if that is a new character or if you’ve seen that face before under a different identity.
The Actor wants you to be engaged, just as the circumstances happening to Paul on screen implore him to take an active role in figuring out who he ultimately wants to be. The exploration of identity hits home the way it does due to André Holland’s stellar performance. The 1950s glamour aesthetic is overt in the film, but Holland adds weight so that the movie never feels like a 98-minute gimmick.
Paul wakes up in a hospital not knowing who he is, finding himself in a small town with no money to his name and no way to get to his supposed home in New York City. He’s dressed in a fancy enough suit but ultimately ends up working at the local factory in town.
He’s now a working-class man getting his hands dirty on the job and hanging out with the locals. It starkly contrasts the life he may have lived before his accident. And while the dialogue never spells out the storm underneath the surface, Paul is a man who is dealing with trauma—not only from what happened to him—but from things in his past that he may have never fully unpacked.
Themes of identity and human connection are understated in the movie but are there. It’s also interesting considering that Holland, who is Black, is playing Paul in the 1950s. It’s rare to see a leading Black actor in noir mysteries of the 50s—whether back in that time or modern films whose plots take place in that era—and not have the story’s center be around their race.
It was refreshing to watch a film of this era with a character who is Black and not be subjected to dated racial slurs. Then again, it’s telling that we have become so conditioned by the status quo of Hollywood films that we expect racial slurs and tension in the first place. Paul has to choose where he belongs and what class of people feel the most authentic to him, and Holland steps up to the challenge of portraying the complexity in that struggle.
The film begins similar to the style of Rod Sterling’s 1959 series The Twilight Zone. This seems purposeful because while the golden era of Hollywood had lots of glam and mainstream success, The Twilight Zone of that same time made it so its episodes were more overt socio-political commentary, using strange stories to reflect the issues that everyday people face. The choice to lean into this style seems deliberate in making the connection that there is more to the film than what may initially tantalize the eye.
In a time where there is so much sensationalism aimed at distracting and, in the case of the political terrain, demoralizing, The Actor serves as a small film with a sizable ideal of attempting to push for the authentic self beyond the bells and whistles. It doesn’t overstay its welcome, and while the ending may leave more questions than answers, it will no doubt stir a number of emotions in viewers as they contemplate their own play of existence.
NEON will release The Actor in theaters nationwide on March 14, 2025.
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