Father Brendan Flynn in “Doubt” (2008)“Doubt” shows Hoffman at the height of his powers and prestige, squaring off against Meryl Streep, herself at the peak of her abilities, and while it helps that the roles are among the best-written of their careers, their commitment to their characters elevates the film and rids it of any trace of its stage-bound origins (director John Patrick Shanley adapted it from his own play). And Hoffman is extraordinary, pulling off the almost impossible task of making Father Flynn human and real and rounded while preserving a knife-edge ambivalence over the film’s central question: did he do it? When the “it” in question is an issue as hot-button as pedophiliac abuse within the Catholic church, the performance has to be sure-footed indeed, and yet Hoffman delivers in such a way that every single moment, every gesture and reaction rings perfectly true whether viewed through the prism of his guilt or his innocence. With Viola Davis’ perfectly modulated but deeply shocking role rightly turning heads, Amy Adams showing the quiet goodness and generosity that almost defines her as a performer, and Streep in blistering, towering form as the utterly rigid, impossible Sister Aloysius, it feels wrong to single out any one of the four central actors for special praise. But to look at it a different way, we certainly cannot imagine anyone else doing as much with Father Flynn amid this trio of powerhouse female performances. Hoffman sells every shade and nuance of this complex, charismatic but fundamentally unknowable man, preserving his secret, and the film’s, right to the end.
Lester Bangs in “Almost Famous” (2000)
One thing we’re coming to realize over the process of writing this feature: Philip Seymour Hoffman was one of the all-time great phone actors. Even the best can be undone by having to do a scene solo to a handset, but many of the actor’s most memorable scenes are done over the phone, and that’s summed up beautifully by “Almost Famous.” Playing legendary rock critic Lester Bangs, Hoffman really only shares one scene with Cameron Crowe’s surrogate protagonist William Miller (Patrick Fugit), sitting down for a coffee with the kid who he’ll become a sort of mentor for. The rest of the time, he’s delivering advice over the phone, and yet his presence in the movie is utterly indelible. As ever, Hoffman had the bravery to not play Bangs as exactly likable: he’s smug, abrasive, and totally in love with the sound of his own voice, and with the adulation that comes from young William. He’s the ultimate on-screen music nerd, in other words (unseating Jack Black in “High Fidelity,” who’d debuted just a few months earlier). But he’s also a speaker of truth, and a genuine friend, and in his famous “uncool” monologue delivered over the phone near the film’s end, he lets that confident, nay, arrogant, mask slip somewhat, showing both Lester’s loneliness and his genuine gratitude at the connection that arrives with finding someone just like him. He may only be a fleeting presence in the film, but it’s proof that everything was made significantly better with Hoffman.
Caden Cotard in “Synecdoche, New York” (2008)
A great actor of course must be able to be both an “actor” and a “reactor,” and Hoffman was undoubtedly one such performer—seemingly equally at home in the more passive chorus of a large ensemble as he was front and center of a movie that revolved around his character. As rare a quality as that is, it’s rarer still to find a role written that requires the actor to switch seamlessly back and forth between these registers, but Caden, the lead character in Charlie Kaufman’s metatextual, impossible Escher drawing of life, death and the psychology of creative endeavor has to do just that. Half the time, as a playwright launching an ever-more-ambitious art-meets-life project, he’s the twisted, feverish, paranoiac intelligence causing the looping insanity around him; half the time he’s responding to that insanity the way any sane, ordinary man might, with the same bafflement and incomprehension the audience feels. Like so many other times on this list, it’s really hard to imagine that there can even have been anyone else on Kaufman’s shortlist to play the role—Hoffman is both the roiling ocean that buffets us, and the anchor that moors us in this wildly imaginative, dizzyingly complex film. And more surprising still, within this gargantuan thought experiment, he finds moments as emotionally satisfying as anything he’s ever done. Caden may be embarking on a grand folly—the ultimate expression of creative endeavor as a means of cheating death—but Hoffman takes the hubris of that intention and shows us all the humanity and pettiness and fear that lies beneath it. When nothing else makes straightforward, logical sense, the emotional state of Caden, as played by Hoffman, can always be understood, and always, despite the layers of artifice and artiness and artfulness on display here, feels true.
Joel Wilson in “Love Liza” (2002)
In the wake of Hoffman’s tragic early death there are certain performances of his that take on added resonance, whether we want them to or not, and perhaps exhibit A in that regard is Todd Louiso’s underseen but deeply heartfelt “Love Liza.” Filmed from a script by Hoffman’s elder brother Gordy, the actor plays Joel, who develops a gasoline-huffing addiction in the wake of his wife’s unexplained death by suicide. It’s a small film, with moments of indie-film offbeat humor, especially in the odd-couple relationship between Hoffman and Denny (Jack Kehler) somewhat lightening the somber mood. But if the central conceit of Joel not being able to bring himself to open Liza’s suicide note feels a little dramatically manipulated, the performances from Hoffman and also the terminally undervalued Kathy Bates as the dead woman’s mother are nothing if not genuine and moving. Hoffman, be warned, will break your heart in this role, whether he’s uncomprehending, morose and depressive or belligerent and high on fumes, this is a portrait of grief and guilt (“I loved well!” he shouts at his mother-in-law) unflinching in its narrow focus. That does come with a downside, as the film sacrifices momentum and dynamism to stop and stare deeply at this one miserable moment in Joel’s life, but Hoffman’s performance is so searingly sad and seems to come from so deep within that that one moment, so honestly drawn and pitilessly mined, it’s almost enough. Hoffman often brought his particular empathy to ensemble roles, and could rise to the challenge of portraying towering, charismatic leading characters, but in “Love Liza” he brings a character actor’s sensitivity to bear on a big role in a small film, and delivers a beautifully raw portrait of an ordinary man trying to comprehend the unthinkable.
