He was one of the students of Dead Poets Society; the love interest from the Before Sunrise trilogy; the non-genetically enhanced young man who dreamed of the stars of Gattaca (with Uma Thurman, whom he married the following year, and Gore Vidal in acting roles); the rookie trained by a corrupt cop from Training day; one of the two brothers who have the brilliant idea of robbing their parents' jewelry store in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Lumet's gritty thriller, with Philip Seymour Hoffman; the tormented priest in Schrader's The Reverend; the terrifying masked psychopath from Black Phone, and Julia Roberts' husband in the recently released Netflix dystopia Leave the World Behind… I'm sure you've already guessed who I'm talking about.
Yes, from the actor Ethan Hawke (Austin, Texas, 1970), who you may not know has a parallel career as a director – he has just filmed Wildcat, about Flannery O'Connor, starring his daughter Maya – and another as a writer. He is not the typical famous person who decides to publish a book: he has five, three of them novels and the most recent one has just been translated: A brilliant ray of darkness. He answers us by phone from his home in New York to talk about her.
The narrative is the sum of three layers: a novel about a thirty-something actor and a Broadway production of Shakespeare's Henry IV in which he participates. Secondly, a novel about fame, with its positive side (easy to flirt; in its pages there is a lot of sex, very explicit and at some point a hyperbolic point) and its negative side (being chased down the street to take selfies with you, even if they don't really know who you are other than that you appear in a movie). And finally, it is a novel about a man in crisis. He is in the process of separating from a singer, because he has been caught red-handed in an infidelity (echoes of the end of his marriage to Uma Thurman resonate here). The guy, confused, tries to mature and to do so he looks for father figures in the divo who plays Falstaff in the play, in the director and in the veteran who plays the king and gives him advice that is one of the best phrases in the book. : “Lead a boring life and make your art exciting.”
On why a novel about an actor, Hawke reflects: “Because the best thing is to write about what you know. And if I know something very well, it is the life of an actor. “I had a lot of things to say about it.” The character has some points in common with him (he also played the villain Hotspur in a montage of Henry IV). Are you worried that it will read like a camouflaged autobiography? He responds that “no, it doesn't scare me, otherwise I wouldn't have written the book. There are, of course, very personal things in it, but I have already written several books and I have learned not to be afraid to explore. So the only thing I was worried about was building an interesting character and letting everyone do the reading they want. The novel is a great metaphor for the life of an actor who is getting into a role. That is the topic that interested me the most, the process of maturation, of self-knowledge through the character he plays. We all think we know who we are, we tend to see ourselves as good people, but when you put yourself in the shoes of an evil person, you have another perspective on yourself and your weaknesses. Only by assuming them can you mature.”
Among other things, there is in its pages a reflection on masculinity and the need to "rethink some things that are not as we had been told about sex, fatherhood, family... The protagonist loses his self-esteem and must self-discover to move forward." ”.
The novel is orchestrated in a very ingenious way, replicating the five acts of the play, whose assembly process continues from the beginning of rehearsals until the curtain falls on the last performance. While this happens, the protagonist tries to put order in his life and once and for all face the maturity that he is already knocking on his door. Why has he chosen to set the story in the world of theater and not in the filming of a film? And why Shakespeare and this play in particular? “Because theater is a very old profession, you feel like you are part of a long tradition. In the staging of a play you feel how something is born that will finally die when the performances are over. Anyway, one day I plan to write another novel about the world of cinema. As for the piece, I needed to use one that I knew well. I tried it first with King Lear, but I have never acted in it and it didn't work for me.”
The parallelism between the work and the protagonist's adventures is very well constructed in the book, which has a very American feel: direct tone, agile dialogues and a rhythm that never loses steam. About the difference between acting and writing, Hawke tells us: “They are two antithetical things and that is why I enjoy them. When you act, in film or theater, you are always surrounded by people. They are collective creations. When you write, you are alone and I like that too. I am an already very experienced actor, but still a young writer, I am still learning. As I get older I hope to write a lot more.”
