Moss and Levine push back against his generalizations, accusations, and abuse. Aaronau is not. he just sits there and takes it. “Do you think this is abuse?” Blake thundered at him. “I can’t stand this. How can I withstand the abuse I received while sitting there?” In that delicate moment, Arkin’s face becomes like a mask, trying to keep it but failing. do. If you look closely and look into his eyes, he’s about to cry. He held his breath for a long time when he finally disappeared from the player of interest.
It’s this subtlety that distinguishes Arkin’s character and performance from the roaring variety of “Glengarry Glen Ross.” Pacino’s Roma was all bravado, much of it earned. Levine of Lemon and Moss of Harris try to do the same, yelling in unison at those who do them wrong, and slyly pitching to those on the other end of the phone, though their pomp It looks more like a rant. Aaronau, on the other hand, is completely vulnerable, open with despair and fear. “I’m sure he didn’t mean it about sales cuts,” he insisted, leaving the second Blake, but the denial quickly replaced by gloom. “They’re going to kick me out of the job,” he groaned to Moss, placing the blame on himself rather than on the office’s draconian standards or the burgeoning economy outside the office. “There’s something wrong with me,” he insists. “I can’t close it anymore.”
In this debilitated state, he goes to Moss for spiritual support and encouragement. Moss seizes on that need and uses it to lure Aaronau into a devious plan to break into Premier Property’s offices and steal property. new lead, good Glengarry leads. The bullish Moss baits Hook to involve the weaker man, plant ideas, and prompt further investigation. Look at Arkin’s eyes in this sequence, the way he listens, and how he takes in and processes the information he receives. Listen carefully as he says things like: speaking Understand the difference between the two versions of “about this” and artfully convey it to your listeners. And notice how he realizes he’s complicit in a crime just by hearing it. The simplicity of that recognition on his face, and the way he expresses it in just one word (“I”), is a display of astonishing acting skill as well as a heartbreaking moment of recognition of the character. There is also.
Arkin and Harris perform this duet sequence like two jazz musicians exchanging bebop riffs. This relationship is established not only by what they say, but how they say it. Breakthrough tempos, jargon, sentences, and even interruptions along the way.Others are going, but sometimes because I can’t wait to tell you what’s going on their Mind. Acting out Mamet’s highly stylized dialogue isn’t easy. When the rhythm is off, it can feel unbearably phony that it is “written” rather than spoken. But Arkin shows his full potential here against Harris, and later in a duet with fellow playwright Pacino.
But the genius of his casting is that he can also use his innate sense of comic timing to draw laughter in these jagged exchanges and later exaggerate his feelings of anger at the crime (” Criminals come, they rob, they steal phones! ”) and his interrogation by the police (“I met Gestapo tactics! ”). But his best moments as Aaronau are his quiet moments, like when he gently begs Moss (after being caught in a mousetrap), “Why are you doing this to me?” He’s not playing for sympathy. This is a silent cry of abandonment and despair.
