The Terror - Jared Harris and his Rembrandt Eyes

'At the still point, there the dance is' (T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets) 

*

Some phrases I really dislike. 'Guilty pleasure' and 'going forwards' are right at the top of the list. I've certainly wrote about the former before and I won't write about the latter because it would mean typing it out again. I'm going to add one more to this list: 'character actor'. I don't understand what it's meant to signify. But it certainly - to my mind anyway - leaves a slightly pejorative impression, as if the actor in question can't quite pull off the status of Hollywood leading man or woman. Perhaps attractiveness - or what conventionally and dully passes for attractiveness - also plays a part in this. Whenever you see it attached to an actor - and it does tend to be applied to mainly men - you can bet that the actor in question will have a certain grizzled quality. They might also be balding, portly or even have some kind of disfigurement. Anyway, it's a ridiculous and insulting moniker. If an actor isn't playing a character, then what exactly is he doing? 

Watching Jared Harris (for the second time) in The Terror, a ludicrously entertaining and atmospheric tale based upon the doomed search for the North West Passage, reminded me that he has also been described as a character actor.

The Terror - Life in a blue suit

First of all, I should flesh out some further praise for The Terror (did I tell you I'd watched it twice)? Maybe it's the sailor in me, but I adored it. The gloomy below-decks claustrophobia, the sight of a bowsprit and a foremast looming out of the fog (yes, one of my ships did have actual masts), the slanted cinematography that gives you a sense that the horizontal can't be taken for granted at sea, the floggings ('as a boy') that are inflicted as punishment (alright, this practise might have been a little before my service). And finally, it also features a monstrous man-faced polar bear called Tuunbaq that goes around devouring sailors. Perfect!      

But to return to my bugbear: Harris isn't a character actor; he's a great actor. Good actors use their eyes; great actors use their eyes and stillness. Harris's face in The Terror is often motionless: pondering, watching, remembering. And it is in these moments that it takes on the look of a Rembrandt self-portrait. Part of this is Harris's resemblance to the Dutch artist: weathered, features somewhat scrunched up, an uneven skin-tone that is very Northern European. I've spent the past hour leafing through Simon Schama's wonderful book Rembrandt's Eyes, seeking out which of the self-portraits illustrates this best. 

Jared Harris as Captain Francis Crozier

It's certainly not my favourite - and the one I know best as it resides just a few miles away from me on the northern edge of Hampstead Heath - Self-Portrait with Two Circles. The face is a little too full, even if the dark eyes and troubled brow are perfect. Nor is it one of the youthful self-portraits - Harris has a face that will reside perennially in middle-age. No, the one that I've clearly had in mind, a painting that I have never seen in the impastoed flesh - and one not featured in Schama's book - is the magnificent Self-Portrait with Beret and Turned-Up Collar. 

 

Rembrandt, Self-Portrait with Beret and Turned-Up Collar (1659)

It's an image that embodies and encapsulates a life filled with both failure and triumph. Look at the eyes. And remember - or look again - at Harris's gaze as he stares out from the upper deck of HMS Terror, or across the barren wastes of King William Island. Both the artist and actor's gaze are weary from experience, yet still manage to search and enquire and leave you transfixed. Harris's Captain Crozier has been rejected - more than once - by the woman he loves, and despite a period of boozy and self-imposed internal exile is still able, eventually, to channel that unrequitement into a deep sense of duty towards his men. I love the contradictions at the heart of his character and the skill in which he delivers them: dignity yet pathos, anger and kindness, humour and despondence. It's a wonderfully human performance. And that most of it is delivered whilst standing completely still makes it all the more impressive.  

A self-portrait by its very nature is still. But a self-portrait by Rembrandt gives you a sense of, not just movement and a life thoroughly lived, but also a mind buzzing with thought. Rembrandt's eyes fix us from a distant past, nearly four hundred years ago, yet are as alive as the most brilliant photograph. This conundrum is captured - or rather hinted at - by T.S. Eliot in Four Quartets - 'at the still point, there the dance is' - and those are the lines that come to mind when I look at a Rembrandt portrait. Incidentally, after dipping into Carlo Rovelli's new book Helgoland, I've got to wondering as to whether or not Eliot was aware of Werner Heisenberg's 'uncertainty principle' when he composed his famous lines on stillness and motion (Rovelli, without overly dumbing down, delivers a poetic and beautifully elusive explanation of the theory).

What creates that maelstrom then, that quiet fury that is borne from a stillness? Delving into the Aladdin's cave of the internet reveals a close up of one of Rembrandt's eyes from the above self-portrait. 

Rembrandt, Detail from Self-Portrait with Beret and Turned-Up Collar (1659)

Immediately I can't help but think of one of Turner's later landscapes: the swirls, the seemingly loose yet controlled application of paint - there's another contradiction - the way that you're both drawn towards the centre of the eye - or in the case of Turner, the centre of a storm or a tempest - yet immediately you need to retreat back out to the edges. There's a mystery to it. It's why, whenever you enter an art gallery that contains a portrait by Rembrandt, you will always find at least one person with their face as close as possible to the painting (it's often me).  

Which is all really a way to get you to watch The Terror and revel in Jared Harris's quiet yet dazzling performance. And perhaps, even, to plant a seed that finds its way to some brave director who might want to take on a life of Rembrandt, but is put off for the moment because they have not been able to find the perfect leading man.