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These days, there aren't many reasons for us to be grateful for Miramax. Talk is still stinking up newsstands, About Adam unnecessarily inflicted even more Kate Hudson on us, and we're about to be assaulted by more Apocalypse Now than ever before. But despite all their contemporary misdeeds, we still owe Miramax a little debt because, way back in 1994, they gave us all a gift -- a gift called Ewan McGregor.
If not for Miramax's intercession -- their buying Shallow Grave and distributing it in North America -- those of us outside the United Kingdom might never have been introduced to McGregor's many and varied gifts. This commentator vividly remembers the experience of watching Grave for the first time; I couldn't decide whether he was cute or ugly. He is saddled with an unfortunate, feathery haircut, and the costumers dress him in pair after pair of oddly feminine high-waisted stone-washed jeans, the better to highlight his incredibly short torso and skinny legs. And yet, despite these impediments to sexiness, I was fascinated. Of the three roommates, McGregor's Alex gets the least screen time and has the least developed back story, and yet the sheer force of personality with which McGregor imbues the role compels the viewer's attention. There's a scene at a charity ball in which Alex shares an aggressive dance with Kerry Fox's Juliet. They spin; he loses his grip on her hands and flies across the floor, landing on his back. She haughtily stands over him and grinds her high-heeled shoe into his chest. He takes hold of her ankle and steers her toe into his mouth, gently biting down on her shoe. In that moment, McGregor conveys to the audience as much about Alex as Christopher Eccleston, as the more overwrought David, gets across in scene upon scene spelling out his character's decline into madness. In other words, McGregor's an intuitive actor -- one who seems aware that less can be more.
Miramax would bring us more and more McGregor in the coming years; he was basically the Gwyneth Paltrow of 1996, starring in four Miramax movies: Trainspotting, Emma, Brassed Off, and The Pillow Book. (Incidentally, those four movies indicate a broader artistic range than John Travolta has exhibited in twenty-five years.) Equally at ease as a charismatic junkie, a charming Regency-era bounder, a laid-off mid-'80s northern England coal miner, and...uh, some guy who let a chick write erotic calligraphy all over his nude body. (Okay, fine -- we never saw The Pillow Book. We heard that's what it was about.)
Rising to fame around the same time as fellow Miramax hype king Hugh Grant, McGregor left the shambling fop roles to Grant and staked his claim on riskier ground -- pansexual rock stars, criminals of various stripes, stalkers, James Joyce. For the most part, these were dismal financial and critical failures. Hello, A Life Less Ordinary? Nightwatch? Eye of the Beholder? Did that James Joyce movie ever play in a theatre? We're sure McGregor did a fine job in these movies and really gave his all despite the fact that they were clearly doomed, but being the best thing about a bad movie is a bit like being the prettiest turd in the toilet bowl.
Perhaps due to this string of professional embarrassments, McGregor took a break from guaranteed flops to star in a guaranteed hit: the highly punctuated Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. To prepare for his role as the young Obi-Wan Kenobi, McGregor worked to match his voice to that of Alec Guinness, who'd originated the role. Despite a brutally ugly and humiliating hairstyle -- worse, even, than the one with which he'd been afflicted in Shallow Grave -- and even though, apart from literally two cool fight scenes, Obi-Wan spends most of The Phantom Menace engaged in Nancy Drew-ish off-screen research, McGregor honours the hallowed material and gracefully embodies the beloved Obi-Wan without a trace of camp or self-consciousness.
The current Moulin Rouge, on the other hand, is all about camp (if not self-consciousness; if you're concerned about looking foolish, it doesn't do to star in a movie that requires you to cover Wings), but once more, McGregor fully commits himself. Playing the lovelorn poet Christian, McGregor clearly believes in love, above all things; much as he demanded the audience's attention seven years ago in Shallow Grave, McGregor is the soul of artistic conviction here, belting out snatches of "Heroes" and "I Will Always Love You" like his very life depends on it. Love it or hate it, surely everyone agrees that a movie like Moulin Rouge won't work in the least unless its stars give themselves utterly to the world of the film, without any winks or smirks. We can't think of another male star famous enough not to be completely obliterated by Nicole Kidman, yet not so famous that he'd be unable to summon the simultaneous intensity and abandon to play this unique role. Somehow -- between the immense international success he enjoyed in The Phantom Menace and the dismal failures that preceded it -- Ewan McGregor has emerged as the Even Steven of fame; we can do naught but judge him exactly as famous as he should be.
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