Superman Before Batman: On Ben Affleck and “Hollywoodland”

“There’s some real pain buried in there…yet it’s covered with scar tissue. There’s some bitterness, which, if dealt with poorly, can go down a bad road.” Thus said Henry Cavill to the New York Times’ about his Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice co-star Ben Affleck’s portrayal of Batman in a recent profile of Affleck himself. For his part, Affleck articulated his interpretation of the Caped Crusader to the LA Times as “a guy who’s not actually in the throes of being Batman but looking back and asking himself, ‘Was it worth it?’”

The announcement back in 2013 that Affleck had been chosen to play Batman in Zack Snyder’s upcoming superhero grudge match naturally inspired lots of chatter among devotees, a fair amount of it skeptical. Even now—with Affleck having expanded his creative range to include directing to great acclaim and awards—people still tend to think of him as the man who starred in those infamous box-office bombs Gigli and Daredevil. Or the grinning cad who made tabloid headlines with his much-publicized affairs with Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Lopez and, more recently, his split with Jennifer Garner.

Which is not to say that Affleck doesn’t entirely deserve the flak he’s gotten over the years, especially as an actor. In many of his screen performances, he has often exuded a stiffness that suggested an unwillingness to really plumb the psychological depths of his characters. His inexpressive shortcomings made him all wrong for the kinds of romantic leading roles he was taking on at the height of his fame in the early- to mid-2000s; the apparent lack of passion and charisma in films like Pearl Harbor and Daredevil was terminally palpable. Even in his self-directed performances in The Town and Argo, there’s something fundamentally unreachable about him; even with all the angst-signifying facial hair he sported as Tony Mendez in the latter film, he seemed more mildly peeved than deeply anguished throughout.

A couple times, though, Affleck has transcended his limitations as a performer. In 2014, David Fincher used his blandness to a wickedly clever advantage in Gone Girl, casting him as a character who himself had difficulty emoting for the cameras as he was forced to give public interviews exonerating himself from harsh public judgment in the disappearance of his wife. He even tapped into his physical comedic sensibility—a backstage dressing-room scene featuring Tyler Perry, as his lawyer Tanner Bolt, throwing snacks at Affleck in preparation for a TV appearance was a particularly memorable comic highlight. But perhaps Affleck’s finest hour, and a possible foreshadowing of the performance we’ll see from him as Batman, came in 2006’s Hollywoodland, in which he played Superman—or, more accurately, George Reeves, the first actor to portray the iconic superhero in motion pictures, and whose death in 1959 remains unsolved.

Most of you probably don’t remember Hollywoodland these days, and in some respects for good reason. It’s not an especially memorable picture. Although Reeves is certainly a major part of the film, his thread runs parallel to a thematically similar plot strand revolving around Louis Simo (Adrien Brody), a fictional private investigator who is, as you would expect from noirs like this, a mess. In addition to him being a middling father, he’s a small-time detective who seizes upon the Reeves mystery as his ticket to wider fame and a bigger payday. And he hides his cynicism beneath a thicket of wisecracks and attitude. Paul Bernbaum’s screenplay means to suggest parallels between Simo and Reeves—both strivers in unforgiving industries that have a tendency to destroy a person’s dreams—but for all of Brody’s conviction in the role, Simo’s plot is strictly boilerplate, which is unfortunate since it takes up the bulk of the film’s screen time. Allen Coulter’s glossy direction doesn’t help, either; though the film has the appropriate look and feel of the genre, there’s none of the frenzied expressionism that animated 2006’s other anti-Hollywood noir, Brian De Palma’s James Ellroy adaptation The Black Dahlia.

And yet, in Affleck’s interpretation of George Reeves, Hollywoodland finds something that is generally a rare commodity in other Affleck performances: gravitas. His first appearance in the film is remarkable for the dashing looseness and charm Affleck exudes to support the boyish matinee-idol looks. Only in Chasing Amy (1997) and his talk-show appearances had he seemed so comfortable onscreen. But Affleck even uses his seeming discomfort with his body to his advantage here. His George Reeves is a man who likewise eventually becomes uncomfortable in his own skin as he realizes that, to some extent, it is betraying his own aspirations to move beyond Superman and realize his own acting and directing projects.

One could read a level of self-portraiture in Affleck’s performance—a man who started out in Hollywood as a dreamboat, but who, at the point of his career in which he took this role, found himself typecast by the industry and the public and yearned to break out of such preconceived notions. Even his very public love affairs find an analogue in Reeves’ affair with the much younger Leonore Lemmon (Robin Tunney), about whom he says “she makes me feel young” to Toni Mannix (Diane Lane), his lover at the time. In the end, though, it all comes down to Affleck’s final scene in Hollywoodland: world-weariness inscribed in his face, he puts his guitar down, walks to a staircase, and says “Good night” in the most listless way imaginable as he slowly saunters upstairs to his bedroom just before he dies. For once with Affleck, a sense of inner turmoil peeks through the handsome face and bulky physique—a moment of emotional transparency that he has rarely achieved elsewhere. But maybe, in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, he’ll be able to locate it once again.