Originally Posted by
McTeague
Di Caprio’s acting took a blow near 2002. He was an AMAZING actor before. Just see him in Growing Pains or What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and see how much natural talent he had. No furrowed brow, no fake intensity. Even at playing a mentally handicapped kid there’s no overdoing it in the slightest.
But then he got snubbed for Titanic, simply for being a victim of Cameron’s horrible dialogue writing. If you watch Titanic nowadays out of the hype and hoopla, you can see how he has what could have been the most annoying protagonist in the history of epics, as written by Cameron, and how instead he sells it and makes it sympathetic just by his sheer commitment to it and his naturalism. A cringe-worthy moment like “I’m the king of the world” feels so spontaneous and lived-in that you go with it and cringe less than you should. It’s moments like that what caused him to not take part of the sweep, despite the fact that he transformed them in something bearable. Titanic works thanks, essentially, to him. Winslet plays a whiny brat exactly as written, as a whiny brat, but because she was relatively unknown and had the aura of British prestige everyone thought her acting had to be better, but it wasn’t. DiCaprio sold much, much more, all the cringe-inducing lines and scenes in that script. Compare his totally natural, lived-in approach to Winslet in the corny “I’m flying!” scene, to Winslet’s totally overdone, over-dramatic “I’m flying! I’m Flaying!”.
He suffered enormous backlash for becoming every teenage girl’s screen crush and was snubbed for yet another great turn in “Catch Me if You Can”, so it seems as if he took lessons from Winslet and Daniel Day Lewis and decided “OK, the key to getting respect is playing it “Dramatic x 100”, that’s the way to go in this industry”. And he started to pretend he was Winslet or DDL, and all the furrowed brow and fake intensity started. Even another great turn like his in “The Departed” suffers a bit from it.
I really hope he can get a nod for what looks like a more relaxed turn, much closer to the amazing natural flow of his beginnings. It should give him the confidence to stop trying to out-Day-Lewis Daniel Day Lewis. Leo, you have natural talent, you don’t need tricks and gimmicks those other people need to shine, despite how much Oscars ignored you in the past! Go back to relaxed acting again!
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