Film Studies: Act? He wouldn't stoop so low...

I really want Bill Murray to win the Oscar this year

Though I am very fond of Johnny Depp (who flounced off with the Screen Actors' Guild acting prize for Pirates of the Caribbean), and though I think Ben Kingsley gave the best performance of the year in House of Sand and Fog, and even though I know Sean Penn is a great actor (it's just that I can't help being deafened by the machinery of his performances), I really want Bill Murray to win the Oscar this year. And in a way, the reasons for wanting Murray to win are more important than just liking Bill. You see, I think something drastic has got to happen to acting.

Let me try to explain - though I'll admit at the outset that I'm not too sure how clear I can be about this, or even how clear I want to be. But I think we've, all of us, had altogether too much acting - rather in the way you can have too much ice cream, sun, or "of a good thing". But think of it like this: from about 1910 onwards, first at the movies, then through television, it's acting, acting, acting all the time. We know that some of our children in the last few decades have watched five hours of television a day, and some more! That's over 1,800 hours a year. Now, I know that not all of those hours are watching fiction (or drama) and acting. But I'd say that at least half of it is.

And even with the other half - sport, politics, talk shows - have you noticed, just in your lifetime, how the people are putting on a show? Example: you can't read the news on TV without being involved - otherwise you look like a zombie. No one simply plays football anymore; they act it out.

That's the exact point I was hoping to make. In other words, if you expose the mass audience (and we think of ourselves now as an audience) to enough hours of "life-like acting" well, sooner or later, people forget what life might be like and they start measuring actors against other actors and the history of performance.

Don't jump to the conclusion that I'm attacking actors. On the contrary, I suspect acting is better than it's ever been - there's more theorising about it, there's more time spent studying acting, and there's so much more going on. One reason for that, in my opinion - and I really don't wish to offend the profession, so think about this carefully - is that I don't think acting's hard. Indeed, once people get into the habit of it, I find it's much harder to stop them - that's part of my problem with Sean Penn. You see, I think acting is a bit like taking photographs - millions of us can do it quite nicely. There may be a pinnacle in both professions where just Laurence Olivier gazes upon Diane Arbus (pick your own favourites). But so many people can take pretty pictures, and so many can give acceptable performances. And everyone knows the rules - some of the rules are actually the same in both tricks, like "don't look at the camera"; get the light in the right place; know your character's arc; lead the eye inwards; and ask the audience to see the sincerity of your eyes.

I could write a lot about the detail, but I think you know what I mean - and all I'm saying really is that Tony Blair is as good an actor as Hugh Grant (actually I think he has more range and depth), just as Ronald Reagan was as good as, well... the earlier Ronald Reagan.

And I've just about had enough. Yes, it's wonderful to see the uncommon touch of newcomers like Samantha Morton, but as for the general run of efficiency and sincerity and that dreadful "clarification" in acting, I feel I'll scream if I have to see much more.

Which brings me to Bill Murray in Lost in Translation, and the feeling I had of being desperate not to take my eyes off him for one second.

Why? I thought. Then I read that the whole time they were making the film, Bill Murray never quite agreed to make it or acknowledged that he was there doing it. Yes, he turned up, but he wasn't committed, he wasn't sincere, and he seemingly made no effort to "grasp" the script and its inner meanings and clarify them. He just sort of hovered as if he was half in and half out of the film - not clarifying, but making the whole thing more mysterious. Mark my words, this is the way acting has got to go if narrative and performing art have a chance.

So I'd give Bill Murray the Oscar for 2004 - and I'd give Sean Penn the Oscar for 1954.

d.thomson@independent.co.uk