The Ethics of Sydney Pollack

Originally submitted by: barcode 2x

Filmmaker Sydney Pollack will be remembered as the director of [i][i]Out of Africa, Toosie, [/i][/i]and [i]The Way We Were.[/i] He is not thought of as an auteur filmmaker with a distinct visual style. What distinguished him was his ability to imbue big Hollywood films with a strong social and political awareness. His characters frequently found themselves in ethical dilemmas, and frequently made the tough choice to abandon their successful careers to protect someone they love. I first saw [i]Tootsie[/i] on New Year's day in 1981. I was 5 years old. The film filled my young mind with comic and erotic imagery that I never forgot. To a child, it was strange, but oddly agreeable. A grotesque Dustin Hoffman in drag, an irresistable Jessica Lange, and a high-stakes television environment. In this world, actors are a dime a dozen, and will do anything to get the job. And they will struggle to maintain their integrity. Pollack's early work and experience in television imbued the film with a sense of cynicism and desperation. Ethics come into the fold again in [i]The Way We Were[/i] starring Barbara Streisand and Robert Redford. This was no ordinary love story. The troubled marriage of extremely different people is set against a historical background of social change. As Redford's young college jock is throwing the shot-put and living the playboy lifestyle, Streisand is marching in political rallies. As time goes on and his career as a writer lands him in the midst of the Red Scare, he is forced to make ethical choices and change, as the world was changing all around him. Again, Pollack used his own experience in Hollywood to paint a picture of artists, caught in a bigger picture. What is the role of an artist in politics? For Pollack, art and politics became inextricable. He acted in many films, though never as a leading man. His choices as an actor perhaps show him in his ongoing desire to learn and study among other filmmakers. He appeared in his own films, but also found his way into Woody Allen's [i]Husbands and Wives [/i] and Stanley Kubrick's [i]Eyes Wide Shut[/i]. He is tall and has a commanding presence onscreen, and his own offscreen persona lends an air of authenticity and danger to his work as an actor. Though in Allen's film he plays an abusive philanderer, and in Kubrick's he plays a menacing doctor with underworld connections, his friends remember Sydney Pollack as a kind and gentle soul. Sydney Pollack lost a 9-month battle with cancer. He died over this Memorial Day Weekend.