There comes a time for all actors of integrity to shine and that time has come for Ian Holm. What makes his performance in Joe Gould’s Secret all the more poignant is that the character he portrays is a very rare kind of actor himself.
Joe Gould was cursed by a time, place and perception that no longer applies, but it left the man so devastated that he became an artist in spite of what he said he was: a writer. He was a real tramp in the New York of the Forties and Joseph Mitchell (Stanley Tucci), who worked as a reporter for The New Yorker, became fascinated by Gould’s magnificently flawed mission: the oral history of the world.
Perhaps it was wrong of Tucci to direct and act as a Southerner when he quite obviously looks like a kid from the Italian Quarter. But what he has done here is recreate a period with the loving attention to detail of a perfectionist, whether itÃ-s the fine female performances of Mitchell’s wife Therese (a beautifully wry portrayal by Hope Davis), a photographic artist in her own quiet right; the gallery owner Vivian Marquie (Patricia Clarkson), echoing those stylishly robed starlets from the golden era; the elegant score or simply the extras passing by.
But towering above it all is an artist whose slightest look, gesture, word or silence can now convey the monumental passions of what TS Elliot called “some infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering thing”.