Hugo Weaving: More Than a Nerdy Face

HW

Here’s the thing about Hugo Weaving. He’s number one on the list. Yeah, that list. You know the one. Anyone who knows me will attest to the fickleness of my celebrity crushes, so depending on what time period of my life we’re dealing with, there are certain groups who will swear by my unimpeachable love of some actor or other, and none of them will be incorrect. But for all the number ones, only Hugo Weaving has come back around, time and time again, into the topmost of my good graces.

I’ve often been described as a girl who has “weird taste” when it comes to the physical attractiveness of men—”weird” mostly being used to qualify my complete lack of any rules of facial or body structure. There aren’t many who can predict a Sara Clemens crush. Here’s the rub, as Hamlet would say: it’s not about some quantifiable hair/eye/rugged-good-looking-ness that groups my man-crushes together—it’s mostly about talent.

A talented man is the man for me. That’s why Peter Dinklage exists on the same plane as Alan Rickman, why Damian Lewis (Homeland) is just as doable as Robert Webb (Peep Show).

Hugo Weaving’s talent is legit.

http://youtu.be/y0Ixn_Y2bIo

I recently caught this commercial whiling away my free time in front of the boob tube. First of all, let’s address the fact that Agent Smith is shilling for machines. Did anyone at GE actually WATCH The Matrix trilogy? Secondly, it’s pretty awesome that The Matrix came out almost fifteen years ago and they’ve decided Smith is still a viable advertising conduit for the modern age.

My love for Hugo stretches back a good long ways, so I’ve consumed a myriad of his performances. He’s Australian, if you didn’t already know, so much of his best work comes from independent productions from the land down under. Here are five fantastic Aussie films featuring the man who brought Elrond, V, Red Skull, Agent Smith, and Megatron to life.

Bodyline

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that in spite of being a tried and true Anglophile, I still don’t fully understand the intricacies of cricket. I suppose it’s just my Americanness asserting itself, despite my desire to be a worldly sophisticate.

But one thing I can understand is Hugo Weaving’s performance as Douglas Jardine, the captain of England’s cricket team. Jardine was famous for captaining the 1932–33 Ashes tour of Australia and employing, as IMDB puts it, “a bowling technique called ‘leg theory,’ or more commonly, bodyline. This technique involved bowlers bowling the ball directly at the batsman’s body, and resulted in many of the Australian team receiving numerous bruises and injuries.”

This Australian miniseries is a bit difficult to find, but Weaving turns in one of his earliest smarmy performances, and it’s pretty delightful listening to his English accent falter a bit here and there. This was a long time before his V for Vendetta days.

Proof

If you’re at all a fan of either Hugo Weaving or Russell Crowe, or just want to see what they were up to in their early days, you owe it to yourselves to see this film.

The plot according to IMDB: “A black comedy about a blind man, Martin (Weaving), who takes photographs as ‘proof’ that the world really is as others describe it to him. The film explores his antagonistic relationships with Celia (Genevieve Picot), who cleans and cooks for him and habitually rearranges the furniture in the house, and with Andy (Crowe), a mate he thinks he can trust.”

Long before Al Pacino won his Oscar for reliably shouting “Hoo-wha,” Hugo Weaving played a blind man making his way in the world. I’m a big fan of this movie, and I especially love the character of Celia, who habitually moves Martin’s furniture around in order to literally trip him up. She loves him, you see. I get her. Russell Crowe is also a gem in this movie, and I’m not always his hugest fan.

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

This movie got me through college. Not that college was some particular difficult time for me—on the contrary, I met my husband, met most of my current close friends, and discovered just exactly who I was going to be in this crazy world—but I really fell in love with this twist on the classic buddy road movie. I guess I really got down with the idea that there can be a family you’re born into and a family you choose, and obviously it’s the family you choose that really reflects on your character.

Hugo Weaving’s Tick was by far the most relatable of the main trio of protagonists, although I would suspect most of my friends would more readily compare me to Guy Pearce’s big-mouthed Adam. Terrence Stamp also turns in a solid performance as the transexual Bernadette.

Really quickly, can we just talk about how dated this trailer is? I mean, it came out less than ten years ago, and it totally reads like the trailer for an eighties film. Maybe I’ll cut a new one just for fun using the Inception “braaaahhhhm” noise to really bring it into the aughts.

The Interview

These trailers are terrible! I hope you’re not letting them discourage you from seeking out these films, because they are all seriously worth viewing.

This is such a hard film for me not to spoil, since the one film I would compare it to would totally ruin everything. So I’ll just say Hugo Weaving is awesome in it, and Tony Martin is awesome in it, much like REDACTED and REDACTED were totally awesome in REDACTED.

Let me just say this, even though this film is similar to a very well-known American film, which will become readily apparent to you once you start watching it, it’s absolutely worth checking out, if only because it focuses even more on the two characters playing off one another.

Last Ride

This film. Jesus, this film. I could write an entire post about how much this film affected me when I saw it.

This is definitely not an easy film to watch. It deals very directly with child abuse via a parent, and that’s not an easy thing to handle. What I found incredible about this movie and specifically, about Hugo Weaving’s performance, is the portrayal of an abuser who still very clearly loves and wants the best for his child. Not only is the audience subjected to a no-holds-barred representation of abuse at its basest level (meaning psychological, not just physical), but there’s never any doubt left in our minds that Kev, Weaving’s character, truly loves his son Chook.

Kev is a man who doesn’t know how to be a parent, but is doing the best he can. A mystery, a crime perpetrated by Kev, lies at the center of the story, and though it’s relatively easy to unravel that mystery a quarter of the way through, the true surprise is Kev’s motivation.

I went from total sympathy for Chook to, horrifyingly, total empathy for Kev on the turn of a dime. When push comes to shove, I wouldn’t have done anything differently than the “villain” in this story. I won’t go so far as to say that moment made me a grownup, but it may very well be the moment I realized I was one. If you watch no other film on this list, make it this one. It’s available for streaming on Netflix.

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8 Comments

  1. I’m with you on this one, Hugo Weaving is a top notch actor and overall badass. Additionally, you forgot to mention Cloud Atlas, where he was not in one, but in several roles and delivered the best performance in a pretty A-list cast.

  2. Hi, Clemens. Trolling artist formerly known as trashcanman using my big boy log-in now. If Weaving is king of the nerds, Natalie Portman has got to be the queen. Star Wars, Thor, Your Highness, Vendetta (with Weaving), Black Swan (inspired by an anime), Mars Attacks; girl’s got the love. Think of the awesome roles their genetically superior nerd children could play if we bred Weaving and Portman together.

    I’m kind of afraid of Last Ride because realistic child abuse is my cinema kryptonite, but it sounds amazing.

    1. trashcanman, I’ve actually always known your name is Nick Verboon. *evil genius laughter* No but seriously, administrators can see the email addresses of commenters. Welcome to the slightly dysfunctional family, brother!

      Pfft, think of the genetically superior nerd children Hugo and I would produce.

      Last Ride is rough. Worth it, but rough.

  3. Thanks for the welcome, senpai.

    Fine, throw a wrench in my celebrity nerd master race breeding plans. If you get Hugo, I get Natalie, though. Think I could win her over by shaving her head and pretending to lock her up in a prison death camp, or is that something only Weaving could pull off?

  4. Chris Evans would give him a run for his money.
    Fantastic Four (Twice), Scott Pilgrim, Losers, Captain America, Avengers, Ninja Turtles, as well as a couple of cool genre movies like Push and Sunshine.

  5. Dear Sara,
    I have to agree with you, that Hugo Weaving has something seriously sexy about him. I get aroused just listening to him talk in The Matrix. I just saw The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert this week-end and I must add, he was way cute as a drag 😛

    1. I love Priscilla! Def one of my favorite Hugo Weaving movies, by far. He’s super cute, and it also shows how ridiculously talented he is. Along with Guy Pearce and Terence Stamp, for that matter. 🙂 Thanks for reading.

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