Here are 967 words in response. I hope you will realise that this is only the most brief of examinations of this technique and its limitations.
What is often called ‘ The Method’ in acting is usually a reference to the Lee Strasborg interpretation of Stanislavki’s teaching. In general method acting combines a careful consideration of the psychological motives of the character, and some sort of personal identification with, and possibly the reproduction of the character’s emotional state in a realistic way. As has been stated earlier, the best way to represent being sad is to make yourself sad, the best way to represent the pain of shooting yourself in the foot is to shoot yourself in the foot. If one cannot bring oneself to this extreme then the next best thing is to remember the last time you were shot, or failing that felt any strong pain. While it has the potential to show a strong psychological realism, this potential is often not realized and instead we are often blinded with a psychological intensity which often attempts to hide the shortcomings and limitations of this style.
Method acting has often been called acting by not acting. Rather than acting the actor trys to recreate the psychological motivations of the character they are portraying. As can be appreciated the character that player will associate with will be an idealized version of themselves, thus the actor is most comfortable when they are playing themselves. This is summed up in the old saying “A person can always play themselves” and in many ways is the essence of the “Method”. Thus it can be said that a high point of method acting is when Michael Jordon played the part Michael Jordon in the movie “Space Jam”
This limitation shows itself when examines the concept of studying the “Psychological Motives” of the character. The person that an actor can associate the “Psychological Motives” best is themselves. This in many works on the old psychiatrist maxim “I am sane”. This works well in very similar contexts to which the actor is raised, however it starts to break down when an actor regards more extreme situations. For example an actor playing the role of Charles Manson will try to associate the behavior of the character with their own personal experience and must fail as they themselves are not mass murderers. The actor will then try to study the motivations of the character in psychological context. However even highly trained psychologists and psychiatrists have never been able to determine his motivations. Further the whole concept of psychological motivation works on a cause and effect premise. This premise can be shown to be false both theoretically and experimentally. Applying quantum physics to human brain function and psychology shows that human reactions can sometimes have no initiating action. To repeat that, for some actions that humans do there is no cause. When the preparing, the actor tries to find a cause and they will therefore make one up where no such link exists.
When one then tries to make a personal identification with a character again the actor starts with the presumption that they and the character that they are trying to portray have a common set of emotions. However members of New Zealand and US society do not have a complete set of emotions that are available in the world. For instance, Germans have a different set of emotions than New Zealanders. When one is playing a German the portrayal must be incomplete. This also extends to individual emotions, especially the sense of humour. Humour is very different in different countries. Without being able to fully understand this then the actor cannot play the character properly. All emotions seem to have a differing basis in different countries and times. Therefore any emotional association with the character will only be a 20th century view of that emotion.
A common method to try and overcome this limitation is therefore to try and live in the characters shoes for a period. A famous example of this is when, for the film Taxi Driver, Robert de Niro worked as a taxi driver in New York for several months. While this will give a mechanical understanding of the role of taxi driver it does not always give a psychological or emotional understanding. When Robert de Niro was a taxi driver he had several films under his belt and a very hefty paycheck promised by his contract. His motivation to be a taxi driver was to see what it was to be a taxi driver, the motivation of the taxi drivers was to stay alive. He will therefore always see their motivations through a distorting lens.
So in method acting the closer the role is to the actor then the more successful they are at the role. In more extreme or historical roles the ultimate complement to give an actor is to say that you like their interpretation of the character they played. This acknowledges that they did not play a historically accurate role, rather they played a reasonable role taking into account modern interpretations.
While “Method” is often used for psychological realism, these films are often most interesting to other method actors. This shows in that of the top 100 grossing films of all time at best only two of them can be said to have sold solely because of the psychological realism portrayed. Also in that most “Method” actors will normally only act in films of a very limited genre range. It has been argued that the “Method” has be responsible for an increase in psychological realism, but it can also be argued that cinema has produced this psychological realism through the mechanism of the Close up and more recently through the Steady Cam.
While “Method” is a fun and interesting technique in the Strasborg interpretation the limitations can quickly overcome any advantages thereby gained. To paraphrase Sir Lawrence Olivier, “Why don’t they just act”
