The Fall and Rise of Ben Affleck

The Argo director completes a remarkable renaissance following Bennifer, Matt Murdock and 'jaw-droppingly awful' Gigli

There's a moment in Good Will Hunting, the film that brought Ben Affleck to the world's attention in a positive sense where Chuckie bawls Will out for his lack of ambition and apparent fear of committal and sacrifice. "Cuz tomorrow I'm gonna wake up and I'll be 50, and I'll still be doin' this shit. And that's all right," he says.

And for a long time, in a weirdly prophetic way, it almost looked as though this would be the pattern for the two leads' careers. Damon went on to huge success with the Bourne trilogy and stepped into serious, sober film making with Soderbergh and Clooney, focusing on smaller pictures which grooved on weighty subjects like liberty, morality and personal redemption.

Affleck, meanwhile, appeared to have got the short end. Whilst he drew flak for the shallow Pearl Harbour and disinterested Daredevil, his well-published relationship with J-Lo seemed to pull him into a spiral of poor choices and awful films. I've seen (some of) Gigli, and it deserved the hype, so to speak. Worse, it spoke ill of a promising career and gave the perception of an actor who treated pastiche with the subtlety of... Chuckie. If the shoe fits, right?


CGI in 1994 was not a pretty thing to behold.

Which might go a small way to explaining the interest in Affleck's renaissance as a director and his critical success with Argo, already an awards magnet and widely touted to get the Best Picture gong ahead of Steven Spielberg's Lincoln at Sunday night's Oscars ceremony.

Personally, I guess I'm here pleased here. I've found it almost impossible to dislike the guy, even in his nadir (admittedly the travails of his career didn't exactly keep me up nights). His unabashed honesty, which doesn't appear calculated is a good barometer in as bizarre an environment as Hollywood, and his work since that much, much reported split with Lopez appears to engage Affleck as an individual, channelling his experience into real human portrayals. It might also help that he's now married with three children.

It seems lots of his critics feel the same way, as though he were an errant child who just needed a bit of straightening out (that Good Will role was really prescient in more than one way). The aforementioned Argo currently holds an average critical score of 86 over at Metacritic, whilst The Town boasts a 74 rating and Gone Baby Gone holds a 72 rating.

The interesting thing about Affleck's return to the public eye is that his directing role seems to fit him better; there's a definite trend of better reviews as a director - typically mid to high 70s - than films he has only acted in, whereupon the score drops to mid-60s. It may be that control of his environment was all Affleck needed to make his mark. That's another reason I find him kind of endearing; like he was being asked to spin too many plates and was eagerly running around after them. Singular focus seems to have improved his output.


All this seems to prove a decent case for the maturation of the man first; the actor and director second. Perhaps Affleck should have made the move to directing earlier. He evidently has a real flair and particularly in his first two directed films, a locale, an ear for interesting conversation and an economic mentality towards plot. 

Perhaps it's merely the passage of time that has improved Affleck's radar. There's no doubt that spending years in the company of gifted actors and directors has rubbed off on his professional side; check out the getaway scene in The Town (above), in which the quick editing between angles and shots making the slow, hanging shot between robbers in rubber nun masks and confused police officer all the funnier.

An interweaving tale of fabricated stories and real-life drama, Argo seems to represent the ultimate statement on Affleck's career so far. His roles in Extract and Hollywoodland showed a man presenting elements of his life in his characters (his bartender role in the former is hilarious). As nailed on as he appears to be for the Best Picture this Sunday, it'd be great to see him repeat the trick in years to come.

Pictures courtesy of BlogWillHunting and Tumblr