Loving the Arkin

Some actors just annoy the hell out of you. I know people who can't watch anything with Tom Cruise in it (which is a shame, they are missing out on some excellent Impossible cinema), and I remain deeply, deeply ambivalent about Amy Adams. They might be great actors, but that doesn't mean everybody has to like them

I discovered this early on in life, when I fucking hated Alan Arkin. I hated him so, so much, and wouldn't watch any film where he showed up.

I'm not sure what it was, but looking back through his filmography, it's almost certainly The Return of Captain Invincible that did it. This was not the first superhero film I'd ever seen, (I definitely saw the first Superman movie in the cinema), but it was the first really disappointing one. I haven't seen it in more than 40 years, but I just remember it being cheap, boring and Australian. With terrible songs.

After watching it on rented video some time in the early 1980s, I hated it with every atom in my adolescent body, would not watch anything with Arkin in it from then on. Which feels a bit mean in retrospect, I didn't hold anything against Christopher Lee for his role in it, just the Arkin. 

It took me years, but I eventually got over it, mainly because Arkin is actually a fantastic actor, with great charm and a undercurrent of shimmering rage - nobody lost their shit in the same way he did - and he always seemed to be on the verge of glorious hysteria, especially when he go quiet.

He made a terrific Yossarian in Catch-22, with a blend of sheer panic and cynical surrender; was unforgettably nasty in Wait Until Dark; and a force for good in a very dad way in Edward Scissorhands. He directed the excellent Little Murders, had a terrific late period of playing old affable duffers with a slight hint of menace, and I just discovered his middle name was Wolf. What a goddamn legend.

That weird childhood hatred is still there whenever I do see him in some old movie now, but it's been crushed by the weight of his wonderful, whiny brilliance over all those years. I didn't need Captain Invincible, not when I had all that.