Russell Crowe’s Extraordinarily Good Year

Not coincidentally, this is also the thrust of Crowe’s new movie. A Good Year is based on Peter Mayle’s book about a London stock market dealer who inherits a French chateau from his beloved uncle and reevaluates his life as he tries to fix the place up for sale. Why knock yourself out making a fortune in London when you could be sitting on the terrace in Provence sipping wine with Marion Cotillard for company?

It’s a convincing argument in as far as it goes, and an unexpected about-face from Crowe, whose attempts at comedy have been few and far between. He once played Dr Frank N Furter in a touring production of The Rocky Horror Show, and I guess Rough Magic sort of qualifies if you’re feeling generous. (Stranger still, the movie marks a reunion with his Gladiator director Ridley Scott – who’s even less experienced at this type of thing.) Maybe you could see it coming at that: Crowe has made only three movies in the five year period since earning Oscar nominations three years straight, 1999-2001. Is that because he’s choosy, or because he’s chosen a different kind of life?

But if A Good Year marks the beginning of a new, less challenging phase in Crowe’s career, it’s worth remembering just how much he’s achieved in the last 15 years.

Like the rest of his male co-stars he was ignored by the Academy that year. But then came his remarkable hat-trick: a nomination for this unforgettable performance as whistle blower Jeffrey Wigand in The Insider (1999); an Oscar for the warrior Maximus in Gladiator (2000); and another nomination for the bewildered genius John Nash in A Beautiful Mind (2001).

It was an extraordinary run, and when it comes to range, only Daniel Day Lewis, De Niro, Penn and maybe one or two others have shown us so much in such a concentrated time-frame. Add in his staunch Captain ‘Lucky’ Jack Aubrey in Master and Commander and the boxer Jim Braddock in Cinderella Man, and you have a portfolio worthy of the utmost respect.

A Good Year is no disgrace either. Whatever the shortcomings of the movie, they’re not attributable to his performance. But it’s not the kind of project that would have tempted him five or six years ago – and that’s either a mark of maturity, or… well, let’s not call it complacency, let’s say ‘contentment’.

You certainly get the feeling that Crowe no longer feels he has anything to prove to himself or anybody else. It probably makes him an easier person to live with, but here’s hoping he doesn’t do a De Niro and stop striving on screen, which is where it really counts.

Bejay