FUNNY AND CUTE!

With major critical acclaim for  The Martian, Matt has proved how he’s a master of every role.

Everybody remembers Matt Damon for his path-breaking performance in Good Will Hunting (for which he also wrote the screenplay with childhood buddy Ben Affleck), the baddie you loved to hate in The Departed, the young soldier stuck in war in Saving Private Ryan and the badass secret agent in the Bourne series. He shines as Linus Caldwell in Ocean’s Eleven, the newcomer in the con business trying to live up to his father’s name, and continues to hold his own in the series despite George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Al Pacino.... The scene where he screams at Julia Roberts’s Tess to “protect your fake baby” is a classic.

Even in animated movies, where his beautiful face isn’t visible, he leaves a mark. He is Bill the Krill in Happy Feet 2 who, along with his buddy Will the Krill (voiced by Brad Pitt), embarks on an adventure of their own after being separated from the herd. They are the best part of the movie and definitely deserve a spin-off movie of their own.
But my favourite comic role of Matt Damon, inspite of it being blink-and-miss, is Donny — the heavily pierced, black-nail polish-wearing singer of a band screaming out Scotty Doesn’t Know, a song about how he has been fooling around with Scotty’s girlfriend, from the 2004 teen flick Eurotrip.
Too much fun!

Deborima Ganguly

ALL-ROUND GOOD GUY

Matt Damon is a Hollywood rarity. He retains boyish looks at 44. A wife of 10 years you have probably not heard of (FYI: Luciana Bozan Barroso). A CV of directors you have of course heard of — Steven Spielberg, Gus Van Sant, Martin Scorsese, Steven Soderbergh…. A pay cheque with see-saw figures (he recently admitted: “My salaries are constantly changing and I don’t know if that is because I’m running hot or I’m running cold.”). At least a dozen roles that have guaranteed him a place in film history. But only one Oscar — and that too for the screenplay of Good Will Hunting — on his mantle. Two back-to-back NASA-happy films (Interstellar and The Martian), both of which are, well, out of the world.... Okay, maybe his Dr Mann was just a cameo but what a brilliant cameo it was, sealed in a cryogenic hibernation pod!

What makes this man special? Explanations can range from his ability to play characters who are darker than their smiles (William “Will” Hunting in Good Will Hunting) or an armchair psychologist’s case study Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley, from his ability to make an ageing franchise like Bourne become more profitable to easily slipping into the character of the sinister wise guy Colin Sullivan, who infiltrates the Massachusetts State Police endangering Leonardo DiCaprio’s undercover trooper Billy who enters the mob in Martin Scorsese’s The Departed. Or is it his scandal-free life revolving around his wife and four children, and his wholehearted dedication to charities and causes, like Water.org, a charity he co-founded?

Big release on the anvil or not, he is always willing to travel to areas with poor sanitation. During his trip to India last year, he met women who paid money so that their family could use a toilet. Needless to say, he took the ice bucket challenge using toilet water.

No wonder there are online articles like “The generalised theory of Matt Damon’s brainy dreaminess”. And no wonder his phone never stops ringing.

Mathures Paul

 

MAKES THE MARTIAN THE FILM IT IS

I have never really been a Matt Damon fan. For good-looking, there’s always been George Clooney and Tom Cruise. For acting, I’ve always gravitated towards Leonardo DiCaprio (why hasn’t he won an Oscar yet?!). For cute, I can’t look beyond Gael Garcia Bernal. And Brad Pitt has forever been my weakness.

Sure, I have enjoyed Damon’s Bourne outings and appreciated that talent for humour in the Ocean’s films, but curiously, I started liking him from a film in which his character only inspired hate — as the scheming and sly “rat” Colin Sullivan in The Departed. It was the 44-year-old — and not Leo — who kept me hooked to the Martin Scorsese film. 

And then I watched The Martian on Sunday. I went in to catch Ridley Scott’s latest film for many reasons — the positive reviews, Scott’s ability to merge story with spectacle and the fact that I love films set in space, Armageddon to Gravity. But when I walked out two hours later, there was only Matt Damon on my mind. 

Damon makes The Martian the film it is. Sure, Scott directs with a deft hand and the film’s triumph lies in its ability to bring its strong emotional core alive, but it is Damon who arrests attention from the get-go and keeps us riveted to the screen.

From his initial wry — and humorous — acceptance of the fact that he’s been stranded alone on Mars to his struggle for survival against all odds, Damon’s Mark Watney is an Everyman-Hero, a man we root lustily for, a man who stares death in the face and makes it bow in defeat. So convincing was his portrayal that after a point, the reel merged into the real... Damon became Watney, Watney became Damon.

It’s said that a good actor’s mark lies in his ability to hold your attention in a crowd. The Martian has long spells with Damon as the only actor on screen and yet your eyes don’t leave him. So engaging was his performance that I thrice postponed getting up to fetch myself a bucket of popcorn. 

And then, of course, was that sardonic humour — from the conversations he would have with his computer monitor knowing only too well that no one on earth could hear him to that whole process of growing potatoes on Mars with his own waste as manure — we loved it when he said, “Take that, Neil Armstrong!” — Damon made sure that The Martian remained an entertainer, even as scary space jargon was being thrown around by the others. 
And hey, did you catch those fab abs when he took off that shirt?

Priyanka Roy

HE SAYS...

• It’s just better to be yourself than to try to be some version of what you think the other person wants.
• I’ve been really lucky. I’ll completely forget that I’m a celebrity. And then something will happen, and I’ll go, ‘Oh, right’.
• If anybody wanted to photograph my life, they’d get bored in a day.
• I’m not Brad Pitt or George Clooney. Those guys walk into a room and the room changes. I think there’s something more... not average, but Everyman about me.