He was not a great actor, at the level defined by a Brando or a Pacino. He was certainly not the type of handsome hunk that is supposed to make the pulse race, like a Brad Pitt. He was not a martial arts hero with quicksilver reflexes and lethal technique. He lost his hair and grew unapologetically bald right in front of our eyes. He sweated buckets and got grimy and dirty. Yet he occupied a comfortable and secure place in all our hearts.
It is extremely difficult to write about Bruce Willis in the past tense, but I have no choice here. Willis’ family has announced that he is retiring because he suffers from aphasia, a brain disorder that seriously hampers cognitive ability.
It is also especially difficult to write about Willis in the past tense because in his most memorable roles, he embodied the ageless solidity of a piece of granite. No amount of winds and rains could erode his core. He could be beaten to a pulp, but he would always rise again, dogged and unrelenting.
Also read: Macho or mushy: How do you like your Bruce?
I don’t know about you, but I can say this about me—late at night, bored and searching for something to while away a couple of hours, surfing channels or clicking through the menus of OTT platforms, I have often chosen a film only because it had Bruce Willis in it. I knew that it would most probably be a lousy film, but what the heck, it had Bruce Willis, so it would not be a total waste of time.
In India, he may have been the most beloved of all the Hollywood actors of his generation. If an autorickshaw-driver in Aligarh or a street vendor in Alappuzha knows the name of only one international male film star, it is quite likely that it will be Willis'. This is not because he killed a lot of bad guys in his movies, though he owes much of his fame in the Indian backwaters to the ultra-violent Die Hard film series. Others, like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone have killed more people, in more spectacular ways. But Willis had the unique quality of being universally relatable. He was that crazy paradox—a star with great screen presence who always seemed to be the unglamorous everyman who is pushed to do extraordinary things.
John McClane, the New York cop he played in five Die Hard movies, is not too bright, is physically tough though he has possibly never heard of Pilates or protein shakes, is not very articulate and is often puzzled by how the female mind works. The rules he follows are simple and basic. He thinks most problems in life can be solved by either keeping quiet or beating someone up. It is difficult for a progressive woman to live with him, but he is still the first person to call if you are in trouble. He is reliable, he won’t let you down. He is a caveman with compassion.
As my friend Ruprekha puts it, in very un-woke terms, McClane is “the normative male”. He is the epitome of a sort of classic masculinity that is flawed but guileless. To use a 1990s computer term, he is WYSIWYG—what you see is what you get. And Willis made it look cool to the entire world. In M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable, he was David Dunn, a man with superhuman strength who is immune to all diseases and injuries. I cannot think of any other actor who could have done that role and earned the sympathy of the audience for actually being vulnerable because he was an invulnerable freak.
As David Dunn, Willis pulled off something never done before—he made a superhero ordinary. This reverses the traditional narrative structure of popular culture—of ordinary people becoming superheroes, from Peter Parker discovering his spidery-ness to Bruce Banner going all green and Hulk-y whenever he is upset. Dunn has awesome physical powers, but he is not comfortable with them.
Willis will possibly be remembered mostly as an action hero. But that will be a grave injustice. A certain gentleness is integral to many of the men he portrayed—the child psychologist Dr Malcolm Crowe in The Sixth Sense, deeply troubled and dealing with a kid who “sees dead people”; the confused prizefighter Butch Coolidge in Pulp Fiction; the soft-spoken small-town policeman in Moonrise Kingdom dealing with an emotionally complex situation. Willis brought a rare subtlety to each of these roles. I started this piece by saying that he was not a great actor. Maybe I am wrong.
And he could make you laugh too, as anyone who has watched The Whole Nine Yards. In Nine Yards, he is Jimmy “the Tulip” Tudeski, a retired hitman who hates mayonnaise. He was originally signed up to play Danny Ocean in Ocean’s 11, but dropped out due to scheduling issues. He would have certainly been as cool and funny as George Clooney is in the three Ocean films—perhaps even cooler and funnier.
Media reports suggest that the deterioration of Willis’ mind had been an open secret in Hollywood for several years. He worked in a staggering 22 films in the last four years, some of which are yet to be released. All of them seem to be entirely inconsequential films, and his managers ensured that he would not shoot for more than two days on a film, and not be available for more than a few hours a day.
Last week, the Golden Raspberry (Razzie) awards that “honour” the year’s worst films, gave Willis his own special category, “Worst Performance by Bruce Willis in a 2021 Movie”. Four days later, after the news of his illness became public, the organizers cancelled the award and apologised. We will never know if Willis would have been able to process either the slur or its withdrawal.
So let us let Willis be. The only really precious things that any of us leaves behind are memories. In his 40-year-long acting career, Bruce Willis has given us a treasury of them. In all his iconic roles, he defined a uniquely tough stoicism. As in the title of his 1996 film, he was usually “the last man standing”. That is how we should remember him, and that is how he will be remembered, from Aligarh to Alappuzha.
Also read: Yippikaaiyaay, Bruce Willis. We'll miss you at the movies
Discover the latest Business News, Sensex, and Nifty updates. Obtain Personal Finance insights, tax queries, and expert opinions on Moneycontrol or download the Moneycontrol App to stay updated!
