Fans ofPaul Giamattidon’t just admire his craft, they adore his screen persona. As a supporting player in major Hollywood movies and a lead in indie fare, Giamatti, a consummate everyman antithetical to the glamor and sheen of a typical movie star, represents an emotional candor missing in the average performance.Because of his knack for playing neurotic and dismayed individuals, cinephiles embrace Giamatti as a role model for accepting one’s insecurities. In one of his most experimental and daring performances, Giamatti plays himself in the overlooked 2009 indie,Cold Souls, where he portrays the hubris, cynicism, and melancholy of acting in aCharlie Kaufman-esque out-of-body experience that sees him removing his soul to improve his craft
Paul Giamatti Comments on His Screen Persona in ‘Cold Souls’
The two-time Academy Award nominee has made quite a viable career for himself, especially since he doesn’t don capes or rely on franchises. Still, avid Giamatti fans can’t help but feel he’s being deprived of prestigious, thought-provoking roles on a mid-budget scale. When he does work in the studio system, he’s often egregiously overqualified, such as being the 6th billed star ofJungle Cruiseor left out to dry in a thankless villain role in the deridedAmazing Spider-Man 2. In fairness,when you have a performance as indelible and star-making as Miles, theangst-ridden wine connoisseur inSideways, you’re more than welcome to rest on those laurels. With his recent reunion withSidewayswriter-directorAlexander PayneinThe Holdovers, where Giamattithrived as a neurotic loner prep school teacher,audiences were reminded of his equal parts robustness and warmth on the screen.
Luckily, Giamatti has had a strong foothold inindie cinema since his breakout,American Splendor. Oddball hidden gems are scattered throughout his filmography, most notablyCold Souls, a peculiar dramedy bySophie Barthesthat premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2009. The film follows Paul Giamatti as an actor so impassioned in his performance work that he struggles to disassociate himself from the characters. While preparing to play the titular role in an adaptation ofAnton Chekhov’sUncle Vanya, his emotions spiral into a tangled mess. After reading an article inThe New Yorker, Paul undergoes a “Soul Storage” procedure, where his soul is surgically removed from his body and stored at a clinic run by Dr. Flintstein (David Strathairn).This practice is as precarious as it sounds, as Paul quickly realizes the damaging liabilities of this operation.He becomes disaffected by everything around him, including his wife, Claire (Emily Watson), and loses all sense of social etiquette. When he decides to revert to his soulful self, he learns that his soul (in the form of a chickpea) was smuggled into Russia by a mule, Nina (Dina Korzun).
‘Cold Souls’ Taps Into the Neurosis and Self-Obsession of Artists
The metatextual and cerebral nature of the film’s dissection of the performing arts will naturally draw plenty of connections toBeing John Malkovich, orany script by Charlie Kaufmanfor that matter.Adaptationand Kaufman’s directorial debut,Synecdoche, New York, concern neurotic artists so self-obsessed that it creates transcendent work to the detriment of their well-being. InCold Souls, we’re not entirely aware of Paul’s pedigree as an actor. After one uninspiring rehearsal, we see him down on his luck, and out of sheer panic, agrees to undergo the soul removal procedure.We don’t know if Paul needed a drastic overhaul in his life, because Paul himself hardly knows.He can’t get out of his own head, causing him to make these rash decisions. The audience is purposefully two steps ahead of Paul. In film or theater, the best compliment an actor can receive is that their work was “soulful.” By cleansing his soulfulness, Paul thinks he’s cracked the code by not havingexternal emotions or psychological complexeshindering his performance. In reality, he soon loses grasp of reality.
Similar to howBeing John Malkovichtaps into the psyche of its titular actor’s cultural persona,Cold Soulsis a delight for audiences who identify with Paul Giamatti’s nervy energy on screen. While not the most popular or recognizable figure in Hollywood, Giamatti has carved out enough of a niche to make himself synonymous with the brand of prickly but endearingly sympathetic characters seen inSideways,The Holdovers, andAmerican Splendor.He hilariously embodies the demeanor of a person meandering around the world without a soul. Unlike most Giamatti characters who have a buried heart of gold,Paul inCold Soulsfeels rotten to the core due to his suffocating defeatist attitude.Casual viewers will be tempted to turn the film off after 30 minutes with his character, but for those in the bag all the way, he feels like anunfettered demonstration of the Giamatti archetype. The soulless Paul commits hilarious faux pas due to losing emotional awareness and intelligence, including when he bluntly suggests to a friend that she “pull the plug” on her comatose mother at dinner.
Paul Giamatti’s Convergence of Farce and Surrealist Drama in ‘Cold Souls’
When writer-director Sophie Barthesleans into its farcical elements,Cold Soulstruly shines. The film stumbles when it shifts into a morose tone that emphasizes the dreary pathos of acting and its respective industry, but things immediately pick up when Paul lashes out,which provides comedy gold. These moments are best exemplified by Paul’s discovery that the clinic lost his bite-sized soul and his confrontation with Nina about his soul being transported to Russia so that the wife of a soul-storage owner can pursue her dreams of acting. Giamatti’s incredulous expression in these scenes is simply priceless. Considering the film concerns an unregulated medical procedure to remove one’s soul, an abstract anatomy of the human body, it’s not surprising that things go awry, yetPaul is dumbfounded by the chaotic series of events that unfold because of his nearsighted decisions.
At a Q&A held at Sundance, Sophie Barthes revealed that the concept ofCold Soulsemerged from a dream she had whereWoody Allenvisited the soul removal clinic and became distraught upon the discovery that his soul was a chickpea. “He was very upset because he had made 43 movies, and how could his soul be a chickpea?” Barthes described. Whether explicitly or not,the film has a dreamlike quality, with Paul frequently walking through empty spaces and engaging in drifting conversations.While undergoing soul surgery, he sees spiritual visions of his past and present life.Cold Soulsplays like a feature-length demonstration of all the fears that terminally neurotic artists like Woody Allen carry with them on a day-to-day basis.Paul’s relentless worrying and prevailing malaiseare driven by his dissatisfaction with his work on the stage, but he still longs to live a worthy life as a decent and noble human being. These conflicting desires trap Paul in his neurotic mind–a mind far too maladjusted for his chickpea soul to handle.
Cold Soulsis available to stream on Peacock in the U.S.
Cold Souls
Paul is an actor who feels bogged down by his participation in a production of Chekov’s play, Vanya.
