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Spotlight: Paul Dano

This post was originally written for my college film studies class.

Paul Dano's acting style borders on method; he commits to his performances off and on screen, and nothing makes this more evident than how strongly he emotionally and physically embodies the roles he portrays. He is able to convey just as much with his eyes, expressions and movements as he is with the lines of dialogue that he speaks. Though his typically lanky build, soft voice, and perpetual babyface gives him the impression of a rather awkward and unassuming man, his chameleon-like ability to change not only his appearance but his entire body language helps him play against type and portray a variety of different characters, none of them less believable or natural than the rest.

Over his career, Dano has shown an amazing range in the types of characters plays. His breakthrough was the 2006 comedy-drama film Little Miss Sunshine (dir. Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris) as Dwayne Hoover, a moody teenager who has taken a vow of silence until he can fulfill his goal of becoming a jet pilot. Even though he doesn't speak and remains stoic for most of the movie, you quickly understand and sympathize with his portrayal of a rebellious misfit with a dream.

Barely a year later, Dano appeared in the 2007 film There Will Be Blood (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson) in which he plays opposite Daniel Day-Lewis as Eli Sunday, the megalomaniacal young preacher of a small town in early 1900s California. Eli is self-righteous, vindictive, and manipulative; he alternates between the facade of a humble man of God and stark raving lunacy with an undertone of sniveling petulance. He's an utterly contemptible character that you'll want to root against even if it means siding with equally contemptible people, and that ability to evoke such strong feelings towards his character perfectly exemplifies why his performance is so effective.

His character in 2011's For Ellen (dir. So Yong Kim) could not be more opposite that of Eli Sunday. In For Ellen, Dano is Joby Taylor, a troubled aspiring rock star in the middle of a difficult divorce who fights to be a part of his young daughter's life. Dano's performance as the flawed Joby is vulnerable, as we watch him evolve from a depressed, alcoholic failure to a multifaceted man who wants to put his mistakes behind him and show genuine love for the daughter whose life he was absent from for so long. Dano carries this weight through some of the most emotional and bittersweet scenes in recent memory.

Other roles that demonstrate his range include Denis Villeneuve's 2013 crime thriller Prisoners, in which he plays a handicapped and childlike young man accused of kidnapping two little girls who faces brutal revenge by one of their fathers; Beach Boys founder Brian Wilson in the 2014 musical biopic Love & Mercy (dir. Bill Pohlad); dark comedy-drama Swiss Army Man (2016, dir. Dan Kwan & Daniel Scheinert) where he portrays a desperate and delusional castaway who befriends the flatulent corpse of Daniel Radcliffe; and the 2018 Showtime miniseries Escape at Dannemora (dir. Ben Stiller) which features Dano as real-life murderer David Sweat as he and fellow prisoner Richard Matt (Benicio del Toro) plot, manipulate, and dig their way towards short-lived freedom. His most recent and perhaps most mainstream role yet is The Riddler in Matt Reeves' 2022 film The Batman. Dano plays another different type of character here, this time as a masked serial killer who taunts the police and titular hero with puzzles à la the Zodiac Killer. Parts of this portrayal could be comparable to Eli Sunday, but here he is far more intimidating, conveying a chilling derangement with just his eyes as he watches his victims from behind his mask. He even gets to indulge in a little bit of over-the-top raving, not unlike the sermons delivered by the aforementioned Reverend Sunday.

Below, I wanted to share a scene of his portrayal of Eli Sunday in There Will Be Blood. In this scene, oil tycoon Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) is manipulated into being baptized at Eli's church in exchange for a piece of land. Eli, who holds a grudge against Plainview after he snubs his request to bless the oil well, puts on the veneer of a zealous holy man but visibly delights in humiliating Plainview and forcing him to proclaim before the crowded church that he abandoned his young son after he was injured in an accident at the well.