Ben Affleck’s career wasn’t exactly soaring throughout the 2000’s, with nary commercial or critical hit to his resume during that period. He was in need of some career and image rehabilitation to reconnect with the critics and audiences who may have written him off as a has been. The Ben Affleck renaissance, or Benaissance, if you will, is the period from 2010 to 2014 where Ben had risen from the ashes of the 2000’s and rallied to make 3 of the signature films of his career: The Town (2010), Argo (2012) and Gone Girl (2014). He takes on directing duties in addition to starring in The Town and Argo, and in Gone Girl, works with one of the great directors of the last 30 years in David Fincher. So what makes each of these films so special that they make up the Benaissance?
The Town is the 2010 crime thriller that kicked off the Benaissance with a bang, with Affleck directing and starring in the leading role. The movie centers around a crew who pull off daring bank and armored truck robberies in Boston and the FBI agents hot on their trail. Affleck’s directorial sensibility is very proficient and invisible, servicing the story rather than calling attention to any sort of stylistic flourishes. He has a deft command of the large action heists and shootouts as well as capturing dynamics between characters in the smaller dramatic scenes. Affleck’s performance as Doug MacRay, the leader of the crew of bank robbers, is the beating heart of the movie, and serves as the audiences entrance point into the story. Doug is a bank robber, so arguably not a great guy, but Affleck imbues him with a very grounded and relatable humanity that allows us to root for Doug and maybe a modicum of redemption for him. He’s the one in his crew who wants to leave his life of crime behind and run off with his girlfriend to lead a better life. Doug is far more reluctant to hurt, injure or kill anyone, as opposed to other members of his crew, and Affleck really sells us on Doug’s reluctance to harm. It is quite an acting feat to bring the audience in to empathize, humanize and ultimately root for such a flawed character. Affleck kicked off the Benaissance with The Town, but he was only getting started.
Argo is a 2012 historical spy thriller, again, starring and directed by Ben Affleck. The movie, based on true events, details how CIA officer Tony Mendez was able to extract 6 American embassy workers from the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979 by creating a cover of being a Canadian film crew scouting locations. Affleck’s direction remains invisible and narrative serving, but his level of proficiency and skillfulness has notably increased, as well as being arguably more balanced. The first half of the movie has a fun, lighter feel to it, as Mendez and his Hollywood contacts go through the process of establishing a believable front for their fake movie, that will stand up to any sort of scrutiny from the Iranians. In the second half of the movie, Affleck skillfully depicts the stress and difficulty of prepping the characters to use their cover identities, eventually ratcheting up and maintaining the tension with almost no action or gunfire. All of the tension stems from whether Mendez’s fictitious cover identities will hold up under the scrutiny of the Iranian customs officers. He is essentially milking all sorts of tension and drama from whether or not their passports will be stamped and whether or not some phones will be answered. The movie also hinges on Affleck’s performance as Mendez, if we don’t buy into him, the whole thing unravels. Affleck again brings out the humanity in the character, portraying Mendez as a maybe slightly flawed, but a decent and honourable man, who deeply cares about rescuing the 6 embassy workers trapped in Iran. This second film in the Benaissance era earned the Academy Award for Best Picture, not too shabby. There was still one movie left to cap off the era.
Gone Girl is a 2014 psychological thriller where Ben Affleck plays Nick Dunne, a man who’s wife has mysteriously disappeared, and he may or may not have had something to do with it. For his last movie of the Benaissance era, Affleck placed himself in the hands of one of the greatest filmmakers of the last 30 years, David Fincher. Once again, the movie hinges on Affleck’s performance, not to take anything away from the brilliant Rosamund Pike as the titular Gone Girl, Amy Dunne, but the structure of the movie and it’s twist, rely upon the audiences relationship to Nick. We have to enter the movie and be on NIck’s side from the get go, then realize, maybe he’s a little bit of a scumbag, but still root for him. As the evidence starts to mount, we have to start to question whether Nick actually did have something to do with Amy’s disappearance. It’s actually a hell of a tightrope to walk, giving us just enough to sway us back and forth on whether we buy into Nick’s innocence. Once the twist happens, we still have to be invested enough in this guy, even though he is a bit of a scumbag who cheats on his wife, and we have to be able to still root for him. Nick’s narrative also plays with Affleck’s own experiences with fame, how a fickle public can love him, turn on him, and finally love him again. All in all its a hell of a performance in an absolutely gripping psychological thriller, and what a way to cap off the Benaissance.
What better way to rehabilitate your career in Hollywood than to make 3 different but equally engrossing thrillers: a crime thriller, a historical spy thriller and a psychological thriller. Why not push all your chips to the center of the table and go all in as the star and director of two of the three movies, and then just go off and work with David fucking Fincher. Affleck was able to flex many different muscles over the course of these three movies, both as an actor and a filmmaker, creating 3 of his most signature movies, the Benaissance.