Alternate Best Actor 2000: Denis Lavant in Beau Travail

Denis Lavant did not receive an Oscar nomination for portraying Adjudant-Chef Galoup in Beau Travail. 

Beau Travail is a film with kind of  a fascinating rhythmic quality, a musical that's not a musical basically, about a former Foreign Legion officer recalling his time in the service.

The nature of the film therefore leaves Lavant really in almost two separate parts more often than not. This as the man reflecting on the past verbally, and the most often silent man of the past. Lavant being silent is never a crutch for him as a performer. He is just so fascinating, in a way that is rather difficult to describe. There is just something about how he moves, how he looks, how he does everything that is so distinctly his own, and fascinating by itself. It is hard to really pinpoint the magic of Lavant precisely, but whatever it is, he has it. This as even as so many early scenes are either him doing physical maneuvers or really just standing pensively, Lavant is still captivating. This even running an obstacle course, or looking over people, Lavant has that way about him, that is so much his own, and so much something that you can't quite put your finger on why you can't look away from what he is doing. The man's presence just is something that creates character all on his own, you know this character is unique, just because Lavant is unique. This being particularly essential given the nature of the film that asks him to mostly be silent when we actually see him against, his voice carrying us through his personal narration of the story.

Lavant's delivery of the narration itself is this calm and similarly, I suppose, idiosyncratic way in speaking these words. It isn't zestful nor is it dour in the recounting, it isn't overly emotional, but there is rather something entirely appropriate of it at every point, whether he is recounting a death or a state of being. Lavant speaks just as it is, and that appears to be all that is needed. This is, Louis Bingo time, very much a director's film. I will say though Lavant is an actor particularly well built for such affairs because he really doesn't need much to be able to be captivating and even convey character. This as even as scene of staring off with another men later on, does speak so many more words than dialogue would've driven in just from the method of the stare down. Lavant suggesting that Galoup is going through more than just a moment of aggression or toughness. This rather a sense of the man's attraction to the other in the moment, and again this is all unsaid yet beautifully performed. The conflict here is said a little bit, this as Galoup enacts wrath against the soldier he is quietly obsessed with, a la Claggart to poor Billy Budd, and this dynamic is between most of the lines. Lavant delivers the moments that are found, even if more cursory due to the nature of the film that is not focused upon acting as much. Still even with that, Lavant is essential to the film's success by still realizing the drama within the limits allowed by the approach. Also just through a magnificent dance number at the end, that is magical in just the way it is so wholly that Lavant energy of a brute and Baryshnikov.