The Majestic Understatement of Jesse Plemons

“What kind of American are you?” Even if he weren’t carrying an automatic rifle, the man who asks this would seem to us dangerous: Observing his captives slightly askance, as if they were specimens, not people, he delivers the line flat while remaining curiously still. In the context of the film—Civil War, Alex Garland’s vision of a United States broken into warring factions of Americans—the question alone carries threat. Our unnamed militiaman, like the actor playing him (Jesse Plemons), understands that histrionics aren’t required; the fact that he’s the one with the weapon, asking unarmed civilians what side they’re on, is frightening enough.

If critics were divided over Civil War, they seemed to reach a general consensus on this scene being the hardest-hitting one in the film. It is a sudden injection of menace at the midpoint by Plemons, who—in an uncredited cameo, in what amounts to little more than five minutes of screentime—makes an outsized impression, the dread lingering after he exits the picture. (And to think that Plemons was parachuted into the role following a call from his wife and Civil War’s lead, Kirsten Dunst, after the original actor suddenly dropped out.) It seems paradoxical: In a film full of noise, one which groans with explosively violent acts, the greatest impact is made by the actor giving the quietest performance.

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At 36, Jesse Plemons already has vast screen experience. Having made his debut at age three (in a Coca-Cola commercial), Plemons worked as an extra throughout his childhood, was by 11 playing a younger version of Matt Damon’s character in All the Pretty Horses (his scenes were cut), got cast at 18 as a regular on a network show (NBC’s Friday Night Lights) and had, by his mid-20s, already graduated to the status of “that guy” actor owing to his tendency to show up, often playing supporting roles, in pretty much everything.

Plemons has grown into a screen actor of terrific confidence. That label might seem an odd fit for Plemons, given how small he tends to keep himself on screen (or how generally awkward he seems off it). But then, confidence isn’t necessarily signified by theatrical, “actorly” performing; at its worst, such acting suggests a performer who’s trying to be noticed, or who lacks faith in the camera, in its ability to see every little thing the performer can do. Cinema is not the stage—there are no cheap seats that the screen actor needs to project out to. Plemons, who has acted exclusively and prolifically in TV and film since he was a toddler, by this point trusts the camera to pick up every gesture and intonation, no matter how small. He is an actor built by the screen, for the screen.

That characteristic quietude, that calm, has seen Plemons cast often and effectively as psychopaths; beyond Civil War, you have Breaking Bad as evidence of how chilling he can be in such a role (the blank naivety of Plemons’ narco soldier, Todd, suggests an amoral kid who never quite matured into a responsible adult). Absence of feeling is the key to many of Plemons’ most memorable creations: see also his manipulative FBI agent in Judas and the Black Messiah, or the disgruntled videogame designer who treats his sentient characters as property to abuse in the Black Mirror episode “USS Callister.”

Take a broader look at Jesse Plemons’ filmography, however, and you find a range of characters. He can wield that signature stillness in less unsettling ways, as in Game Night, in which Plemons is hilariously inexpressive, delivering lines like “I’ve always enjoyed the camaraderie of good friends competing in games of chance and skill” in a dead-eyed monotone, the blankness draining the warmth from any attempts at earnest sentiment.

In addition to the creeps and killers, there are the decent men: Killers of the Flower Moon’s quietly authoritative and ever-vigilant FBI white hat Tom White, and The Power of the Dog’s Montana rancher George, a gentle, simple soul who in that neo-Western’s most touching scene cracks to reveal something even more tender beneath. There are also the sadsacks, chief among them I’m Thinking of Ending Things’ Jake, a largely interior character whom Plemons infuses with a gloomy lethargy.

There are no grandstanding behavioral differences between any of these men, but each is nonetheless a distinct personality, Plemons preferring to locate his characters on a spectrum of minute subtlety. There are exceptions: Plemons’ villainous Prussian prince in Disney’s adventure comedy Jungle Cruise, for example, is pure pantomime, the actor’s usually placid face exaggerated into a gleeful mania, his fake German accent sounding like a mangled hybrid of Werner Herzog and Christoph Waltz. Plemons can go big when a project asks for it, and winningly so—but he has built a career on trading in shades of understatement.

This makes Jesse Plemons an ideal match for Yorgos Lanthimos, whose latest, the darkly comic anthology film Kinds of Kindness, arrives in cinemas this week. With his characters veering always from unnervingly cold to amusingly deadpan to curiously moving in their almost automata-like blankness, Lanthimos prefers his actors dialed low. Plemons seems a perfect fit: Last month he won the Cannes Best Actor award for his performance(s) in Kinds of Kindness, and he’s already lined up to star in Lanthimos’ next film.

As the “touchstone” for his performance style, Plemons has named the resolutely natural Robert Duvall, giving his reason why in a 2021 conversation with Marc Maron: “You don’t see him acting.” That Duvall would be a model for Plemons checks out: New Hollywood contemporaries of Duvall’s like De Niro, Pacino or Hoffman would in their heydays remake themselves from the ground up for a performance, but Duvall has always been more modest. Like Plemons, Duvall as an actor seems allergic to artifice, preferring there to be a more everyday ring of truth to his characters. Working in a quieter register has never quite brought Duvall to the heights of fame experienced by De Niro, Pacino or Hoffman, but he has worked that way steadily, and frequently to acclaim, for more than 60 years.

Like Duvall in his prime, Jesse Plemons today is something of an oxymoron: the star character actor. He’s not a Hollywood-handsome face made to front blockbusters, but the kind of actor with the talent to work for the long haul. The kind of reliable professional who can be drafted in as another actor’s last-minute replacement, and nearly walk away with the picture while appearing to do deceptively little.

Brogan Morris is a London-based freelance writer and editor, whose writing on film can also be found at the BFI, The Guardian, BBC Culture and more. You can follow him on X formerly known as Twitter at @BroganJMorris.

Kinds of Blankness: The Majestic Understatement of Jesse Plemons