Alan Arkin Could Do It All. In ‘Glengarry Glen Ross,’ He Did.

Moss and Levene push again towards his generalizations, accusations and abuse; Aaronow doesn’t. He simply sits there and takes it. “You think this is abuse?” Blake thunders at him. “You can’t take this, how can you take the abuse you get on a sit?” In that delicate second, Arkin’s face is a masks, attempting to maintain it collectively and failing; in the event you look shut sufficient, into his eyes, he appears on the verge of tears. When he’s lastly out of the hotshot’s sights, he lets out a long-held breath.

This sensitivity is what separates Arkin’s character, and his efficiency, from the various shows of roaring machismo in “Glengarry Glen Ross.” Pacino’s Roma is all bravado, a lot of it earned; Lemmon’s Levene and Harris’s Moss try the identical, snapping and shouting in any respect who do them incorrect, silkily promoting to these on the opposite finish of the cellphone, however their swagger appears extra like bluster. Aaronow, alternatively, is completely weak, an open wound of desperation and worry. “I’m sure he didn’t mean it, about trimming down the sales force,” he insists, the second Blake leaves, however denial quickly offers solution to melancholy. “They’re gonna bounce me out of a job,” he moans to Moss, putting the blame not on the cutthroat requirements of the workplace or the cratering economic system outdoors it, however himself. “Something’s wrong with me,” he insists. “I can’t close ’em.”

In this weakened state, he goes to Moss for emotional help and encouragement; Moss seizes on that want and exploits it, drawing Aaronow into an ill-advised scheme to burglarize the Premiere Properties workplace and steal the new leads, the good leads, the Glengarry leads. The bullish Moss baits the hook and reels the weaker man in, planting the concept and prompting additional inquiry. Watch Arkin’s eyes on this sequence, the best way he’s listening, how he takes within the data he’s receiving and processes it; pay attention intently to the best way he says a line like, “Are we talking about this, or are we just talking about this,” understanding the distinction between two variations of the phrase, and deftly conveying it to the listener. And then watch the best way he registers that, merely by listening, he has change into an adjunct to the crime. The simplicity with which that realization comes over his face, and the way he places it throughout in a single easy phrase (“Me”) is each an astonishing show of appearing approach and a heart-wrenching second of character identification.

Arkin and Harris play this duet sequence like two jazz musicians buying and selling bebop riffs, the connection established not solely by what they are saying however how they are saying it — the breakneck tempo, offhand jargon, sentences and even phrases interrupted midstream, typically as a result of one is aware of the place the opposite goes, typically as a result of they will’t trouble to attend to say what’s on their thoughts. Mamet’s hyper-stylized dialogue isn’t simple to behave; if the rhythm is off, it will probably really feel unbearably phony, “written” reasonably than spoken. But Arkin greater than holds his personal towards Harris right here, and in later duets with Pacino, a equally heavyweight dramatic actor.

Yet the genius of his casting is that he may also draw on his innate sense of comedian timing, garnering laughs from these jagged exchanges, or when he later overplays his sense of concern on the crime (“Criminals come, they take and they steal the phones!”) and his interrogation by police (“I meet Gestapo tactics!”). But his finest moments as Aaronow are his quiet ones, like when he softly implores Moss (as soon as he’s caught within the mousetrap), “Why are you doing this to me?” He’s not taking part in for sympathy; this can be a muted cry of abandon and despair.