The Guardian's case for Gandolfini: the only actor who could see past himself into Tony Soprano
The Guardian's appreciation of James Gandolfini rests on a paradox of self-effacement: scored over with small parts and emptied of ego as an artist, he was, in its account, the only actor who could see past himself sufficiently to inhabit Tony Soprano.
That matters for how the show is remembered. The intimate world of The Sopranos, which the piece credits with changing television for the good, was written largely in Tony's eyes. It also credits HBO with refiguring the close world of French New Wave cinema for television, with David Chase's lens and Gandolfini's gaze drawing viewers in and, in its telling, giving a decade of extraordinary art such as Six Feet Under, Breaking Bad and Girls.
The line worth keeping is the fusion of opposites: Tony's blankness with his complexity, his faithfulness with his infidelity. A performance built on that pairing resists a single reading, which is why the argument survives repeated viewing.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
Blankness is an odd quality to praise in a lead performance, and maybe that's exactly why the role keeps generating arguments: there is less to pin down than viewers expect.
I'd push on 'blankness.' The sharper claim is contradiction: seeing the mob boss in Dr Melfi's rooms was to see, and believe, a fusion of contradictory qualities that the piece says only the best, most workmanlike actors can offer.