Even when it is bullying or cruel or grumpy, Tommy Lee Jones’ face is wildly watchable. It has a complex star quality that recalls Robert Mitchum, who gave two of his best performances as a rapist and a killer priest. There is something similarly cracked in Tommy Lee. Though he often portrays gruff, no-nonsense authority figures, we hesitate to call Tommy Lee a hero, for there is something off about him. His face, with its scarred cheeks, deeply lined even at the prime of his 70s handsomeness, and heavy brow, is a mask of authority. He is the sheriff, the cowboy. He is the man in black. But let him darken the gleam in his eye and he becomes a mercenary, a terrorist, an assassin, a conspirator against the president.
"Tommy Lee Jones’ star quality is, with its duelling impulses to heroism and villainy, a kind of double."
In Danse Macabre, Stephen King analyzes Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde as an archetypal double figure, a hypocrite who splits himself so that he can enjoy the illicit pleasures of society which he pretends to disdain. King characterizes Jekyll/Hyde and the double more broadly, as a variation on the werewolf, a type which reflects the duelling impulses in humans. The split frees the wild self from its tamer.
Tommy Lee Jones’ star quality is, with its duelling impulses to heroism and villainy, a kind of double. Tommy Lee has actually played villainous doubles in his career. Not just once, but twice. First in The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) and then in Batman Forever (1995) as Harvey Dent/Two-Face, a hard-charging district attorney driven mad after being attacked with acid during a trial, an act which he blames for failing to stop. In line with Batman Forever’s over-the-top neon gothic aesthetic, Two-Face’s acid scar perfectly bisects his profile, rendering him as a Jekyll forever stuck mid-transformation into Hyde: a liminality that makes him grotesquely funny, fascinating, and somehow earnest.
This Two-Face is not a portrait of the double as warring impulses of good and evil. Both the Jekyll/Dent and Hyde/Two-Face sides are in agreement about killing Batman. The Difference between them is one of degrees. Where Harvey wants to shoot Batman, Two-Face wants to trap him in a vault full of acid and drop it off a helicopter. It is unclear whether this reflects their varying degrees of hatred for Batman, or is merely a stylistic difference. Crucially, both Harvey and Two-Face agree on the role of chance in their actions, and use a coin to decide whether or not to kill, making them the embodiment of a wanton logic of random destruction that floats in the air over Gotham, between sequels and adaptations, temporarily attaching itself to this character or that.
In Batman Forever, Two-Face explains his motivations, “One man is born a hero, his brother a coward. Babies starve, politicians grow fat. Holy men are martyred, and junkies grow legion. Why? Why, why, why, why, why, why? Luck! Blind, stupid, simple, doo-dah, clueless luck.”
This sentiment is echoed by Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight (2008), when the Joker converts Harvey Dent into Two-Face by giving him a gun and a coin, and telling him that chaos is fair.
Tommy Lee’s Two-Face is a version of the double in which the difference has almost disappeared. His selves have aligned, and are free to pursue their twisted urge. Their face is free to twist into a scream. But the scream dies in total frustration. Being a villain in a Batman universe, Two-Face will never achieve his true desire. Batman will always escape. The most humorous instance of this in the film is when Two-Face traps Batman in a pit in the foundation beneath a construction site. He and his goons gleefully launch a barrage of flamethrowers and grenades at the Bat. Two-Face’s eyes gleam in rapturous joy, for finally, surely, he has succeeded in his quest. But nope. Lo and behold, Batman presses a button on his utility belt and his cape morphs into a fire-resistant plastic shell. When Batman emerges unscraped from the blaze, Two-Face howls in disappointment, his violence impotent in the face of Batman’s sophisticated technology.
Lt. John Neville, as played by TLJ in Eyes Of Laura Mars (1978), embodies a different kind of doubleness. This double can masquerade as normal, has a day job as an NYC detective, and the killer inside only shows itself to those it kills, stabbing out its victims eyes with an ice pick.
Jekyll invented Hyde so that he could patronize brothels, but he did not invent prostitution. The warring impulses that animate the double exist in society in a way that predates and supersedes any one individual. The double—acting out the conflict of larger society—scratches at taboos, leers at transgressions, and ultimately punishes itself for its fascinations.
In Eyes of Laura Mars, we see this through an ongoing conversation about Laura’s photography, which uses images of dead models, and is both feted and criticized. It opens with an opening of Laura’s new show. Outside, a female reporter tells Laura that her work is offensive to women. Inside, a television reporter speculates into his camera that “photography is just a hype.”
Lt. Neville is also drawn and repelled by Laura, who in addition to being a controversial photographer, also has the ability to see the murders through the murderer’s eyes. Initially, he is dismissive of her work, but he softens after she explains her art practice. She says, “What I’m trying to do is give an account of the times in which I’m living. I’ve seen all kinds of murder. Physical, yes. But moral, spiritual, emotional murder! I can’t stop it, but I can…make people look at it.”
“That’s a very moral point of view,” he replies.
But as Neville comes to respect her art, and in a sense indulge his fascination with its transgressive nature, the killings do not stop. The killer inside Neville is still driven to punish Laura for using death to sell things, because it views death as sacred. The fascination and the punishment escalate hand in hand as Neville falls for Laura, and the killer orchestrates and controls the events surrounding the crimes. It even arranges a patsy to take the fall for the killings. The killer is in the clear, and Neville is free to be with Laura, if only it would keep its mouth shut.
But the killer inside Neville is tired of being careful. It is driven, at the very moment of its triumph, by an overwhelming desire to announce its existence to Laura. “I’m the one that keeps him in shape. See this body? That’s my work. If it was up to him, I’d weigh 98 pounds. I’m the one that feeds him. I pay the bills. I answer the Christmas cards. I’m the one you want.”
"It is as if the different parts of him are finally seeing each other."
The killer wants to punish her and love her, it wants her to see him and be seen by her. It advances on Laura, triggering her special power and we understand that she is seeing through his eyes. He is looking at her. She is looking at herself. This confusion of identities reaches a sublime peak when he looks at himself in the mirror, seeing himself seeing himself through her eyes.
It is as if the different parts of him are finally seeing each other. His real full self finally revealed. His urges to love and to kill out in the open. The good Neville seems to re-establish control, stabbing one of the reflections with an ice pick, and turning to Laura, begging her to shoot.
“If you love me, you’ll kill him.”
Laura pulls the trigger. She kills Neville, then calls 911.
“He came here to kill me,” she tells the operator. “But he couldn’t do it. Because he… he really did love me.”
Laura chooses to believe that the loving part is the real him, but the love and hatred Neville feels for her are equal.
Laura haltingly says her own name to the 911 operator, as if saying it for the first time and we are left with the impression that Neville’s punishing/leering spirit has jumped through time and space to infest her, and will be seeing through her eyes forever.
This conflicting urge, to punish what attracts, is at the heart of the double. It is also a deep animating force in our society, and seems likely to survive the death of all those characters, those Jekylls and Hydes, and Nevilles and Harveys, who briefly represent it in our fiction. It will continue to jump across society, and Tommy Lee’s face will be one of its conduits. Through him, the star who is both hero and villain, we can see an important truth, one which needs always to be spoken, namely that authority is a cracked mask, behind which lurks not justice.
Even when it is bullying or cruel or grumpy, Tommy Lee Jones’ face is wildly watchable. It has a complex star quality that recalls Robert Mitchum, who gave two of his best performances as a rapist and a killer priest. There is something similarly cracked in Tommy Lee. Though he often portrays gruff, no-nonsense authority figures, we hesitate to call Tommy Lee a hero, for there is something off about him. His face, with its scarred cheeks, deeply lined even at the prime of his 70s handsomeness, and heavy brow, is a mask of authority. He is the sheriff, the cowboy. He is the man in black. But let him darken the gleam in his eye and he becomes a mercenary, a terrorist, an assassin, a conspirator against the president.
"Tommy Lee Jones’ star quality is, with its duelling impulses to heroism and villainy, a kind of double."
In Danse Macabre, Stephen King analyzes Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde as an archetypal double figure, a hypocrite who splits himself so that he can enjoy the illicit pleasures of society which he pretends to disdain. King characterizes Jekyll/Hyde and the double more broadly, as a variation on the werewolf, a type which reflects the duelling impulses in humans. The split frees the wild self from its tamer.
Tommy Lee Jones’ star quality is, with its duelling impulses to heroism and villainy, a kind of double. Tommy Lee has actually played villainous doubles in his career. Not just once, but twice. First in The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) and then in Batman Forever (1995) as Harvey Dent/Two-Face, a hard-charging district attorney driven mad after being attacked with acid during a trial, an act which he blames for failing to stop. In line with Batman Forever’s over-the-top neon gothic aesthetic, Two-Face’s acid scar perfectly bisects his profile, rendering him as a Jekyll forever stuck mid-transformation into Hyde: a liminality that makes him grotesquely funny, fascinating, and somehow earnest.
This Two-Face is not a portrait of the double as warring impulses of good and evil. Both the Jekyll/Dent and Hyde/Two-Face sides are in agreement about killing Batman. The Difference between them is one of degrees. Where Harvey wants to shoot Batman, Two-Face wants to trap him in a vault full of acid and drop it off a helicopter. It is unclear whether this reflects their varying degrees of hatred for Batman, or is merely a stylistic difference. Crucially, both Harvey and Two-Face agree on the role of chance in their actions, and use a coin to decide whether or not to kill, making them the embodiment of a wanton logic of random destruction that floats in the air over Gotham, between sequels and adaptations, temporarily attaching itself to this character or that.
In Batman Forever, Two-Face explains his motivations, “One man is born a hero, his brother a coward. Babies starve, politicians grow fat. Holy men are martyred, and junkies grow legion. Why? Why, why, why, why, why, why? Luck! Blind, stupid, simple, doo-dah, clueless luck.”
This sentiment is echoed by Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight (2008), when the Joker converts Harvey Dent into Two-Face by giving him a gun and a coin, and telling him that chaos is fair.
Tommy Lee’s Two-Face is a version of the double in which the difference has almost disappeared. His selves have aligned, and are free to pursue their twisted urge. Their face is free to twist into a scream. But the scream dies in total frustration. Being a villain in a Batman universe, Two-Face will never achieve his true desire. Batman will always escape. The most humorous instance of this in the film is when Two-Face traps Batman in a pit in the foundation beneath a construction site. He and his goons gleefully launch a barrage of flamethrowers and grenades at the Bat. Two-Face’s eyes gleam in rapturous joy, for finally, surely, he has succeeded in his quest. But nope. Lo and behold, Batman presses a button on his utility belt and his cape morphs into a fire-resistant plastic shell. When Batman emerges unscraped from the blaze, Two-Face howls in disappointment, his violence impotent in the face of Batman’s sophisticated technology.
Lt. John Neville, as played by TLJ in Eyes Of Laura Mars (1978), embodies a different kind of doubleness. This double can masquerade as normal, has a day job as an NYC detective, and the killer inside only shows itself to those it kills, stabbing out its victims eyes with an ice pick.
Jekyll invented Hyde so that he could patronize brothels, but he did not invent prostitution. The warring impulses that animate the double exist in society in a way that predates and supersedes any one individual. The double—acting out the conflict of larger society—scratches at taboos, leers at transgressions, and ultimately punishes itself for its fascinations.
In Eyes of Laura Mars, we see this through an ongoing conversation about Laura’s photography, which uses images of dead models, and is both feted and criticized. It opens with an opening of Laura’s new show. Outside, a female reporter tells Laura that her work is offensive to women. Inside, a television reporter speculates into his camera that “photography is just a hype.”
Lt. Neville is also drawn and repelled by Laura, who in addition to being a controversial photographer, also has the ability to see the murders through the murderer’s eyes. Initially, he is dismissive of her work, but he softens after she explains her art practice. She says, “What I’m trying to do is give an account of the times in which I’m living. I’ve seen all kinds of murder. Physical, yes. But moral, spiritual, emotional murder! I can’t stop it, but I can…make people look at it.”
“That’s a very moral point of view,” he replies.
But as Neville comes to respect her art, and in a sense indulge his fascination with its transgressive nature, the killings do not stop. The killer inside Neville is still driven to punish Laura for using death to sell things, because it views death as sacred. The fascination and the punishment escalate hand in hand as Neville falls for Laura, and the killer orchestrates and controls the events surrounding the crimes. It even arranges a patsy to take the fall for the killings. The killer is in the clear, and Neville is free to be with Laura, if only it would keep its mouth shut.
But the killer inside Neville is tired of being careful. It is driven, at the very moment of its triumph, by an overwhelming desire to announce its existence to Laura. “I’m the one that keeps him in shape. See this body? That’s my work. If it was up to him, I’d weigh 98 pounds. I’m the one that feeds him. I pay the bills. I answer the Christmas cards. I’m the one you want.”
"It is as if the different parts of him are finally seeing each other."
The killer wants to punish her and love her, it wants her to see him and be seen by her. It advances on Laura, triggering her special power and we understand that she is seeing through his eyes. He is looking at her. She is looking at herself. This confusion of identities reaches a sublime peak when he looks at himself in the mirror, seeing himself seeing himself through her eyes.
It is as if the different parts of him are finally seeing each other. His real full self finally revealed. His urges to love and to kill out in the open. The good Neville seems to re-establish control, stabbing one of the reflections with an ice pick, and turning to Laura, begging her to shoot.
“If you love me, you’ll kill him.”
Laura pulls the trigger. She kills Neville, then calls 911.
“He came here to kill me,” she tells the operator. “But he couldn’t do it. Because he… he really did love me.”
Laura chooses to believe that the loving part is the real him, but the love and hatred Neville feels for her are equal.
Laura haltingly says her own name to the 911 operator, as if saying it for the first time and we are left with the impression that Neville’s punishing/leering spirit has jumped through time and space to infest her, and will be seeing through her eyes forever.
This conflicting urge, to punish what attracts, is at the heart of the double. It is also a deep animating force in our society, and seems likely to survive the death of all those characters, those Jekylls and Hydes, and Nevilles and Harveys, who briefly represent it in our fiction. It will continue to jump across society, and Tommy Lee’s face will be one of its conduits. Through him, the star who is both hero and villain, we can see an important truth, one which needs always to be spoken, namely that authority is a cracked mask, behind which lurks not justice.