“I am Shiva, the God of Death!,” Tom Wilkinson bellowed as Arthur Edens in the modern noir classic Michael Clayton. And despite how addled Arthur was, how unglued he was becoming as his conscience was taking over his litigator’s heart in Tony Gilroy’s film, I’ll be damned if there wasn’t a part of me who believed that maybe Arthur really was the God of Death. Because Arthur was being played by an actor so good and convincing that even a claim as outlandish as this one, however metaphorical, could seem plausible.
Tom Wilkinson was a titan of an actor. He was so relentlessly excellent that were someone to say to you, “You know, I think Tom Wilkinson is our best living actor,” you might not agree, but you would surely not put up much of an argument. Because, you know, close-e-fucking-nuff.
In fact, it could be argued that Wilkinson was so reliably terrific that he was taken for granted. “There goes Wilkinson, being perfect, again.” In my own emotional response to learning of Wilkinson’s passing, I felt some measure of surprise as I wiped the corners of my eyes. Even someone like me, so steeped in the art of film, so aware of Wilkinson’s talents, wasn’t prepared for him to complete his earthly journey. Somehow, I just always thought he’d be here, in parts large and small, owning them all as if they were written with him in mind.
There was a certain ordinariness to his appearance. He was a tall man, standing six foot one, but he sort of stooped a bit, as if to counter his vertical size. He carried a bit of girth. His hair often looked just barely combed, and even in a nice suit he often seemed a bit rumpled. Were he to pass you on the street, I don’t know that you would give him a second thought.
But on screen, he took that seemingly pedestrian nature and held each moment in his hand like a gifted sculptor. It may seem overly romantic to say, but I think he held us in his hands too. We were rapt with attention at his every line reading, his every facial expression.
He could be a wonderful crank, such as in Priest where he played an overly pragmatic man of the cloth consoling a fellow collared professional over their difficulty in managing their homosexual nature. He would mine humor from the most unusual moments. Just by derisively taking on what he considered the antiquated tenets of the Catholic Church.
He was exceedingly brave as well. Long before it became common, Wilkinson played a man proceeding with a sex change while still trying to hold onto his marriage (to a luminous Jessica Lange) in the 2003 HBO film Normal. His incredibly vulnerable and sensitive approach to the role was so bold and committed and humanizing in representing the unrepresented that I don’t think the typical huzzahs and hosannas that greeted his performance came close to being sufficient.
In perhaps his most famous lead role, Wilkinson was magnificent in In The Bedroom as the heartbroken father who takes revenge against the man who killed his son, while never letting you forget how very aware his character is of the sizable costs to his humanity that come with his actions. It didn’t mean something obviously significant to become a killer of another man, it meant nothing less than the sacrifice of a portion of his very soul.
Wilkinson could be very funny too. He was a total stitch in The Full Monty, Shakespeare in Love, and RocknRolla. He classed up genre fare like Rush Hour, Mission Impossible – Ghost Protocol, and Batman Begins. He was a wonderfully droll and randy Benjamin Franklin in the HBO mini-series John Adams. And in top-tier films like Separate Lies, The Ghost Writer, The Debt, Girl With a Pearl Earring, Ride With the Devil, Sense and Sensibility, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Belle, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Selma, he was never, not even once, the second best actor on screen. He was always no less than a first among equals, no matter who his equals might have been.
But for me, I must always return to what I believe is his greatest role in my favorite film of his—the doomed attorney Arthur Edens in Michael Clayton. A man whose decency will not allow him to honor his contract, to take the Brink’s truck sized sums of dirty money that are sure to come to his door. His Arthur has an awakening. “I cannot live with myself if I represent a company that is poisoning people.” I. Can. Not. And so Arthur becomes manic, goes off his pills, and meets a tragic end. But before that, he finds the truest part of himself. The part he cannot only live with, but die over. It is a profoundly moving performance that, like the movie, only gets better with each passing year.
I have never met Tom Wilkinson. I have never interviewed him, or brushed by him at a film festival. But, his character’s manic depression aside, I believe that he was, at his core, Arthur Edens. I believe he was the good man who found within himself what was most important. Maybe that’s why upon learning of his death, I felt so emotional. I have written many, many obits/tributes for the lost in the field of entertainment, but few have been harder to write than this one. I know it is a strange thing to feel such affection for someone you don’t really know, but through his work, the decency he seemed to exude when I was in his celluloid presence, I feel a sense of loss over Wilkinson that I was not prepared for. Maybe it’s just because he made the wonderful seem so routine. But we all know better than that.
Tom Wilkinson was the promiscuous priest, the overwhelmed father, the common man, the uncommon man, he could play anything. Even Shiva the God of Death.
There was nothing routine about him.
Tom Wilkinson died on December 30, 2023. He was 75 years old.
