Welcome to 5 Favorites. Each week, I will put together a list of my 5 favorites (films, performances, whatever strikes my fancy) along with commentary on a given topic each week, usually in relation to a specific film releasing that week.

Acting on film since the early-to-mid-1980s, Willem Dafoe is a character actor of great talent whose films range from esoteric art pictures to broadly popular ones. With more than 110 feature film credits in a 40-plus-year career, Dafoe is a hardworking actor who/s done some great work and even when you don’t expect much of the film itself, he can always be counted on to lend a sense of gravitas to the proceedings. Let’s look back at five of his best films.

Interestingly, I could also do a top five list of films of his that I definitely want to see. Regardless, this list will focus on the five best films that I’ve seen featuring Willem Dafoe.

Platoon (1986)

A director who has become synonymous with political films, Oliver Stone started out simply enough with two films about artists and their murderous creations. His first flirtation with Oscar came in 1986’s Salvador about a photojournalist becoming a part of revolution in Central America. That film scored two Oscar nominations, but it was this film, his fourth, that launched him into the stratosphere. Platoon is the scorching story of a platoon of enlisted men on the frontlines in South Vietnam. The platoon battles a merciless enemy as well as themselves to find peace and survival in a war-torn region.

Charlie Sheen leads the story with Tom Berenger and Willem Dafoe providing his main support. The cast is strong with Berenger and Dafoe highlighted for their solid work, which ultimately landed them competing Oscar nominations. Both actors lost that year, although the film ultimately took home half of its eight Oscar nominations, including wins for Oliver Stone as Best Director and the film itself securing Best Picture. The picture would ultimately be the first in a series of three films set during the Vietnam war with its follow up, Born on the Fourth of July, doing well with Oscar, and the third film, Heaven & Earth, a disappointment. Of the war films that have won Best Picture, this is probably the second best following All Quiet on the Western Front.

The English Patient (1996)

A supposedly unfilmable book became a major Oscar success when Anthony Minghella wrote and directed this adaptation of Michael Ondaatje’s well regarded novel. Starring Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas as ill-fated lovers during the final days of the Italian Campaign of World War II. The winding novel follows the pair as they are separated during the conflict, with Fiennes leaving the injured Scott Thomas behind to seek medical attention and finding himself caught up in numerous struggles along the way.

Juliette Binoche, who won the only acting Oscar for the film, plays a French-Canadian nurse caring for the severely burned Fiennes who cannot seem to remember his name. Dafoe plays a Canadian intelligence officer who questions Fiennes in an effort to determine his identity. Wonderfully acted and brilliantly written and directed, the film is a beautifully designed one that swept nine of the twelve awards it was nominated for as a result. Although the film’s designs were inferior to the same year’s Evita, that film won only one for Original Song and the winners thanked this film for not having a song in it as they felt the night of constant awards to the picture would have swept it in as well.

The Aviator (2004)

The film that should have won Martin Scorsese his Oscar for Best Directing, The Aviator is a look back at the strange life of pilot and filmmaker Howard Hughes as he goes from celebrated Hollywood sensation to recluse. His obsessive-compulsive disorder is a key component of his psyche and is explored with great care and patience by Scorsese. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Hughes with gusto and an array of prominent modern Hollywood acting legends provide solid support, including a superb Cate Blanchett as Katherine Hepburn, a brilliant performance that landed her a richly-deserved Oscar alongside the film’s four other prizes including Art Direction, Film Editing, Costume Design, and, as I’ll discuss momentarily, Cinematography.

Of the five films highlighted this week, this and the next probably feature the least important roles of Dafoe’s career. Dafoe here plays Roland Sweet in a largely forgettable performance. Forgettable is a bit harsh since so much of the film is incredibly memorable, the least of which are the performances. That said, DiCaprio and Blanchett expectedly shine and the film is a riveting look back at the Halcyon days of Hollywood’s heyday. The most impressive element of the film, and one that I feel gets short shrift, is the photography choices Scorsese employs. As the film progresses from two-color to three-strip Technicolor, the film emulates the lighting and photographic techniques of the era. It’s a brilliant decision that helps bring the audience into a period that many of them weren’t alive to see and to experience the wonderous advancements that came about during the career of the innovative Hughes.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

Dafoe’s performance in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel isn’t much bigger or more important than his appearance in The Aviator, but it’s not that crucial either. That said, why have I included these two films when his performances in other films, including At Eternity’s Gate are so much better? Because those films are only enhanced by his performance, the pictures themselves are rather dull and not particularly good. So, we’re looking instead at two films that are really quite good and may well be among the best their respective directors have ever or will ever make. In this case, Anderson has done some really good stuff in the past, including The Royal Tenenbaums, Moonrise Kingdom, and Fantastic Mr. Fox, but Grand Budapest exists on a slightly higher level.

With a story as fascinating as its characters, Anderson’s terrific ensemble cast make the film a tremendous achievement. His trademark artistic and thematic style comes right through with a bountiful array of quality design elements that elevate it even further. The film combines Anderson’s best qualities and showcases few of his weaker ones. That story is about the rags to riches story of a once-bellhop at a renowned mountain hotel. The bizarre array of figures he meets there form the foundation of the tale. It’s a wonderful, hilarious comedy that marked a high point for Anderson and his very distinctive auteur style.

The Lighthouse (2019)

In the final film for this week, Dafoe gets to show off his acting chops quite well. Robert Eggers directed this bizarre little black-and-white drama about two men co-existing in a remote New England lighthouse. Dafoe is the older, veteran lighthouse keeper with Robert Pattinson, given a chance to show of his surprisingly estimable skills, as a newer one. As the pair banter over their pasts and what has driven them to seek such moribund isolation, the stresses of being alone in such a remote location begin to take their toll on the younger keeper as he struggles to come to terms with the strange goings-on and the bizarre secrecy engaged in by the elder statesman.

Not just employing a black-and-white filmmaking motif, Eggers also goes with a smaller aspect ratio to draw the audience into the claustrophobic lighthouse and its environs, using natural lighting to highlight the intense bleakness of the fog-shrouded area over which the lighthouse watches. The filmmaking techniques are more important to the film’s success than its narrative, which is somewhat hard to follow. Regardless, Dafoe and Pattinson deliver tremendous performances that showcase a vast career of such performances in Dafoe’s case and a surprisingly rich future available to Pattinson. It’s definitely not a film for the squeamish or the easily bored as it takes a great deal of stamina to make it to the end and whether you come out better for it in the end is a matter of some debate, a debate that might never be settled in the near future.