Pete Postlethwaite made stubborn men worth listening to, even when they were asking too much. We value the precision that keeps his bandleader difficult and makes Shakespeare clear without stopping the film to explain it.
Fi1m perspective
In Brassed Off (1996), Danny keeps insisting that the band matters while the players face losing their livelihoods. Pete Postlethwaite lets him be unreasonable rather than softening him into a lovable enthusiast. We were moved by his insistence that the music deserved attention when there was so much else to fear. He makes us understand why Danny needs the band to survive without asking us to agree with his priorities, and the performance allows us to feel affection for someone who can be difficult company.
That difficult authority had already been central to his breakthrough in Terence Davies’s Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988), where he played a father capable of tenderness as well as intimidation. The move into Hollywood came with Alien³ (1992), followed by Giuseppe Conlon in In the Name of the Father (1993). Supporting parts in British and international films became the main screen pattern, extending to Maurice Fischer in Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010).
His Father Laurence in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (1996) makes Shakespeare clear without sounding as though he has stopped to teach it. Luhrmann’s romance is moving, but its noisy interruptions and hurried delivery make Postlethwaite’s clarity especially welcome. Leonardo DiCaprio can communicate a feeling more securely than the full thought inside a speech, and Postlethwaite makes that limitation easier to hear. The language needs time to register, but he never makes attending to it feel like a delay.
The Usual Suspects (1995), with Postlethwaite as Kobayashi, is another film we recommend, though its people can feel thinner than its mystery. It is worth resisting the temptation to credit a dependable supporting actor with everything that works around him. Nor can he fix the awkward changes of tone in Mark Herman’s Brassed Off, or its script’s habit of telling us how to feel. Start with that film, and allow Danny to irritate you before deciding how much you like him.
Biography
Pete Postlethwaite was an English character actor. Born Peter William Postlethwaite in Warrington in 1946, he trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and began his career on stage, including with the Royal Shakespeare Company. His first major film role came in Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988).
He gained international recognition for his performance as Giuseppe Conlon in In the Name of the Father (1993), for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Other notable film roles include Captain Beams in The Last of the Mohicans (1992), Mr Kobayashi in The Usual Suspects (1995), and appearances in Alien 3 (1992), Romeo + Juliet (1996), The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) and Inception (2010). On television he played Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill in the Sharpe series.
Postlethwaite was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2004. He died in Shrewsbury in 2011.
