The king of animal instincts

In Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Andy Serkis again shows his creature portrayals go more than skin deep.
WE CAN all remember the turning point in our lives or careers. Andy Serkis's recollection is especially vivid. He was on a stage in the Wellington studios of Weta, director Peter Jackson's visual-effects house, his body dotted with sensors. A video screen was nearby.
''As I lifted my hand and began moving my head, I could see Gollum doing the same thing on the screen,'' Serkis says. ''It was like looking at a magic mirror.''
This was during the filming of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. In every sense, Serkis was Gollum, the haunted nemesis of author J.R.R. Tolkien's imagining; literally, a man-made creature.

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Andy Serkis as Caesar the chimp with James Franco in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Photo: AP

The process is called motion capture, or performance capture. Pioneered by the Weta Workshop in New Zealand, it recently reached new levels in James Cameron's Avatar.
After Gollum, Andy Serkis played King Kong and now he is Caesar, the chimpanzee and protagonist in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. In each case, Serkis becomes the animal, mostly speechless but certainly not voiceless.
The sensors and cameras, improved with each outing, map and track his every move and feed the multitude of facial and body movements into computers, which then render them as his new self. The process means Serkis can act alongside other real characters.

Andy Serkis. Photo: AP

To his director, Rupert Wyatt, it is a bravura performance in keeping with Serkis's reputation. ''Andy Serkis is our generation's Charlie Chaplin,'' Wyatt says of his fellow Englishman in his production notes.
''By that, I mean he's one of the very few actors around who has fully embraced the available visual-effects technology because he completely understands the full potential of what it can achieve. He's able to push through the technology and focus on the role,'' Wyatt adds in a later interview. ''I do think he's one of the great actors in the world."
It's not that Serkis goes looking for this kind of work, he says, but it invariably finds him. He has worked away from the sensors, most notably in Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll, a biopic of British new-wave performer Ian Dury, for which he was nominated for a BAFTA award. Not that the biopic role is needed to demonstrate his acting chops, Serkis says, but it does provide what he clearly feels is much-needed validation of his view that his performances are pure acting rather than something created by computers.

Andy Serkis as Gollum.

Interestingly, criticism originates from his own profession, Wyatt's glowing endorsement of Serkis's talent notwithstanding.
''That's what actors don't understand,'' Serkis says. ''Actors work in different ways. Some play characters close to themselves, others go in search of characters a little way away from them, others a long way from themselves; transformational roles are what they seek. I'm one of those actors who likes to go that way.
''Pushing the characters as far away as possible [from yourself] makes the challenge greater and finding an ability to connect with those roles is what you've got to want to do if you want to use this technology. The price of that is you completely disappear into the role and that you're manifested on the screen and you won't be recognised as you.''

Andy Serkis as Ian Dury.

So, no, there is no resemblance between Serkis and Caesar the chimp. But that's Serkis giving Caesar's face and character depth and life, from shambling movement to evocative, soul-deep eyes.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes reimagines the beginnings of the now 43-year-old original movie. Caesar is the survivor of a medical experiment gone wrong - an attempt by James Franco's character, scientist Will Rodman, to regenerate brain tissue as a cure for Alzheimer's disease. Caesar is the child of such a victim of experimentation. The mutation that makes the cure short-lived and fatal for humans revs the IQ of primates.
Serkis is closing on 50 but he is one star who doesn't have to worry about his looks, at least in this line of work.
There is the comfort, too, of believing the next generation appreciates him, even if this one doesn't, or can't make the distinction between digital and analog. ''They totally get it,'' Serkis says. ''Kids understand because they're the generation that plays with Wii and Nintendo.''
Rise of the Planet of the Apes is now screening. Gerard Wright travelled courtesy of 20th Century Fox.


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