In Memory of David Warner

 A few days ago, actor David Warner passed away, on July 24th, 2022. He always seemed to be the kind of actor born to play Shakespeare; after he passed, I learned that his first claim to fame was in various leading roles with the Royal Shakespeare Company, but this trivia tidbit was so expected, I actually would have been shocked to read otherwise; he was the kind of distinguished, intelligent actor who seemed born to play Shakespeare.

I'm not interested in that, however. The Royal Shakespeare Company has, by now, employed hundreds of capable, talented actors. In that context alone, Warner's work would have been respectable, but hardly noteworthy.

What makes Warner notable, in my opinion, is his work in what they sometimes call "genre entertainment" -- mostly horror and science fiction. Warner's work in these areas brought dignity to genres that can often seem silly to mainstream audiences. Perhaps I feel this way because my first exposure to Warner's work was his role as a time-traveling Jack the Ripper in Time After Time. Like I said, it's silly work, and it would be foolish to claim otherwise, but Warner never made it seem like he was slumming.

His Shakespearean work notwithstanding, I'd argue that most of Warner's best work was in horror and sci-fi. His Jack the Ripper in Time After Time was chilling despite the mixture of wacky premise and 1970s disco aesthetics that almost but not quite derail the film. His Bob Cratchit in A Christmas Carol did the seemingly impossible, by making an overly familiar character with overly familiar lines seem fresh and relatable. And his turn as doctor and vampire hunter Professor Abraham van Helsing in (sadly, only two episodes of) Penny Dreadful was so believable that you almost wanted to check the history books to make sure that van Helsing was indeed a fictional character and not an historical figure. (Spoiler: He was fictional. It was just Warner's interpretation of the iconic character that made him so believable.)

Arguably, two of Warner's best performances were as aliens in Star Trek. As Klingon Chancellor Gorkon in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Warner was an only thinly disguised stand-in for Gorbachev, in a tale that intentionally mirrored the then current demise of the Cold War and the Soviet Union. Intriguingly, Gorkon's compatriot, General Chang, excellenty played by Christopher Plummer, was explicitly depicted as obsessed with the works of Shakespeare, but it was Gorkon whose role and demise were more Shakespearen in theme. Until this point, the Klingons had been depicted as purely villainous and war-like, which made Warner's performance of Gorkon as a calm, eloquent man of virtue all the more shocking for long time Star Trek viewers. Gorkon's assassination early in the film comes partially as a result of the character's one tragic flaw: He was so enamored of the hopes and potential promise of the future that he was blind to the fact that so many others would be terrified of that same future, to the point of violence. Gorkon's dying words about the future to Captain Kirk -- "don't let it end this way" -- are heart-breakingly delivered; even with Gorkon's dying breath, he cares more about his beloved future and his hoped for peace between enemies, than he does his own life.

On the flip side of this moral scale, Warner harnessed some of those same characteristics -- calmness, dignity, and intellect -- and used them to create one of the most effective and horrifying villains in Star Trek history. As Cardassian Gul Madred in the story "Chain of Command," Warner's character mercilessly submits our beloved captain, Jean-Luc Picard, to emotional, mental, and physical torture -- for so long that it took two episodes for poor Picard to be rescued. Madred sees no emotional or moral contradiction between speaking lovingly with his daughter one moment and wracking Picard's body with painful electric shocks the next. His goal is to break Picard so completely that it's not enough for Madred that Picard simply admit to his accused crimes. He wants Picard to "admit" that there are five lights in the room, when there are obviously four. Madred wants nothing less than Picard's very sense of reality to bend at Madred's relentless will. You want to hate Madred with a passion while you watch these scenes, but you can't help but marvel at Warner's ability to bring a touch of humanity even to this monstrous villain.

If Warner had done nothing else but these aforementioned roles -- and I've mentioned only a few out of many -- he'd be forever remembered both by me and by the general public as a fine and admirable actor. But personally, my favorite David Warner performance -- it's hard to choose one, but for the sake of this blog, I will -- is as the narrator for the audiobook of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. Warner gives each character their own subtlely different inflection and voice to make them all distinct from another, and even though the main character is a shy young woman, you never once feel that Warner's casting is inappropriate. Warner perfectly portrays the mixture of hope, insecurity, and vulnerability in the role of Eleanor Vance. Furthermore, he makes the third person narrator a character in and of himself, reflecting the unique voice in which Jackson wrote her best work. Too often, narration is read simply to get across a plot point, but with Warner's performance here, he makes you feel like an eloquent, empathetic, professorial grampa is in the room, telling you a scary story by the fire. You can catch this brilliant performance on YouTube here:

David Warner reads The Haunting of Hill House

So rest in peace, David Warner. Your performances and talent will be missed by generations of audiences.