Virility

I don’t like much of Anthony Hopkins’ work, but having watched “A Bridge Too Far”, I now see why he’s famous. Lieutenant-Colonel Frost is one of the best written, best acted heroes in Hollywood. He speaks softly. Maybe too softly, and a bit high. He brings his dinner jacket and golf clubs to Holland. The blasts on his tiny bugle seem affected, even dweeby. But he doesn’t let the cheering crowds in Arnhem get to his head. He just wants to see the bridge in one piece. He apologizes to the owner for having to occupy the house overlooking the bridge, but wastes no time in smashing out the windows and placing machine guns. He politely directs the front line of defence, and politely tells the German translator requesting his surrender to go to Hell. He takes the news that no reinforcements are coming dispassionately, and gets back to the hopeless business of keeping a Panzer division at bay with a few hundred exhausted men. And at the end, the position lost, the bulk of his men dead or wounded and himself crippled, he dismisses his batman with a small smile and the words: “We just didn’t make it this time, did we?”
On seeing Frost’s courage unfold, we might be tempted to refer to ‘character development’. But that smile belongs to the same soft-spoken gentleman we met at the beginning, who was already then the battle-ready leader of men that we see now. Only our knowledge of the man has developed.