Last night, Gandolfini, the terrifying yet relatable Tony Soprano, passed away. Alyssa eulogizes:
If you write about television, as I do, or watch it frequently, Gandolfini’s performance as Tony Soprano on the titular show that helped remake HBO and prestige television along with it was a major contribution to the world we inhabit together. … [M]ore than anything else, it was Gandolfini, who gave us a man who fascinated us and commanded our sympathy despite the enormity of his crimes, reminding us that people whose only sins are against each other’s hearts deserve our attention, too.
James Poniewozik reflects on how he changed television drama:
James Gandolfini was our usher into that new TV era, by taking a performance that could have been cartoonish (remember Analyze This?) and making it psychologically layered and unshakeable. This was a man who could show us a brute throttling a Mafia turncoat while looking at colleges with his daughter and make us think: I want to know this guy better. He could lead us, mildly contemplating an onion ring, to the finale’s famous cut-to-black, to the tune of “Don’t Stop Believin’,” and leave us wondering whether he lived or died, and what he deserved, and what it all meant. We can only wonder what more Gandolfini would have done with a more fair measure of years.
Suderman nods:
Certainly [the show] was among the most influentual, with its creators and core ideas still reverberating through the so many of the high-quality dramas produced today.
And that influence, and it staying power, has a lot to do with the way Gandolfini payed Tony: powerful but conflcted, angry and often menacingly violent but not wholly heartless, driven and determined yet fundamentally confused about what he wanted out of life. Was he a monster? Or just the man next door? Gandolfini’s performance helped provide the only possible answer to that pair of questions: Yes. It was the perfect role, and he was the perfect actor for it. It’s impossible to imagine The Sopranos without Gandolfini, and nearly as difficult to imagine the modern TV drama landscape — with its emphasis on brooding serials led by aging male antiheroes — without his work on the show.
Marc Tracy wants critics to remember that Gandolfini wasn’t Tony:
I can hear the laptops clacking: obituarists are saying that the [Sopranos]’s obsession with death (“In the midst of death, we are in life. Or is it the other way around?”) has prepared us for Gandolfini’s death as we are prepared for nobody else’s death; that the final scene blah blah blah; that, indeed, “Whaddya gonna do?” No. At least when we ascribe attributes of a fictional character to her author, it is not always a fallacy—the author has created the character, and so it is fair to ask what he has invested her with. Gandolfini’s achievement was different: while Tony may share things with Gandolfini, ultimately what Gandolfini does is completely efface himself, disappearing into the role completely in order to make the entire thing work.
“The Sopranos” likely would have been a pretty good show no matter who was playing Tony (unless it was Steve Van Zandt, who played Silvio and reportedly auditioned for the part). Would it have been the American masterpiece it was with anyone other than Gandolfini? To ask the question, as Christopher Hitchens used to write, is to answer it.
The Dish 