Nathan Lane

In The Lion King (1994), Nathan Lane and Ernie Sabella make Timon and Pumbaa a welcome interruption to the solemn family drama. We laughed with relief at their comic exchanges, because the film can be overbearing when it starts teaching lessons. Lane’s timing gives their apparent untidiness a precise rhythm. He makes room for Sabella, and editor Ivan Bilancio keeps their comedy moving briskly into the more serious passages. The speed helps, though some of the quieter feeling could use longer to settle.

The stage helps explain that precision: his breakthrough came as Nathan Detroit in the 1992 Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls. The Birdcage (1996) put him opposite Robin Williams as Albert Goldman, with room for humour and hurt. He played Bialystock in the 2001 stage musical The Producers, then returned to the part for the 2005 film. That background in farce matters when we watch him on screen: he can make an exchange seem unruly without losing control of its pace.

Ari Aster uses that reassuring manner to make Roger unsettling in Beau Is Afraid (2023). He and Amy Ryan, as Grace, are far too pleased to have Beau in their house. Crombie surrounds them with pastel colours, leaving Beau in borrowed grey looking conspicuously out of place. Lane makes the hospitality uncomfortable without discarding its friendliness, so that accepting help begins to seem unwise. This is the film’s best-written stretch, though these performances cannot prevent the story from losing its shape elsewhere.

We would not ask Lane to keep all that comic energy out of sight. His gentility and readiness to entertain can be difficult to suppress in a straight dramatic role, but a director can put them to work rather than fight them. Sabella gives him another comic performer to work with; Ryan makes the same friendliness harder to trust. Start with The Lion King; approach Beau Is Afraid prepared for a good supporting performance in a film that asks for considerably more patience.