Jennine Lanouette for ScreenTakes created and narrates this excellent video “refuting the notion that a character must be likable to be sympathetic”.
Her examples draw comparisons between characters such as Paul Newman‘s title character in Harper, Quvenzhané Wallis in Beasts of the Southern Wild, Melanie Laurent in Inglourious Basterds, a load of characters from Margin Call, James Bond in From Russia with Love, Woody Harrelson in The People vs. Larry Flynt, Charlize Theron in Monster and, of course, Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street where she says, “We’re notified in the opening scene we’re not supposed to like Jordan Belfort.” Hmmmm, and yet the argument against this film was that it glorified all that Belfort did? Interesting.
Give the video a watch (though, be warned, it’s NSFW), it’s a fantastic look at creating sympathetic characters out of unlikable people and just might have you looking at some films and characters a little differently in the future.
