The McConaissance – the catchy term applied to the renaissance of Matthew McConaughey’s career over the last few years that culminated with his Oscar win for DALLAS BUYERS CLUB – is truly one of the more remarkable transitions in Hollywood history. Here was a super-good-looking, super-charming, top-shelf romantic comedy leading man, a little goofy, a little hard to pin down but oh so worth the struggle for the heart of gold that beats beneath his golden, taut skin – it’s like Tinseltown made him in a lab. But then he started to change, the projects stopped being so bankable and started stretching his abilities as a thespian.
It started in 2011 with THE LINCOLN LAWYER, BERNIE and KILLER JOE. 2012 gave us THE PAPERBOY, MUD, and MAGIC MIKE (which is more in line with old McConaughey but not the way MM played it). Then in 2013 there’s DBC as well as his cameo in THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, and cap that off the next year with his stellar run in TRUE DETECTIVE.
Granted, since then it’s been a little rocky: INTERSTELLAR isn’t for everyone, THE SEA OF TREES is by most accounts abysmal, and his latest FREE STATE OF JONES, which opens this weekend, isn’t getting great reviews.
But so what? You can’t change the great work McConaughey has done, and you can’t refuse him credit for shifting his creative persona from something akin to a golden retriever to, I don’t know, what’s a dramatic dog? A Pincher? Something like that.
In their latest supercut, Burger Fiction traces the evolution of Matthew McConaughey from the days of “alright, alright, alright” to “time is a flat circle.” Cue the chest drumming.
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