Management guru Stefan Stern meticulously recalls a screen performance by the late great actor Paul Newman.
FT Weekend reprints Stefan Stern’s eulogy blog to Newman. It’s great to see how Stern notates Newman’s deft performance of David Mamet’s script for the Sidney Lumet 1982 film The Verdict. Click here to read the blog.
To add: The speech works on another level. In speaking of the opportunity “to act as if you have faith” the speech by Newman’s character crystallises the actor’s craft — and by extension — the audience’s labour.
The actor says I act as if I am this other person. The willing audience, suspending its disbelief, affirms this “as if” with attentive silence. Everyone in their rational selves “knows better” but the consensus is to collaborate, for a time, in the fiction.
Stern, a management writer in today’s turbulent times, says he turned to The Verdict because he craves a morality tale. Even in more stable times, justice is realised only when we act as if the world is already just. Like the theatre audience collaborating in the fiction, we collaborate in making the world more just. Our belief, while not sufficient, is necessary to make it so.
