For the kind of irony that's distinct from comedy in terms of narrative structure, Fred MacMurray in Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (1944) is the quintessential protagonist: you know Barbara Stanwyck is going to be poison to him; he knows Barbara Stanwyck is going to be poison to him; but he falls, thinking he's jumping, and you find yourself hoping he lands on his feet. The movie maintains its moral bearings by the inclusion of Edward G. Robinson's character, and though no actor has ever made sheer goodness less phony, while watching the movie you want MacMurray to get away with something you'd gladly see him executed for if he were a real person. (No less so when he plans a second crime to cover up the first.)
Ewan McGregor was Boyle's original badboy protagonist, and when Boyle stopped pushing the edge almost desperately, as he had in Shallow Grave (1994) and Trainspotting (1996), and relaxed with the comic irony of A Life Less Ordinary (1997), their talents threw out new, unexpected shoots. It was like the first spring in a calendar that had previously had only one season, winter--A Life Less Ordinary is a sensational black romantic comedy. (Click here for Stephanie Zacharek's Salon review, one of the very few to appreciate the movie.) Leonardo DiCaprio starred in Boyle's adaptation of Alex Garland's book The Beach, and you can see why the director and star would want to work together. DiCaprio is arguably the greatest male photographic model ever and a wonderful mime. (The two don't always go together: Marilyn Monroe was a great model but at best merely an endearingly woozy actress.) In The Beach, for instance, when DiCaprio sees a girl shot down or when he thinks he's about to be executed, he shows an expressive talent rivaling that of the greatest silent stars. He's so able to get us to identify with him that there's no need to make him likeable.
But Boyle's indifference to the usual appeals to the audience were compromised in The Beach, possibly by 20th Century-Fox, possibly by DiCaprio. Hard to know, but what is clear is that at times the movie expects us to like this boy whose behavior is quite sketchy. He could be a hero only if finding the ideal stretch of white sand were a heroic quest. Otherwise the only point would seem to be to seduce us into justifying the means he takes to a tempting end and then to snap the travel brochure shut on our lolling tongues. (Irony overlaps with comedy, sometimes in terms of structure but usually in terms of the response it elicits, i.e., laughter, but can at the same time be quite punitive.) But the script ducks the hardball approach and ends up neither-nor.
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