Black Sheep interviews Ralph Fiennes

GENERAL FIENNES
An interview with CORIOLANUS director and star, Ralph Fiennes

Ralph Fiennes is known for playing intimidating, imposing characters, be that in his breakout film, SCHINDLER'S LIST (1993), his Oscar-nominated turn in the epic THE ENGLISH PATIENT (1996) or his recurring role in the HARRY POTTER series, as the Dark Lord himself, Harry’s archnemesis, Voldemort. Like so many great actors before him, Fiennes has finally decided to step behind the camera with his directorial debut, CORIOLANUS. Keeping the experience true to intense form, Fiennes also stars.

“There were times when I came near to it, never totally though,” Fiennes confides when pressed if he ever regretted his decision to direct and star in this career benchmark, when we meet at the Toronto International Film Festival press stop. “Obviously I knew it would be hard and I tried to be as prepared as I could. It was a bit schizophrenic still.”

Based on one of William Shakespeare’s lesser known tragedies, and set in modern day Rome, CORIOLANUS finds Fiennes’ hero briskly built up and violently torn down by a near mad society, desperate for change and better living. “I love it dramatically because I think audiences are challenged as to where to put their allegiance,” says Fiennes of his attraction to the text. “They can start off resisting Coriolanus, then finding a way to admire him despite their thoughts about his views.”

Directing co-star, Gerard Butler

Having played the part over ten years ago, Fiennes knew even then that he wanted to keep the Shakespearean text intact for the present day setting. “I think it’s a potent mix when you put Shakespeare in modern dress,” Fiennes explains of his approach. “The trick is the language, you have to strip it of all theatricality and yet not deny its power.”

On screen with co-star, Jessica Chastain

Considering how stately he is on screen, Fiennes is considerably relaxed and humble in person. He is also quick to point out the important lessons he has taken away from the demanding CORIOLANUS. The first is that he wants to do it again. (He is already in pre-production on an Abi Morgan penned script called THE INVISIBLE WOMAN.) The second is that this time, maybe he’ll just sit back and watch from the director’s chair.

“You don’t want to be thinking about how you’re looking when you’re acting; you want to be just in it, reacting to the other person, but as a director, I have to try to detach.”

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Black Sheep interviews MICHAEL SHANNON

When I sat down to speak with Michael Shannon about his mesmerizing performance in Jeff Nichols’ equally transfixing film, TAKE SHELTER, Hurricane Irene had just paid a visit to his hometown, Manhattan. The media had made out the event to be potentially catastrophic but the weather came and went without much damage to mention. The media may have had egg on their faces but what if they were right? One day, they very well might be.

In TAKE SHELTER, Shannon plays Curtis, a husband, a father, a construction foreman and a good man. Curtis has a secret though; Curtis is having visions that a storm that could end all storms is coming and he isn’t quite sure how to deal with that. “I don’t think he’s a prophet,” Shannon begins to explain of Curtis. “I don’t think Curtis has necessarily even thought it out to the extent that he thinks the end of the world is coming. I think it’s much more poetic than that.”

That it certainly is. When Curtis dreams, he sees rain of a different colour than we are accustomed to, falling from the sky. Whatever it is that is falling from the sky, it is potent and powerful and it will be the game changer humanity has managed to avoid for centuries now. Rather than presume too specifically what that would will be like though, Nichols chooses to keep things ambiguous, which is what Shannon loves about the film. “The sky is such a beautiful poetic image. People ask why can’t he just run but you can’t run from the sky.”

The supernatural elements of TAKE SHELTER are counterbalanced with Curtis’ family life, which is tested greatly by his mounting paranoia. In yet another stellar supporting turn, Jessica Chastain plays opposite Shannon as his wife. Their marriage is already braving its own storm of sorts, with their daughter facing the possibility of permanent and total hearing loss. It was the scenes with Curtis’ daughter (played by Tova Stewart) that Shannon found most disturbing and difficult. “I have a 3-year old daughter. The thought of some disaster happening to her, it’s not something I can digest. I think that’s what is so terrifying about what’s happening to Curtis is that he’s lost the ability to block it out.”

That’s an understatement. Faced with a potentially apocalyptic storm, Curtis begins expanding an underground shelter in his backyard. Naturally, this tips off his friends and family to his increasingly bizarre behaviour. Complicating matters further, Curtis’ mother (Kathy Baker) was diagnosed with schizophrenia when she was roughly Curtis’ current age. This begs the question, is this madness or is this divine intervention?

“I think what Curtis is experiencing beyond schizophrenia is just feeling unsafe because he doesn’t know who’s running the show,” Shannon clarifies. Curiously enough, Curtis is not a churchgoer, unlike the rest of his family, and yet God has chosen him to warn of what’s coming. Or, he’s totally losing it. It could go either way. “For me, one of the reasons I was interested in doing the film, is that more metaphysical, spiritual component,” says Shannon, a non-churchgoer himself.

It is these kinds of delicate layers that inform both Shannon’s performance, one that will certainly come up come awards season, and the effectiveness of TAKE SHELTER itself. “To me, the inherent question is, if you don’t believe in God or if you’re not religious, then isn’t the world a terrifying place?” Shannon asks, of both his audience and himself. “Because everything is arbitrary and nature is very arbitrary. Nature is not malicious; it’s not like it wants to destroy your house but its there and its undeniable. It’s been that way for centuries. Just ask the dinosaurs.”

Would that I could but we all know how that turned out. If only the dinosaur having premonitions had spoken up.

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ReReview: THE TREE OF LIFE

Written and Directed by Terrence Malick

Starring Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain and Sean Penn

Mrs. O'Brien: You'll be grown before that tree is tall. 

Terrence Malick’s THE TREE OF LIFE is the most polarizing film I’ve seen in ages. It was widely reported that plenty of patrons walked out and angrily demanded their money back while just as many fans vehemently defended it, proclaiming the film a modern masterpiece. In fact, this pattern began at the Cannes film festival, where the film made its debut, when half the audience took its feet in ovation while the rest booed and hissed loudly. To be fair, Cannes audiences do tend to err on the dramatic side of things but this divide was very real. No word of a lie, I hold THE TREE OF LIFE personally responsible, at least in some small part, for actually ruining a very close friendship of mine. It doesn’t matter which side of the line you fall on though; what matters is that for those who see it, the reaction it inspires is a strong one.

All I knew after seeing THE TREE OF LIFE in theatres was that I would need to see it again to truly form a full opinion of it. I knew that seeing it again would either leave me feeling more detached from it or more involved in it. When I saw the film with an audience, I was surprised and moved by how quiet and attentive everyone was. The film demands your attention and it certainly had it in that room. A few people left, including the couple sitting in front of me. (I knew when they sat down that it was only a matter of when.) At the time, my original review praised the film’s aesthetics, calling them nothing short of genius, but I also felt the film came across as somewhat self-important, as if Malick portended to know something we didn’t.

After seeing the film again, in stunning high definition in my living room, I feel as though I have seen THE TREE OF LIFE in a whole other light. The film is an odyssey of sorts, one that the viewer must choose to embark upon freely in order to enjoy. At two hours and eighteen minutes, the film is not particularly long but it can feel that way at times because it requires such delicate contemplation on the viewer’s part, as well as some very focused observation. It’s almost meditative. If you can find that state of balance and calm that Malick mysteriously manifests on film though, the experience itself can be transcendent. Every frame of this film is magnificent, bursting off the screen with beauty like you’ve never seen, rendering the action taking place superfluous most of the time.

There is no succinct plot in THE TREE OF LIFE. Having one would almost defeat the point, or at least the new point I’ve taken away from the film anyway. I feel more now as though Malick is not telling us what he thinks he knows about life but rather asking us to see life as the splendid miracle it is, to appreciate it fully and to understand that not only could it disappear in an instant but that one day it will. And so instead of story, Malick gives us random moments, some mundane, some meaningful. Moments are what make up our lives and from these moments, spring the stories we create in our minds. We invite shame and suffering into our homes and into our bodies when we don’t need to. Our lives are but blinks of an eye and all that we should see in that instant is love.

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THE DEBT

Written by Matthew Vaughan, Jane Goldman and Peter Straughan

Directed by John Madden

Starring Helen Mirren, Sam Worthington, Jessica Chastain and Tom Wilkinson

Stephan Gold: Truth is a luxury.

Debt has always been something of a dirty word but hopefully the anxiety it inspires in people won’t keep them away from the new John Madden film, entitled THE DEBT. Those who do see it will be swept up in a whole other kind of restless stress, the kind only a good thriller can provide. Madden’s remake of the 2007 Israeli film tells the story of three young Mossad agents (Sam Worthington, Jessica Chastain and Martin Csokas) and their successful mission to hunt down and kill one of the worst Nazis to go missing after the war. Many years later, Ciarin Hinds, Helen Mirren and Tom Wilkinson must cover up the lies surrounding that mission that they’ve been hiding ever since.

Debt weighs you down and and the trio of combatants in THE DEBT know this all too well. Without revealing what they’re keeping secret, the secrets themselves have kept all three of them trapped in the 1960’s, when they successfully caught one of the most nefarious, infamous, and not to mention fictional, nazis ever to escape capture at the end of World War II. While they keep him under watch and await instructions as to what to do with him, things go awry. This is where the lying starts and the truth threatens to show it’s “ugly” head some 30 years later. The time passed has given the initial debt time to grow and now their lies echo around the world. While the global impact of the truth coming out would be monumental, Mirren, as Rachel Singer, is most worried her daughter will find out her mother has been lying to her for her entire life.

Aside from the clear morality lesson at play, THE DEBT, does not spend a lot of time trying to make grand statements, political or otherwise. Instead, it focuses on maintaining suspense while exposing the humanity of what it means to lie about something on such an international scale. Sure, the players are only debating coming clean now that their cover could potentially be blown but that does not take away from the weight they have carried all these years. Their personal debts have taxed them all greatly and the performances, great across the board, including yet another mesmerizing turn from Chastain, are all heavy and harrowing. It is not about emotion for them but rather everything they do is for the mission. Fortunately, Madden accomplishes his mission with style and great tension, allowing for him to make good on this debt.

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THE TREE OF LIFE

Written and Directed by Terrence Malick

Starring Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain and Sean Penn

Mrs. O'Brien: You'll be grown before that tree is tall.

THE TREE OF LIFE is a true film experience. Writer/Director, Terrence Malick’s latest opus is an assault of the best kind on your eyes, your ears and your mind. It is mesmerizing from the moment it begins with a pattern of dancing waves of colored light flowing in the center of a black screen. Whispers can be heard in the distance, birds too, seagulls maybe. It is a total mystery what lies ahead but you can feel its weight, its magnitude, its inevitable magnificence. THE TREE OF LIFE is a journey, one with remarkable richness in every frame. When the journey ends though, its insight isn’t as revelatory as its grandness suggests it should be.

Malick has famously been tinkering and toiling over THE TREE OF LIFE for more than two years now. And while his hyper-perfectionism might drive the man himself to the brink of potential madness, it has once again served to create a film so fluid and inviting that I felt as though I was floating through space and time along with it. Despite its subject matter, which I will get into shortly, THE TREE OF LIFE has an airy quality to it. Alexandre Desplat’s (THE KING’S SPEECH) piano and string score carries you effortlessly into the sky on the wind, allowing you to look down upon Emmanuel Lubezki’s (CHILDREN OF MEN) breathtaking cinematography and just gaze longingly at its immense beauty. The film is then cut together in non-linear sequence so seamlessly that it never seems to matter at all just how little it all comes together at times.

Malick’s screenplay is a vast contemplation on life, its meanings and lack there of. It may be perhaps a tad bit too vast though. Mr. and Mrs. O’Brien (Brad Pitt and the captivating Jessica Chastain) have just lost one of their three sons at the age of 19. Their grief and regrets run so deep that they transcend time, affecting not only the present but the future of their remaining children as well. As an adult, their son, Jack O’Brien (Sean Penn), has never gotten over the loss of his brother, let alone the drastically different views his parents instilled on him. Malick seems to be musing on the continuity of issues and pain as passed down from generation to generation, how one moment in time can affect all the others to varying degrees. To really drive his point home hard, Malick expands his theory to the dawn of time, taking his film into a lengthy segue showcasing the creation of the universe. Life forms have always affected the others around them and they can appear and disappear without warning or explanation, rendering most of our problems completely pointless.

The obvious but supposed deeper meaning in THE TREE OF LIFE forces the viewer to think there must be more to this, that any experience this spectacular must contain clues to puzzles I’ve never been able to fully understand. Only the idea that our souls continue on throughout time, destined to struggle with the same issues the whole way, despite our ability to decide how we approach and master our troubles, is not exactly new. For as much depth as THE TREE OF LIFE portends to have, it rests fairly comfortable on the surface most of the time. It is however one of the loveliest surfaces I’ve ever stared into.

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