Some of the hard truths at the heart of Mike Leigh’s latest fall easily from the mouth of Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), a misanthrope London mother and housewife whose daily diatribe at, and about, other people hides a crushing depression and self-loathing. When she’s not furiously polishing the leather sofa in the lounge, Pansy is berating her layabout son, scolding her cowed husband or shouting at random people in car parks or the health professionals at the dentist and doctors. She even has a scowl and a harsh word for the pigeons and a passing fox that dare to enter her garden. By contrast, her sister Chantelle (Michele Austin) is a laidback hairdresser with the patience of a saint and a vibrant social life that involves her two grown, ambitious daughters. She sees the boiling rage and frustration emanating from her sister (Pansy of course criticises her hairdressing skills) but struggles to tell her sibling a hard truth; that Pansy clearly needs mental health support.
A reunion of Leigh and Jean-Baptiste after their collaboration on 1996’s Secrets And Lies, Hard Truths marks a return to the velvet glove punch of the auteur’s trademark observational dramedy. With cinematography by longtime collaborator Dick Pope, Leigh allows seemingly insubstantial suburban moments to be captured as Pansy goes about her day which accumulate into a sorrow for a woman who can demand to see the manager, that checkout assistants smile more and that her husband never eats fried chicken in the house but cannot ask for the help she desperately needs.
The success in making an audience care about such a curmudgeon who even criticises a baby for wearing an outfit with pockets is due to Leigh’s sly script (gently unpicking a deep-seated trauma in Pansy from her mother’s death) and Jean-Baptiste’s performance which is the very definition of powerhouse. She rightfully deserves the heat she’s currently getting on the trophy trail. Pansy is monstrous and ridiculous, yet funny (she has a point about the baby) and vulnerable. A scene in which the two sisters attend the grave of their mother is so brusquely affectionate that it is heartwarming as Chantelle tells Pansy something many audience members will recognise in their own family relations.
They say that we can choose our friends but not our family and in this bittersweet meander through a world many of us know intimately, perhaps that is the hardest truth of all.
Words by JANE CROWTHER Hard Truthsis in cinemas now
A talking point at Venice Film Festival for its epic running time (215 minutes including an interval), Brady Corbet’s uncompromising drama finally makes it to cinemas for audiences to decide if it’s as ambitious and empty as the building at the centre of it, or an Oscar-winning masterpiece. Following the life of Jewish architect László Tóth (Adrian Brody) over 33 years, Corbet’s opus tracks the story of America via immigration, anti-semitism, art and commerce.
Universal Pictures
Arriving into New York on a boat from Hungary in 1947, László’s and our first view of the Statue Of Liberty is inverted, setting the tone for a film that seeks to play with expectation. László makes his way to Pennsylvania and his cousin (Alessandro Nivola) who gives him shelter in his furniture making business. Called to the home of wealthy industrialist, Harrison Lee Van Buran (Guy Pearce), to create a library for his study, the Eastern European genius’ work is so starkly modern that Harrison is impressed enough to commission him to design a building. The creation of that brutalist building over decades as László’s wife and niece are brought from Hungary and the Tóths become the Van Buran family pets, is the life-work and angst of the film. László attempts to find perfection in draughtsmanship and reconnect with a traumatised wife (Felicity Jones); his benefactor shows his generosity and cruelty…
Universal PicturesUniversal Pictures
Corbet and Mona Fastvold’s screenplay is dense and chewy, giving Brody the opportunity to show off the soulfulness that won him an Oscar for The Pianist and allowing Pearce to entertain with dangerous bonhomie. The two men dance around each other; one trying not to be obsequious in gratitude, the other trying to conceal his darkness. Waiting for those factors to collide as the building begins to take shape on the hill is much of what drives the film, which thrums with tension – both emotional and aural, thanks to sound design.
Universal Pictures
Lauded by critics during the festival circuit, The Brutalist is likely to be diverse to paying punters. While some will thrill to the immersive, indulgent nature of Corbet’s detailed universe, others will be tested by its unhurried pace, esoteric themes and bum-numbing length. Even the precisely styled credits might annoy. But for those looking for the bombastic results of an auteur with a vision, The Brutalist is arresting cinema that offers a unique experience. Whether you like it or not, depends on your tolerance to the didactic nature of auteurism.
Words by JANE CROWTHER Photographs courtesy of UNIVERSAL PICTURES The Brutalistis in cinemas now
Bob Dylan has purposefully been an enigma for decades and James Mangold’s traditional biopic of a small window of his life doesn’t try to answer any questions about the troubadour – rather it unpicks the ambient influence swirling around the 19 year-old when he arrives in New York from Minnesota and takes the folk scene by storm. Kicking off in 1961, Mangold tracks Dylan from his beginnings through to stardom and up to the point when he ‘betrays’ folk music by plugging in an electric guitar at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. The director admits that not everything in the film happened exactly as depicted (and apparently Dylan himself asked for a completely invented scene to be added to further fox audiences), but the result is an accomplished primer for newcomers to Dylan and an account that won’t irritate diehard fans.
Bob (Timothée Chalamet) first pitches up in NY in search of his hero, Woody Guthrie. Discovering the musician is critically ill in hospital, the wannabe visits him – the first time in many that Dylan puts his needs ahead of others. Woody (Scoot McNairy) is being cared for by the nicest man in folk, Pete Seeger (Edward Norton, emanating kindness) who takes the young songwriter under his wing. Dylan, still a gangly youth, impresses him as well as established folk star, Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), setting him off on a meteoric rise to fame, prolific record making and a love triangle with Baez and Sylvie (Elle Fanning playing a thinly disguised version of Suze Rotolo). As Bob writes – and cheats and is selfish to the point that Baez tells him he’s an asshole – the world changes and informs his music; the desperation of the Cuban missile crisis, the freedom rides, Martin Luther King… The times, they are a-changing.
Chalamet had five years to perfect guitar, harmonica and Dylan’s scratchy vocals and his renditions of the classics are both spot-on and still retain an element of himself within them. As Dylan’s hair gets bigger and his jeans skinnier (via evocative costumes by Hollywood Authentic columnist, Arianne Phillips), Chalamet and Dylan infuse so that by the time he’s riding motorbikes around and behaving with the insouciance of a rock star brat, the transformation is entirely convincing. Similarly, Barbaro nails Baez’s sweet voice and zero BS attitude and Boyd Holbrook threatens to steal the show every time he shows up as sozzled man in black, Johnny Cash.
The highlight of the film is undoubtedly the ‘going electric’ moment at the ‘65 Newport Festival when, having watched Dylan do exactly as he pleases throughout his interactions, there’s a rebellious thrill in watching him purposefully plug into an amp in front of a horrified audience of acoustic fans. Once again, we’re not treated to any interior motivation to Dylan’s actions, ensuring he’s still a delicious enigma – a man who despite the biopic treatment, remains a riddle – as the title suggests, a complete unknown.
Leigh Whannell aced updating The Invisible Man in 2020 by making it a horror about domestic abuse and gaslighting, and he’s on the money again with another smart reinterpretation of a Universal classic monster. This time he takes the Lon Chaney jr horror and places it in 1995 Oregon where a young boy, Blake, lives in fear of his army vet dad and some unseen threat in the woods. Fast forward to modern day and Blake (Christopher Abbott) is a dad himself and married to a workaholic journalist and breadwinner, Charlotte (Julia Garner). In a neat role reversal, Blake is the primary parent to their kid, Ginger, complaining of Charlotte’s work impinging on family life, having put his own writing career on the backburner. So when a letter arrives declaring his missing father officially dead and his childhood home legally his, Blake suggests a family trip in a U-haul to clear out the remote cabin. He’s clearly forgotten a lot about his traumatic upbringing because the trio arrive in a no-phone-signal dense forest in the dark. The anticipatory dread that has pervaded the film from the start comes to fruition, as the family find themselves running through the woods pursued by something… and over a single night transformation will arrive for everyone.
Photography by Nicola Dove
Whannell excels in tension and Wolf Man is an exercise in ratcheting with jump scares, body horror and set pieces in the pitch black. But the aspects that make the concept truly frightening is the decision to show the shifting perspectives of hunter and prey – and the emotional clout that comes with that. As an audience we see the horror of a stalking man-creature from the POV of his would-be victims; and then, via disquieting sound design and instinctual VFX, the way dark-blind humans look like dinner to a predator. Wrapped up within this are themes exploring pandemic fears and infection, generational trauma and our anxieties about becoming the worst parts of our parents.
Photography by Nicola DovePhotography by Nicola Dove
Abbott, in a role originally scheduled for Ryan Gosling, brings a tortured pathos to a Dad trying to do his best and protect his family from himself, while Garner gets to flex her ‘final girl’ muscles. And Whannell makes popcorn-spilling use of the terror of an animal’s breath, an escape from a truck, the velvet darkness of an unlit house and the unknown source of upstairs banging. Though some may tire of the repetitive running between house, car, greenhouse, barn… the overall takeaway is one of a sharp, effective chiller with considerable bite.
Words by JANE CROWTHER Photographs by NICOLA DOVE Wolf Man is in cinemas now
Though it was released on New Year’s Day you may not have made it to the cinema to catch the latest potent fever dream from Robert Eggers – but you should make it your resolution to do so. Darkly designed to fill a big screen (it opens by descending an audience into pitch blackness and sounds of distress), the filmmaker’s reinterpretation of FW Murnau’s 1922 take on Dracula is a crepuscular, filthy and visceral vision of sexual obsession and the plight of women who speak up against predators. Yes, it’s about bloodsuckers and staking, but with current headlines it’s inescapable to not see a correlation between the claims of a young woman (Lily-Rose Depp) being dismissed and her realisation that only her own bravery will stop abuse.
Depp plays Ellen, a new wife to Nicholas Hoult’s solicitor in 1838 Germany, whose pallid complexion and nervous disposition are caused by the night terrors she suffers as a creeping, shadowy presence stalks her. When hubby is called away to attend to the needs of a client in Carpathia, a count ‘with one foot in the grave’, Ellen fears losing herself in the nightmares and moves in with friends (Aaron Taylor Johnson and Emma Corrin). Meanwhile, her husband undertakes the six week journey to the snowy mountains where gypsies warn of evil and Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgard) lurks in his inhospitable castle with nails like a Guinness World Record holder and a truly disquieting, fetid voice that is the aural equivilent of damp, decay, death. The fresh blood that willingly enters his home sets Orlok on a course of destruction to Ellen that takes in plague, exorcism and monster hunting courtesy of Willem Defoe.
Though the story may be familiar, Eggers’ reliably striking visuals are not; Skarsgard’s creature design is disgusting enough you’ll be sure you can smell him, while the cinematography recalls a Vermeer painting – characters often framed in doorways, tree-tunnels, gateways to heartstoppingly beautiful effect. Set pieces such as Ellen’s possession (Depp contorting herself, eyes as large as saucers), her husband’s welcome in Carpathia (thundering horse hooves in the snowy gloaming) and a city laid waste by disease are grotesque, gorgeous, grim. The detail of costume, set design and sound is richly layered, while Eggers’ cast are pitch perfect. Skarsgard is cornering the market in terrifying characters you can’t shake while Hoult’s terror in Transylvania is palpable. But the film belongs to Depp; as fragile as glass, tremulous and bruised – but also erotic, feral and ultimately, kickass.
Viewers who are not fond of rats or scuttling things might find Nosferatu intolerable, but for everyone else Egger provides a thrumming discomfort of terrible beauty that will haunt as certainly as Orlok himself.
Humphrey Bogart’s son with Lauren Bacall, Stephen, gave his blessing to writer-director Kathryn Ferguson’s documentary Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes which charts his father’s career and legacy via the instrumental women in his life; his mother and his four wives.
As the co-manager of the Humphrey Bogart Estate, you don’t want people to run roughshod over the image of someone who has been historically at such heights. I’m not famous, but my father was famous and somebody’s going to try to screw you over. They’re going to try to do stuff that you probably don’t want to have done. This has not been my life’s work, but it’s been important to me to do that. And in order to do that, you have to do trademarks. You have to do licensing. You have to do that legally. Or else it just goes to the public domain. So it’s a double-edged sword. You really have to do it, even if you don’t want to.
The estate gets a lot of requests and if the request was going to be the cookie-cutter bio of ‘movie, movie, movie, movie, movie, meets Betty [Bacall], movie, dead’ I wasn’t interested. I voiced one of those [Bogart: The Untold Story, 1997) before, and my mother did Bacall on Bogart for PBS. But the way that Kathryn [Ferguson] proposed us doing it was totally different from any biography I’d seen on anybody. And there aren’t many people who had a succession of women in their lives who have affected them so specifically. It was so incredibly different. And it turned out to be really spectacular. I am not a complete expert on my father at all. I worked for CBS and Court TV and NBC. I’ve been working my whole life – not at this. I never thought about his relationship with his prior wives [stage actor Helen Menkin, film actors Mary Phillips, Mayo Methot and Lauren Bacall]. So all of that was new to me.
Some of it was not new – like the footage I am in as a child [8 year-old Stephen is seen attending his father’s star-studded Beverly Hills funeral in 1957]. I remember, I had my hand over my face when I’m walking out of the funeral because I’m blocking it from the photographers. I’m not crying or anything. But I don’t remember during the funeral. I don’t even know if I remember that part, but I remember it because I’m seeing it on video.
I’ve been my father’s son for as long as I’ve been born, obviously. So I’m used to [the idea of having famous parents]. My friends were just friends. They may have been Liza [Minelli], Sammy Cahn’s kid Stevie… these were the people I hung around with, but they were just friends. I was just a normal kid. I only realised my parents were famous when I went to my father’s funeral – all those people, and all the press. Then all of a sudden it was over, and stuff started to happen. My whole life changed. We moved and lived in England for a while, and we moved back to New York. I had three dogs and a cat – and no more. We got rid of the dogs. We got rid of the cat. We got rid of the house. We got rid of the school. We got rid of the state. And we moved to England, and got rid of the country. And then we came back to New York. There were a lot of losses along the way.
It was annoying [to be known as the son of Humphrey Bogart] as a teenager, in my twenties, my thirties… It’s even annoying now! I would not introduce myself using my last name, because then I wouldn’t have to deal with: ‘Oh, are you…?’ But my close friends know who I am, and they know all of this, but they don’t care. That’s what’s most important.
My parents were probably one of the top five couples of the 20th century. You’ve got the Kennedys. You’ve got Edward and Wallis Warfield Simpson, and you’ve Charles and Di. They were right up there with these in terms of fame. So I think they just went through life knowing that. They went through their 12 years together knowing that. They stood out. But they always put their marriage first.
My father loved to sail [on his boat, the Santana]. I was not allowed to go on the boat until I could swim. I’d go down to the boat, and I’d be on the boat while I was in the dock, before he went out. It sank in San Francisco Bay, and a guy pulled it up, and fixed it up. He didn’t really change it. So I went on it then, when I wrote my book [Bogart: In Search Of My Father]. There’s footage in the film of me on Satana but I don’t remember this stuff. That’s the thing. I see it, and I say, ‘Oh, I did that. Yeah, I can see that’. But there’s no visceral memory of it within me. That’s a strange thing.
I don’t know what my father would think of the movie because it’s not all hearts and flowers. It takes a somewhat negative – especially by today’s standards – view of him. But he was tremendously proud of his work, and he loved his work. He loved making movies. That was what was most important to him. And making a living! He liked money – he liked the nice house, the nice boat, the nice car, and all that.
Did I ever consider following in my father’s footsteps? I’m not an idiot. Can you imagine becoming an actor, and having to live up to that hype? No way. Plus I’m not very good at it. My parents made me do it. They made me be in plays when I was in middle school. I played Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew in an all-boys school. And I played General Snippet in The Mouse that Roared, but I’m not very good, and I don’t really like being someone else. It’s not my thing. Although if [Bogart] had lived longer, who knows? I don’t know that he would have encouraged me. I might have gravitated to it just because you’re in that milieu, so why not?
I have no idea why my father continues to fascinate us. If I did, I’d be selling it, and I’d be a billionaire! It’s inexplicable. People have asked me that all the time. Yeah, he died young, and he was a fine actor, but even he says he didn’t know how he ended up the way he did.
He’s a movie star to other people but my father to me. When I think of him it’s in a sports coat. I think of him on a boat. He was around for such a short time in my life. I didn’t know who he was, which is why I wrote the book, and why we did the documentary.
You don’t have to be a parent or have been part of raising a child to feel the vibes of Marielle Heller’s adaptation of Rachel Yoder’s novel. But anyone who has ever played the hundredth mindnumbing toddler game in a day, cleaned up ankle-biter messes on rinse and repeat or prayed that the little darling goes to sleep in hour four of lullabies will feel seen watching Amy Adams, as an unnamed mother, lie facedown and aghast on the carpet of her living room while her child jumps on her.
Following the internal monologue of our nameless protagonist, Nightbitch introduces us to a woman who used to identify as an artist with a vibrant life in Manhattan and now struggles to find a clean shirt in a daily suburban routine of caring for her child while her sweet, feckless husband (Scoot McNairy) works away during the week. Heller depicts this as a relentless, machinery hum of monotony – the same hash browns for breakfast, the walk to the park, the fraught bathtime, the wind-down routine, the sleepless nights. The Mother dreams of shouting her real thoughts at former colleagues she meets in the supermarket who ask ‘Don’t you just love being a Mom?’, of running away from the sunny mums she meets at baby book club, of ripping her husband’s throat out when he returns to complain about his room service and tell her that ‘happiness is a choice’. Which is when a pack of dogs start showing up at the Mother’s door, when she starts to grow hair, likes eating a raw steak, when a nub protrudes from the base of her back like a tail… Is the Mother becoming something else?
With its flirtation with body horror (pus-filled sores are poked with needles), transformation and society’s rigid view of ‘good’ women, Nightbitch shares similar themes with The Substance. Tonally though, it’s a gentler rage against the machine. Fans of the book will perhaps feel that a certain cat incident lacks, ahem, bite, while the ferocity of Yoder’s societal critique is softened. But while the satire might be less savage, the commitment of Adams is not. In a truly vanity-free portrayal, she sticks the landing of playing a believable messy woman trapped in a maternal Groundhog Day and wracked with guilt for having wished for it. And when she’s digging into the back garden earth, nose pressed to soil and nails seamed with filth, she’s a feral, joyous creature that you’ll want to run the streets with.
Though it wants its doggy treat and to eat it, Nightbitch is nevertheless another encouraging step towards a world in which every type of woman and female experience is represented onscreen – and will certainly play like gangbusters at mother and baby screenings.
Words by JANE CROWTHER Nightbitchis in cinemas now
Cate Blanchett and Charles Dance lead an ensemble cast as the fictional German Chancellor and POTUS in Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson and Guy Maddin’s political satire, Rumours. They tell Hollywood Authentic about night shoots, AI fears, outlawing pineapples and tall poppy syndrome.
What happens when the seven leaders of the richest democracies in the world walk into the woods together…? Sounds like the start of a joke, and in the hands of trifecta writer-directors Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson it is. An absurdist satire that follows the fortunes of the world leaders at a G7 summit when their staff suddenly disappear leaving them defenseless and vulnerable, Rumours takes in masturbating bogmen, AI ChatBots, a giant brain the size of a car and woodland trysts as the group tries to reach civilization. It was a Cannes Festival hit earlier this summer and Hollywood Authentic sat down to chat with the actors at the heart of the film: meet German Chancellor Hilda Ortmann (Cate Blanchett), American president Edison Wolcott (Charles Dance), British PM Cardosa Dewindt (Nikki Amuka-Bird), Canadian Prime Minister Maxime Laplace (Roy Dupuis), PM of Italy Sylvain Broulez (Denis Ménochet) and Italy’s leader Antonio Lamorte (Rolando Ravello)…
What was it like shooting for 23 nights in the woods?
Cate Blanchett: Honestly, when Guy approached me about this, I thought we’d be shooting in Winnipeg and I’d be in his lounge room, or in some sort of mocked-up soundstage. And all of a sudden, we were in a forest in Budapest doing five weeks of nights. It wasn’t what I expected. I’d never done that many night shoots back to back. But there’s something kind of magical about it because you are on a time that only we understand. You wake up at 2 in the afternoon.
Nikki Amuka-Bird: We definitely understand what it’s like to overcome your fatigue, and the characters are kind of delirious. We were getting more and more delirious as it goes on. It was very useful in that way.
Delirious is how you might describe the movie itself…
Charles Dance: It’s not a Marvel picture. Guy Maddin really is an arthouse director but this is not purely an arthouse film.
Nikki Amuka-Bird: I find it quite hard to express, in a linear way, what the story is about. I start with the G7, and then say: from there, it goes on to become this enormous, surreal, endless nightmare. What’s so great with Guy and the boys is that they’re not afraid to play with genre. It’s a bit horror, it’s a bit satire, it’s a bit zombie movie. It defies expectations.
It’s apocalyptic – do you think that’s the movie we need right now when we’re talking world politics?
Denis Ménochet: Not really. There’s a lot of good things in the world still. There are good people I know, and good things. I don’t want to think like that because otherwise you don’t enjoy yourself. No?
Nikki Amuka-Bird: I’m embarrassed to say that I’m an eternal optimist. Yeah, there’s a lot to be afraid of at the moment. It seems like an omni-crisis. But I do have this kind of faith in humanity at the end of the day to somehow turn itself around. I think that’s what we’re looking at in the movie. What if you’re only left with that fear and confusion? How does that evolve, and where does that end up?
Cate Blanchett: Yeah, and what happens when all of the signifiers of your life, and your position, and your relationships drop away? And then suddenly you’re in a gazebo, and you don’t know how long you’ve been there. It’s a bit like A Midsummer Night’s Dream. They’ve suddenly all gone. It just suddenly changes, and you’re in this altered state. Look, I think somehow, now, the setting and the atmosphere and the tone and the image that they finally look out on seems much more possible than it did 15 years ago. It’s important to look at those things head on. But sometimes if you talk about them in a head-on way, you lose an audience. How do you use the collective anxiety and despair that any thinking person – apart from Denis – is feeling? But also invite an audience to laugh at it, and feel like they could go out slightly refreshed and more purposeful? And if it makes them talk about those things, I think it’s fantastic. It did feel more and more like a documentary.
Are you an eternal optimist like Nikki is?
Cate Blanchett: I think I’m probably an optimistic pessimist. You know, plan for the worst, hope for the best. I don’t like making fun of the state of the world. I love the world. I don’t think what we’re doing to the planet is at all amusing. I don’t think systemic, fiscal inequality is at all amusing. But you can satirise it, and invite people to see it and talk about it. That’s what I love about cinema. It asks you to engage in the world of someone else’s invention, and to imagine a way into different storylines. It’s expansive as an audience member, and I certainly find that as an actor.
Charles Dance: I despair with politics, really. The worst thing that happened, of course, was that [Britain] decided to leave the European Union. It was one of the most depressing days in the history of my country. But I didn’t look at this script politically, actually, at all. For me I thought this was a cross between Luis Buñuel and an episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. And I’m a fan of both of those things. It’s why I wanted to do it.
Rolando Ravello: For me, I think that an actor or a director or a screenwriter has the possibility to come up with a way of thinking for people. For me, it’s an occasion to speak with other people – only speak without judgement. To only speak to reflect. This is important for me.
Cate Blanchett: I feel like this is as much a comedy or a satire or a tragedy as it is an episode of Scooby Doo. I’ve never seen the current state of affairs played out with that particular tone. It’s a zombie movie and it’s a Mexican soap opera. And that’s what I was so interested and curious to see what an audience would make of it, because we were discovering the tone as we made it. Guy [Maddin] has always had a unique perspective that’s really playful and wicked and naughty, but also soulful and yearning and so full of self-reflection. It’s almost like a parallel reality that is able to speak, in a way, more truthfully to the environment that we sit in because he’s been so outside of mainstream cinema. If you haven’t seen The Green Fog, I highly recommend it. It’s astonishing.
Roy Dupuis: I had worked with Guy before, and he gave me the two most extraordinary shooting days of my career. It was like being a kid, and doing some sketches in my basement. This shoot was completely different. It was a big production, and very well-written. But there’s one aspect of the movie that kind of gets my interest. It’s the fact the world is changing very quickly, because of – mostly – AI. We hear a lot about it. I’ve been aware of that for the last 10 years, and that’s one aspect that I found interesting.
Does AI worry you?
Cate Blanchett: I don’t think we’re going to ever replicate the truly human, because we’re mortal, and that’s what gives us all our activators and all of our understanding and struggle with the world in which we live. That’s why all those middle-aged billionaires are trying to go to Mars, because they’re not confronting the fact that they too shall die, and AI doesn’t have that knowledge. It could replicate a synthetic understanding of that, but it doesn’t have it. I think it’s a huge threat. I was really grateful to the actors’ strike for many reasons, but for bringing that AI conversation into the mainstream. This touches on it, but it’s not a film about AI. But people might step out of the cinema talking about it.
Charles Dance: There were so many extraordinary advances in the last hundred years, far more than there’s been in the last thousand years. Suddenly, we as a species, we’ve yet to learn the law of cause and effect. We think, ‘Yes, we can do this. We can do this. We can do this’. Every now and again, somebody says, ‘Yeah, but what if we do?’ You know? I think that question that needs to be asked very, very loudly with AI, because it’s incredibly powerful.
Roy Dupuis: I personally think it’s going replace a lot of jobs, but making movies with real people is going to become precious, also. But I think it will happen. It’s really hard to stop.
Charles Dance: Years ago, I voiced a character in a cartoon. There was a comic in England called the Eagle, and one of the strips in it was a space thing. I went in to voice one of these characters. As I was going in, Albert Finney – bless him – was coming out. He saw me, and he said, ‘The writing’s on the wall, kid’.
What was it like working with three directors?
Denis Ménochet: It was like a little lab behind the video village. When you asked a question, they would talk about it a little, and then come back to you. It was really amazing with three directors. And Guy Maddin’s sense of humour and dryness is amazing.
Charles Dance: There’s different kinds of directors who try to put performances in, and there’s directors who try to bring performances out. I prefer to work with the latter, but it depends on how good they are. The film industry is not populated completely with wonderful directors. There are some who don’t know their arse from a hole in the ground, in the same way there are actors who really don’t know what they’re doing. But these three managed to create an environment in which we were encouraged to contribute, which is a very healthy way of working.
Nikki Amuka-Bird: It felt like you could speak to any one of them – you could ask any one of them any question, any time, and they’ve got an answer for you, and they know how to connect with each other. So it was really easy.
How did you find your characters, did you base them on anyone?
Cate Blanchett: There’s so few examples of female leadership but there’s certain signifiers for what represents a powerful woman in politics. There’s an iconography to it, and the gestures, and the way the men use it, and the way women have to use those male gestures. You can just see them being coached. They’re so separated from themselves, and the more they live a public life and speak in public, their voice changes. So there was a construct and an artificiality to them as human beings, in a way that I felt that the further they went along, the more human they became. I think we as citizens of our various countries are culpable for creating leaders as part of our societal ID.
Charles Dance: We purposely didn’t push it in any direction. I guess if somebody sees a parallel in that with me and Joe Biden, then fine. OK. But that wasn’t in my head at the time.
Roy Dupuis: I looked at the archive videos that Guy and Galen and Evan sent us, just to see the body language.
What laws would you pass if you took on the role for real?
Cate Blanchett: No pineapple. There’d be no pineapple in Germany. I would outlaw pineapple. I don’t know!
What do you think world leaders will think if they see the film?
Cate Blanchett: I think any leader worth their weight in salt has a sense of humour about themselves. When you lose your sense of humour about yourself and your position…
Did playing these roles make you think about the corruption of power?
Denis Ménochet: It’s very isolating to have too much power, because then you change, and then you have no discernment, and everyone will say yes to you. I think it’s a lonely thing to have power. That’s how I feel.
Cate Blanchett: I think with power, we build people up. We build people up to tear them down. We’ve done that for millennia. I think it’s not only that you might change, but people might change in the way they deal with you.
How do you deal with being built up?
Cate Blanchett: My very first time in Cannes, I was in a very small Australian film in the marketplace, and I literally had bruises on my ribs from being elbowed out of the way to get to whatever movie star was there. And then I was back two years later with a film, being walked down with basically gladiatorial horses, and watching these other people being elbowed. It was so surreal.
Does that experience keep you humble?Cate Blanchett: It tells you how the whole thing is a hall of mirrors. It’s so weird. We are really a weird species. And I think that’s what Guy and Evan and Galen are leaning to – it’s the human insanity.
On paper, Conclave does not sound like a thrilling and slyly comedic drama. Adapted from Robert Harris’ novel, it’s a film that revels in the minutiae and pedantry of pomp and ceremony. In Vatican City, the Pope has departed for the pearly gates, prompting church cardinals from around the globe to gather in their conclave and vote for a new pontiff in a specific and antiquated way. That means camping out in the Sistine Chapel and repeatedly casting votes for their favourite man until a majority decision is reached, for as long as it takes and as the world watches. A sort of Big Brother scenario with rosary beads.
But in the hands of screenwriter Peter Straughan and director Edward Berger, the repetitive process becomes a ticking timebomb, an intrigue and, yes, a thriller via deliciously tart dialogue, smart editing and an unexpected score that reveals the universal in the specific. The admin of the Catholic Church is rendered as a showcase for many of the deadly sins as the ambitious cardinals bicker, showboat, covet and envy in their bid to become His Holiness. The elegance of that presentation is matched by an ensemble of divinely talented actors.
Ralph Fiennes is our point of entry into this hidden world as Cardinal Lawrence, a logistics man in the Vatican who organises the religious voting and sleepover in the midst of suffering a crisis of faith. This, points out Stanley Tucci’s liberal contender Bellini, is what makes Lawrence a credible competitor to the throne. Certainly, Lawrence seems a better option than hard-line traditionalist Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto), obsequious Tremblay (John Lithgow) or nakedly ambitious Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati). But as the voting begins and factions and secrets are revealed, the race takes an unexpected turn when an outsider takes the lead. And, as the men of God plot and whisper, pray and pontificate, they are watched by Sister Agnes (Isabella Rossolini), a nun whose army of sisters provide their every need – including some home truths.
It’s as delicious to watch what isn’t said by such accomplished actors as what is. The curtsy Rossolini executes speaks volumes, as do the constantly-moist eyes of Fiennes as he wrestles with humility and power, the jagged weeping of a cardinal stripped of the big job, the swirl of Castellitto’s theatrical cape. But when they do talk (in brutalist bedrooms, shadowy stairwells, a crimson auditorium) the running time speeds by on amusing moments, plot twists and a finale that is both bombastic and subversive. A movie that engages heart and mind without overstaying its welcome and is a savage piece of cultural observation wrapped in red velvet vestments. Heavenly.
