When I was preparing to shoot Rebecca Hall in New York for this issue’s cover story, I asked my friend, and Rebecca’s recent co-star in The End of It, Noomi Rapace, to describe the actor. Her response was immediate. ‘Rebecca is one of the kindest, most classy, gentle, fun actresses I’ve ever worked with,’ she said in a voice note. ‘She’s a brilliant leader on set, I will do anything with her, go anywhere with her. She has such a balance between an ocean of wisdom and something really childlike, naive and playful.’ I found this to be entirely true when I flew to NY to hang out in Washington Square, ride the subway and grab a bite to eat in a Greenwich Village Thai diner with Rebecca in July. As the daughter of a theatre director and an opera singer, she was taught not to take on projects for their commercial appeal and to pursue art for the joy it brings her personally. As we discussed her acting career, her recent art exhibition, her directing and the three scripts she currently has finished on her desk, I felt that she really let me into her real world, life and process. I’d spent time with a multi-disciplined, curious, smart creative who pours herself into everything she does, whether acting, writing, directing or painting. And that was motivational to me.
Rebecca Hall photographed by Greg Williams
Elsewhere in the issue, I made cocktails with Leslie Mann, took in a football game in Como with Damien Lewis, strolled Westminster Bridge with Eve Hewson, hit the Croisette beach with Jay Lycurgo and hung out in Cannes with Diego Calva. And I revisited shooting Matt Damon nearly 30 years ago on-set of The Talented Mr Ripley where The Odyssey actor was contemplating Homeric verse even then, in a moment that now seems like pure kismet. Artistic drive and ambition are inspiring to me and this issue is full of both… I hope it inspires you too. Enjoy the issue!
Greg Williams takes pause to consider the bigger picture on images from his back catalogue. This issue: capturing a prescient moment on set with Matt Damon.
When we were choosing a picture for this issue, my editor, Jane, suggested focusing on Matt Damon because of his role in The Odyssey. I’ve shot Matt numerous times over the years: I did the advertising campaign for The Bourne Ultimatum, shot magazine editorials as well as at various awards and festivals. But I suddenly remembered this photograph from all these years ago, taken on the set of The Talented Mr Ripley, and it popped into my head that he was reading Homer’s The Odyssey – I have no idea how I remembered this.
This was taken in August 1998 in Piazza Navona, Rome, and shot on film, hence the grain. It happened because I’d met the late director Anthony Minghella, who lived at the end of my road and was very supportive of me, and someone I cared for very much. I was doing a Sunday Times commission celebrating British cinema – which I turned into my first book, Greg Williams On Set. These shots were part of that project. But it’s probably the closest I’ve ever got to taking one of the pictures that made me want to photograph Hollywood. It feels like Life magazine in the ’50s – it’s only the modern boom, lights and the clothing of a woman in the background that tells you that it’s not that era. There was a terrific rainstorm that day so they were waiting for it to pass, sheltering under a reflector that the crew turned into a giant umbrella to keep us dry. I’d met Matt’s co-star Cate Blanchett (sitting on the chair in the forefront) on Elizabeth, but it was my first time working with Matt. This was a moment when he was moving from co-star roles to lead; he was really dialled into the work. A quick Google revealed he was reading a 1954 Penguin edition of Homer’s classic, which is very much what Tom Ripley might have chosen to read.
It’s a favourite photo of mine partly because it captures a quiet moment on a busy set so well, with the name of the project on the back of the chair – ‘it does what it says on the tin’. But I also like it because the lines of this photo all lead to Matt: the spokes of the umbrella, the building lines in the background, the turn of Cate’s head, even the line of her bra strap. It’s a picture I’ve loved for a long time but it now has added resonance. It’s amazing that a photo that is 30 years old now has more relevance than ever. It’s a picture that’s aged well.
Shot on Kodak Tri-X film on a Leica M6, 1/250 sec, f/5.6, pushed to 800 ISO, 21 mm
Photograph and words by GREG WILLIAMS Matt Damon on the set of The Talented Mr Ripley in 1998
Christopher Nolan’s Homer adaptation is a classic – both in genre and its ability to remain relevant in any age. While it may be a swords-n-sandals epic of myth, set in ‘a time of apparent magic’, the journey of a warrior returning home from war (physically, emotionally, mentally) explores themes of imperialism, PTSD, patriarchy, masculinity, the senselessness of war and the continued importance of writing in an increasingly post-literate, AI world. It is epic in scale, scope, ambition – a true event movie befitting the timeless power of an eighth century text.
Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures
Nolan, of course, can weave narratives and multiple timelines, so he nimbly parses Homer’s time-skipping, media res poem into a three-hour adventure that begins in the royal palace of Ithaca where the queen, Penelope (Anne Hathaway), and her son, Telemachus (Tom Holland), have waited twenty years for the return of their king, Odysseus (Matt Damon) from his battle in Troy. Penelope has spent years fighting off suitors, chief among them Antinous (Robert Pattinson), while Telemachus fiercely believes his father is still alive. For ten of those years Odysseus has been camped on the beaches of Troy trying to figure out how to gain access to the city on a rageful campaign spurred on by Agamemnon (Benny Safdie in a priapic suit of armour) and Menelaus (Jon Bernthal) pursuing his stolen wife, Helen (Lupita Nyong’o) – she whose face launched a thousand ships. His solution of the Trojan Horse allows his troops to sneak into the citadel and Nolan to sneak in questions about how much mankind has advanced from such brutal times with images that evoke 9/11 and a cast that speak in American accents as they pillage, brutalise and destroy. We might as well be watching rolling news were it not for the swords and breastplates. Having seen the horror he has unleashed with his trick, Odysseus’s perilous journey home taking in monsters, gods, witches and trips to Hades becomes not merely a physical challenge but a mental one. Odysseus must come to a moral reckoning in order to earn his place in his wife’s bed, on his throne and in the hearts of audiences.
Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures
That journey is rendered entirely in IMAX (the first film to do so) and practically – globe-trotting to stunning landscapes, filming in real locations tagged to the myths (the cyclops dwelling is Nestor’s Cave in the Greek Peloponnese) and special effects created in-camera and physically. Some uncanny-valley sad big cats, the cliff monster Scylla and aspects of single-eyed Polyphemus aside, this Greek blockbuster, richly lensed by Hoyte Van Hoytema, feels tactile, grounded, immersive and real. And though characters talk of gods, we only meet tangible, relatable deities. While the denizens of Olympus show their might in storms and strokes of fate, Athena (Zendaya), Calypso (Charlize Theron) and Circe (Samantha Morton in a cracking interpretation of the ‘men are pigs’ myth) appear as real women, and telling manifestations of Odysseus’ guilt, regret and PTSD. Their versions of womanhood are shown through the lens of a man who has abused women through war, misogyny and abandonment – and their mortal counterparts are granted agency and comment. Penelope doesn’t simply pine for her man, she exhibits ambition, rage and cunning, telling her son ‘in this world a man does what he wants, I do what I can’. Helen of Troy displays her disgust at being a possession, her twin Clytemnestra nurses bloody vengeance. Nolan has been criticised in the past for not writing great female parts and this feels like progress.
But, inescapably, men drive the narrative. Damon, leading after supporting in Interstellar and Oppenheimer, brings his Bourne physicality to a role that requires verisimilitude in battle – both in combat with giants, cyclops, Trojan forces and suitors, and internally as he struggles with amnesia, decisions of collateral damage and attempts to obey the moral code of the gods. It’s a performance that recalls Russell Crowe’s dextrous balance of grit and humanity in Gladiator and will likely net Damon similar accolades and gongs. His nemesis is given full baddie credentials by Pattinson, complete with delicious twitching eyes and pissy line reads (think Alan Rickman in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves) while Holland manages to mature from boy to man during the screentime and impress beyond his Spidey suit. In a stacked cast John Leguizamo shines as the loyal servant of Odysseus and audience proxy, Eumaeus. Though he’s seen chucking puppies off cliffs, his ethics are a guiding force in a world where betrayal, vengeance and power steals are commonplace.
Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures
As expected, Nolan’s take on Homer will withstand multiple viewings to appreciate all the moving parts and themes, but as a stand-alone cinema experience it’s the sort of crowdpleasing extravaganza that will invigorate audiences and prove the value of big screen entertainment. And, in an industry that increasingly wants to shrink cinema and replace human endeavour with AI, it’s a battle cry for artistry. As Nolan has one of his characters note in the finale: ‘songs will be all they have to remember those of us who can write’. Well, indeed.
Words by JANE CROWTHER Images courtesy Universal Pictures The Odyssey is in cinemas now
