 |
Ben Kingsley was Oscar®-nominated for "House of Sand and Fog," and won a Best Actor Oscar® for "Ghandhi."
HBO:
Tell us what the story is about.
Ben Kingsley:
I would say that this film is the autopsy of a relationship. You, the audience is
allowed to see the conclusion of a relationship. And
then the audience is also allowed to see how those two
people got into that room to conclude the relationship in
that way.
You know when Phyllis sent me the
screenplay, everything I needed to know was
within the first and last page of the
screenplay. Therefore there was no need for
me to do anything. I felt no urgency to do any
historical research. What I felt was a
compulsion to play a man whose emotions are
buried.
And I made a choice in this portrayal
of Tarnhower to bury my natural emotional
responses as an actor and therefore allow
Annette's wonderful creation of Mrs. Harris to
hit me like successive waves of water hitting a
rock, so that the water actually breaks upon
the rock, and in a sense that could be a
metaphor for the relationship.
Phyllis and I
and Annette worked so closely together
because we all understand that particular
metaphor and we all understand sometimes
the necessity to recede from the camera
emotionally rather than constantly audition
for the camera which is death anyway. So
that was my approach to my portrait of Hy
Tarnower.
HBO:
How do you see Mrs. Harris?
Ben Kingsley:
As Annette Bening of course. Annette for me will always be the definitive Mrs.
Harris. And because I am trying to present the camera a
subjective vision of Hy, I wanted to present to the
camera what I believe Annette is seeing. The story that
Annette is telling about Hy. Annette's character was
vociferously devoted to Hy Tarnower. She would not
have a word said against him. And therefore I need to
present my objective portrait of Hy if that's possible and
also Annette's subjective reflection of Hy. I want the
camera to see what she sees. I want the camera to see
what she found compelling. So it's the rock and the
wave. That's how I see these two characters. If I can
simplify the metaphor then it's actable, it's playable.
HBO:
So her story is sort of - you sort of lived her story in a sense?
Ben Kingsley:
Phyllis wrote this screenplay I think to reflect Mrs. Harris' devotion to Hy and Mrs.
Harris' narrative in the courtroom and in various letters
and conversations during her life and therefore in a
sense it's a family portrait painted by Mrs. Harris. That
doesn't diminish the integrity of my character or the
sovereignty of my character. It's just that it is a very,
very great exercise to be able to present to the camera
what I think she saw. It's all speculative. And that's
what makes it very exciting. Because nobody knows
anything about relationships. Nobody knows a thing.
HBO:
In this script linear time isn't obeyed much, it's sort of jumps back and forth and I
assume in the process of shooting - you're also
shooting out of sequence. How as an actor do you
handle that? How do you manage to shoot out of
sequence?
Ben Kingsley:
Let me reassure you that actors are not linear. They're completely non-linear. We
have a great random imagination. And can move
around very freely in scenarios. Also let me say that the
emotional memory is non-linear as well. I've heard many
people describe relationships and recollection of events
and suddenly they go oh - and you're miles off target
suddenly. They remember something that happened
five years previously. Ten years afterwards. The
emotional memory is not linear. The emotional memory
is a beautiful collection of various images taken in no
chronological order whatsoever.
And let me reassure
you and the viewers actors suffer no pain if they're not
filming in chronological order. It's like rehearsing a
symphony. The great conductor can tap his baton and
say to his orchestra, we are going to section F and we're
going to start with the third bar with the violins and they
pick that section of the symphony up with extraordinary
precision. And really an actor has to have a symphonic
grasp of the film so that he or she can dip into any
section, just like the orchestra. It really is part of our job.
HBO:
You mentioned that every scene has a journey, but is there a particular scene that
you think sums up who Hy Tarnower is?
Ben Kingsley:
Well we certainly mentioned the autopsy of a relationship, and we certainly
mentioned how they got into that room. So I think that
would be very intriguing to see how we play the two
versions of the truth. What we're going to do is to film
two versions of the truth. The truth is that he was shot.
The truth is that the bullets came from her gun. What is
completely unknown is what motivated her in that room.
And therefore we're filming more - like Cubist filming,
we're filming from more than one point of view and
perspective and from more than one sensibility's point
of view. That's gonna be very, very intriguing.
HBO:
Obviously you've played real people before. Is there a special
responsibility?
Ben Kingsley:
I think that Phyllis has done meticulous research in bringing
together this screenplay. And my task is
not to serve history at all, but to serve
Phyllis's extraordinary embrace of this
story, and to serve her matriarchy, which
she leads with extraordinary grace and
confidence. I made a pact with Phyllis,
which was that I would be entirely guided
by the matriarchy, and not be narrowed
down by the constraints of history. If I read
all the books, and look at all the pictures,
there'll be one hundred conflicting opinions
of Hy and it's bound to be, in a sense,
subjective, because it's going to be my
portrait. My mainstay, my guiding star in
this journey with Hy is the buried emotion,
is the suppression of emotion and the
burying of extreme emotion.
HBO:
Do you think he loves her? Or, do you think as he says, he's incapable of love?
Ben Kingsley:
I don't know yet. I know that the character I'm portraying has
experienced moments of love as well as
moments of indifference and impatience,
and neglect. If that question, did he love
her, were easily answered, we probably
wouldn't be making a film, because there'd
be no contours, there'd be no landscape to
explore. It would be, why tell the story? So,
all the contradictions have to be on the
screen, and as I said earlier, I'm still
exploring those contradictions.
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
HBO Store
Something the Lord Made starring Alan Rickman and Mos Def. Buy the DVD now at the HBO Store!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
