 |
HBO:
What is Warm Springs about?
 |
Kenneth Branagh as Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the HBO Films production of WARMS SRINGS.
|
Kenneth Branagh:
Warm Springs is about Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the period when he first contracted polio. He was 39, it was 1921, and prior to that he'd been tremendously fit and active, a very privileged, individual, who came from a very wealthy, moneyed family on the east coast. He seemed set for a very smooth career in politics, which even when he was 25, he talked about culminating in his becoming president. It was a genuine ambition of his.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"When he was struck down with polio in '21, his life really was transformed. And this story is about how that very privileged man who took many things for granted became very much changed by the experience of trying to learn to walk again and meeting other people in the same struggle." |
|
|
|
— Kenneth Branagh
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
So, when he was struck down with polio in '21, his life really was transformed. And this story is about how that very privileged man who took many things for granted became very much changed by the experience of trying to learn to walk again and meeting other people in the same struggle. And how Warm Springs, the place, had a tremendous effect on him.
HBO:
What was it like shooting in Warm Springs?
Kenneth Branagh:
It was very, um... it was sort of eerie to be in Warm Springs. I visited twice, first when I saw the several small museum exhibits down there, which are terrific, which draw quite a number of visitors who want to see the place that Roosevelt visited really every year, bar a couple of years right in the middle of the Second World War.
When I first visited, the pools were still there, but not filled with water, because for reasons of the ancient nature of the actual pools themselves. But when I returned to shoot, and it'd been, redressed and repainted and recreated as the place itself, it was very moving, with everyone in period costumes, and the place full of other people, including many people with polio themselves, or who'd had spinal injuries... experiencing the unique kind of camaraderie of everyone there in the same position, and being part of this very charming place where the water was warm.
And to see it filled with the kinds of people who would've been there during Roosevelt's time was very moving, and very much reminded me of some of the film footage that we'd seen, and the photographs, it was very well documented... his time there. So there's something that's always very special about being in the real place.
 |
|
Kenneth Branagh on set discussing a scene with director Joseph Sargent.
|
|
I hope it comes across in the movie, because we not only recreate what was there, but I think the spirit of what was there was what we were really after. I hope that's what comes across. It was a place of unique optimism, and hope, and fun, and sometimes huge challenges, but... it was a tremendously important place for many people.
HBO:
Taking on this role, playing Roosevelt at this point in his life must be very physical. Could you talk about that?
Kenneth Branagh:
Margaret Nagle (the screenwriter) makes the point that cocktail hour, the martini hour, was very important to Roosevelt, because in some ways, it was kind of a pain killer. He didn't have the use of abdominal muscles or lateral muscles, and so even when he was in leg braces, which allowed him to stand, he still needed either the crutches, or, as he then developed later in his life, a way of walking for short periods where he could hold onto the arm of his son, usually, and use a cane.
But people often said that he perspired heavily, the physical effort of doing this was enormously difficult; he did develop very powerful upper body and shoulders. There's a story about Jack Dempsey, the boxer, saying that he'd never seen more developed shoulders than in FDR. With crutches, it's really all about hands, it's all about weight on hands. You know, very obvious things to people who've had these challenges, but to people coming to the process of playing someone, getting that kind of thing right seemed to be fundamentally important.
Other people who consulted on the film, also showed me how people without use of their legs swim, and what it does to their legs, and how they float, and how they manage, and which is the most comfortable position to swim in. All of this is tailored to the individual sort of constraints of whatever physical damage has been done by the polio. So it was pretty challenging, physically.
I mean, obviously, you're continually humbled by the idea that, first, this is all acting, and it made you aware of just what this means if you have to do it every single day, and I was always amazed as I worked with people who had spinal injuries or were in wheelchairs, of the amazing dexterity with which they can get in and out of a car, or in and out of a swimming pool. And so I was trying to find a way to do that as well, and be active about it. And not always be sort of advertising the pain and the difficulty, which unquestionably FDR found at the beginning of his challenge. But he became really adept and adroit at using and maximizing what muscle power and what body movement he had.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"FDR wanted the public to see him as a vigorous individual. Some would argue that wasn't the right thing to do, but in the time in which he lived I think it was important that people did not in some prejudicial way, dismiss it." |
|
|
|
— Kenneth Branagh
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
And so thank goodness for people who were there reminding you that his legs turned out, and that you know... trying to walk, really, from your shoulders... very strange experience. And, in FDR's case, he worked hard to do it, because... you know, he wanted the public to see him as a vigorous individual. Some would argue that wasn't the right thing to do, but in the time in which he lived I think it was important that people did not in some prejudicial way, dismiss it. And so we've worked hard to do that. And, yeah, it was much more physical than I... at first thought. But it felt like... a very important part of the role.
HBO:
You're a British actor, playing this American icon... what did you do with your accent? Where does it go?
Kenneth Branagh:
There are lots of recordings of FDR speaking. And another challenge was that, obviously, you hear him in statesman-like mode, usually recordings of him making public speeches, and like politicians at the time, there was a kind of oratorical, presented quality to it. They often spoke like great men. They spoke great phrases, there were great purple passages, and you have to make a guess of how he spoke in private.
But he was so very, very aware of his voice, he was very, very aware of the use of it. And very aware of the effect of it. He was a very good speaker... eventually, but Eleanor said that, at the beginning, he wasn't. It really wasn't until Warm Springs, and going down South, going to Georgia, and finally having the independence of a motor car that he could drive without feet controls, it was all done with hands, that he would get out on his own, and he would go to meet people and talk to people, and find out a different view of America and Americans than perhaps he'd been used to.
It took him a long time to get that, but... like many people of his class at that time, his accent was much affected by trips to England, he'd been going to Europe since he was six... often once a year. They spoke foreign languages, he spoke a little French. Eleanor said he spoke very bad Italian, but he believed he was very good at both languages. But there was, if not an affectation, there was definitely an influence from the English side of the culture that they'd been made very aware of.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"I listened very carefully to the recordings, and listened very carefully to our dialect coach, and tried to find a way that allowed that very familiar voice not to become too much of a tune, you know, a familiar tune. Cause he's as familiar in a way with his cadences as someone like Churchill. But it's a beautiful voice that he has, and it's a beautiful way of speaking." |
|
|
|
— Kenneth Branagh
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
So I listened very carefully to the recordings, and listened very carefully to our dialect coach, and tried to find a way that allowed that very familiar voice not to become too much of a tune, you know, a familiar tune. Cause he's as familiar in a way with his cadences as someone like Churchill. But it's a beautiful voice that he has, and it's a beautiful way of speaking.
So, it was a lot of practice with, [LAUGHS] headphones and microphones, and after awhile you start to think like he talks is what you hope the process will produce, kind of osmosis, when he starts, I finish, as it were. So... I disappear and hopefully he arrives. Any sort of process with these biographical pieces is so dependent on the script. The screenplay makes an imaginative guess, I suppose you want to call it, an imaginative leap into what Margaret Nagle believes is the inner life of a man who's facing this challenge. A life change, a traumatic life change, from a very vigorous, fully active, physical life, and a series of enormously high expectations to a sedentary life with very few expectations.
It's also about a man facing a very difficult problem, and I think there's lots of areas of recognition on a human level, which is one of the things that makes the script compelling. Mostly, I think we get a very imaginative understanding of what the man was like. And I think it's very well supported by the volumes and volumes of material, observations and conversations had by family members, fellow politicians, friends who observed him... very closely. I think... it seems as though she gets very close to him.
And so, when that happens, as an actor it's much easier to try and find a way in, because there's a human way in. I'm playing a man who happens to be a historical icon. That's the way I've approached it.
HBO:
Franklin and Eleanor -- where are they in their relationship?
|
 |
|
Cynthia Nixon and Kenneth Branagh as Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt.
|
Kenneth Branagh:
They have, Franklin and Eleanor, I think, loved each other very much. They had a very romantic courtship, if you like. They were distant cousins, and not long after their marriage, really, she spent 10 years having children. And it was after that, unfortunately for her, that he began a relationship with a friend of hers, Lucy Mercer. And from everything we read, it appears to have been a very passionately felt relationship, if not actually consummated, but that it was a tremendous shock and betrayal for Eleanor is clear. And their relationship changed from that point on. So our story begins with the marriage in good order.
And then it's the parallel journey between Franklin's road to recovery and, in a way, the recovery and repair in all the subtle and tenderly painful ways of their marriage. So there's very much a love story at the center of this. It's an unusual love story, but it's a deeply felt love story, and it's deeply human, because it's flawed and it's painful and it's full of human mistakes and human errors, but it's, I think, beautifully drawn.
I think that Eleanor Roosevelt, who had a tremendous charisma, and I think was very beautiful in early pictures, was rather mocked later on, unkindly and rather cruelly, for being rather sort of plain, I suppose, would be the word you might use, but I didn't think she was. We have with Cynthia Nixon, I think, a very beautiful woman, but she, I think, has the same kind of charisma, same kind of passion, same kind of intelligence and the ability to convey all of those things as well as delicacy and vulnerability and, it's a wonderful performance, a very open performance.
And I think, Eleanor felt as though she was released through the trauma of the affair. And she grew into, if not a different kind of person, the person she might always have been. And I think you feel in Cynthia's performance this unleashing of the full- blooded woman, and I think that she conveys what I believe Eleanor had, which was tremendous magnetism and charisma, and I find it very sexy... both of them. [LAUGHS]
HBO:
What do you want people to take away from the film?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
"I hope that people enjoy seeing a part of the life of FDR that's not familiar to most people in any detail. To see the personal and emotional center of the events that helped forge a new version of his character in a very emotional way." |
|
|
|
— Kenneth Branagh
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Kenneth Branagh:
I hope that people enjoy seeing a part of the life of FDR that's not familiar to most people in any detail. And it seems, from so many commentators, the notion of the fundamental impact on FDR's character, and on everything... subsequent to his contracting polio, as a result of that traumatic change, is something that people can understand for a man who is the longest serving president in American history, who presided over the most extraordinary world events and catastrophic events.
To see the personal and emotional center of the events that helped forge a new version of his character in a very emotional, I hope not sentimental, but very emotional way... I think that that could provide an entertaining and intelligent insight into how important it was for him... as it is for anyone to meet the struggles and the challenges that life throws at us, and realize that with... sufficient determination and sufficient imagination, and with... not just a little, but a lot of help from your friends... anything is possible.
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
HBO Store NEW!
Something the Lord Made starring Alan Rickman and Mos Def. Buy the DVD now at the HBO Store!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
