< Home / Interview / Critic / Bio / My articles in Japanese >

The Debt

Coverage by Nobuhiro Hosoki

Story : The espionage thriller begins in 1997, as shocking news reaches retired Mossad secret agents Rachel (Helen Mirren) and Stefan (Tom Wilkinson) about their former colleague David (Ciarán Hinds). All three have been venerated for decades by their country because of the mission that they undertook back in 1966, when the trio (Jessica Chastain, Marton Csokas, and Sam Worthington) tracked down Nazi war criminal Vogel (Jesper Christensen) in East Berlin.

Opens August 31, 2011

Runtime:1 hr. 44 min.

 

Interview with Director John Madden, Actress Jessica Chastain

 

(Q) : How did this project come about?
 
(John Madden) : What happened was that as you know, the film is based on an Israeli film called "Ha-Hov," which means "The Debt," and it was made in Hebrew so it had a limited reach. It was only released in Israel. So I think via Ari Emanuel, who is Matthew's agent, the project was brought to his attention as something that might be worth bringing to a wider audience.

So Matthew and Jane Goldman wrote an adaptation of it I think initially with the idea that Matthew would direct it, but they were also writing "Kick-Ass" at the same time, so he sent the script to me and I responded very strongly to the material. But they couldn't work on it because they were doing "Kick-Ass" so I then deconstructed the thing and put it back together again with Peter Straughan, the writer. So that's how it came about, and we started casting it then.
 
(Q) : How did you make it more globally appealing? I haven't seen the Israeli version actually. Did they shoot as well in Berlin?
 
(John Madden) : No, the film is very good, but it was made on a very limited budget so it's more of a chamber piece. The piece is expanded in terms of a sense of place. There were very, very few exteriors basically, and if there were the camera was pointing here because it didn't have enough money to point there or there. But it was none the worse for that because obviously the core of the film is these four people inside this place.

But the sense of place was very, very important to me. Also the emphasis of the film is different inevitably because you have to take a point of view as a director about what you think is important, and this film is much more about the unraveling of their lives as a result of what's happened than the original is.
 
(Q) : Jessica, obviously the physical scenes were challenging, but what were the challenges of the Nazi feeding scenes? Because you had to walk a very fine line between being attentive and not seeming nurturing. What was it like to be a Nazi?
 
(Jessica Chastain) : Oh gosh. What was so wonderful about working with Jesper is he's such a great man and he's so kind, and I was kind of hoping actually when I would meet him that he wouldn't be, so maybe kind of a son of a bitch. But he's actually really lovely and because he's a brilliant actor he could just switch it on and off. And he brought I thought so much complexity and humanity to the character that it really creates bits of doubt in Rachel whether or not he is a monster or if they're treating him as an animal, those questions.

But during those scenes I just tried to think the thought that the character would think. There's so much going on, so a lot of it would be "Don't talk to him. Don't listen to him, don't talk to him. But then as you're taking a lot in then you have moments where you think "I'm not afraid of you."  That there's so much of what that scene was just having a great scene partner and reacting to how wonderful Jesper is. I had worked so hard on my backstory of where Rachel had come from and what she brings into the picture that I was able then to just be present in the moment for what was happening between us.
 
(Q) : And what were you feeding him?
 
(Jessica Chastain) : Oatmeal. Oh yeah, he ate a lot of oatmeal.
 
(John Madden) : Steel cut oatmeal.
 
(Q) : Did he have any choice? Like was there a menu?
 
(Jessica Chastain) : Oh no. I don't think so. Was there?
 
(John Madden) : No.
 
(Q) : You do a lot of physical scenes but then you do a lot of scenes where you're speaking with just your eyes and your face. Which one is more difficult? Is it doing the physical stuff or is it just trying to portray an emotion without even saying anything?
 
(Jessica Chastain) : I'm an actor who loves so much when I'm given the opportunity to try and convey something without dialog. I love that because it means that I have to be present and I have to be really in the moment. It has to be real is what the circumstances are. And nothing forces me to be absolutely present than when I don't have dialog to convey how I feel. So I guess I would say that the fight scenes were more challenging, because in my personal life I'm not a fighter.

I've never thrown a punch, so I went through four months of training and actually learned how to punch someone without hurting my wrist, and to be honest I became a bit of a monster at home. Whenever I would come back from training all my friends I'd be like "Come on! Come at me! I'll take you down!" So yeah, that would be the most challenging.
 
(Q) : John, could you talk about the process of casting?
 
(John Madden) : I'm a believer in a role belonging to a person. We started with Helen in the casting of this, and Helen made the movie possible as well as being a perfect piece of casting. And then the next task was to cast the younger version of her, and I told the studio that it was my conviction that I should cast a relative unknown, not that Jessica didn't exist before we cast her in this, but she was pretty unknown, but obviously I knew and could see what the track record was and particularly the Julliard training, so I thought we're going to be off to a good start.

But anyway, I met Jessica and worked with her and famously spoke to Terry Malick about her for a considerable length of time because I needed really to have something I could go to the studio with and say okay, this is who it should be. Ironically, because the film because of various studio realignments has taken much longer to come to the screen than we had imagined, and now Jessica is not unknown.
 
(Jessica Chastain) : I'm still an unknown.
 
(John Madden): But that's actually fine. It was not so much an unknown as somebody who didn't carry a lot of baggage, because it didn't seem to be a useful agenda for the film to figure out how actress A turned into Helen Mirren, and that would have totally dominated the press agenda I'm sure if we had done it that way. But Jessica, she's a proper actress and she has the training to put her right at the center of what she's doing.

It's not about, as you can see from the work of hers that you would already have seen that she's just totally about the part and she immerses herself completely in the part. So she's my kind of actress; I don't know what to tell you. She's brilliant and you'll hear so much more of her. But I felt very, very, very lucky the moment we started shooting it. I knew I would actually, to be honest with you, because Jessica and I worked on it and I put her on tape and I could see. And she taught me about the role, and the writer as well.
 
(Q) : You and Helen got together and came up with a backstory for Rachel. How was it having her come to you and connecting with Helen?
 
(Jessica Chastain) : Oh my gosh. Well it's funny because when I first met John I was saying "Oh I'm perfect for this part. I'm great for this. She's 5'4, I'm 5'4." Just everything I was saying to doggedly go after the role. And then once I found out that I was cast immediately there's the feeling of how on Earth am I going to share a role with Helen Mirren, who really is like a goddess? She's a dame and a broad and just amazing.

So to hang out with her in the very beginning of our first session I was a little intimidated. There were moments were I felt like okay, Jessica, speak up. Don't be too shy. But she has a wonderful air about her. She started in the theater, she's a theater actress and a film actress and rehearsal is very important to her.

So being able to sit down and work with her on the accent with Joan Washington is a great dialect coach. We worked on different mannerisms that Rachel might share, and the backstory, I think it was very important because it created the spine for the character that follows us throughout the film. So even though I didn't have scenes acting with Helen I still feel like I worked with her.
 
(Q) : You mentioned the accents. How did you decide? Because clearly, especially in the '60s, everyone in Israel was coming from somewhere. How did you decide how to dole out the accents?
 
(John Madden) : We went for a particular kind of sound. You just have to sort of aim at a target essentially. We felt it had to be an accented world. Obviously we couldn't let everybody speak in their own accents. As you say, Israel, particularly in the mid-'60s was a melting pot anyway. Everybody came from somewhere else. We just needed to place it somewhere. Everybody came at it with the very expert help of Joan Washington, so it put us all in the right place. And these two, Jessica and Helen, started together with Joan, so that was a very good starting point for everybody else.
 
(Q) : There's a history of ambivalence about government spies, and certainly your portrayal and your direction of these spies is ambivalent. Especially more recently we've heard stories about agents during World War II trying to slip female hormones into Hitler's food to make him less aggressive. This was a recent news report.
 
(John Madden) : Damn, didn't know about that one when we were shooting the movie.
 
(Q) : So how did the two of you handle that sort of ambivalence? Because it's probably going to be seen with audiences coming in with those feelings.
 
(John Madden) : When you say ambivalence do you mean the fact that they live a double life? Or do you mean the fact that they're flawed?
 
(Q) : Flawed.
 
(John Madden) : Well obviously the flaws are the subject of the film, and actually for me that's the core interest of the film is behavior at the center of the film essentially. These are ideologically driven people, but one person obviously thrust into a situation that despite her training and despite her skills, she's never been in the field before, Rachel, and obviously she's confronted with a kind of overwhelming circumstance.

So the way in which they unravel under the pressure of that seems to me to be what makes the story interesting because it's about moral culpability and moral responsibility, the film, and it's obvious what that would mean in terms of the Nazi doctor. Less obvious what it would mean in terms of the pursuers.

But the fact that they go through this transformative experience and opt in a circumstance that I think the audience is able to track very carefully for a kind of political expedient and what that means for them and what that means for their lives afterwards is absolutely the subject of the film to me. It's what roots the entire thing, and I suppose the expiation of that. The payment of that debt is where the heart of the film is.
 
(Q) : And on your part you as a person had to do lots of mean things that maybe went against your own personal feelings. How did you handle that duality?
 
(Jessica Chastain) : As an actress I always want to play a character that has duality within them, and I did a lot of research actually about the Mossad; how it came to be and different missions that they had gone on. Some of these missions there are a lot of mistakes that were made and a lot of successes and a lot of quick thinking creating weapons out of nothing and finding themselves in situations.

So what I love so much about this film is it's not like a typical action film where your action heroes are superhuman. I feel like there's more realism in it, that characters can be incredibly strong but also vulnerable at the same time, and that creates the conflict and the drama.
 
(Q) : How was it having two love interests?
 
(Jessica Chastain) : If I have two lover interests where it's Sam Worthington and Marton Csokas thank you John Madden. You always get nervous as an actress when you're playing a character where there's going to be a romance with the actor. You think "Oh please do not be a jerk." And I met them, we had a dinner actually at John's house, and there's a lot of pressure because here I'm going to meet everybody and I think the table was even situated where I was sitting between the two of them.

And John's there and Chris is there, our producer's there, everyone's there and they're kind of watching the situation. And five minutes into the dinner I just thought "This is going to be awesome," because not only are they of course incredibly handsome and funny and smart, but in the film I find their characters heartbreaking and I love that there is in a sense the love triangle.

You can see really redeeming qualities in both of these men, which sometimes as an audience member if I go see a movie and there's a love triangle it's like one is the jerk, like the absolute opposite.
 
(John Madden) : You feel bad when he gets snubbed actually. When you say no he puts his hand on you.
 
(Jessica Chastain) : Yeah. And I think in the hands of lesser actors and a lesser director it wouldn't have turned out this way. I had absolutely chemistry with both those men.
 
(Q) : And you're working with Sam again in "Texas Killing Fields."
 
(Jessica Chastain) : Yeah, we became great friends on this set. He was like my action coach and he nicknamed me Tommy Cruise. There's a scene where I'm running and he was teasing me when I first ran I ran like Gumby, like I had my arms by my side. And he mentioned Tom Cruise, you have to really pump your arms, and there's no one who runs better than Tom Cruise. He runs in every movie and he's fantastic, but now after working with Sam I have a run that rivals Tom Cruise.
 
(Q) : How was it having movies coming out back to back?
 
(Jessica Chastain) : It's wonderful that people are seeing my films, but it's really scary at the same time. Normally it's a slower introduction into this part of the business. But I know that needless to say I'm not an unknown anymore, but really I don't think the public knows I'm an actress at all. I don't think they recognize me.

I've only been recognized a couple times in the past three or four months, even since "Tree of Life" came out. It's a very rare thing for me. I'm not photographed a lot unless I'm at an event for work, so I still think that the public will go and not make the connection.
 
(John Madden) : Jessica can't say it, but she's very unusual as an American actress I think because it's precisely that versatility which is what marks her out. You can't quite pin down who she is, and long may that last in a way, because it's great not to have to deal with an audience's expectations of who you are all the time but just to be able to disappear into a role, and she's quite amazing in that way.

And there's a certain in my mind class of actor who can do that even though they're very big stars now, which Jessica will be as well, I'm sure. But I completely understand on her part it's like "My god; I've got seven movies coming out this year. They're all going to be fed up with me by Christmas." They won't be because you look at these three movies, it's like holy smoke; how do you draw a line between them?
 
(Q) : Do you think theater training as a lot to do with it?
 
(John Madden) : Yes, because theater training is about transformation. If you train properly to be an actor it's not about "How do I make the role me?" it's about "How do I make myself into the part I'm playing?" and I think that's a very, very distinct difference. And you look at the actors who can accomplish that out in the world, Meryll and Cate Blanchet and all these people; they're people who have that training and it's not about who they are, it's about the role they play.
 
(Jessica Chastain) : But you do need a good leader and director to be able to do that, and I knew when first meeting with John that this was absolutely something that I wanted to do because he would give me the support and lead me in the right direction to be able to do that. And also, John directs both theater and film and he lives in that world as well. I think if I played this role it would have been a very different Rachel had another director directed. It would have been more action; it wouldn't have been I think the human story that he's created.

 

End.