Better not mess with Chastain
Actress aces her high-stakes role in Sorkin’s adaptation of memoir
Aaron Sorkin is ribbing Jessica Chastain.
“I’m going to short you,” he says. “That means I’m going to buy stock and I’m betting against you.”
“Don’t ever bet against Chastain,” she replies levelly.
“I’m shorting you,” he repeats. “That’s the big short.”
“I had five — no seven films come out in 2011.” She pauses to let that sink in. “Never bet against Chastain.”
In Sorkin’s defence, only Take Shelter, Coriolanus, The Tree of Life, The Help, Texas Killing Fields and The Debt had a wide release that year; Wilde Salomé only played the Venice film festival. But Chastain is not someone to trifle with, and neither is the reallife character she plays in Molly’s Game, one of only three films she starred in this year.
Molly Bloom is a former Olympic skier who started hosting highstakes poker games after an accident knocked her out of the sport. She was scrupulous about keeping the games legal — until she took a commission to help insure her against losses, which ran her afoul of the FBI.
Her memoir, Molly’s Game, was adapted and directed by Sorkin. He and Chastain are discussing the film at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it premièred. I ask why he wanted to make this his directing debut.
“I didn’t know that I did,” he said. “But I felt like it was possible to tell the wrong story, or tell a different story than the one that I wanted to tell. There are so many shiny objects in this movie — the glamour, the decadence, the money, Hollywood, sex — that I was worried that it was going to overwhelm what I thought was a better, more emotional story that was going on, set against the backdrop of all these shiny objects.”
Chastain relished the challenge of taking on a real-life character; even better, the real Bloom was there to guide her. “She was excited about the film, and no question was off limits. One thing I was really touched by is she made excuses for a lot of people. When bad things were happening, she wasn’t someone who was quick to belittle someone.”
Chastain would mark up sections of her screenplay with notes from their conversations: “How many years have passed, what has happened, how much of herself has she given away? Because it was very important for me to see her play the rules that someone else had established, and then at the end say, ‘I’m not going to do that any more. This is what I want and this is what I’m going to do. No one’s gong to stop me from being who I am.’”
As a screenwriter, Sorkin is known for having an ear for argot, whether from the world of technology (Steve Jobs, The Social Network) sports (Moneyball, Sports Night) or politics (The West Wing, Charlie Wilson’s War). For Molly’s Game, he says it was important to get the poker terminology right.
“So when she’s describing something to the audience, she is very comfortably able to toss off this kind of lingo,” he says. “That having been said, I still maintain that it is not a poker movie, and the reason why is that at no time are we ever asked to care who wins or loses the hand of poker. We’re asked to care about Molly.”
Sorkin nods. This is why he wanted the reins of the movie. “Because once you’re doing that, once you’re rooting for this person versus that person, Molly is an extra in the scene ... and you are making a movie about someone else. I was worried that it was so easy for that to happen.”
Watching this biopic of former Olympic skier and “poker princess” Molly Bloom, I was reminded of former U.S. secretary of defence and “whiz kid” Robert McNamara. Stay with me. When he was in the military during the Second World War, McNamara pushed for the devastatingly effective firebombing of Tokyo. Later, as president of Ford Motor Co., he helped make safer cars. The man excelled at whatever he did, for good or ill.
Molly is a bit like that. As portrayed by Jessica Chastain, this driven, brilliant woman was on her way to Olympic glory when a freak accident took her out of competition.
She had the grades to get into law school, but decided to take a year off first, and wound up running a high-stakes poker game in Los Angeles. The woman who was planning to practise law
ended up skirting the grey edges of illegality.
Molly was eventually indicted by the FBI for taking a rake. This is not an obscure federal horticultural offence, but a gambling crime; like much of the pokerese in writer-director Aaron Sorkin’s brainy screenplay (the flop, the nut, pot committed, etc.), you’ll eventually feel like you know what it means, even if you don’t.
The script doesn’t so much back into the story as sidle up from several angles at once. Early in the movie, we see Molly taking on the services of Charlie Jaffey (Idris Elba), one of those incorruptible lawyers movies are so good at providing. (Film shorthand: He’s got a sweet school-age daughter so we know he’s on the level.) He urges her to turn on her former clients in exchange for a lighter sentence, but she has principles too!
Even the movie doesn’t give the real names of any of the players, although it’s an open secret that the smarmy young actor played by Michael Cera is in fact Tobey Maguire.
But the players, and the game they’re playing, take a back seat to Molly’s story. She is on the screen for just about every frame of the movie, mostly played by Chastain, although incredible look-alikes Piper Howell and Samantha Isler fill in as her younger selves, mostly to demonstrate her fractious relationship with her father, played by Kevin Costner. (Their odd reunion late in the film is one of its few false notes.)
And it is very much Molly’s story. She narrates throughout, guiding us through the highs and lows of her life, and occasionally punctuating an anecdote with the perfect punchline. “Sometimes God happens fast,” she says of a deus ex machina moment. Or my favourite: “You know what makes you feel OK about losing? Winning.” The lines land as though fired from a staple gun; Chastain may have an airbrushed look, but her delivery is tempered steel.
And that patter rattles at such breakneck pacing that if anyone other than Sorkin were directing, this movie would clock in at over four hours. As it is, the ride is over in two hours and 20 minutes, yet it feels shorter. There aren’t many slow scenes, but if you notice one, take the opportunity to catch your breath.
Because of the personal nature of the story, there are few supporting characters who make much of an impact. Jeremy Strong plays Dean Keith, a mogul (not the skiing kind), who starts Molly on the road to her eventual poker potentate-dom, first swearing her to secrecy. (“’Don’t f---ing tell anybody’ is usually not the beginning of a promising law career,” she remarks wryly.) Irish actor Chris O’Dowd is her most sozzled and besotted player, though the role also serves as proof that he should never try an American accent.
Molly’s wardrobe will evolve from J.C. Penney to Chanel, with about two dozen costume changes along the way. The movie is exciting and glamorous, a peak into a realm few of us will ever enter — although, by the time her story wraps up, even fewer would dare to go there. Molly’s Game, whether skiing or poker, makes for great spectator sport, but you play at your own risk.