Arterton making big-screen impact
Busy actress still wants to ‘cut loose’ on stage
Gemma Arterton’s been busy. The 31-year-old actor made five films in 2016, three of which and screened at the Toronto International Film Festival last year. “This was the starkest,” she says bluntly of the last title. “I’ve done gritty films quite a lot, like with referencing 2009 kidnap thriller. “And
was a shoot-’em-up kind of movie.”
But in which Arterton plays a teacher trying to save a young girl in a postapocalyptic world?
“It was a departure for me,” she says. “This was much more of a thought-provoking film.”
She isn’t much of a science-fiction fan, but was taken by the screenplay, adapted by comic-book writer Mike Carey from his novel of the same name. “It’s probably one of the most feminine characters I’ve played, very sensitive and caring and loving. So I like that, the dichotomy of ... everyone fighting to live, and this heart in the middle of it. It really is a story about human connection.”
Arterton’s character connects most closely with Melanie, played by 12-year-old Sennia Nanua in her first film role.
“I’ve always wanted to work with a child,” she says. From hundreds of young applicants, Arterton had a “chemistry read” with the final 10, and something clicked with Nanua.
“There was something quite sophisticated about her and quite in control . ... She wasn’t bratty, she wasn’t show-offy.” But she’s still just 12, “so she gets very overexcited about there being Jelly Babies on set. She has this energy, this freshness.
“We’re friends,” Arterton concludes. “She doesn’t need any help. But it was nice to be there for her.”
Arterton’s acting career started on the stage and still includes treading the boards; in 2014 she starred in the musical and in 2016 she appeared in the West End run of about Charles II’s mistress.
“I like the balance,” she says of moving between stage and screen. “I feel more comfortable on stage because I started off doing that. I never really was into film growing up.”
But part of her is always looking over her shoulder.
When she’s in the midst of filming, she misses the ability to “let loose” and try new things in a live performance. And then, during a West End show, she’ll find herself thinking: “It would be really great to just never do this scene ever again.” So a play a year’s the thing. “It’s really nourishing for me to do that,” she says. “I think it’s important for me as well to flex my muscles in a different way.” cknight@postmedia.com twitter.com/chrisknightfilm
One of the surest ways to see the power and relevance of James Baldwin’s words today would be to look at some of the signs of recent protesters. “If I love you I must make you conscious of things you do not see,” read one. “The only way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain,” read another.
Or you could see Raoul Peck’s documentary It resurrects Baldwin’s words — his eloquent poetry of injustice — with the same fire with which they were blazed. Peck’s film, which was nominated for best documentary at the Academy Awards, bears no talking heads. There’s no analysis of Baldwin’s influence in literature or interpretation of his politics. But there is his voice: clear and direct.
“I wanted the confrontation to be direct from his words, himself to the audience,” said Peck, who shares screenwriting credit with Baldwin. “I was the messenger.”
It took Peck, the Haitian-born filmmaker of and
years to find the right avenue into Baldwin for
A great responsibility hung over the decade-long endeavour, Peck says, to bring Baldwin to the forefront.
“I read Baldwin as a teenager and his writing never left me,” said Peck. “His writing structured the man I am today and the filmmaker I am today. I wanted to make sure the next generation had access to Baldwin.”
Peck was welcomed by Baldwin’s estate, which is managed by Baldwin’s younger sister, Gloria Karefa-Smart. But the key to the film only emerged when KarefaSmart gave Peck the pages of
which Baldwin completed 30 pages of before his death in 1987 at age 63. The unfinished book was intended to stitch together reflections on three assassinated civil rights leaders: Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and Medgar Evers.
is used as the prism through which to view the novelist, essayist and activist. Passages from the manuscript and other works by Baldwin are narrated by Samuel L. Jackson. And there is copious footage of Baldwin speaking and of his arresting appearances on television.
But isn’t a time capsule. It’s about today. Peck juxtaposes Baldwin’s words with images of police brutality, the Black Lives Matter movement and other recent events. Other images flicker at times — John Wayne and Doris Day — that question the white picture of America promoted by Hollywood.
As he toiled, Peck found his film increasingly timely, a relevance that has only increased since the election. When the Ferguson, Mo., protests grew, he sent a crew to document it.
“I knew how fundamental Baldwin’s words were and I knew they were important to understand the confusion we were in,” said Peck. “What I did not expect is that it would become so obvious and I would have so many examples and illustrations of what I was working on.”
Aisha Karefa-Smart, Baldwin’s niece, says Peck’s film, which includes excerpts from the FBI’s extensive file on Baldwin, was revelatory. “It made me understand my family more in terms of the hushed tones that people spoke in and the unspoken fears that permeated the household.”
At festival screenings, she has watched the film help resurrect her uncle. “A lot of kids are upset they didn’t know who he was,” says Karefa-Smart. “He was kind of the background for a while.”
That has changed in recent years. Baldwin is widely taught in universities. The Library of America has published his essays, novels and stories. was begun in 2015.
When Chris Rock spoke at a Harlem church on Martin Luther