‘It’s not often th that has intelle At you read a film ctual ambition’ begins a controversial experiment with his . GEORGIA HUMPHREYS finds out more.
James D’Arcy plays a teacher who graduate class in The Philosophers.
TEN days of filming on a desert island in Indonesia was just one of the reasons The Philosophers appealed to James D’Arcy.
The 45-year-old actor, who hails from Amersham in Buckinghamshire, also shot scenes by a volcano, and at the Hindu temple compound Prambanan, “which is one of the most spectacular ancient bits of architecture you’ve ever seen in your entire life”.
“I don’t know how it’s not been in a Bond movie. It’s spectacular,” says D’Arcy.
What’s interesting about mindbending sci-fi adventure The Philosophers is it was made way back in 2013, but has only just recently had its UK digital release.
D’Arcy – known for his portrayals of Edwin Jarvis in the Marvel Cinematic Universe TV show Agent Carter, and the 2019 film Avengers: Endgame – plays Mr Zimit, a controversial philosophy teacher at an international school in Jakarta.
The film is an exploration of emotion versus reason and sees Mr Zimit’s class pushed to their limits when he asks them to choose which 10 of them would take shelter underground and reboot the human race in the case of a nuclear winter.
“The whole film is set on the last day of high school,” explains D’Arcy. “So you’ve got this group of 20 or so students who are about to graduate, and his version of ‘bring your own toys and wear your own clothes’ is to set a fairly brutal thought experiment for the class.
“I thought it was really clever. It’s not often you read a film that really has intellectual ambition, and I admired it for that.”
The role was a “fantastic experience” for D’Arcy, but he adds “it was also a bit odd because I was playing a teacher and the only other actors in the whole film were the students.”
“You know how your life goes by in a blink of an eye – it wasn’t that long ago that I was the youngest member of a film set. And now I was, by some distance, the oldest actor on the set, which was very peculiar, I have to say.
“The kids were nice – they’re not kids any more, they’re all fully grown, practically middle-aged people, and some of them have gone on to be fairly successful, which I’m quite pleased for them [about].
“It was very odd at first, arriving and realising I wasn’t the baby; I was the old, boring one.”
It meant D’Arcy sometimes felt like a teacher himself.
“Maybe out of the 20 kids, five of them had never set foot on a film set before. They didn’t know how the process worked. Obviously, there were kids on the set that had made plenty of films, so they knew what they were talking about. But the ones that were new, I did feel some sense of responsibility of helping them.”
One of the technical challenges the star discusses was the fact director John Huddles often wanted to have everybody in the same shot.
“Twenty-one people in a shot is very difficult to corral,” he elaborates. “And it was hot and sticky; Indonesia is a warm, sticky environment. And when we would be filming outside for hours on end, obviously people would lose their focus or get a bit antsy or whatever. So, to keep 21 people focused when he said ‘action’, that was sometimes challenging – and that includes me. But apart from that, we had a really fun time.”
Other previous projects you might recognise D’Arcy from include ITV drama Broadchurch, and films Dunkirk, Master and Commander: The Far Side of
and Cloud Atlas. One misconception we perh of actors is that it’s a glamorous he reflects on how “unless you’r a really expensive film, mainly try and do is they go to the chea place they can film, and make i the most expensive place they c
“So you quite often end up i the world that you wouldn’t hav to go and visit,” he notes, matte factly.
“Master and Commander, w over the border of Mexico, just p Tijuana,” which he says is “not the world you would choose to t holiday in”.
“When you’re driving to wor there are cars upside down, and
horses on the side of the road, it doesn’t feel glamorous. It’s work.
“It’s tiring and it’s hard, and I’m not complaining in any way, shape or form, but it is like any job. It can be thrilling and exciting and it can just be the machine. You’ve just got to get through it.”
So, what’s next for D’Arcy to add to the CV?
“You have a career in retrospect, you don’t have a career as you’re going along – unless you’re extremely lucky,” he muses.
“One of the things I love about acting is you’re very heavily, heavily focused on one particular role and genre and project, and then that’s finished, and then you can focus on something wildly different.
“I wrote and directed a film the year before last [Made In Italy], and that was really an enjoyable experience, and I wouldn’t mind an opportunity to try and do that again. That would be really fun.
“In terms of acting, I just want to work with good directors on good projects – that’s really the only criteria.”
The Philosophers is out now on digital platforms including iTunes, Amazon and Sky Store