Mary Magdalene is in cinemas now
first muscle-bound Jesus, and this was in Sicily “where you just wanna roll out and eat some good pasta and have a glass of wine”.
He got down to biblically emaciated in time for production and gives another consummate performance, the film ruminating on the nature of faith in a similar way to Martin Scorsese’s Silence.
“There’s just no one like him,” he says of Mary Magdalene director Garth Davis. “There’s such a sensitivity and consideration and appreciation for what everybody does, he reveres acting or at least he makes you feel that way, and so he’s super-perceptive.
“I remember we were doing this scene where I’m talking to Judas who’s saying,
‘Bring about the Kingdom now’, and he leaves and
Mary comes in and washes Jesus’ feet.
We were breaking it up into two different scenes for shooting, just me and Judas first — we were gonna get that and then Mary was gonna come in later.
“Then on this one take, for whatever reason I just really felt Tahar’s (Rahim, Judas) performance, I was really caught up in the moment, and when he left I turned and I wanted Mary to just come in so bad. So I sat there and immediately I heard, off-camera, Garth whispering, ‘Go to him Mary, go to him,’ and she came
in and we just kept running and played the scene out. Garth could sense that I was feeling something and wanted to move it forward, and when you work with a filmmaker like that it’s a joy to be on set.”
It might be something to do with the fact that Phoenix checks out his films once principal photography has wrapped and isn’t there for all the good stuff and the plaudits and analysis, but he doesn’t seem to know how good he is. Do you think about your body of work, what you’ll leave behind, or are you more in the moment than that?, I ask
him.
“I don’t think about that, if I did I would just be embarrassed. No, I don’t.” He pauses, “You’re making me think about it now.”
I feel bad and suggest it’s probably not a healthy way to think anyhow.
“Yeah, it’s probably also just that it would be a sign of age. I think in some sense I’m just trying to — I still feel like I haven’t done it, I still feel like ...” Everything’s ahead of you? “Hopefully! I’m pursuing it, I just feel like I haven’t done anything yet that I could sit back and go like, ‘Alright, I did that.’ I still feel like I haven’t done anything yet, but I’m gonna try.”