ALONE AT THE END OF THE EARTH
Vikander and Fassbender are keeping fans guessing over whether they are conducting a real-life romance
It’s impossible to watch The Light Between Oceans — Derek Cianfrance’s tale of a childless Australian couple who discover a baby in a rowing boat and keep it — and not assume that you’re witnessing its stars, Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender, falling in love. After all, speculation ran rampant last year when photographs suggested that the incandescent actors were an item — a suggestion that neither would confirm. Rumour seemed to become fact when Vikander kissed Fassbender after she won the Oscar as Best Supporting Actress for The Danish Girl (2015) in February, and the world’s collective knees went weak.
Seated on a sofa, but not too close, at the Ritz-Carlton Battery Park hotel in New York this summer, Vikander and Fassbender completed each other’s sentences as they discussed their film, which will open in Thailand on Nov 10. It’s an adaptation of ML Stedman’s novel about Tom (Fassbender), a World War I veteran turned lighthouse keeper on a rocky, storm-swept island, and his wife Isabel (Vikander), whose maternal longing he wants nothing more than to satisfy.
Asked about their discretion, Vikander, wearing geometric-print palazzo pants and radiantly barefaced, said, “We’ve done this film and we’re talking about it. Then you keep certain things private and between us, which I think is the right thing.”
Fassbender, his blue T-shirt complementing her outfit and his eyes, chimed in, “Our work is something that we’re very committed to, but also our private lives.”
They also spoke about their characters’ moral compromises, their director’s quirks and the scene in which she shaves his moustache off — with a real blade. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Congratulations on your Oscar success.
VIKANDER: It was the most memorable and extraordinary night, and good partying, and I’ve kind of been in a bubble since then.>>
>> With so many offers sent your way, why this film?
FASSBENDER: I was doing Macbeth and Derek came to visit. The script really got me in a primal place, just hit me emotionally. It seemed like a very old-school film, and that felt very refreshing.
VIKANDER: I admired Michael for being one of the most brave actors I had seen. And when I knew that he was involved in this, and with Derek, whose previous films [such as Blue Valentine (2010)] I’d loved, that was it even more. It was a script that made me cry. But the people are always what draw me most to a film.
The lighthouse setting is otherworldly. Where is that?
FASSBENDER: It was Cape Campbell, outside Blenheim in New Zealand. A peninsula, much to Derek’s dismay. He almost wasn’t going to pick it because it wasn’t an island. I was like, “Dude, it’s not going to get any better than this — this is amazing.” He was like, “But it’s not an island.” Small compromises.
VIKANDER: I felt like I was in Jurassic Park. It’s that kind of nature that looks morphed and bigger than anything I’d seen. We camped there and had dinners in the evenings.
James Kent, the director of ‘Testament of Youth’ (2014), said no one does tragedy like Alicia Vikander. What’s your secret?
VIKANDER: You need to have an extremely supportive director and co-actors you can play with and you can search with and you can dare to try new things with.
It was the first day of work, and we were going to do a scene again, and Michael said, “Give me some reason. Give me a new idea. Just give me anything, whatever it is.” That showed him to be an actor who was so willing to be involved and work together.
The scenes of Isabel’s two miscarriages are harrowing. How difficult were they to portray?
VIKANDER: I was quite terrified, but Michael allowed me the possibility to “lose it” a bit. It’s a very primal thing and, as a woman who hasn’t had children, this is the one time I feel like a real fraud.
Tom and Isabel seem the perfect example of good people who do a bad thing. And yet we sympathise. What’s your take?
VIKANDER: When I look back at emotional situations in my life, I probably reacted in ways that surprised me. Keeping a baby, like Isabel does, is of course considered morally wrong, and I felt that. Then I got in the head of someone trying to do good and wanting to just give love to a child, and I understood how she ended up where she went.
FASSBENDER: I would like to think I would go down more Tom’s route, to go through the correct procedures, but it’s just too easy to say. It’s like the classic thing of people saying in hindsight, after the era of slavery, “Well, I wouldn’t be one of those white people that had slaves on the property,” or black people would say, “Well, I’d be one of the slaves that revolted against the master.” It’s impossible to say because you try to survive in whatever circumstances you’re in at the time. It’s always easier to say from the other side of the fence looking in.
Whose idea was it to shave off Tom’s moustache?
FASSBENDER: I just had this idea that Isabel might have said, “Oh, get rid of that old moustache, it scratches me.” It was a sign of people making little changes to exist together.
VIKANDER: And also a moment that signifies them having a fresh start, to being clean. And it’s a wonderful thing that she physically is the one to take it off.
It takes guts to let someone other than a barber go after your face with a straightedge.
VIKANDER: Derek asked me, “So we’ve got this idea, and everyone says that it’s dangerous and that you can’t do it. Do you want to do it?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Can you do it?” Then I started to really freak out because that thing is just a blade and I’d never shaved a man before.
FASSBENDER: She made me bleed a little. ■