Farrell takes dark journey with ‘Sacred Deer’ director
NEW YORK — Colin Farrell had a surprise 2015 hit with Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos’ “The Lobster,” so naturally they reteamed for tomorrow’s equally strange and discomfiting “The Killing of a Sacred Deer.”
In “Lobster,” Farrell gained 30 pounds to play a lonely man who would be turned into an animal (or a crustacean) if he didn’t find a heterosexual mate.
In “Sacred Deer,” Farrell’s cardiac surgeon befriends a fatherless teen (Barry Keoghan, “Dunkirk”) only to see the relationship turn malevolent with a death threat against Farrell, his wife (Nicole Kidman) and their two children.
Lanthimos’ films are distinguished by their bizarre plots, absurdist events and the droning way everyone speaks.
“Yorgos is very specific although he doesn’t say much,” Farrell, 41, said. “His direction usually results in, ‘Faster. Slower. Maybe take a pause here,’ that kind of thing.”
While the director wanted Farrell tubby for “Lobster,” this time he wanted the actor to have a beard.
“I questioned whether surgeons, just as a result of the lack of hygiene I thought, would sport beards. He sent me a picture of a guy with a beard.”
What does Farrell think the eerily strange “Sacred Deer” is about really?
“Honestly, I have no idea,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s about just the disintegration of the American Dream. I don’t know if it’s about the inevitable cost that befalls those who are guilty of the deadly sin of pride.
“I don’t know, I don’t really know. It’s about pain, it’s about revenge, it’s about sacrifice, all those things.
“In the worlds Yorgos creates, there is a logic. Everything makes some bizarre sense. As twisted, as bizarre, as hard to reference in relation to our own lives as it may be, there is some kind of dark logic to everything.
“That’s for me one of the great things about Yorgos as a filmmaker.”
Farrell is now teamed with Tim Burton on Disney’s live action remake of “Dumbo.”
“Before I heard about ‘Dumbo’ I didn’t think, ‘I want to do a film that’s light and expansive and filled with hope.’ But when I read ‘Dumbo,’ it was light, it was expansive and it was full of hope.
“It felt like the perfect thing because I had come off doing pieces that were very dark, tonally, psychologically and emotionally.”
(“The Killing of a Sacred Deer” opens tomorrow.)