Rahim breaks out in Guantanamo drama
‘The Mauritanian’ based on memoir of former prisoner
Kevin Macdonald was going to turn down directing “The Mauritanian.”
He’d read Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s bestselling memoir about his experience being kept behind bars in Cuba for 14 years without charges, but couldn’t see anything aside from a fascinating historical document in his “Guantanamo Diary.”
The director of the Oscar-winning Munich Olympics documentary “One Day in September” and the Idi Amin film “The Last King of Scotland” didn’t think it was a movie.
But Benedict Cumberbatch and his producing partner, who had brought the project to Macdonald, had one request: Talk to Slahi before you say no.
“I was intimidated to talk to him,” Macdonald said. “Here’s a guy who’s been accused of being involved in 9/11, who has received a phone call from Osama bin Laden’s satellite phone. And more than anything else, here’s a guy who has suffered so much. I thought he was going to be a destroyed human being — angry and resentful.”
Instead, on the other end of the line, he found an intelligent and witty person who could quote “The Big Lebowski” verbatim and was, against all odds, unbroken by his harrowing experience. And suddenly Macdonald knew that he was the story.
The end result, co-starring Cumberbatch as a Marine Corps lawyer and Jodie Foster as a defense attorney, is “The Mauritanian,” playing in theaters where open.
“I thought this is a man who I think a mainstream audience can fall in love with, who they can relate to,” Macdonald said. “And I don’t know another mainstream American movie which has a sympathetic Muslim lead. I don’t think it exists.”
Playing Slahi is French actor Tahar Rahim, who is perhaps best known for his breakout performance in the 2009 French prison drama “A Prophet.” Macdonald had worked with him a decade prior on “The Eagle” and knew that his English skills had improved considerably. He also had recently played an FBI agent in the Hulu miniseries “The Looming Tower.”
But Rahim was also reluctant at first. He didn’t know what to expect from a Muslim role in an American production about Guantanamo Bay and feared it would be stereotypical.
“I think when you are a Muslim man and you are taking part in this sort of project, this is more than just about your career,” Macdonald said.
After five pages, however, Rahim knew this was something different and worthwhile.
“It was the first time I read a script where the Muslim character was sympathetic and at the heart of the movie,” Rahim said.
Naturally, the next step was to meet Slahi, which he did over Skype. He found him to be funny and clever and generous and cool, like a mix of “Muhammad Ali and Nelson Mandela.” But his entire person also changed when the subject veered toward his captivity.
“His face darkened. He was almost not articulate. I felt bad, and I felt stupid, and I didn’t want to make him suffer,” Rahim said.
As Macdonald observed, “the trauma is still there. He’s just decided to not let it take over his life.”
Rahim settled on a different approach from that point. “I felt the right way to do it was just to spend time with him so I could observe him,” he said.
He decided to avoid burdening him with those kinds of questions, and instead relied on the memoir, other accounts of the detainee experience there and putting himself “as close as possible to the real conditions.”
“The only way to do it was to go all in, and I did,” Rahim said.
He lost around 25 pounds in 18 days, deprived himself of sleep and wore shackles around his ankles, which bled occasionally.
Macdonald worried Rahim was going too far, but his actor protested.
“I said, listen, I’m not going to die. I am not going to hurt myself. But I need to do it out of respect to Mohamedou and to the audience,” Rahim said. “The more you experience it, the more you feel like you’re touching a sort of truth, and you want go further and further and further.”
Rahim did have to ask Slahi one big question before starting, however. He couldn’t understand how he turned his anger into forgiveness. Slahi told him that it made him feel free.
“He would put himself in the shoes of others, trying to always understand people, especially his captors,” Rahim said.
The committed performance has not only earned Rahim early raves, but some awards love too. He was recently nominated for a Golden Globe.
And Macdonald thinks it could be his big breakout stateside too.
“I can see him in a romantic comedy. I can see him in a mainstream American movie,” Macdonald said. “And I think in some ways he would love to have that career.”
“It was the first time I read a script where the Muslim character was sympathetic and at the heart of the movie.”
— Tahar Rahim, who plays Mohamedou Ould Slahi in “The Mauritanian.”
Inspiration and talent don’t always travel together. How many young men and women electrified by director Elia Kazan’s Broadway productions of “A Streetcar Named Desire” in 1947 and “Death of a Salesman” in 1949 went on to achieve their own success in the performing arts?
One who did was a teenage Mike Nichols, whose career in the theater and in film would rival Kazan’s in critical and popular acclaim. Nichols directed across six decades, hits like “The Odd Couple” (1965), “The Real Thing” (1984) and “Spamalot” (2005) on Broadway and “The Graduate” (1967) and “The Birdcage” (1996) on film. A Mike Nichols credit always made the heart race with anticipation.
So does “Mike Nichols: A Life,” an epic biography of an epic creative life. Writer Mark Harris delivers an engrossing narrative while exploring the qualities that made Nichols a thoughtful and generous friend and an encouraging, insightful director, his brilliance tempered by insecurities and destructive self-indulgence.
From the beginning, Nichols (1931-2014) was an outsider. He was born Igor Michael Peschkowsky in Berlin, a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. An allergic reaction rendered him hairless for life. Not yet 8 when he fled to New York ahead of war, he found that the U.S. had its own brand of anti-Semitism. The death of his father, a doctor, plunged his family into poverty when he was 13.
Nichols learned to observe life from the sidelines, a trait that served him well when he became
interested in the theater and improvisational comedy. A partnership with Elaine May led to performances in clubs and on records, TV and Broadway that turned the duo into a national sensation.
But it was directing where Nichols excelled for the long haul. His appreciation for human behavior allowed him to finely tune stories and performances with writers and actors, what Harris describes as “the kind of granular, character-based work he most enjoyed.”
The 1960s was Nichols’ decade. He directed a halfdozen plays on Broadway — his first, “Barefoot in the Park,” was a huge hit — and scored at the box office with his first movie, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ?” His second, “The Graduate,” brought him a fortune as well as an Oscar to go with three Tonys and a Grammy.
The 1970s was a comeuppance of sorts for the guy who could do no wrong but was getting fewer things right. The film “Carnal Knowledge” took away some of the pain from the big-budget failure of “Catch-22,” but then other duds followed. Nichols
refocused on the stage and didn’t direct another feature film for seven years until “Silkwood” with Meryl Streep put him back in the groove.
Harris details how the Nichols touch, at full strength, brought out the creative best in any collaboration. With actors it often came with a personal anecdote revealing an unexpected side to a character. But Nichols could be, as Harris writes, “tough, caustic, and dismissive,” even sadistic. While filming “The Graduate,” he insisted on 15 takes for a scene in which actor Dustin Hoffman took a slap — and eventually suffered a torn eardrum.
Nichols had his limits with irascible actors or crew no matter how good they were. He directed George C. Scott in three plays and one film, drawn by Scott’s undeniable talent but rocked by his alcoholism. It was a personal slight — when complaining about a performance of “Uncle Vanya,” Scott told Nichols to “slap on your wig and get your ass down to the theater” — that ended their association.
Successes as well as setbacks took a toll on Nichols’ health. With more money came more food, more drink and more drugs, particularly cocaine. At times Nichols began a movie or a play far less prepared than usual, and the results showed. Hovering over all was depression, which could lay him low more than any artistic problem.
Closing the circle at 80, Nichols directed a revival of “Death of a Salesman” in 2012 and won his eighth and final Tony. Who in that audience will carry the torch that Nichols burned so brightly for so many years?