Dumbo luck
Farrell says he wanted to work with Burton
Before landing the part of Holt Farrier in Disney’s live-action Dumbo reboot, Colin Farrell had one goal to check off his acting bucket list: to work with director Tim Burton.
“I’ve been a fan of Tim’s for the past 20-plus years,” he says. “I don’t know when I saw Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (Burton’s 1985 full-length directorial debut) — I might have been 12 or 13 — and from that it went into Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood and on and on. I’ve been a fan forever.”
Farrell, 42, made a name for himself in a string of high-profile roles, including Phone Booth, Minority Report and a big-screen revamp of Miami Vice.
But after enduring high-profile flops, most notably Oliver Stone’s Alexander, and a battle with drugs and alcohol, the Irish-born actor reinvented himself in such indie hits as In Bruges and Crazy Heart.
“It’s just fun to do different stuff,” he says of his zigzagging career.He says Dumbo, inspired by Disney’s 1941 animated classic, is a story about families struggling to understand and care for each other and be reunited, “not just physically, but emotionally as well.”
QWith a few exceptions, it seems in your career you’ve been drawn to edgier material. What made you want to do Dumbo?
ATim Burton. He’s a director who continuously creates these magical worlds that transport me, as an audience member, from where I am to something completely new and wondrous. And also, the themes he explores
— themes of loneliness and isolation — those play a huge part in all of our lives at various stages. So when I heard Tim Burton was making this film, I really wanted to be a part of it.
QWere you looking to do something that was more accessible to an audience?
ANo. You’re always hoping that an audience no matter how big or small finds its way to the work. When you’re making The Lobster or Ondine or The Killing of a Sacred Deer, you know that it’s probably going to cater to a more boutique audience. But I wasn’t
looking for something as big and accessible and colourful and bright and filled with hope as this is. It happened to come along.
QWhy do you think that story has endured?
AI didn’t see it as a kid. I think it’s because it’s from 1941. I saw animated films that were more contemporary — Lady and the Tramp, Aristocats, Jungle Book — when I was growing up.
But I think this endures because of how relatable it is. Like any good tale that stands the test of time, it has to be relatable. Because of this forced separation
between him and his mother, Dumbo begins to experience this sense of isolation and sadness, and he feels he doesn’t fit in. All of us have felt that at one time or another. All of us have asked ourselves, “Where do we belong? Where do we fit in? Who is our tribe? Who’s going to love us and be there at the end of the day to tell us everything is going to be OK?” Those are enduring themes.
QOther than the first Fantastic Beasts film, this is perhaps the biggest movie you’ve made in over a decade. Did it challenge you in a different way?
AI feel this was just different. I approached it the same way I always would have.
The challenge was trying to honour the weight and depth of the themes that are explored, but do them in a way that was accessible.
It’s not a kitchen-sink drama, but it deals with themes that really good, strong BBC television dramas have dealt with. And it does it in such a way that’s accessible to children and accessible to people’s imagination, all the while never straying from the truth of what’s going on in the tale.
QIt deals with weighty matters — particularly due to the separation between Dumbo and his mom. But it’s not heavy handed.
ATim was judicious in how he promoted this notion of keeping it simple. He didn’t want to gild the lily. There are so many themes that are important and big, and then there’s a flying baby elephant. There’s so much earnestness in the story already that Tim wanted to make sure we didn’t hit people over the head. There’s a moment between Dumbo and the kids, and in another filmmaker’s hands that moment might have been played a lot more emotionally. But that would have been an act of manipulation, and I think Tim just played the scene really easy and it has a sweetness that it might not have had if it became wrought with emotion.
QWhat do you think about Disney doing these revamps of their animated classics?
AI think there’s a criticism that they’re only doing it for money. And, of course, Disney wants to make money. But when you get somebody like Tim Burton, who is a strong visual artist and a keen storyteller, somebody who has a passion for the work, then you hope the film is given a new life by virtue of its mere existence. We’ll find out. The audience will justify the making of it. As I said, the themes explored in this film are as pertinent today as they were in 1941, if not more topically in a way because of the illegal separation of child and mother.
QYou’ve never repeated yourself in your career. If you had to choose five of your movies ...
ATo burn? (laughs)
QNo, if you had to choose five underrated ...
AI don’t even have five underrated because that would be me saying the audience didn’t appreciate their worth. But I will tell you the five most enjoyable experiences I had: Phone Booth, because it was 10 days. Tigerland. Alexander — for the experience (laughs). Ondine, I had a great time making that. Then maybe a tie between In Bruges and The Lobster.
Dumbo
★ 1/2 out of 5
Cast: Colin Farrell, Danny DeVito, Michael Keaton
Director: Tim Burton
Duration: 1 h 52 m
There’s an unbridgeable chasm between Disney’s original flying-elephant movie Dumbo, which turns 78 this year, and the new live-action remake. And that’s a mixed blessing.
The 1941 version features some problematic characters, including a bird named Jim Crow (a 19th-century racist caricature of African-Americans) and a troupe of all-black “happy-hearted roustabouts” who boast that they “never learned to read or write.” Even with the elephant in the room, there’s ample room for improvement.
On the other hand, the original was a kid-friendly 64 minutes long, with Dumbo taking flight only in the final five. Between the baby elephant, his mother and the wisecracking Timothy Q. Mouse, this was a heartstring-tugging, animal-centric story.
The new version, directed by Tim Burton and written by Ehren Kruger (credits include three Transformers movies, The Ring and Ghost in the Shell), clocks in at almost two hours and puts the human characters up front.
Chief among them is Holt Farrier, played by Colin Farrell. As the film opens in 1919, he’s just back from the war, which took his left arm and apparently his Irish accent: He sounds like a bad George Bush impersonator. He also lost his wife in the influenza epidemic, and his boss (Danny DeVito) has sold the horses that used to be his act in the travelling circus. All he has left are two adorable children, Milly and Joe. Oh, and he gets to look after the circus’s new baby elephant.
Dumbo is still an animated critter, albeit crafted from computer pixels rather than ink and watercolour. The landscapes are largely visual effects as well, leading to an uncanny-valley look in many of the wider shots.
Why his preternaturally large ears should engender such hatred from human circus-goers is never quite explained. Wouldn’t a circus that specializes in freaks capitalize on those auditory flappers? In any case, Dumbo is ostracized by everyone except the kids, who are also the first to witness the pachyderm’s powers of flight.
There’s then a bizarre tug of war between various parties who don’t have the elephant’s best interests at heart. DeVito’s character, Max Medici, seems a safe bet as the chief villain in the early going, but he’s soon elbowed out of the way by V.A. Vandevere (Michael Keaton), an entrepreneur with a disturbingly Disney-esque theme park called Dreamland. Is this the Mouse biting its own tail?
Vandevere is accompanied by Colette (Eva Green), though no one in the film seems certain whether or not they’re a couple, especially the couple. And late in the game Alan Arkin wanders in, playing Wall Street tycoon J. Griffin Remington, Vandevere’s chief financier.
Burton can be undone by the breadth of his own ideas, particularly when he’s remaking someone else’s story — see Alice in Wonderland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and his take on Planet of the Apes.
Movies can also be harmed by their own best interests. When DeVito’s character learned that the pregnant elephant he purchased has given birth to a bigeared spawn, he shouts: “This is an aberration, a travestation, and we want our money back!”
And while it might be going too far to put these words in the mouths of moviegoers, Disney’s latest overstuffed remake certainly qualifies as a “travestation.”