Chris Knight on Villeneuve’s latest,
Denis Villeneuve ‘had to jump’ at Sicario
Few can play the modesty game as well as a Canadian, but U.S. actor Josh Brolin handily triumphed over Quebec’s Denis Villeneuve while discussing the director’s newest film, Sicario. The film is the only work by a Canadian in the running for the Palme d’Or this year, and played before an appreciative press on Tuesday morning.
Villeneuve called the film a great collaboration with his stars — including Emily Blunt and Benicio Del Toro — and with cinematographer Roger Deakins, a 12-time Oscar nominee. “I want to bring people together and try to bring the best out of them,” he said. “It is tough on my ego to say that, but as a director I’m best when I’m more like a channel. I know I’m here because of these guys.”
Brolin wasn’t having any of that, however. “When I saw the movie I thought: He knows exactly what he wants. There’s no way to accomplish what I just saw and have no idea what you’re doing.”
Brolin continued: “He wants it to come from you even though he’s manipulating you to do exactly what he wants you to do. So ... you feel good as an actor, like you actually gave something to the film — which you didn’t. While you’re doing it you’re like: I came up with this great idea. Thank god he has me on the set. And then I saw the movie and I said: This has nothing to do with me.”
Sicario — the title is Spanish for “hit man,” and the opening titles explain that the word derives from an ancient term for those who hunted invading Romans in Jerusalem — is set on the U.S.-Mexican border. Blunt plays FBI agent Kate Macer, who joins a U.S. team — including nebulous “defence advisors” played by Brolin and del Toro — on a heart-pounding raid across the border to extricate a highlevel cartel leader. The ultimate aim, as Brolin’s character puts it: “Shake the tree and create chaos.”
Blunt’s character is very much our way into this world; she’s as confused as the audience will be in the early going. All the more surprising then that screenwriter Taylor Sheridan was asked to make the role male. Villeneuve said the producers had the “guts” to insist that it remain a female character, though he clearly found it ironic that such an argument still needs to be made in 2015.
Blunt has done her share of action films, mixing what might be termed traditional roles ( Into the Woods, The FiveYear Engagement) with more badass characters ( Looper and, especially, Edge of Tomorrow.) “I found this character quite damaged and vulnerable,” she said of her role in Sicario. “She’s trying to maintain face for most of it.” She said the female FBI agents she spoke to in preparation for the part were “real girls ... They go home and watch Gosford Park and Downton Abbey. You would want to have a beer with them.”
Villeneuve, a writer/director on such early films as Polytechnique and the Oscar-nominated Incendies, has worked as director-only on Enemy, Prisoners and now Sicario. “I’m a very, very slow screenwriter,” he explained, “and my appetite for cinema is huge right now.” His next films are Story of Your Life, about a linguist (Amy Adams) in contact with aliens, and an untitled sequel to Ridley Scott’s science-fiction classic Blade Runner.
He said he was “traumatized” when he read the script for Sicario, and had to sign on. “When you fall in love you don’t have a choice,” he said. “You have to jump.”
Asked if he believed what certain characters espouse — that the end justifies the means — Villeneuve was cautious. “The movie is asking questions,” he said. “I don’t think the movie is giving any answers. We’re living in a time when grey zones are more blurred than ever.”
The director’s talent seems beyond question, however. Certainly Brolin thinks so. He said he had originally turned down a part in Sicario. “Usually when you’re not sure about a film it turns out very bad,” he said. “Denis is a great, wonderful man to work with — because the film turned out good.”
‘As a director I’m best when I’m more like a channel’