A peek into Sam Neill’s world
Blackbird deals with a wife and mother looking to die, but Sam Neill says it’s no euthanasia rallying cry.
Sam Neill does not, he insists, always play the good guy. He has become a Covid Twitter hero with his snippy little sketches about toilet roll shortages, obsessive diets and phone dependence offered up as entertainment for the locked-down masses.
It’s always a beautiful day in Neill’s neighbourhood, singing Moon River to his cows. But no, he says, he’s not always good. ‘‘Have you seen Peaky Blinders? I play the worst unhinged bastard on the planet in that.
‘‘I’ve played lots of baddies! I’ve played the Antichrist, for God’s sake! You don’t get much more of a baddie than that.’’
That was in Omen III: The Final Conflict (1981), not his finest hour. But yes, he confirms; just as everyone says, playing baddies is generally more fun.
‘‘They’re graphic, you know, they’re vivid, they’re three-dimensional. Good guys can be bland.’’
We meet in Spain’s gastronomic capital San Sebastian, where his film Blackbird opened the annual film festival in preCovid times.
‘‘Do you come here every year?’’ he asks, clearly hopeful he might be asked back too. He claims gluttony as his greatest sin.
We joke about spending working days on the beach, although this is possibly too little like hard work for Neill.
He says he gets bored easily, hence maintaining two simultaneous careers – acting and running his farm in Central Otago, where he has cattle and a thriving winery – at the age of 73.
‘‘There’s always something to do. It’s impossible for me to retire. When this isn’t happening, I’m really busy over there.’’ Actually, he’s just really busy.
Blackbird is well down his CV now. Since its premiere in Spain he has played the crusty old cocky in Rams, and Michelle Payne’s equally crusty dad in
Ride Like a Girl, then spent the Covid year at London’s Pinewood Studios making a fourth instalment of Jurassic Park, 20 years after the last one but under strict Covid-safe conditions.
Palaeontology gave him his star status, as he is happy to admit. Even an arthouse film as enduringly famous as The Piano (1993), in which he cut off Holly Hunter’s finger – another bad man – doesn’t have the clout of a family-friendly dinosaur blockbuster.
Blackbird is not a blockbuster. Adapted from a Danish film called Silent Heart, it is the story of a fractious family gathering around the terminally ill matriarch Lily, played with stoic magnificence by Susan Sarandon, for a last weekend before she takes a lethal dose of phenobarbital.
Already partly paralysed, she has decided to end her life before she entirely loses the use of her limbs, her voice, her mind and her ability to swallow.
Neill plays her husband Paul, loyal and loving and the last face she will see.
Director Roger Michell and Neill say this is not a film about euthanasia.
Whatever arguments one might have about the subject, says the director, have taken place in this family well before we enter the story.
Neill agrees. ‘‘It touches on it, but I think it’s more about life and love and family. It’s a story I relate to on a very human level.’’
His own family convened when his father was dying of cancer for a similar sort of farewell.
‘‘A lot of that was very vivid and extraordinary, very sad but funny as well, so what I was reading seemed to speak to me. It’s a film for grown-ups about grown-up things.’’
His family had never contemplated assisted dying. ‘‘But my mother died with dementia. She was a brilliant woman – lively, funny, beautiful, an extraordinarily charismatic person – but she died with no dignity at all.
‘‘I know she would have said ‘right, that’s enough of this; I don’t want to die like this’. It was humiliating.’’
He certainly supports New Zealand’s End of Life Choice legislation, due to come into force in November. ‘‘I think it should be considered a human right.’’
So does he have a game plan? ‘‘Not yet, no. I hope I’ve got another three decades!’’ He is altogether a great supporter of Jacinda Ardern’s government.
In San Sebastian the previous year, he was worried for her.
‘‘We’ve had so many years of dull, asset-stripping right-wing governments and now we’re faced, like most places, with a housing shortage, a terrible disparity between the rich and poor, you know, increasing racial tension because of the first two things,’’ he says.
‘‘Everyone wants and expects Jacinda to fix everything. And it’s just not possible to do it all, so I’m concerned that we’ll see a backlash. But I admire her more than any other leader on the planet.’’ It was Covid, which she was seen to handle with exemplary decisiveness, which clinched her position.
Neill, who spent much of last year in lockdown, says he doesn’t like being alone and he doesn’t like having nothing to do; all his cheering Quarantine Cinema films were made for his own benefit as much as for the public.
Before that, he had largely abandoned social media, appalled by the unpleasantness of people hiding behind screens.
‘‘The internet was supposed to bring us together and I think it’s done the opposite. It’s actually very divisive,’’ he says.
‘‘I worry now that people are less part of their community than they were 20 years ago. You don’t have to go out to the movies any more because there are 10 platforms on your big screen.
‘‘You don’t have to go out to a restaurant. You just call Uber and aman comes with a three-course meal. You don’t have to shop.
‘‘And even if you do shop, there is a robot serving you. A f...ing thing that goes beep, you know: what is that about? It’s just horrible.’’ There is quite a bit more of that.
Neill is by nature retiring and courtly, with the slow delivery of a former stammerer, but he can also muster a rant.
‘‘I mean, that is what wine is about,’’ he says suddenly. ‘‘Conviviality! It’s so much more than what’s in the glass. It’s about community.
‘‘If wine brings people together – and it does – let’s drink more of it!’’
He smiles at this idea. You would have to say there is a devilish gleam in his eye.
Blackbird opens nationwide on March 11.
My mother died with dementia. I know she would have said ‘right, that’s enough of this; I don’t want to die like this’. It was humiliating.