AMMONITE THE KING’S MAN
Francis Lee’s intense second feature looks set to propel him to new heights In a prequel set in a world of men, Gemma Arterton’s no-nonsense nanny may steal the show
Francis Lee left his scrapyard job just one day before starting official prep on his debut feature film. He hoped he wouldn’t be returning, but the possibility was there. “I just wanted to make that film,” he says of God’s Own Country. “I didn’t think about having a career as a filmmaker. So I hadn’t fully thought through what I might do when I finished. There was always the chance that I’d be back doing a manual job.”
Much has changed since that day in 2016: God’s Own Country won both awards and rave reviews and Lee has made his second film, Ammonite, starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan as palaeontologist Mary Anning and her younger lover, Charlotte Murchison. The film was chosen for festivals across the globe including Cannes, Toronto, Telluride and London. But in this most difficult of years, Lee never left his kitchen table. It’s a clear sadness for the director, though he’s keen to emphasise that there are many struggling with much more.
“My own personal disappointments pale next to people who’ve been devastated by the loss of loved ones or jobs,” he says. “But I can’t lie and say it’s not been disappointing —to get my second film accepted into official competition at
Cannes, which was kind of a dream really, and not be able to go.”
Winslet’s performance has already been praised by US critics (the film has been released in America), ranking it as among the very best of her career. For Lee, this is due to his actor’s willingness to “rid herself of anything we’ve seen before”. It’s a total transformation, which he describes as her becoming “both physically and emotionally someone else”. The transformation, though, was perhaps too successful. “One day I was on set and there was this person walking around that I didn’t recognise,” says Lee. “And I said to the first AD, ‘Who’s that on my set? What are they doing?’ And he looked at me and said, ‘That’s Kate.’”
And out of such a strange year came, it’s clear, something very special. “My relationship with Kate,” Lee confirms. “She has been so amazingly supportive and committed to me as a filmmaker and a friend. Together, we’ve been through this experience, supporting each other, being there for each other. It’s been a real joy.” AMMONITE IS DUE IN CINEMAS FROM 26 MARCH
The Kingsman movies have been about boys and their toys. Does your character, Polly, redress the balance a bit?
She does. She’s the brains behind the operation, incredibly intelligent, without being one of the boys.
Polly is the nanny to Harris Dickinson’s aristocratic character. How does she fit in?
When Matthew [Vaughn, director] cast me, I said, “‘My character’s the nanny. What can she say?” But she’s almost like a housekeeper that runs the household. He said, “Let’s not make her posh.” It’s nice to have a good Northern accent in there because it’s warm and real.
He told us recently that Polly is Mary Poppins on steroids. Is that fair?
Yeah! I always loved Mary Poppins as a character because there’s more to her than meets the eye. Who knows what she gets up to? Polly is her, but you see what she gets up to. She’s very cheeky, and puts people in their place, which was a real highlight for me, putting Ralph Fiennes in his place.
How do you do that?
It’s a pretty scary prospect at first. But he responded well. I was really nervous about working with him because he’s Ralph Fiennes, and he’s got this mysterious, and a little scary at times, aura. But he’s so playful and so available.
And how was working with Matthew?
He seems unafraid to let actors experiment and also, maybe, to…
Let them know if it was crap?
Thank you for phrasing that. I loved the way he works. You want a director that says, “Try whatever you want and if it’s not working, we’ll throw it out.” We had a reshoot where I was playing a stern character — a nun — on something else, and I was still carrying that character with me and bringing her into Polly. He was like, “Stop being the nun!” That’s what I needed.
How do you top a nerve-shredding slasher that took one of the most iconic characters in horror back to his bloody roots? David Gordon Green knows what not to do. “I do not think fans would thank me if I put a scene into this movie where Michael Myers starts dancing,” laughs the Halloween Kills director, who’s spent a portion of the pandemic enjoying memes created by fans of the notorious serial killer. Particular favourites include ones applauding Myers on his responsible attitude towards public health — if this monstrous boogeyman can wear a mask, why can’t the bloke in the cereal aisle in Tesco?
— and any video in which a fan has donned Michael’s mask to showcase awesome dance moves. “I love the way people on the internet can show a preposterous side of this character,” says Green. “There’s no way I could get away with that kind of absurdity in my films, so I’m glad as a fan of the character that they can.”
Instead, his and co-writer Danny Mcbride’s sequel to 2018’s Halloween — a warmly received reboot of John Carpenter’s 1978 original — ratchets up the terror in simpler ways, deploying grislier murders, higher stakes and themes that resonate with our times. “This film is about community fear, paranoia, misinformation and crowd panic,” says Green, when asked if he agrees with Jamie Lee Curtis’ recent assessment that Halloween Kills lifts a mirror up to our fraught modern world. “This movie is a great popcorn genre movie and not really any kind of statement, but it’s strange how things line up. It couldn’t be a more interesting time to release a movie like this.”
Helping escalate the action this time around are familiar figures from the Halloween mythology. Curtis is back as determined survivor Laurie Strode. Carpenter — who recently
claimed this film has the highest body-count of any Halloween movie — also returns to create the film’s atmospheric score. Classic characters such as Lindsey Wallace, Sheriff Leigh Brackett, Lonnie Elam and Nurse Marion Chambers are all being revived, as well as a familiar location: Haddonfield Memorial Hospital, the primary setting for 1981’s Halloween II.
“There’s a good bit of action there,” teases Green. “Laurie got cut in the gut a few times in the last film, so she needs to go to the hospital. That was an organic path to bringing that location back.” The director promises kills unlike anything seen before in the franchise when Myers’ story continues, but isn’t giving anything away. “All I’ll say is that, when you have the team that we do bringing these ghastly visions to life, sometimes it’s like being at the ballet.”
Timely themes, unbridled violence and an ensemble cast made out of returning series favourites? No wonder there’s no room for a Michael dance scene. “Right?!” says Green. “Maybe we’ll make one for the deleted scenes…”
HALLOWEEN KILLS IS DUE IN CINEMAS FROM 15 OCTOBER