tougher sell?
Yes. But the thing is, when you read about Nureyev, this is what
you meet. He could be extraordinarily rude and arrogant. That
was something that neither David [Hare, screenwriter] nor
I wanted to dilute. I think those characters are great to watch,
especially if you balance it with his drive to be an artist. Then
you’re building a proper, complex portrait. The audience,
I hope, go, “That boy is driven. He wants to feed off great art
and it feeds his dance. He’s someone who’s a conduit for
an expression of the soul, of life, and along the way he
metaphorically punches out and is vile and is insistent.”
I always felt I could understand it. For me there’s something
Icarus-like about him. He flies to the sun of his own genius
but there’s some flaw in him that sort of burns him out.
Your three films as director are about
deeply complicated, flawed men. Is that
a conscious choice?
I’ve thought about that sometimes.
I very much feel I’m finding my way. I’m
interested in what makes up complicated
people, and these protagonists of the
three films — Nureyev, Coriolanus and
Dickens — have, arguably, some element
of narcissism and a determination to be
bigger than their humanness. Coriolanus,
the soldier with a sense of warrior destiny
that makes him completely unable to be
part of any civic discourse. Dickens,a literary genius who is in love,
a soul wanting to be answered. But his
treatment of his wife! I love finding
the endless ambivalences in human
relationships, so that nothing is ever
black and white; it’s always drawn in
shades. I’m uncomfortable with films that
lay out good and bad.So how do you go about getting
into someone like Voldemort? He
doesn’t have many shades of grey,
beyond his robes.
There’s not a huge amount that she ❯