April 2020 | Sight&Sound | 29who was a sort of construct, who was created in much the same way
as Colonel Gaddafi created himself, or Idi Amin or Margaret Thatcher.
I had this fantasy that Mason was of some indeterminate gender,
and that maybe when you went into her cabin there was a wig
stand and her wig was on it. And who knows what gender she
was? Maybe she was actually a mild-mannered man in a suit and
she just dressed up in this ridiculous way in order to be bombastic
and tyrannical. That idea of boundless, egotistical, maniacal,
bombastic, showing-off type power we really wanted to look at.
And then we started trading photographs, and Bong produced one
of a woman who looked like a parrot. And then we were off, we just
went, “That’s the beginning of Mason.” So, I went and got a whole lot
of uniforms and we did a whole lot of dressing up. I remember making
some medals out of paper and sticking them on. And that stayed in
the film, because of course that’s what Gaddafi did. He would make
his own medals and stick them on. We put it together like two eight-
year-olds would put together some sort of ridiculous school play.
IS: Is that the way you work with, say, Wes Anderson?
TS: With Wes Anderson, you’re dealing with a different machine.
You’re dealing with [four-time Oscar-winning Italian costume
designer] Milena Canonero. She and Wes presented me with a much
more realised variety. There was still a variety of options – there
always are – and then we would home in on colour, for example.
That’s always very important. Looking for the colour of the yellow
of the dress for The Grand Budapest Hotel [2014] was also a bit of a
journey. The colour is as important as anything else. It’s almost more
important than looking for the shape because, in the frame, it’s
about resonating and taking up a certain amount of psychic space.
IS: How do your collaborations tend to come about? Do
people tend to come to you? Do you go to them?
TS: A bit of both. I have a longstanding habit of knowing people
before we work together. Like Apichatpong, for example. He
and I have known each other for over ten years, and we’ve been
talking for that long about making a film together and we’re just
finishing it now. But that doesn’t feel like a very long time for me.
That’s pretty normal. And it’s a nice feeling, because when people
ask us, “Have you worked together before?” we sort of go, “Well,
kind of, yeah. We feel like we’ve made eight films together, but
actually this is the first one.” I tend to get to know people before
there’s a project, and then there’s a project, and then the third and
least interesting question is whether I’ll be in it or what I’ll play.
But the conversation comes first and the project comes second.
I’ve been thinking about the way I worked with Derek in Prospect
Cottage and that’s what it was. It was just sitting around the kitchen
table, talking about what we were going to do next. I mean, you’d
have to ask Wes Anderson, but I
have a sense that he’ll be thinking
of a project and then he’ll fit us all
in. The French Dispatch we’ve been
talking about for around four years.
It’s a nice way of working. [Uncut Gems
directors] the Safdie brothers I met through Darius Khondji, who’s a
director of photography I’ve worked with several times. We made Okja
[2017] together and worked on [Danny Boyle’s 2000 film] The Beach all
those years ago. And he introduced me to the Safdies. We had supper
one night and we liked each other. It’s just... how does anybody meet
anybody? Is there a Tinder for filmmakers? Maybe there should be.ON PERFORMANCE
IS: You’re not an actor who’s attached to a particular school
of acting – you’re not at all a Method actor, for instance.
TS: I’d have to go further than that and say I’m not anything. I know
this always sounds a little bit strange, but I really don’t identify as an
actor at all. I mean, I’ve read [Russian theatre practitioner Konstantin]
Stanislavski. I read Bertolt Brecht. But I don’t think in those terms. It’s
a strange thing to say, but when I’m working it’s like the performance
is in my peripheral vision – I don’t focus on it. Again, this is probably
best explained by thinking of my roots – the way we worked together
with Derek, all of us, it was always collective. Yes, it is true that
Derek was saying to Sandy Powell, “You take care of the costumes.”
“Christopher Hobbs, you take care of the design. Tilda, you play
that.” But all the decisions were made collectively. It wasn’t like I
was off by myself, like a proper actor figuring out a performance.
I suppose the most orthodox performances I made with Derek
were things like Isabella in Edward II [1991]. And that was an
interpretation of a text, of a classic play [by Christopher Marlowe].
There would be decisions about how she’s going to look, how
she’s going to be placed in the frame. That still is the case for
me – what is the frame? What’s in it? What’s the atmosphere?
Is the camera going to move? If so, how? And how do I fit in?
In my observation, real actors tend to work on a continuity of
their own performance from shot to shot through the narrative of
the story. And I don’t work like that. I go from frame to frame. I don’t
know how else to put it. If you’re up close on my face, or if you’re
all the way back there and you’re in the foreground I’m tiny in the
background, that’s really important. It’s not about my character.
It’s to do with the shape. Maybe it’s more a fine art attitude.
IS: How do you approach defining the look of the characters you
play? Are you very involved in that side of things?
TS: Again, it relates to the frame. Early on, beyond thePLAYING IT COOL
(Above, from left) Tilda
Swinton: with Derek Jarman
in 1987, in Bong Joon Ho’s
Snowpiercer (2013) and in
Wes Anderson’s The Grand
Budapest Hotel (2014)