30 | Sight&Sound | April 2020
TILDA SWINTONconversation with the directors, I need to talk to the designers,
and to a certain extent the cinematographer, about the look
and atmosphere of the film. And then I’ll start talking to the costume
designers. So that’s the order it goes in. This is another reason why
it’s so lucky working with people you know well. Because you
know roughly what you’re dealing with. For example, with Wes
Anderson, you never talk about period. No one ever says, “Is it the
50s? Is it the 60s?” No, it’s ‘Wes Time’. And there’s a code that gets
easier with every film because people understand that that’s the
sort of universe that you’re creating. It’s completely unique. So
when you’re in that kind of conversation – and it might be struck
up on the first film or it may be something that’s lovely rolling on
in the fourth – you have that agreement. You know that, in this
moment, this character needs to be very bright and very defined.
Or you need to know what colour the wall is you’re standing
in front of. This is all really important to me anyway, and I love
working in that way. It’s a very sort of organic conversation.
The first point is, how is it going to look? What does everything
mean? What does this person in this particular scene – in this
particular shot – need to mean? Does it need to mean something quite
abrasive? Does it need to look very put together? Or does it need to look
in opposition to its surrounding or somehow part of its surrounding?
IS: You seem drawn to characters in positions of power: Snowpiercer’s
Mason, obviously, the White Witch in the Narnia films, Queen
Isabella. Is there a particular attraction to these figures for you?
TS: Yes, or that they have some kind of negotiation with the idea of
power. Some of them are not as successful as others. For example,
the [ruthless lawyer] character I play in Tony Gilroy’s Michael Clayton
[2007], I found that a really interesting portrait, because that’s
someone who has this very complicated negation with the idea of
being powerful. You get the sense that she doesn’t really want to be in
power but she wants to be a really good soldier and follow a leader.
Then you have the character in The Deep End [2001], Margaret
Hall, who really wants to live a vanilla life being a service wife
and a responsible mother and wife and daughter-in-law. And
she’s a very soft-spoken and rather shy individual, and then she’s
thrown into this situation where she has to take control.
I do like that this is what binds all these characters, unless
they’re these sort of superhuman people like the White Witch
who are the epitome of all evil, so there’s nothing that they can
do but reign supreme. I do like looking at the way in which this
predicament of taking power on and living with it plays out. I’m
interested in the decision to be powerful, because it is a decision,
just as it’s a decision to be happy, that
people make and it costs them.
IS: When I think of you in films, I tend to
picture you moving. In The Deep End your
character is constantly on the move. In
Orlando you’re running. Even the scene
in The Souvenir when you’re delivering
the tragic news at the end, you’re coming
down the stairs. You seem a very physical
actor. A person I often think about in
relation to you is Buster Keaton.
TS: It’s true, I am, as a person, fairly
mobile, and quite energetic. It’s very telling, how people move.
When you’re making films, you’re dealing with a code. You have
to work very fast – especially if you’re dealing with something
like 90 minutes – to lay down the code of who is this person, what
sorts of mechanisms operate when they’re making decisions about
how they talk, what words they use, what they decide to say and
what they decide to keep quiet. All of that. And so, looking at how
they do it on the move, and this is semi-conscious – I won’t say it’s
completely unconscious because I do think about it a little bit.
Your mention of Buster Keaton is the most wonderful reference
because he’s the first god for me. Of anybody, he’s the person who
made me want to be a film performer. I was very, very young when I
saw Buster Keaton. I remember seeing him in the newsreel cinema
in the late 60s, early 70s, and it was love at first sight. It was the
combination of his incredible stillness, his physicality, and his beauty.
And there was something about the way in which he held his face.
Possibly the first moment I thought practically about performing
was when I was on a train going back to school and being very, very
unhappy about it. I was sitting in one of those carriages opposite other
people – which now feels like it lives only in Miss Marple films and
nowhere else. I remember being aware that nobody would be able to
tell how miserable I was. I remember looking at all the other people
and thinking, “I wonder what’s going on in his life, that man with
the pipe, and that lady who’s doing her knitting.” And I remember
being immediately mesmerised by the possibility of both hiding
from the world what’s going on inside, but also showing it – and
how would you show it without talking? And Buster Keaton is the
patron saint of that, because he makes a point of connection and a
point of empathy so vibrant. The General [1926] was a very early film
of mine and it was a very early film I showed my children as well. It’s
a great, great film for kids. Because he’s a great example of an adult
for kids: he’s got the energy of a child and the anarchy of a child and
yet he has that solitary existential alienation which a child has too.
IS: Staying in a sense with Keaton, comedy is something you’ve done more
and more of over the last ten or so years. What’s led you down that route?
TS: It’s funny, because I remember after I’d been working for a fewTRADING FACES
Tilda Swinton in (clockwise,
from top left) Michael
Clayton (2007), Julia (2008),
The Souvenir (2019) and The
Deep End (2001)PORTRAIT OF A LADY
Tilda Swinton relished the
dual nature of her role in I
Am Love (2009), saying: ‘You
have this interior life and
then you have the persona
they play out to other people’