the times | Thursday October 15 2020 1GT 9
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HBO; ALAMY; MERRICK MORTON/NETFLIX; LES KANERShe adds, nonetheless, that she’s
inherently an optimist and found
much to appreciate during her Danish
lockdown with her composer husband,
Jesper Winge Leisner. “I had been
basically away from home working
for four years,” she says. “So I think
for my partner and me it was quite
good to be locked in together and
not be able to travel.”
Editing The Undoing from home was
challenging during the same period
and involved endless transatlantic
Facetime sessions and the recording
of a soundtrack score in Australia (the
only place where orchestras could
perform earlier in the year).
She says that, although she had no
idea about what project she’ll tackle
next, she has been spoilt by the
expansive luxury of mini-series
storytelling and admits that she’ll find
it hard to return to movies. “I probably
will go back to the two-hour movie
format, but it feels like going back
to a short story rather than a novel.”
She doesn’t reveal the budget of The
Undoing other than to say, repeatedly:
“Yes, it’s a very expensive show.”
HBO is notoriously reluctant to
release financial figures, but the first
season of Westworld is alleged to
have cost $100 million, while Big Little
Lies was rumoured to cost $10 million
an episode.
Bier admits that it’s “costly” work,
but that it’s about creating a cinematic
experience on the small screen. “There
really isn’t any big difference between
TV and film any more,” she says. “The
big difference, in fact, is that this is a
six-hour film, as opposed to a two-
hour film.”
She ends with some reflections
on her position as a heavyweight
film-maker and the first woman
director to win an Oscar, a Golden
Globe and an Emmy (for The Night
Manager). Has it changed her as a
director? Is she, when on set, for
instance, cock of the walk?
She says that she’s firm with actors,
but always honest. “It’s not always
pleasant, but it makes me trustworthy.
I will say, ‘That was really boring!’
But if it’s done with a certain amount
of warmth and with the purpose of
getting the best result, I think it
works.” But, equally, she adds: “I’m
not about shouting, or about the
trappings of command on set. I don’t
waiver. I might make a mistake, but
I’m pretty consistent and confident
about what I do. Which is a nice
place to be.”
The Undoing begins on Sky Atlantic
and Now TV on October 26I do. But that was a huge privilege,
coming from a society like that.”
Bier grew up with two brothers in
a middle-class Copenhagen home,
children of Jewish parents who had
fled from Nazi persecution in the
1930s. She has said that her home
life was harmonious yet “eerie”
because of her parents’ refusal to
talk about the war years and the
atrocities committed.
She briefly studied architecture
in Jerusalem before defecting to
film-making at the National Film
School of Denmark, yet this
foreboding sense of what she
describes as “potential catastrophe”
never left her.
She quickly became a celebrated
director in Denmark, making the
car-crash melodrama Open Hearts,
the Afghan war story Brothers (later
remade with Jake Gyllenhaal and
Tobey Maguire) and the refugee
drama In a Better World (for which
she won a best foreign-languagefilm Oscar). Hollywood beckoned,
first with the middling Things
We Lost in the Fire, then the
execrable Serena.
Married twice and with two
children (now grown-up), she was a
self-declared and dedicated news
junkie, perpetually scouring
broadsheets and websites for hints of
some vague impending Armageddon.
It made her, clearly, the perfect
choice to direct the Sandra Bullock
apocalypse movie Bird Box, but
recently, with the arrival of the
coronavirus pandemic, she has felt
oddly clairvoyant.
“That sense of catastrophe hasn’t
gone away from me,” Bier says.
“Now I’m just sharing it with the rest
of the world. The pandemic has
contaminated everyone else,
and we’re all now hyperaware of
potential catastrophe.
“When we spoke last time the whole
world didn’t think as I did, but now,
unfortunately, we share the same
sentiments. It doesn’t make it any
better. Before I felt like I was just crazy
on my own, but now I turn around
and ask, ‘Are we all crazy?’ ”I love Big Little
Lies, but this
one is more of a
clear-cut thriller
Above, from top: Nicole
Kidman and Hugh
Grant in The Undoing;
Sandra Bullock in
Bird Box. Above right:
Elizabeth Debicki
and Tom Hiddleston
in The Night Managerwe supposed, as a more enlightened
screen culture, to be, you know, not
doing that any more?
“Well, violence against women
happens,” Bier says. “We also need
to address it, in terms of drama,
because it’s real. That doesn’t mean
that we’re endorsing it. Quite the
contrary. We’re not justifying violence
against anyone.”
Bier wears her feminism lightly
these days. In the past there was
a tendency for every interview
(including mine) to become a platform
for her to express her outrage at the
lowly place of women in the film
industry. Yet her recent track record of
unqualified wins has elevated her into
that rarefied commercial space where
gender is irrelevant and her status as
a hit director (rather than a “female
director”) is all that matters.
“Yes, I feel that,” she says. “I feel that
for me personally. But I also feel that,
for women starting out, the very
thought of having kids while also
being a director is very challenging.
I was lucky to come from a country
that’s very equal, which has enabled
me, with very little effort, to do whatWithin a couple of scenes, though,
someone gets bludgeoned to death
with a hammer, marriages fall apart,
fingers of suspicion are pointed and
suddenly, eerily, everyone involved
seems guilty — or at least capable —
of homicide.
Grant, it transpires, is especially
good at ambiguity, and his
performance as Jonathan is one
of his best yet. He is slippery in the
extreme and slides thrillingly between
sympathetic and sinister, sometimes
within the same line.
In a moment from episode three,
for instance, when suspicions land
on Jonathan, he turns to Kidman’s
Grace and pleads, choking back the
emotion: “You know that I would
never take a human life!” And yet he
delivers the line with his bottom jaw
jutting slightly forward and his teeth
flashing with a hint of barely
suppressed aggression.
It’s indecently accomplished acting
and something that you don’t always
expect from Grant, who has, for a long
time, often seemed content to toddle
about lazily in his “charming toff”
wheelhouse. I tell Bier that I love
what she has done with the man.
“Here’s the thing,” she replies. “He’s
done that himself. He’s a brilliant actor
and he was relentless and incredibly
diligent on this. The most calls I got
from any actor over the weekend
were from Hugh. He’d be agonising
about a certain line, or a certain
moment, and how to change it. And
then I’d get pages of rewrites of
brilliant dialogue from him. So even
to suggest that his range as an actor
is limited is preposterous.”
Elsewhere, there are issues. The
dramatic momentum of the series, for
instance, is built on the vicious (seen
in shockingly subliminal flashes of
gore) slaughter of a woman. Aren’t
Ni l