EDGE Interview: Director Anand Tucker Channels Ian McKellen's Dark Side for 'The Critic'
Filmmaker Anand Tucker — known for films like "Girl with a Pearl Earring" (2003), which he produced, and "Shopgirl" (2005), which he directed — took the helm for the film adaptation of Antony's Quinn's 2005 novel "Curtain Call."
Working from a script by Patrick Marber — who was nominated for an Oscar for his adaptation of Zoë Heller's "Notes on a Scandal" — "The Critic" finds out actor Ian McKellen in fine form, inhabiting a character named Jimmy Erskine, a brutal theater critic whose reviews were executed like a blood sport. Feared by actors and adored by the reading public, Erskine's eloquent and erudite discourses strike David Brooke (Mark Strong), the new owner of the newspaper Erskine has long written for, as too much. The paper is due for a refresh, both in content and in staffing, in order to boost circulation. It's 1937, fascism is on the rise in England as well as in Europe, and right-wing modes of thought are de rigeur.
But that's just the half of it. Erskine is a barely closeted gay man who frequents a cruisy park and employs his much younger lover, Tom (Alfred Enoch), as a secretary. When he's arrested for "public indecency" — that catch-all charge that was once leveled at anyone suspected of being gay — it looks like Erskine's career is due for an abrupt end.
But Erskine is clever, and he's desperate. He hatches a blackmail scheme that involves a struggling actress named Nina Land (Gemma Arterton). The plot is as ruthless as it is amoral, and McKellen has great fun demonstrating the darkness and fury by which a gay man of his time might well have been possessed. But he also has a softer side, one that Nina brings out of him in her blend of ambition and haplessness.
McKellen creates a villain that's as complex and evil as any he's portrayed before — and he's portrayed plenty of villains, from Magneto in the "X-Men" movies (a role he last revisited with 2014's "Days of Future Past") to a Nazi mentoring a young boy in 1998's "Apt Pupil," and even his turn as Freddie Thornhill, one sharp-tongued half of a deeply dysfunctional gay couple on the British TV series "Vicious."
Tucker joined in a Zoom call from his home in London, announcing his whereabouts with a tone that suggests he finds being in the city anything but exciting. When this correspondent mentioned having gone to London for fun on weekends while living in a market village called Saffron Walden, he brightened.
"When I was a youngster in the '80s, I used to go there," he said, "because my girlfriend was a Tibetan Buddhist. There was an ashram up in Saffron Walden run by a Tibetan lama. I used to go and have terrible gruel for breakfast, and then have to sit in a cold room on my haunches for hours with miserable Germans."
That, your EDGE correspondent has to admit, doesn't sound out of character for Saffron Walden. Read on to see what else Tucker had to say about making the movie, working with McKellen and the rest of the cast, finding the last '30s-esque parts of London, and the ways in which 2024 echoes 1937.
EDGE: Have you heard from Sir Ian since he took that nasty tumble?
Anand Tucker: Yes, yes. I saw him on Monday night, in fact, at the European premiere of "The Critic."
EDGE: He is so good in everything, but, to borrow a phrase, when he plays bad he's better! Was it fun to coax evil Ian McKellen out to play?
Anand Tucker: It was! I think Ian has created one of the great British screen characters with Jimmy Erskine. It's a remarkable performance that's unbelievably entertaining, and yet deeply nuanced. He's not afraid to show you all his vulnerability, all the darkness, the terrible, dark shit that's brewing inside... the venality, the fear, the cowardice. It's extraordinary.
EDGE: Jimmy Erskine does everything with gusto, whether he's eating, smoking, or cruising for sex in a park. But I got the sense that's not out of exuberance so much as rage.
Anand Tucker: You're absolutely right. I think it's contained in the script, as well as it's embedded in Ian, because Jimmy Erskine and Ian McKellen, for the majority of their lives, have had to hide who they truly are because [being gay was] fucking illegal. You could lose everything in a heartbeat and be thrown in prison, or worse. Jimmy's great thing is truth: truth in art, be true to yourself. And yet, somehow, he has to do all of that while hiding who he really is. There's an interview that Ian gave when he finally came out, where the interviewer asked him, "Has it changed your work?" and Ian said [something like], "Absolutely. Suddenly there was no need for the mask, and a whole different range of emotions and truths were available to me."
[For Erskine], that anger, that resentment, bitterness, darkness, anger at the world — that has gone sour inside him. And, in a way, it asks the audience to confront the question of, "What would you do?" Because in some way or another, we've all been in a situation where you can do something that can benefit you and your family at the expense of someone else.
EDGE: I love the period production on this film. Was the 1930s aesthetic something you were pleased to be working with?
Anand Tucker: Yeah. Who doesn't love all that beautiful art deco stuff? Lucienne Suren, the production designer, and I, and the DP, David Higgs, we looked at a lot of original photographs of 1930s London, and what really hits you is there's no cars. It's deserted, and it's really empty and minimal. That was quite a good lead for us, because we thought, "Okay, we don't have a lot of money. We have to shoot the film in five weeks, so we have to go fast. We'll go minimal. If we have something in the frame, it'll have to be the thing that most [speaks of] 1930s London in the viewer's [imagination].
We couldn't afford loads of sets or lots of CG. You'd be amazed how little 1930s London there actually is [in 2024] that you can actually film on. The filming style developed from that, which is, "Okay, we're going to be minimal; we're going to work with big close ups; we're going to work with quite stark frames and backlighting." We looked at [the 1945 John Brahms film] "Hangover Square," which is a great British noir film, which mainly takes place in London, in the fog, and you hardly see anything!
The final thing was, we looked at some beautiful restored color photos from that time, these beautiful three-strip Technicolor photos. I'm a huge fan of [filmmakers Michael] Powell and [Emeric] Pressburger, of course — [their 1946 film] "A Matter of Life and Death," and this beautiful English three-strip, muted, dark color. We tried to make a very expressive, dark, colorful film noir. I wanted you to have all the pleasures of a great British period drama — that it should look sumptuous and lovely, and that it should give you all the lovely things that you expect when you're going to sit down for a British heritage film with Ian McKellen, and some great witty dialog, and people in nice costumes. The film hopefully does seduce you into going along as it takes you to places that are quite dark.
EDGE: Fascist ideology was popular at that time in Britain and the U.S. It seems like you're finding a resonance there with our current moment.
Anand Tucker: One hundred percent, and that's one of the big things. When I read the script it felt like now, with the dilemmas facing those characters: If you're gay or an outsider, can you or can't you be who you are? In large parts of the world, you still can't.
The papers were exceedingly right wing, and the new media at the time was radio, and mass media was only just happening. The fascists were on the rise, and the black shirts were everywhere. Most of the British aristocracy supported [fascist Member of Parliament] Oswald Mosley; most of his friends were in the House of Lords. It's a dirty secret that's swept under the carpet, [but] Britain could very easily have been a fascist country.
And that's what's happening now. It's the same moment. We're having another massive disruption in how media is mediated and consumed, and who can control it, and how. It's 100 years, almost, and we're in the same cycle.
EDGE: You're executive producing "Europa," an upcoming dystopian thriller about Europe in a climate change-ravaged future. Can you say just a little about that?
Anand Tucker: I am indeed. I recommend everyone read the amazing series of incredibly quirky sci-fi books by Dave Hutchinson, [who] is a brilliant author. We've got the brilliant team [behind 2011's "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy"], of writer Peter Straughan and director Thomas Alfredson, who is a true cinematic genius. It's a "sci-spy" show like you've never seen before.
"The Critic" opens in theaters Sept. 13.