An Interview with Sir Ben Kinglsey

While I've read quibbles about the plot machinations of Vadim Perelman's debut feature, House of Sand and Fog, no one's dared complain about the acting.

Jennifer Connelly plays Kathy Nicolo, an irresponsible reformed alcoholic who loses the tumbledown bungalow in Northern California she inherited from her father after a bureaucratic mix-up (which is ultimately her own fault). The house is auctioned off, bought by Massoud Amir Behrani (Ben Kingsley), a proud man keeping up appearances years after the fall of the Shah, the loss of his position in the Iranian Air Force. In only a few scenes, mostly in Farsi or in gestures, Iranian actress Shohreh Aghdashloo breaks the heart. Yet Kingsley's embodiment of the most buttoned-up of men is a marvel as well.

Kingsley and I talk over tea at Chicago's Allegro Hotel, with a view of the downtown Loop. I insist that he see the elevated from this height, running to the industrial horizon. We part a potted palm, and there's the center of the city. Despite the sorrowful movie we're discussing, Kingsley speaks like one of the most contented men you'd ever meet.

PRIDE: There are many little bits of revelation in House of Sand and Fog, and one of my favorite passages is when Behrani and his wife and Kathy start to recognize each other as human beings just before things go grievously wrong. There are four or five elements. Then a misunderstanding, another. Such a dense... The film moves so assuredly, so quickly-

KINGSLEY: --Yes-

PRIDE: But it also manages to have this novelistic density. I was actually happy as the story unfolded that I hadn't read Andre Dubus III's book. Dubus' wife had sent it to you?

KINGSLEY: Yes, that's right. But like you, I could have almost said to you, I'm very glad I didn't read the novel before I got the script. Because I never brought any... The novel was a great read, I really enjoyed reading it, it's a beautiful novel. It's big, confident, Dostoevskian, beautiful, powerful novel. The screenplay? It is in and of itself one of the most perfectly balanced screenplays I've come across. Very compelling for us actors to enter into such a beautiful, as you say, such a beautifully balanced piece of work, like a piece of engineering or architecture. As you say, with such assuredness and speed and dexterity, to revelations that go off in the end, that appear towards the end, where there is a reaching out, there's a literal holding of hands at one point, a literal exclamation of "Do not let go." Between the two unlikeliest people in the film.

But that's why drama, or the gods, or whatever we call it, bring these, exactly why these two people are brought together. You bring people together on a dramatic landscape in order to create a spark when they meet, and that spark is drama and that spark illuminates the auditorium or illuminates our minds and the way this screenplay brings them together keeps them apart, then brings them together, is very, very piece of screenwriting. It made our job as actors joyful. Joyful. Because all we needed to do was to be precisely, between action and cut, just deal with that little square of the mosaic, that particular color. Someone else is going to pull back and see this, but you just do that color. That's one joyful exercise for an actor.

PRIDE: The screenplay, then, displayed these little daubs as you read it? It showed itself as clearly as if you had actorly arias like in Sexy Beast?

KINGSLEY: Yes. Yeah.

PRIDE: The most chilling and thrilling dynamic for me is the fact that this man and this woman are on a battleground, and that battle is waged on the most confined and intimate spaces, the home, the hearth.

KINGSLEY: Yes, 'tis the battlefield. Absolutely.

PRIDE: Whether the Iranian epigrams are invented or true, about the wounded bird and so on, you think, oh, there's a thematic thing, but the movie is much more complex. The elements involving blood are startling as they evolve, the film isn't telling you everything it's about. You see Behrani's reaction to blood in his home, you think first, control freak. Remembrance of acts he may have committed in the past-

KINGSLEY: Yes-

PRIDE: And then there's the fear of what may happen to his family.

KINGSLEY: There's even a scene [omitted from the finished film] where Behrani cuts his finger and sees blood trickling down his own thumb. In his genius, and in his confidence, our director decided, I don't even need that. The audience had begun to gently appreciate the underlying themes, as you do in a symphony. There's that thing, you feel persuaded by it! Not manipulated. Just gently moving in and reaffirming dramatically certain elements. I admire him very much for he decided in the end not to put it on the screen. He's made it inexorable and swift and ahead of the audience. I saw it for the first time, the completed, with music, final print, in Los Angeles, at the AFI with an audience. I had never screened it with an audience. I saw a somewhat rougher cut by myself. It's the closest I've been to audience participation in the cinema. People literally out loud saying, "No... No... No... No!" Of course, the film is slightly ahead of them. They have to run to catch up, to join, almost to try to stop the action. Very, very exciting room to be in.

PRIDE: The French filmmaker Olivier Assayas is interested in ellipsis, he's said he wants to make movies that cut out "all the bullshit" that bores him when he's watching the work of other directors. The velocity of this movie's progress is impressive. When I teach, I try to impress on someone younger the difference between a shot and an image. The word image can be used to mean anything that's put up on the screen, but more strictly, it should mean a mysterious symbol, a signifier that brings in other elements. When Behrani has to prevent the blood from Kathy's punctured foot from getting on the floor of her house/his house, he finds a plastic bag. He suffocates it, in a sense.

KINGSLEY: Yes!

PRIDE: Even if your conscious mind isn't taking it in, that's an image. Somehow you recognize that as being about protection, suffocation, sanitation.

KINGSLEY: I didn't see that. You, see, I'm discovering this film with you.

PRIDE: I only realized it saying it out loud right now.

KINGSLEY: I just realized it as you said it! There are other things that I've realized recently, and that's a new one. I think this film will probably stand like a great symphony. Nobody says to you, Mahler's Sixth, and you go, 'Oh no, I've heard that. I heard that last week. It's a good symphony!' You actually say, I'm going to see another performance. I think that maybe Vadim's film will have that symphonic authority whereby you can return to it and it's exactly the same sequence of images and you hear something differently for the first time. The plastic bag on the foot, the plastic bag... somewhere else in the film... that never occurred to me. I saw it. But I didn't analyze it. I just saw it and felt that there was some deep connective tissue between myself and the film. I watched the film as if it were not one of my films.

PRIDE: Is that rare?

KINGSLEY: Very rare. It never happened before. I was actually able to watch in a passionately detached way. Which is what I think is what we're talking about, you trying to describe that as the ideal experience, where the filmmaker, the auteur's ego is shown in confidence and generosity and not in, y'know, writing 'Aren't I a clever filmmaker' on the corner of every frame.

PRIDE: From one viewing, it seems there's another bit like that, where the family says from the widow's walk, we can see the sea, the first time I couldn't see the line of the water. Later in the film, it's a different time of day, a different lighting scheme, and you could see the sparkling line. At one point, it seems like self-delusion-

KINGSLEY: Yes, yes-

PRIDE: The other time, however, your eyes genuinely see it; I think it's the party with the family members. It's quiet assurance. What kind of director is Vadim?

KINGSLEY: In an ideal way, in an ideal world, myself and the director are one. And as you rightly say, in an ideal world, you can't see the horizon between sky and sea. I felt that the times with Spielberg on Schindler's List, we were moving as one creature. He in his vastly complicated and hugely responsible department and in a demanding, but in a sense, much cleaner, simpler department of storytelling. He's got the difficult bits; I've got the easy bit of just acting. But I often felt that we were moving through the waters as one beast, finishing each other's sentences. I felt that with Polanski when I did Death and the Maiden. We were as one beast. All he would do is... And then we would do another take.

And Vadim, Behrani and myself were very often moving as one being. He had a comprehension and appreciation of Behrani's journey that I deeply enjoyed sharing and collaborating with. Very collaborative, close, manly experience in the sense that the two of us were going into battle together and the film, from my part, concerning a warrior, a warrior who's lost his primary battlefield. And his king. And his army. And his home. The warrior now finds himself confined to a very small space. And you shouldn't confine warriors to small spaces. They will break the crockery! I think Vadim and I enjoyed the essential, the elemental warrior that the film demanded that we offered the work. Terrific to be with him, wonderful.

PRIDE: The last time I spoke to you, I asked you a question about accents. You gave a wonderfully detailed answer, almost a master class in a few moments. What about Behrani? Was there some touchstone, something emblematic about the character that you were able to latch onto? Beyond thinking the script Dostoevskian, what let you grab on and not let go? Something specific about Behrani.

KINGSLEY: Hala [Bahmet] is our costume designer. Hala's a wonderful woman, she's very intelligent, very creative. Operates at a very high level of energy. She has the metabolism of a prima ballerina. The meetings between actor and costume designer can be very uneasy. Because they're very early on in the process. The actor is in that very insecure period where, in fact, just before the cell divides, there's chaos. Then all the cells go to different, to opposite sides of the cell, and then the cells divide. Have you ever seen cells divide? Under a microscope? Astonishing. The choreography of those chromosomes and bits. So it was chaos. Good chaos, but chaos. So primal soup time for my character. I tried on shoes. And suits. And ties. I said, 'Hala, yes, I really don't know. You tell me what suits I'm going to be wearing in these scenes because I really don't know. You tell mea and I'm sure you're right.' And of course she was. Then she said, 'Here's the photo.' She showed me photographs of generals and colonels. And also said they were in L.A. And also said that they'd given me medals and a uniform and would I care to try it on? There he was. There he was.

PRIDE: Even in a suit, he's wearing a uniform, there's no line between the tie and the collar and the jacket.

KINGSLEY: Ray! He's never out of his uniform. And that was it. That small incident, at the best time, at the primal soup stage rather than, 'The uniform is great, we'll get it to you on the day, don't worry. It's not quite finished yet.' [Behrani] opens and ends the film in his uniform. His narrative, his particular branch of the narrative, begins almost as if he is taking a salute on a balcony. A tree is falling is down. It ends with him looking at himself in the mirror, almost taking the salute to the Shah. He wears the uniform: what the uniform demands, what it did to his body. My body just decided, as an actor, don't ever let me out of that uniform.

PRIDE: Which is also suffocating.

KINGSLEY: Which is also suffocating.

PRIDE: There's a couple of neat details you can't even call jokes. The fake brand names-Kathy slugs down little miniatures of Guerrero whisky, or in Spanish, warrior.

KINGSLEY: [purrs] Oh really?

PRIDE: The cigarettes, someone orders a pack of cigarettes, "I'll take some Royals," the line goes.

KINGSLEY: Gosh.

PRIDE: Quiet.

KINGSLEY: Yes.

PRIDE: They could be generic names. But somewhere in your mind, "I'll have a Royal," it's a weird thing, a little echo in the rest of the narrative. Then there's the scene with the Snickers bar and Behrani and the expense log in the gas station, shockingly good and fragrant small detail. And Vadim and Deakins shoot these words upside down, they're not truly flagged.

KINGSLEY: It's upside down and it's not... I think "snicker" is a horrible word. To "snicker," in European parlance, is to giggle in a very derisive yet suppressed way. You're sharing a private joke at someone else's expense. And [Behrani] writes "Snicker" and what it cost him.

PRIDE: It's a strange moment. He's at work behind the counter, we see a real brand-product placement, you think? Why the heck is eating a candy bar at this point in the narrative.

KINGSLEY: Yes.

PRIDE: Bam-here's the point.

KINGSLEY: Bam. They weren't labored on the set. They were just so gratefully accepted by the cast, these things that were incorporated into the greater scheme of things. As being archetypal images, messages and names. Names: Burden [Ron Eldard's deputy sheriff]-a wonderful name. He will carry that rock on his back for the rest of his life.

PRIDE: You don't hear his name until late in the narrative. You might see it on a tag.

KINGSLEY: The one time I mention his name in the film is no longer in the film! And I think again, that is a great cut by Vadim. Thank you! Had it been in there-

PRIDE: Clannngg!

KINGSLEY: Yes. It wouldn't have been upside down.

PRIDE: Everyone wants or needs or craves something, but they're unexamined wants and dreams. There's a brief scene where Burden's inventing her, he hardly knows her. "I don't deserve you," and Kathy says, "Yes, you do." I mean, that's something new lovers say, but what the heck is going on? "I don't deserve you." He's not paying attention to the fact that he's allowing a reformed alcoholic to drink again.

KINGSLEY: "Yes, you do" is a terrible premonition. She's the bringer of death. She's the bringer of death. She's like Kali. The destroyer. "Yes, you do" is a flash of intuition, deep, terrifying intuition. His is shallow and platitudinous, but her response has massive depth to it. She doesn't know how deep! It just pops out. She doesn't know. We never know when we say these things. "Yes, you do." I laughed out loud in the cinema. [chuckles] One or two other people laughed. I think many smiled. "Yes, you do." Wow.

PRIDE: She's got that little twang.

KINGSLEY: It's perfect.

PRIDE: It's in the middle of the woods in the middle of the dark in a non-home. A shelter is not a home. These movie stands up to some examination. Were there conversations with Vadim about outsiderness and the emigreexperience? Is he someone who talks things into the clouds?

KINGSLEY: When I first met him, on our first meeting, which I really enjoyed, he never once alluded to why he'd cast me and what he'd like me to do in front of the camera, which was very freeing for me. So I could have a genuine meeting with someone, a meeting of souls.

PRIDE: No nuts and bolts.

KINGSLEY: No nuts and bolts. A lovely meeting with him. I met him. He talked much about his own exodus from Russia. But just as a way of reaching out to me, he decided to tell me stories. Then later on in the film, he said, 'cos I know that there were people in his life that he connected to Behrani and there was one particular person, and he said-I really admire that he was doing this, this is was what I mean, it's what he doesn't say, it's what he takes out. He said, "You should really meet this guy... No, you shouldn't." Just like that! It's wonderful!

PRIDE: He could express it, then just take it back.

KINGSLEY: Take it back! Almost like... You don't need to, because you're already him! His ego and his insistence on it being all about him is absolutely invisible. Disappeared. Disappeared.

PRIDE: In the service of the story.

KINGSLEY: Yes. Yes. Yes.

PRIDE: You've done comedy. Sexy Beast is a comedy. Want to do more?

KINGSLEY: It is a comedy. I've got a couple of comedies. I've got four pictures being released almost simultaneously and two of them are comedies. Two out of four's not bad.

PRIDE: Triumph of Love, I remember that's a comedy, too. What's coming up?

KINGSLEY: Well, my performance is comedic, I wouldn't say they were generically comedies. Thunderbirds. I play a pantomime villain. I chew the furniture, I wear a red cape and it's very releasing. I was very happy doing that. And in the Ray Bradbury short story called The Sound of Thunder, I play the corrupt executive who runs the theme park. I enjoy just playing with the tacky showman in an Armani suit. I enjoyed doing that.

- by Ray Pride