thelostsmiles:“It really felt like a kiss from Thomas Savage to me, to say, ‘Okay, thi
thelostsmiles: “It really felt like a kiss from Thomas Savage to me, to say, ‘Okay, this is yours,’” Campion says now. “‘You’ve seen the dog too.’” “This was certainly a different texture of character than I’ve played before,” he says. “But Jane gave me a long runway to really get Phil, to let him in, to understand him, be with him, think like him, move like him, talk like him.” Campion had met the Oscar-nominated actor back in the U.S.—she warmly remembers “turning up at his door with a little backpack on”—and was intrigued by the possibility of him playing such a mysterious, complicated role. “I loved how emotional he can be as an actor and what a lover he is,” Campion says. “That’s something that a lot of men aren’t so good at.” “To be in character for an entire shoot is new to me; this level of work, and the long run of this project, is also new to me. But it’s very much what I’ve been hoping for for a long while now,” Cumberbatch says. “It felt so important to be able to walk from the outside in, and bring that sense of everything that Phil keeps on his body—the stink of his work.” You see that commitment, that total immersion, in Cumberbatch’s performance, which ranges from sexy to menacing to quietly heartbreaking. One scene, in which Phil’s simmering rage boils over, took the actor to an unexpectedly raw place; it’s “what this kind of work brings out of you,” he says. He found great solace and peace in the land: watching sunrises and sunsets, trailing the birds circling. “It’s so awe-inspiring,” he says. He wanted to embody that spirit on and off camera, as well as the story’s ambiguity.” “She’s remarkable,” Cumberbatch says of his director. “She’s got such a vision. She’s so specific in her art—and her art runs deep.” That close bonding stayed rooted in a character they jointly brought to life—and who, for both of them, marked very new territory. “I was standing on the outside a little bit—I looked like an anthropologist with my little science coat on,” Campion says with a chuckle. “I got close to Phil in a way that made me very, very confident that I could feel him and love him. I loved his dirtiness. I loved who he really was.” “When you adapt a book…you want that to not just be adoration, but to use the view of what he built, and to stand on that—to look beyond,” she says. “You’re making something new with it, as well as the thing itself.” The Power of the Dog premieres September 2 at the Venice Film Festival. Netflix will stream the film beginning December 1, following a limited theatrical release in November. -- source link