Benedict Cumberbatch, Claire Foy and Will Sharpe on new film 'The Electrical Life of Louis Wain'

i am prepared to offer you a staff position you capture something of a cat perhaps because you yourself are an outcast i do to provide for the five hungry and precocious sisters that i live at home and we've had a governess i think you're the first person to see the cats are ridiculous frightened and brave like us a whole cat world they will tumble in and communicate with us in our own language did you say that they would turn blue yes of course wow what's going on in that funny little head of yours i think cinema has a unique place in our culture to offer an incredibly personal empathetic and subjective experience and when it comes to sort of ripping into the traditions of a biopic and delivering something that's tailor-made for an artist you couldn't ask for a richer series of ingredients to work with than louie wayne's world his view his work and and everything that revolves around it in that victorian era and will is the perfect marriage for that he also gets to tonally how to bring a movie to life in a way that gives us the sort of epic shift between the comedic and the tragic i felt like i was familiar with the pictures of louis wayne i felt like in some way they were familiar to me i couldn't really remember where i'd seen them before but i never heard of louie wayne and i certainly didn't know anything about his life story so i guess that in itself felt interesting to me that i'd come kind of come across him but never stopped to think who the man was behind these pictures and so you know as i came to this project i started to read more and more about louis wayne in his life and i suppose i just was struck first of all by what a truly remarkable life he led but i also found his story really inspiring and uh i felt like he led i guess in some ways an unconventionally heroic life in that you know the battles he was fighting were with you know tragic events in his personal life or with his own mind you know he struggled with mental illness through the course of his life and at some point i guess i just sort of fell in love with him and felt like i just really wanted to share his story uh with a wider audience when i read the script i i always read things with a very cynical eye anyway and i was reading it with a santa claus a man's whole life and um that's such a difficult task it's so ambitious um and then i knew it was different because we had like a week's rehearsal before and what will wanted to do was to have a not an intimacy coordinator but like a choreographer come in and work with me and ben and see how we moved and how we could move like each other or how we could have like sort of magnetic sort of feeling between two bodies while they were in different parts of a room and things like that and i thought oh he he's not really interested in how to be a film how to make something a film basically in that sort of conventional way of being like anyone else he he sees the world in a very different way like louis did and um he has this amazing ability to hold everything in a frame and also hold emotion and deal with it and i think very often from my experience i think that sometimes that emotion can become sentimental or and i just think he's just not he he can have humor and tragedy and um and honesty and truth all in the same breath he i think he just is who he is in his fingertips i think good evening no what go away go away yes what why what what do you mean why i don't yes of course yes sorry what are you doing mr wayne what do you want me to i don't know oh yeah sorry right yes of course sorry i apologize i am under your employee mr wayne but do not expect how to tolerate you barging in here after hours well i'm well it doesn't matter what i was doing does it yes no sorry of course um it's just i have so many sisters that sometimes i forget that it's were you painting something that's none of your business mr wayne but yes if you must know i've got a drawing lesson with the girls tomorrow and all you wayne's at such accomplished art is that i rather hold i could do with a bit of preparation that's all i see as a producer you know we had a fantastic time with will uh when he pitched his idea of how he wanted to take us on this journey uh visually and you know very excited by his ideas of how to render louise art something real something analog something textual in the frame and also even the aspect ratio of the frame the academy ratio which is much more sort of portrait it's like a it's like a picture frame and that's purposeful as is the kind of texturing of the depth of field but also how the tableau of the organization of the figures um and everything else that's going on in susie's amazing design but also the artistry of all every single craft whether it's the lighting or the fabric of michael's incredible costume designs or the coloring of the pictures and the ornaments it's it's all very considered but there yet there was a real freedom in that to play as actors you know we shot in this 4-3 aspect ratio which um you know gives it a fairytale sort of nostalgic feeling and it leans into the louis wayne world of it all but it also i think is very powerful for close-ups and those kind of type 2 shots of benedict and claire where they're playing a really intimate scene and there's very little negative space so all you have is the sort of power and the nuance of their performances when i'm doing it i have absolutely no interest in the idea that it's a film i just don't want to know really um and anything that feels filmy or like you're doing you know like the fact that you have to stand abnormally close to someone or that or you know the classic line that people say which is it won't look like that on camera i'm like well it feels like that for me on camera so i'm pretty sure that's what's coming out my eyeballs um i'm deeply uncomfortable and this feels weird so i i it's not like i i'm method i'm definitely not method but i i just wanna be in it i don't really want to know and that's not i mean i'm interested in what i was doing and the lighting was beautiful and but now i see it and i go that is why some people are directors and some people are not because you know you see things visually you see things in a technical visual way whilst also hopefully in an emotional way and i think that's where some some directors are more that way and more that way and will just meets in the middle and that's a real gift are you an illustrator and yes you're very muddy i was attacked by a one and a half tonne ball oh the biggest influence on the world of this film what we came to sort of call as a shorthand wayne's world uh was louis wayne himself and you know whether it be in the set design or the costume design we wanted to kind of show the same delight in colors and patterns that louis wayne seemed to seem to have and also to i guess share in some of his witticisms and his idiosyncratic charm i guess but also i suppose i sometimes find when i'm watching biopics i have a fee i sort of have this sense of how life has been exploited in some way in service of a movie and i really wanted this movie to work in service of his life and i really i sort of had this feeling that i wanted the movie to feel like a life in some way and i wanted us to be able to share in the journey with him and to i guess have some sense of time and to be able to almost kind of reminisce about earlier scenes in the movie alongside louis you know as an older man and so i think those ambitions i guess informed some of the structural decisions and some of the kind of ways in which we decided to tell the story what we really wanted to highlight was the idea that a successful life is a life that experiences love and connection and if you struggle in terms of mental health with feeling different or behaving differently or seeing things differently um to what seems to be the normal the prescriptive norm then that's all right and you should still have somebody in your life hopefully and the world around you to help you celebrate what is true to you and that's very much what happens with louis with his relationship with emily he finds someone who is brave focused on him and what he has to offer and gives him an emotional language to understand things he struggles with and to find a purpose that sustains him throughout his whole life it's love and connection that's really what the film is about i feel electricity [Music] can you feel it [Music] this is our place this is where i'll be louie when you need me i really felt like emily was a breath of fresh air for me like she really really was i had not read a part who which was someone who looked at the world in a very similar way to me in a way that she just saw is beautiful and and wanted to eat it basically and and live it and was rarely given the opportunity to and every moment that she could she took a little ounce even if that was a stone or a rock or um like a feeling or um just reading a book like that was she lived inside it and um it was a joy to play someone who wasn't every five seconds balling their eyes out or dealing with a drama or drama and someone who was falling in love and seeing the world and allowing someone to see the beauty of the world and that's sort of what her purpose is in this film and i you know um at drama school they said there's no small parts any small actors with um benedict and claire i felt like with both of them i felt like they're so they make it seem at least to me so effortless and they're able to like very gracefully navigate the lighter moments with the more sort of hard-hitting uh dramatic moments and but what was particularly exciting for me was watching them together and even in the rehearsal process i started to get a sense of this special kind of chemistry that they had they just seemed completely at ease in one another's company claire's a dear friend we've worked together before we know each other quite well so there was something quite kind of uh weird about that intimacy but as far as falling in love with her or her emily i should say that was it was a magical moment because louis doesn't have a language for it and he doesn't really know that what he's doing is very obvious so he's just sitting there as an innocent just being hit with it and there's something kind of comic about how long will holds on him he and he played a favorite piece of music of mine uh max richter's reworking of uh vivaldi's four seasons that that beautiful track of spring and it carried me to this place where i could just stare and stare and stare at emily and lose myself in her as the camera came closer or the lens racked in close i couldn't really tell you what happened i was just lost in it and uh that's there in the film and her sort of embarrassed but also wide-eyed shifts that claire plays so delicately in brilliantly she does with all of her work and it's a joy to see that electricity as it's termed in the title of the film come alive in that moment between the two of them and connect we're a family of mischief makers miss richardson you may as well have been called the shenanigans and you'll have your hands full with these three and as for you two by time you found some nice husbands of your own don't you think we will mother in time well i was given quite the look from a hatted man with the moustache the bus absolutely enormous moustache and a very prominent brow this was very prominent it was like a dome but um it well it was quite the glance it was it's embarrassing did he seem wealthy josephine did he seem wealthy were doing it and they didn't warn me yes eating my dinner in the scene and then suddenly sort of this music starts playing and i was like can anyone else hear that what's going on and it was basically to encourage ben to look at me with in a loving way and have sort of like some sort of massive moment um and that sort of helps as well but yeah i don't really ever need any help with falling in love i fall in love all the time surreal it's an error one of the things that i think benedict and claire handled so well was this sense of them both being people who never quite felt like they had landed or never quite felt like they'd made a full connection with the world around them but in the meeting of each other we're able to kind of open their hearts and minds and to sort of appreciate even the wider world and its beauty and they're able to do that together i think there was something about the way that they collaborated through the scenes and the way they were supportive of each other that i think manifested that feeling of like giving each other the strength that maybe you need to sort of be that vulnerable and i suppose in the end uh one of the big throughlines of the movie is the question of whether louis wayne is someone who i think it's fair to say never really had a super easy time of it is he able to achieve that level of vulnerability and to feel as at peace as he did in the company of emily is he able to do that on his own and interestingly we sort of not entirely by design but we shot a lot of the scenes with benedict and claire earlier on in the shoot and it meant that we were carrying the feeling of those scenes with us through the shooting of the rest of the movie and i think uh that often did affect the feeling of those later scenes as well i think sincerity was definitely a watch mode for every aspect of this film um [Music] he approaches all of his life with this extraordinary energy and [Music] yet within that he truly believes he is going to be a masterful inventor a champion boxer um a great opera composer and the sort of comic tragedy is where he falls short however the real kicker is that he was the most exceptional artist i mean the early body of his work is very representational highly skilled and then we know him better now i guess for the more anthropomorphic illustrations of cats but even within that even within that experimentation and that diversion into something stylized there's a huge amount whereby he finds a language in a form to reflect our nature as human beings it's not just about celebrating the cats for all of their oddity and peculiarity and um silliness and weakness as emily confides in him that she feels is us as well as a species he really does then take that to heart and they become a prison for reflecting his understanding of the world at large there were satirical pieces and politicized pieces as well as just celebratory pieces to do with quite how silly and funny and profane and tragic we all are mr wayne we have been showing your cat pictures to our staff they've been laughing they've been smiling tell them alicia tell them i'm not lying one of our typists she took some of your pictures home to her kids and she said that they were running about on their hands and knees pretending to be cats how cute and then and asking to have cats for their birthday we're gonna get you out there you're a personality wouldn't you say elisha honey you're mr cat you're cat man cat man batman cat man louie and the character that he was and um what he represents and and um his gift and his also real um burden in life is how he sees the world and that the world doesn't really appreciate how he views it basically that no one really wants to hear it um and i really thought that was a really important thing and and to deal with somebody who may be diagnosed or undiagnosed or anything who who has what people just deemed to be some sort of mental disorder um not being categorized and not being put in a box and then just being allowed to be a bloody person so whether they're male or female or leading or supporting i felt that was a really important story that i really wanted to be part of i think one of the things that is so beguiling about louie wayne and the accounts of how he was and some of his own writing actually is that he seemed so unembarrassedly himself and it's almost like he couldn't help but be who he was and that wasn't always very helpful sometimes it was actually really unhelpful to him that he was a certain way but he just couldn't help it and i think what comes with that is a sort of yeah like i say a kind of innocence that at times can be funny that he believes in something so absolutely and yet to us it feels so alien and other times it can be the source of i suppose tragedy that you know he was holding on to something uh so hard and to see the kind of reality take that away from him can also be kind of heartbreaking in a way just remember i have how things get how much you feel like you're struggling the world is full of beauty and it's up to you to capture it louis to look and to share it with as many people as you can you are a prism through which that beam of life refracts it's often the case when you're doing a signature or something physical that connects you to uh the spiritual of the animal you're portraying and with this i had plenty of that with the artwork um i do a little bit myself but to really kind of copy his style and his methodology again sort of felt like playing with the presence and that comes with a great onerous sense of duty but also a massive wave of love and understanding and really enriches the experience of playing a character as unique as louis

Channel: Film4

Views: 15,561

Keywords: Film 4, Film, Cinema, Film4, Channel 4, Filmmaking, Films, Movie, Movies, Interview, Benedict Cumberbatch, Cumberbatch, Claire Foy, Will Sharpe, Louis Wain, Louis Wain Artist, The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, The Electrical Life Of Louis Wain Film, Cat, Cats, Cat Painter, Cat Paintings, Cat Art, Cat Artist, New Film, New Film 2022, New Film Release, New Movie, New Movie 2022, New Movie Release, Moviemaking, Director, Directing, Filmmaker, Actor, Acting, Louis Wain Movie, Louis Wain Film

Id: PuDWxkBQP8M

Length: 19min 3sec (1143 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 12 2022