Look, movie theaters are stressful. Not particularly because it’s strenuous — there’s coffee, food and, just in case Argyllyou travel to London to talk to celebrities in a posh hotel suite just across the Thames from the London Eye.
But try to have a real, thoughtful conversation with a movie star in less minutes than the fingers on your hand. You don’t want to be too flippant, too silly, too off topic, or say something the actors haven’t already been asked a million times. After all, at a junket, you are one of many global journalists gathered for this one-day press conference blitz. You want to stand out.
In case that Bryan Cranston and Bryce Dallas Howardtwo of argylleThe stellar ensemble cast, I guess — 10 whole minutes! An absolute luxury in junketland. And what followed was a real conversation that went deeper than any of us might have expected.
On the surface, Argyll is a semi-camp, fully metafictional film about Ellie Conway, a successful spy novelist who suddenly finds herself at the center of a real-life espionage plot that bears an eerie resemblance to the events of her books. The film is cheeky with moments of good fun, but also has as many twists and turns as the streets of London. Those same twists made me wonder about good vs. evil, and it was those deeper thoughts that drove Cranston and Howard to delve into the essence of what makes a Hollywood hero — and what makes a villain.
“The hero is really someone who goes beyond accepting what they think of themselves,” Cranston, who plays the director of The Division, tells me. “He’s not someone who already imagines himself as a heroic person, like a warrior or a gladiator. He is someone who, despite fears, cautions and concerns, rises above to meet a moment in time that is needed. And that’s really when someone steps up to be a hero.”
As for being mean?
“There’s some malice in all of us really, if we’re honest,” Cranston says. “If we really opened up and said, ‘Well, I felt these particular emotions at particular times and I was wrong. I have wronged people from time to time.’ The villain is the person who never corrects the wrong, who allows himself to continue to be that person.”
Context also matters, adds Howard, who plays Elly. Whatever legal, moral, or ethical standards dictate the norm in any given society sets the tone for how people interpret actions. An evil action in one culture may be considered heroic in another. In the film, the spy agent Aidan (Sam Rockwell) kills a bunch of assassins, but he has a purpose to protect Elly, who is more important than it first appears. So is it that bad?
What if you are manipulated into taking a terrible action? Even if you didn’t mean to hurt, does that make you hurt? “The bad guy is the one who doesn’t take responsibility for the end result, for the things that go wrong, for the cost of life,” Howard says. “We always need to examine ourselves and our actions because people won’t necessarily control us, and that’s scary and that’s how evil spreads.”
Actors often say that villains are more fun and more complex to play because they take on motivations that are taboo in real life and explore the darker sides of a person’s character that they wouldn’t necessarily realize in their own lives. The same goes for us in the audience. There is a reason because we are attracted to the bad guys. It’s “delicious,” as Howard says, to escape to a villain, that’s why so often the bad guys are the scene stealers.
“The villain is really a mischievous child who is allowed to expand on it [mischievousness]says Cranston. “In the adult version of the game, we’re encouraged to be as bad as possible, which is the opposite of what our parents were trying to sculpt and mold. “No, no, share your toys. No, don’t say that about someone.’ Now, you can let it go. Everything your parents said [you]you just do the opposite, and there’s your villain.”
When the line between hero and villain is, in his world argyle, As blurry as the line between reality and fantasy is, it’s important to define how we separate the good guys from the bad guys, what the rules are, who plays by them and who doesn’t. Whether we realize it or not, we carry what we see in the theater into the real world to help us understand our own moral compasses. Art informs life, as life informs art, and there are profound lessons to be learned – even if from a film that, at first glance, appears to be just a good cinematic moment.
Not bad for a 10 minute chat.
Argylle is now in cinemas.
Do you like what you see? How about something more R29, here?
The best TV shows and movies to watch in February
Tiffany Pollard is back and as badass as ever
Brb, Entering My Villain Era
