Martin McDonagh is taking a stand with “Wild Horse Nine.”
“This is probably my most political film. That’s why I find it very exciting to be releasing this monster into the world,” he said at the Zurich Film Festival.
“I feel like, in the modern day, there’s perhaps a little too much artistic neutrality, or too much saying nothing, not having an opinion or being apathetic. I’m excited to be doing the opposite with this one.”
In his new black comedy, two CIA agents (played by John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell) travel to Easter Island before the 1973 Chilean coup. However, it feels surprisingly timely.
“So many things in the present day mirror a lot of those types of interventions in the past. You can actually hear lines that I thought were about 1973 being interpreted by a modern audience as being about Venezuela a few months ago or other places around the world,” he noted.
“The Russia jokes in the film are about their interventions in Finland 100 years ago, but we connect them to Ukraine now. I love that it has a resonance I wasn’t necessarily aware of in the writing of it.”
McDonagh, who received A Tribute to… Award at the fest, looked back on his past during a masterclass.
“I left school very young, at 16, and was unemployed for a long time. But with the hopes of being a writer. Part of that was not wanting to have a real job or a boss. That has remained with me until now,” he said.
He wrote radio plays, all of which were rejected – “Mostly by the BBC. But I don’t bear a grudge” – and then became an acclaimed playwright.
“As a film fan, I put all that into the energy of the plays. Things would happen that you wouldn’t usually see on stage. Like cats exploding [in ‘The Lieutenant of Inishmore’].”
Seeing Al Pacino in “American Buffalo” by David Mamet was a pivotal moment.
“I can still remember it to this day. He just came on stage and blew the whole theater away. It was this combination of a play, full of energy and swearing, amazing dialogue and this movie star who, well, you’d realize what acting really was when he was on stage.”
McDonagh still writes “without the camera in mind,” but he enjoys the freedom of writing scripts.
“It’s like when you don’t go to the gym for a long time; that’s where my theater brain is at the moment. But the muscle memory is still there.”
The transition to cinema wasn’t exactly easy. “It was the bad rejections that really inspired me. Maybe I thrive not on encouragement, but anger,” he said. Still, his 2004 short “Six Shooter” won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film.
“It was probably the scariest situation I’ve been in artistically. But the wonderful thing was having Brendan Gleeson be part of it. He protected me from any interference. I couldn’t have done it without his help and guidance,” he recalled.
He reunited with Gleeson on his hit “In Bruges,” also starring Colin Farrell, where two hitmen are forced to hide out after a mission gone wrong.
“I used to be a hit man. People don’t know that. They thought it just was plays and then films. It was plays, killing and then films,” joked McDonagh.
“I went to Bruges not knowing anything about it. I was supposed to meet a girl on the second night, and she didn’t turn up. It was this combination of thinking it was the most cinematic, undiscovered town I’d ever seen, and being bored as hell and just wanting to get drunk and get out of there.”
Once again, he felt shielded by his lead actors.
“Colin and Brendan were great partners in protecting me from any interference from the grown-ups. Who aren’t usually grown up; they’re children with a lot of money. It’s the nature of Hollywood,” he said.
“I’m going to get in so much trouble. It’s good that it’s not being filmed, right?”
McDonagh tackles serious – even shocking – topics in his films, yet somehow they still tend to be funny. But recently, he’s been noticing a change in his work.
“I’ve tried to make sure that the films aren’t just about being cool. They’re about something deeper, and I guess more tragic. I’m leaving room for more contemplative scenes where the characters are on their own and it’s not funny. They’re left to think about their lives or dwell on their regrets.”
This was the case with Frances McDormand, who played the grieving mother Mildred Hayes in “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.” And now with John Malkovich in “Wild Horse Nine.”
“When they’re great actors like Frances or John, you see the sadness in their eyes, and you fill in what they’re thinking about. One of the ideas for John’s character was to give him the entire palette of emotions. You know that John can do comedy, he can do rage and he can do contemplative, quiet stuff. But I’m making sure all those things are together in one package,” he noted.
“None of my films are sort of what I would call ‘Hollywood movies.’ They’re not simple, feel-good stories. When actors of that magnitude who have maybe done some of those films, and know they’re a little empty get to work on something different, it frees them up to show their brilliance.”
McDonagh wouldn’t want to make bigger movies anyway.
“Weirdly, I’m really happy with the trajectory or the level of films that I’ve made. I don’t want a bigger budget. I don’t even want more success. I just want to continue making films completely free from any interference from anyone. That’s a perfect position to be in.”
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