It’s hard not to be impressed when you look at Brendan Gleeson’s filmography - indeed, one could even imagine many very successful actors feeling a bit envious of the popular Dublin actor’s career trajectory.
He’s enjoyed significant roles in several massive blockbusters (including a recurring role as Professor Moody in the Harry Potter series). He’s worked with some great directors too including Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Paul Greengrass, Ridley Scott, Neil Jordan, John Boorman and more. Despite his mainstream regard, however, he’s also managed to constantly make the time for smaller films and more challenging roles, ensuring a steady stream of critical acclaim and viewer respect.
“I’ve always tried to follow the writing, and it’s led me into some amazing places,” a modest Gleeson reflected when talking to The Picture Show’s Philip Molloy recently. “I know that I’ve been lucky... It’s always that thing that it’s easier to get work when you’re working. I’m really appreciative of it, and I’ve learned so much from so many different people. It’s been a blast.”
While many Irish actors are rarely seen on these shores again once they’ve ‘made it’, Gleeson has been impressively active in and supportive of the Irish film scene. Without a doubt, his popularity was a central reason behind the staggering local success of The Guard - a film that enjoyed a record breaking run at the Irish box office in 2011. Now Gleeson has teamed up again with that film’s writer / director John Michael McDonagh for Calvary.
In the film, Gleeson plays Father James Lavelle, a well-respected priest in a small rural Irish village. Shot mostly in Sligo, Calvary memorably opens in a confession box, where a mystery man vows to kill Fr James in a few short days. The story follows Lavelle’s subsequent encounters with his various parishioners as he tries to do some good in the corrupted, cynical community he finds himself in. Equal parts black comedy, existential drama and savage deconstruction of both past and present Ireland, it’s a significant step up from The Guard in terms of scope and ambition.
“I think it’s a great film,” Gleeson says, and it’s clear he’s genuinely passionate about both his and McDonagh’s work. “I left whatever I had out there in that film. [McDonagh is] a major filmmaker at this point and I guess it has its own pressure, but knowing him he might turn it around some other way. You’d never know what he comes up with next. Hopefully we get to do it again one more time.”
For Gleeson, “there are so many great things about [Calvary’s] script. There’s an awful lot that isn’t said in it, and there’s an awful lot that is said in it. There’s such a life outside of the spoken word, even though there’s a lot of spoken word in it.” He observes how the film addresses “spirituality and questions of all that metaphysical stuff” but doesn’t forget the human stories being told, and that’s what makes it such a powerful experience.
“When you have the heart beating underneath it, the soul has its own message or journey,” Gleeson remarks, although he also points out audiences shouldn’t expect a simple film. “It becomes layered and confusing and affecting, hopefully. The questions still remain, and you’re left with a question rather than an answer.”
McDonagh, like his brother Martin (Seven Psychopaths and In Bruges, the latter of which also starred Gleeson alongside Colin Farrell), wrote and directed the film, and Gleeson has nothing but genuine respect for his work and ability to tackle both roles effectively. “I always remember John Boorman talking about being a different person to the writer when you’re directing and being a different editor to the director when you’re editing,” Gleeson recalls. “When you get a good writer-director with a very singular vision who wrote with the frame in mind there’s a kind of symmetry, and you’re going to get to the heart of it.”
Calvary has some roles for women - most notably Kelly Reilly as Lavelle’s troubled daughter - but is very much a male-dominated film. One of Gleeson’s next films, however, will be different. Suffragette, due out next year, is directed by Sarah Gavron, written by Abi Morgan and stars the likes of Carey Mulligan, Meryl Streep and Helena Bonham Carter. “It’s tremendous,” gushes Gleeson, who plays a policeman investigating the suffragette movement in the UK. “The last time I worked with a bunch of women it was Albert Nobbs, and it’s just fantastic. It’s a completely different feeling and there’s all the oestrogen instead of testosterone... [It’s another] way of working: it’s gentler, and teases out things that emerge suddenly. You say ‘wow, I wasn’t expecting that’.”
Even with someone like Brendan Gleeson on board, a film could well stall during production. Such is the case with Sexual Healing, a planned Marvin Gay biopic. “I kind of felt sorry for everyone involved,” Gleeson says of the film, which is currently stuck in so-called production hell. “It’s one of those things - I felt sorry for the producers because they really were trying to make something good.
On that note, he also updated Philip on the status of his passion project - an adaptation of Flann O’Brien’s classic surreal novel At Swim Two Birds, which Gleeson has long planned to direct. “I came very close, and then it all didn’t come together, so I have to regroup myself,” Gleeson says, referring to reports over the last few years that the film was on course for release. “I have no real interest in directing other than directing that. That’s the one I want to do because I think I know how to do it. So it will happen, but I have no idea - it could be ten years, it might be two. I’m just going to let it happen.”
We could be waiting a while for Gleeson’s first ‘directed by’ credit then, but with Calvary hitting big screens soon and many more performances on the way, fans will have no shortage of Brendan Gleeson to keep them entertained in the meantime. No doubt that filmography will be even more enviable by the time he steps behind the camera for a change.
You can hear the full interview with Brendan Gleeson on Newstalk’s Picture Show http://www.newstalk.ie/pictureshow
