Long Live The Kingsley

Based on Dennis Lehane’s novel, Martin Scorsese’s deliriously pulpy Shutter Island takes place in 1954 on a Boston island compound that houses the criminally insane. It’s one creepy locale, and the director loads every shot with diseased references to Shock Corridor and just about every nightmarish Grand Guignol scenario ever committed to celluloid.

A classically spooky institutional horror, one might imagine that the cineaste director sat down with his sterling cast – Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Kingsley, Mark Ruffalo, Patricia Clarkson, Michelle Williams – to take in Chan Wook-Park or Sam Fuller movies. Instead he treated the gang to Titicut Follies, Frederick Wiseman’s coruscating 1967 about the treatment of inmates and patients at Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane.
“It wasn’t an indication of what the style or tone of our film should be,” Ben Kingsley tells me. “It was because it’s incomprehensible to us to grasp the fact that treatments still medieval until end of 20th century. Things hadn’t moved on much since 14th century. Marty always sat in on screenings and seemed as surprised as us at seeing the film. He sees it all as a teaching experience. Because he is so massively knowledgeable, his projection is that you are all as educated as he is.”
In the terrifically heightened movieverse, Ben Kingsley’s tremendously gothic performance – think Dr. Moreau on leave from Dachau - increasingly dwarfs the malevolent architecture of the setting as the film progresses to its demented climax.
Today, sitting down with the actor on the eve of Shutter Island’s London premiere – he’s neat as a pin and gentlemanly as ever - we’re a bit taken aback when the actor suggests that those subtle tonal shifts are mostly down to Marty.
“I’m delighted you think that,” he cries. “But all I had to worry about were my patients. The prism that he films through is shifting all the time and it therefore allowed me to exploit core character description. But I feared that if you share that explicitly with an audience you are showing off. Like those painters who write three pages on their work in awful English.”
The Oscar-winning Mr. Kingsley – no, contrary to those stupid stories, he doesn’t care if you call him ‘Sir’ or not – was understandably thrilled to collaborate with Scorsese.
“It was an absolute privilege throughout,” says the actor. “It was a wonderful script but even before I read it, he called me up to tell me it was on the way. He has a very personal touch and a very loving touch. He has an understanding of the difficulties involved in acting but also an ability to extend the sprint with each take. I watched Leo (DiCaprio) do it and I was astonished. I don’t know how he survived the shoot. Just look at the film. It’s eviscerating. A lesser director might have killed him.”
Really?
“Oh yes,” he says. “I have seen poor actors struggling with directors who don’t have that control. Because we will give it our all. If you want open heart surgery we will give it a go. It’s not fair to exploit that. I have worked with directors who just show contempt for actors. I worked with a director who would have killed a slightly weaker version of Leo in the process of this film and thought fuck it and walk away. These cretins who think all they have to do is provoke a neurosis. I remember a director once suggesting a female lead and saying she is the character. I thought ‘you idiot’. This is man on wire – you go from that tower to the other. You go from A to B. It’s terribly dangerous. Employ a very unstable actor, push them too far and then wonder why she ends up in an ambulance. I always talk to the young actors for that reason. Because it’s tough work.”
Despite the traumatic aspects of his craft, Kingsley, Salford’s most famous Kenyan-Indian export, has run up one of the most impressively varied resumes in the business. A brilliant biographical student, he has played Gandhi, Lenin, Simon Wiesenthal, Stanley Spencer and Shostakovich and still found time to scare the hell out of us in Sexy Beast.
I wonder if the craft gets any easier? Does he ever get a chance to enjoy it?
He thinks for a minute. “The transition from being neurotically driven to joyfully driven does take place. As one shrinks the other grows. In my case neurosis shrunk and joy had more space to thrive. If you are blessed with company like Marty and Spielberg and Attenborough, these are not guys who exploit the neuroses of the actor. I have worked with those guys and I have wanted to slap them in the face.”
Being guided by brave choices rather than cushy numbers does, however, have certain drawbacks. In recent years, the actor has put in some of his best work on films like The Wackness And Elegy, films that never really received the attention they deserved. The latter, a career highlight for actress Penelope Cruz, was, bafflingly, never even in the running during awards season.
“You mean both of us should have been nominated, don’t you?” he says. “Were you implying that? Ha ha ha! There’s the neurotic part of me again. You know, the independent sector may be shooting itself in the foot. More and more of us may say: “Great script. Great actors. But I am not going to do it. I am not going to go through the pain working so hard and delicately with Isabael Coixet for a film that no one will see. People say to me: Oh I love that move. Like it’s a minority interest. I loved The Wackness. This is the Falstaff/Hal relationship with me and Josh Peck. His favourite film – which he used to quote line by line – was Searching for Bobby Fischer. It saddens me that Searching for Bobby Fischer didn’t get a release in the UK. It saddens me that Elegy was not released at the right time and as a result was over looked.”
He shrugs and smiles. “Thank God for DVD, eh?”