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For his new movie feathered thing, Benedict Cumberbatch She found a useful – if painful – shortcut to getting into the mindset of a bereaved person. in adaptation of max porteris shiny 2015 novelCumberbatch plays a father of two boys who is grief-stricken after the sudden death of his wife. For one scene, the child actors recorded a voiceover where the boys openly express how much they miss their mother. Cumberbatch listened to it when he needed it. “I used it as a tool to bring them face to face with their pain, their perspective, their sense of loss,” he says. “And those innocent little voices talking about how their father changed so much after their mother died –” He exhales sharply – “Immediately Access to emotions there.”
The actor has three sons of his own, which further increased his sensitivity. “They say that as soon as you have kids, you become far more emotionally available, and everything becomes much closer,” he says, touching the skin of his arm. “But, I mean, I’m almost 50, so I’ve lived a little bit. I’ve experienced grief. And anyone who loves or has lost someone can benefit from this movie.”
At 114 pages, Porter’s original book is as light as a feather. But within those pages lies an experimental, poetic, and emotionally charged story. A man and his son are struggling with their suffering when suddenly, a talking crow comes into their lives, uninvited, to serve as their “antagonist, trickster, healer, babysitter.” Porter, whose father died when he was only six, used his own experience of losing a parent for the book. It is sometimes unbearably sad: “The whole place was in heavy mourning, every surface covered with the dead mother, every crayon, tractor, coat, well, a film of sorrow.” And often simultaneously tragic and funny: “People, on her last day on Earth, don’t leave notes on red wine bottles saying ‘Oh no you don’t cock-cheek’. She wasn’t busy dying… She was just busy living, and then she was gone.”
In the film adapted by Dylan Southern, Crow is voiced by David Thewlis (though he sounds more like John Cooper Clarke) and is portrayed as a giant adult man in a bird costume. This creature, inspired by the figure of the crow in Ted Hughes’ poems, torments Cumberbatch’s character, known only as Dad, wherever he happens to be – from the shower to the crisp aisle at the supermarket. When Dad is drinking and crying on the couch, Crowe scolds him in stammering, unkind dialogue: “Middle-aged white widow music. Guardian-Beard-stroking farmer’s market guest Elle Birkenstock Reading the Barbican***! You’re a very worn out man, you know that? Dead Wife Trope. Next you will have a photo album, you will talk to his gravesite. This is tough love.
If your head is spinning from this description of the film, it should be no surprise that Porter’s novel – a freewheeling and often disorienting triptych that rotates between the viewpoints of Crowe, Dad, and the Boys – was at first seen as largely unsuitable. Cumberbatch says, “Dylan read it and thought, ‘Wow, this wouldn’t be filmable,'” and then pitched it to Max in a coffee shop within two weeks and won the rights to develop it.
Children have an extraordinary ability to empathize without any lived experience
Benedict Cumberbatch
Cumberbatch and Porter, whom I met in a London hotel, sit side by side on a sofa. Porter leaned back, legs crossed, his voice deep and soothing. Cumberbatch is posed forward, on the edge of his seat, all walks of life. It’s the end of a long press day, so they’re a slightly unruly pair. Cumberbatch is wearing a bright green jumper with two slits on the chest. He proudly displays that it is a fun Jumper, a jumper where he can pull wads of yellow stuff out of two holes. “Nipple Hankies!” he declares cheerfully, before pretending to wipe away the tears with a cloth. This sets the tone for a loaded conversation, with the couple coming across like brothers, their conversation hanging heavy feathered thing How they like their tea, that time Porter was crying on the plane aquaman,
“The book was considered virtually unpublishable,” says Porter. “The first email I received was from a colleague at Faber [the publishing house he worked at] Said, ‘Tell him to go and write a proper one.'” Now, 10 years later, it has been adapted several times (including a play starring Cillian Murphy), translated into 38 languages, and Dua Lipa is a superfan. Porter admits the book’s success has been “surreal” for him, as well as “delightful and massively, life-affirmingly sad and wonderful.” It felt particularly weird on the set. “It sounded extremely close to my dad’s flat, so that was the first time I said, ‘Dad, if you can hear me, this is weird. “I probably should have run it by you.”
Porter believes that people connect with the story because it does not give a backstory to the dad or include the mother’s voice, and so there is a “void into which people can put themselves”. “A friend of mine lost his wife last year, and he has two young sons,” he says. “We went for a walk because he’d read the book and he wanted to talk about how perfect I got it, and it felt terrible for me to say, ‘Thank you and sorry and shit,’ you know?’ But if I had turned it into a more traditional novel and filled in some of the blanks, it wouldn’t be a collaborative gesture, and the reader wouldn’t feel like this is your flat, your relationship, your grief.
While Porter and Southern have been working on the film for a decade, Cumberbatch only came on board about a year and a half ago. It is co-produced by the actor’s company SunnyMarch, and is a world away from their mega-budget Hollywood staples such as. doctor strange And power of dogBoth in its scale and the rawness of Cumberbatch’s performance. “I’m trying to use the currency that I’ve been gifted — through spectaculars, tentpoles, spectacular performances — to shine a light on filmmaking that’s struggling to survive,” he says.
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a special aspect of feathered thing It fascinated Cumberbatch and made him feel like there was a story to tell. NowDad struggled to deal with his overwhelming grief. He tries to hide his sadness from the boys, so at breakfast time he yells at them and storms out in anger. At other points, he becomes completely disillusioned, surprised to see his dismal reflection in the bathroom mirror.
“I think it’s really important to have a conversation around the male inability to manage emotions,” says Cumberbatch, “and how easily that can be channeled into very horrible causes, whether it’s incel culture, riot culture, or blame culture — where your problem isn’t your problem, it’s that person’s problem.” I think it’s so important to realize, ‘No, it’s OK, you can take responsibility, you can mess up, you can be sensitive to human emotions, and you can feel things on a very deep level.’ This is everything in this film. And it’s also about the mess men make without women in their lives.
What’s fresh to see in this? feathered thing Little boys are so kind and good. Under the age of 10, they are at the age where they have not yet been properly exposed to the adult world and social media. “The media captivates children so quickly,” says Cumberbatch. “And it’s because of the devices we have in our hands. We have to control the access they give all of us. We can’t just say, ‘Okay, let’s give our kids a smartphone and see what happens.’ Look what has happened to an entire generation.”
As a father, Cumberbatch finds it touching to see his young children grow up to be naturally loving and kind, free from the evils of the world. It reminds me of a passage in the book where Dad says that “the pain of being naturally kind is like appendicitis”. As I read it, Cumberbatch nodded vigorously. “Children have an extraordinary ability to empathize without any lived experience or cues,” he says, and then points to Porter, who also has three sons. “We’ve both experienced this as fathers. They just go to you and give you love without asking, and it gets regurgitated to reinforce it, without any input or feedback from you, necessarily.”
Porter agrees. He too is now on the edge of his seat. “I’m always telling my kids, ‘Hurry up! Do your homework! Be kind!’ And then when you least expect it, bang! It is there. It is beautiful.”
They look at each other smiling. “It makes you excited to be alive sometimes.”
‘The Thing with Feathers’ is in theaters