Synopsis
London, 1934. In The Critic, Jimmy Erskine (Ian McKellen) is the most feared theatre critic of the age. He lives as flamboyantly as he writes and takes pleasure in savagely taking down any actor who fails to meet his standards. When the owner of the Daily Chronicle newspaper dies, and his son David Brooke (Mark Strong) takes over, Jimmy quickly finds himself at odds with his new boss and his position under threat. In an attempt to preserve the power and influence he holds so sacred, Jimmy strikes a Faustian pact with struggling actress Nina Land (Gemma Arterton), entangling them and Brooke in a thrilling but deadly web of desire, blackmail, and betrayal.
Interview
Cinema Scholars’ own Glen Dower sat down with director Anand Tucker to discuss his new British period/thriller The Critic. They discussed how British football helped Anand land the directing job, what goes into making a British period piece on a reasonable budget and working with the legendary Sir Ian McKellen, among other topics.
(Edited for content and clarity)
Glen Dower:
Mr. Tucker, how are you, Sir?
Anand Tucker:
I’m very well, Glen. How are you?
Glen Dower:
I’m excellent thank you! Now, when I first got the opportunity to talk about The Critic, I thought…Sir Ian McKellen, I’m in! Then I learned…set in the 1930s, I’m in!
Anand Tucker:
And you’re like, ‘Anand Tucker?! Fuck, show me the door!!’
Glen Dower:
Not at all! But what was your reaction when you first got the opportunity?
Anand Tucker:
I was a bit like you. It slightly fell in my lap as an act of football nepotism, because the reason being, I played football for about 25 years with the same group of old men. The game was started by Patrick Marber, the screenwriter, and Anthony Quinn, who wrote the novel, is a founding member of that game.
And ironically enough, of course, Mark Strong is also a member of our ancient squad of creaky people. So, you know, I think what had happened was that Patrick had, through a producer, Julian Simmons, he’d optioned the book, got Patrick to write the screenplay. Patrick loved Tony’s book, but I think it was the world and a particular character that particularly appealed to Patrick.
He’s extrapolated a story that runs to the side of the universe in the book. Then in 2019, I think a few years after they’d got going on the project, he just called me up and said, would I be interested in having a look and a read and maybe taking it on? And of course, I said, yes, because, you know, I’m a huge admirer of his work. He’s such a brilliant writer and we were pals. I respect him. I think he’s such a fine writer. So it wasn’t hard.
I didn’t have to go hunting for it, which has never happened before in my life. Let me just tell you. All those broken bones in my foot and my hands over the years, you know, they added up to karma, giving back to me, giving me back this movie!
Glen Dower:
All roads led here! Fantastic. In the movie, we are in the 1930s. I grew up watching Jeeves and Wooster on the TV with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry and the Poirot stories with David Suchet, of course. If I could go back in time, that’s when I would choose to be. When gentlemen dress as gentlemen, having their suits cut on Savile Row. They went to ‘their club’ after, or during work. Forget about World War Two breaking out imminently.
I would love to know how you captured that aesthetic so well. The nicotine-stained lampshades and those textures were the exterior blues and the interior bronze and yellows. How did you capture those? Did you do much research on watching TV shows and other films? How did you capture that feeling? Because I loved it so much.
Anand Tucker:
Well, that’s a very good question. And I can see Glen because you are a very dapper dresser. It’s interesting, is it because we all have a 1930s London in our imagination which we’ve received from films and movies of the time, and are kind of made up? So I think I went back to a whole series of photographs from the time. And, you know, the main thing that strikes you, first of all, is how there are no cars anywhere. Right. So everything is empty. It’s empty. And also it’s very minimal because it’s empty. No cars or signs. You know what I mean? It’s minimal. So that was the first thing that struck me, which was useful, because we have five weeks, and an independent budget.
And so trying to create this, a world that was believable on that budget would require a lot of skill. And so I thought, okay, minimal, we’ll go the least we can in each frame and everything that will be in a frame will have to do a lot of work to suggest more. So that’s why the lampshades as you said, each thing is very carefully chosen.
But then obviously it’s a British heritage period movie, you know, beautiful people in the theater in lovely costumes and country houses and all that stuff that we’re very familiar with. But it’s a movie that at its heart is a film noir. It’s Double Indemnity, right? The greatest one of those movies. Jimmy Erskine is Barbara Stanwyck. And very quickly, he figures out how who, and how he has to persuade to do something difficult for him that ultimately spirals out of everyone’s control, you know, and bad things happen.
So it’s a whole series of those kinds of noir British films. But then I also thought, oh, black and white but there’s enough darkness in the film. And so when you look at Technicolor films of the time, like I looked at lots of just documentary three-strip Technicolor footage, documentary footage, and the colors are just amazing when you finally see that. And so that’s all those things came together. I thought, well, we’ll make a dark…bright film. A dark color noir. We’ll try and make it as bright and colorful as we can. But it’s also super dark, like dark light.
Also, we can’t move the camera that way or that because this fucking Piccadilly Circus with, you know, everything there. And it’s a lot of smoke, a lot of frames that are lit for one side or another, quite starkly, a lot of backlight and placing key things in it that make you think there’s a lot more. It’s a massive con trick.
But I must call out my amazing production designer, Lucienne Suren, who did an amazing job, and her department and the costume team, and David Higgs, the DP, it all works. Everyone saw the same thing. And so we had to go really fast, but it all came together.
Glen Dower:
It certainly did. Now let’s talk about why we’re all here, Sir Ian. Everyone has their own Sir Ian McKellen role. So I first came to know of him when I did GCSE English Literature. I was already in love with Shakespeare because of Othello, but then I came across Macbeth. And every child who does Macbeth will see the Trevor Nunn TV version with Sir Ian as Macbeth and Dame Judi as Lady Macbeth.
Plus, you have Ian McDiarmid in there as well as the porter, Emperor Palpatine himself. And that’s when I thought, this guy’s cool. This guy’s special. Then I came across Gods and Monsters. Fantastic. And then Gandalf, boom, Magneto, boom. What’s your journey been with Sir Ian and his career?
Anand Tucker:
Well, a bit like yours. I did Shakespeare at school like you do. And funny enough, Othello too. Although I played Othello, hard as it is to believe. Marvelous love! If you haven’t seen my Othello, you haven’t lived. Oh, it’s terrible! I’m terrible. I’m like the world’s worst actor. But, I’m so very much like you. I’m aware of his presence as a kind of legend. Like one of the acting greats alongside Anthony Hopkins and Laurence Olivier.
He’s the heir to Laurence Olivier. And then I think back to Gods and Monsters. I remember seeing that and being so struck by that because he hadn’t done…I think Richard III is what he had done first. That had sort of burst onto the screen. And he began that run through the late 90s when suddenly he went from Richard III to Gods and Monsters. Then, you know, he was Gandalf. And it’s hard to…what do you do with that?
I watched those. I watched those with my boys as they were growing up, you know? It becomes part of the fabric of the sort of mythology of your life. Mr. Holmes? I think that’s one of my favorite films. He’s my favorite Sherlock Holmes. He is exquisitely heartbreaking in that film. I think Laura Linney is in it as well. If you haven’t seen it, just watch it.
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So you then have a sense that Ian has got all these other colors, you know, and, and, and anyway, long story short, when he wanted to do this film because of Patrick’s script and his relationship with Bill Kenwright, who was financing the film, I guess I was quite trepidatious to go and meet him, you know, who are you going to meet? And here’s the thing, I’m not just saying this. Ian is like really humble.
Ian has even more imposter syndrome than you or I have, right? I mean, that’s the startling thing. I mean, I walk around all the time thinking, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing and I’m going to get found out, but I also have enough part of me as an ego thinks, yeah, I am, you know, we all carry that duality with us, right? Ian genuinely really, has so much humility. He’s really scared, like on the first day on set, he’s scared because he thinks he’s going to be shit and he doesn’t know what he’s going to do. And, and he’s not afraid.
Here’s the best bit of it. A lot of actors feel that of course, but then they cover up by acting out or, or, you know, it comes out and he’s just so honest. It’s like, I’m scared. I don’t know, is this right or wrong? And he’s prepared to be super vulnerable with it. So, you’re like, okay, you have to very quickly get over Ian McKellen and you’re just with this human being who’s trying to do something, who’s just trying to do something good.
And he’s prepared to be humble and say, I don’t know, or sometimes say, oh yeah, that was good. You know? It’s very disarming. So that’s the Ian I have, and, he was 83 when we made the movie. He’s in virtually every frame. We shot it in five weeks. You can only imagine the strain on him and his energy was unflagging and having just turned 61 myself and feeling very tired. I’ve, I think what I will carry with me my whole, the rest of my life from Ian is how that ability to be scared and humble in the face of new challenges is what keeps him excited about life and the journey of discovery of what he’s doing. I can’t describe it.
All that technical stuff he does, it’s so ingrained in him that he’s able to just still be, to be scared and allow it to work and trust it and trust everyone around him. I’m always astounded by it, so it’s some mysterious thing that happens and everyone’s different in how they do it, but that’s how I think Ian was doing it or does it.
Glen Dower:
And he’s just wonderful. I mean, I’ve watched the movie three times since I’ve been sent the screen and I just can’t get over it. I’m a big shout-out to Gemma Arterton, who hasn’t been as good as this. She suits this genre, the melodrama, and that period as well. She’s stunning in any way, but in that time she would fit right in there. Mark Strong, of course, never disappoints. And you’re surrounded by great key players throughout the cast. It must have been such a joy for you and for them to be there, but they must have been so intimidated when Sir Ian stepped on set.
Anand Tucker:
Well, again, I think he had the same effect on all of them. I think they were. We all had the same, but I think literally, he’s so lovely and so sweet, right? That also you want to sort of take care of him, but you also know that you know, if he needs to fucking stand up for himself, he absolutely can, but he’s prepared to make himself so vulnerable that, you know, there was a sense that, and it’s awful, the younger, it’s a stupid thing, but because he was always the youngest of all of us, but the way he was with all of us, we ended up just being a kind of team, you know? And so we didn’t have much time.
Everyone just threw themselves at it. And yeah, and he made that atmosphere. I’ve always found that in every film, in the end, it’s number one on the cast, on the, you know, call list that sets the tone and the atmosphere for the film. It just does, you know? And if I tell you that it was a bit like a Friday morning kickabout with a group of friends, having a laugh and sometimes getting a little bit carried away, you know, but still then being able to hug and make up afterward. It was a bit like that because of him.
Glen Dower:
That is wonderful to hear. Well, Mr. Tucker, I could talk to you all day. Thank you so much for your time.
Anand Tucker:
And thank you so much, Glen.
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