If Men actor Rory Kinnear looks familiar, it’s because you’ve probably seen him playing a wide range of characters over his long career on stage and screen — sometimes in the same film or series. Director Alex Garland’s subversive horror film Men features Kinnear in nearly a dozen different roles, and it’s far from the first time the award-winning British actor has showcased his talent for portraying multiple characters in the same project, with his dual role in Taika Waititi’s Our Flag Means Death offering another recent example.
Men does, however, provide quite a few other firsts for the veteran actor. Kinnear is the focus of a terrifying, visceral final scene in Men that has already sparked plenty of discussion due to its graphic nature and — more importantly — the powerful symbolism behind it.
Kinnear sat down with Digital Trends to discuss his experience on Men, that wild final sequence, and why he keeps finding himself playing multiple characters in a single story.
The following interview contains discussion of key plot points from Men .
Digital Trends: You play so many characters in this film, sometimes even in the same scene. What was it like on your side to keep track of all of them and their mannerisms and such throughout filming?
Rory Kinnear: It was a pretty enjoyable juggling act. It did feel like I was sort of working towards capacity in terms of keeping an eye on everything, where you were in the story, where those characters were in their stories, and so on. But basically, I was playing just the one character a day, except for the the pub scene, which was the only time where I was sort of dashing in and out. When I woke up in the morning, I knew who I was going to be, and also, as soon as I got hair and makeup sorted that day, it gave me my jumping-off point into the rest of the day.
Alex Garland keeps the themes and message of his films intentionally vague, but why do you feel it was necessary to have you play all of these characters? What went through your mind about the message or themes that conveys?
Obviously, you can’t get caught up with the themes when you’re acting in it, so my takeaway from the film has been informed by seeing it. I’ve now seen it twice. By the second time, you’re beginning to see it as an audience, rather than the first time, when you’re mostly interested in how they put the puzzle together. In terms of the acting experience, while creating these characters and making sure you had justification for their behaviors, you could see what Alex was doing in terms of crafting the micro- to the macro-aggressions that these characters were displaying towards Harper (Jessie Buckley). But at the same time, for most of them, Harper was a small feature of their lives rather than hers.
But in terms of how I, as an audience member, have taken it thematically, Alex likes to keep these things opaque and I feel like I should probably fall in line with that as well. Being part of the creative process, you have an assumed degree of authority, which I don’t have here. My takeaway from the film, though, is the impact of trauma. That’s something that chimes with me. There’s this inescapable, ineluctable nature of trauma that people experience, and it repackages itself through many different and varied experiences one has — in this case, all played by the same person.
There’s this sense of repetition, this sense of deadening multiplicity, and it can echo through through your life. It’s how you try to challenge that and stop it repeating itself.
You’ve mentioned before that the big, final scene of the film was settled after you had already signed on. What was your reaction on learning what it would entail?
When it’s as big a swing as that, it’s always, “How are we going to do that?” And when it’s as bold as something like that, you’re really aware that everyone has to be so committed and inventive. The technical know-how that’s on show throughout that sequence is something that you have to take a sort of a leap of faith in when you’re performing, [hoping] that they’re not going to leave you high and dry after the event. And I’m certainly not high or dry at any point in that scene.
Définitivement pas.
À droite? But what’s lovely about filmmaking is this collaboration, and for so much of that sequence, the collaboration was after the event. Whereas I trusted Alex, I trusted Jessie, and I trusted the crew, and knew that we could do something special ourselves with it, I also knew there were quite a lot of people I was not going to necessarily meet who were going to be in charge of making it fully realized.
Well, I do want to ask you about that, because it clearly makes a lot of use of effects — practical and digital — but there’s still so much of you in it. How do you approach that aspect of filming scenes and the need to imagine what they’ll look like in the end?
Eh bien, la séquence finale est essentiellement une séquence entre moi et Jessie. Il y a le morceau de naissance, mais une fois que chacun est né, il a ce genre d'attitude ou de relation avec Jessie [pendant une brève période]. Il y a une version encore plus longue de cette séquence qui aurait pu être coupée, car il y avait beaucoup d'alternatives différentes que nous avons tirées tout au long.
En termes d'imagination à quoi allait ressembler les choses, pour la scène du pub, nous avions des gens qui ressemblaient un peu à ces personnages. Le stand-in de Geoffrey était dans la soixantaine, tandis que le stand-in du personnage du policier était à la fin de la vingtaine, au début des années 30, et ils avaient appris eux-mêmes les lignes. Nous avons donc continué à faire la scène comme vous le feriez à tout autre moment. Pour moi, je devais parfois rester concentré, donc je ne me suis pas glissé dans leurs lignes, parce que je le faisais ce matin-là, mais dans l'ensemble, j'ai pu jouer la scène à chaque fois comme le personnage que je jouais.
Vous avez joué plusieurs personnages sur une émission récente qui a généré beaucoup de buzz:notre drapeau signifie Death_. Il y a eu quelques autres projets où vous avez fait cela aussi. Ces types de performances Multicharacter vous plaisent-ils?
C'est drôle, parce que je suis allé directement à L.A. [pour votre drapeau signifie mort_] à l'arrière de ce tournage, et j'ai découvert que je suis passé d'une salle de maquillage avec une image imprimée en 3D de ma tête me regardant pendant six semaines, immédiatement dans une autre salle de maquillage avec un buste 3D de ma tête qui me regarde. Ces jours-ci, vous pouvez simplement envoyer des détails et ils l'impriment pour vous. J'ai donc joué plusieurs versions de moi-même dans une seule scène quatre fois. Je l'ai fait dans penny Dreadful. Je l'ai fait dans inside n ° 9, un spectacle britannique, et évidemment ces deux-là aussi. Et c'est un créneau étrange à avoir.
Peut-être que c'est juste parce que je suis très bon marché qu'ils pensent qu'ils peuvent en obtenir plus, ou peut-être que je suis si cher qu'ils doivent en tirer le meilleur parti. Je ne sais pas. Nous ne parlons pas de ces choses. Mais oui, en termes de changements de ton, vous ne pouvez rien obtenir aussi nettement différent que ces deux-là.
Alex Garland’s Men , avec Jessie Buckley et Rory Kinnear, est dans les salles maintenant.
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