Good - Jason Isaacs interview

JASON Isaacs, whose film credits include the Harry Potter movies, The Patriot and Event Horizon, talks to us about starring in and producing Good, an ethically challenging insight into 1930s Germany and the rise to power of Hitler as seen through the eyes of the nation’s everyday people. He reveals the research that left him feeling very dark and the reasons why the film should make you feel uncomfortable afterwards. He was speaking at a UK round table...

Q. Can you talk us through the process of getting Good made, because I believe it was pretty difficult and you’re also executive producer?
Jason Isaacs: I am and it was very difficult mostly because I did two very, very stupid things. I was involved in it for a very long time because the real producer, Miriam Segal, who did all the work, asked me if I wanted to get involved a long time ago and I said: “No, you’re mad! You’ll never raise the money!” But then eventually when she did and had the thing up and running and was about to start filming in Germany… we were literally days away but there was a tiny cash flow problem which meant we just needed money until Wednesday to pay the crew who had been working unpaid for months, so I wrote a cheque and it was that cheque that brought the whole house of cards tumbling down and the film collapsed.

Q. What happened after that?
Jason Isaacs: At that point, Miriam said to me: “I’m going to get your money back and I’m going to make this film!” It felt like saying: “I’m going to learn how to fly…” But she did. She got all the money back, paid me back, and raised it again. We didn’t have an actor… a star, but I knew someone who knew Viggo Mortensen, who had very publicly said that he wasn’t working and wasn’t doing a film for a year. He wasn’t reading any scripts. So, I asked my friend if she would pass him the script, which was the second stupid thing because you can lose a friendship very easily doing that. She probably should have said “no” to me, but she knew Viggo and knew what kind of person he was and so gave him the script. Two pages into reading it, he said: “I know this play. I saw this play 25 years ago when I first started.” So, for those two reasons and for the many, many hundreds of hours I listened to the real producer on the phone bemoan her life falling apart I get an executive producer credit.

Q. How much of a relief is it to finally be talking about a finished product?
Jason Isaacs: It’s almost inconceivable to me that we’ve made it here. Because when we finally had the budget to make it and we had Viggo on board, it still took two years to get financed, and then I wasn’t available. I was doing a television series on Rhode Island [Brotherhood]. But Viggo and the director said: “We’re not making it without you..” It was very noble but really not practical. But the TV show released me for two chunks of 10 days and I got to make it.

So, at every stage it’s been uphill because it’s a very ethically challenging film – no one has super-powers in it, nobody does those things that we expect of movie characters to do. They don’t suddenly storm the Reichstag and shoot Hitler. And they don’t lead a convoy of refugees through secret tunnels in the hills to get over to Austria. They do the things that I do in my daily life. They make moral compromises that I recognise from my own life. It’s the kind of story that I’m proud to be involved in but which is much harder to sell.

Q. Do you think, though, that the delay has enabled you to come out at a more opportune moment given the current global situation and also the recent revival in Holocaust themed films?
Jason Isaacs: It’s very opportune. We came out in America last year [at the same time as The Reader] but ours is about the Thirties in Germany, which is a period of time that I’d not seen explored on camera. I have myself. But it has so many contemporary resonance’s. It was at a time when human lives were being curtailed and long fought for civil rights were being thrown away, but only for a very small section of society. Most people were seeing such enormous benefits, or were so scared by this group that were scape-goated, that although they thought it was extreme and probably unnecessary, they weren’t powerless to protest about it.

As we were raising the money for this, amazing things happened in the newspapers every day – the right to silence was done away with, and we find out that we’re invading a country based on lies, and we were detaining people without trial. Then, we were taking people to other countries to avoid the Geneva Convention and torturing them. So, stuff happens under our noses and I think: “Well, that’s in the newspaper and I can sound very loud about it at dinner parties in Hampstead but I’m doing absolutely bugger all to challenge it!” I can talk about it to you, but what does that achieve? I can march up and down Downing Street with a placard, but essentially I feel powerless. I feel powerless in many of the ethical choices that I make every day and that’s really what the film is about. It felt just right to be making it at this time.

Q. How important are films like this?
Jason Isaacs: We need art in times of crisis and difficulty to challenge us and to remind us to be human; to remind us to find our moral compass no matter how difficult it might be. And to work out when and where we’ve stepped over the line, so we can step back over them. First and foremost with any film, you’ve got to engage people so that they have a vicarious thrill through a story being told, so they can experience the drama of some other characters. And then if you’re lucky, you can do things on other levels that stay with them – that by taking that character’s journey they can be inspired to change themselves. That’s what our intention was going in – to give you a thoroughly engaging, provocative and challenging experience and that’s unusual in the cinema. But Good is an unusual film on that front because it doesn’t satisfactorily close all doors at the end and make you feel safe and that the world is still a wonderful place, that love conquers all and the good guys beat the bad guys, so let’s go and get a Chinese! You can’t do that after this one.

Q. I would imagine that the reaction to this film has been very varied. So what is the most surprising you’ve experienced?
Jason Isaacs: Well, for me, the thing that really blew me away was showing it in Eastern Europe. We’ve shown it in a lot of places in America and Israel and all those Western Europe cities and people were always challenged by how they identified with Viggo and at what point they stopped identifying with him and they allowed themselves to be distanced from him. But in Eastern Europe they don’t do that – not for a second. They don’t expect him to suddenly challenge authority and speak out, or defy anyone. They… the ones who are old enough to remember what it was like living under Communism recognise a reflection of their own powerlessness; the things that crushed and emasculated them for so long. And they see in Viggo and in Anne’s character the daily compromises that they made in order to live a life and raise a family and work. So, they had a completely different reaction. They didn’t judge any of the characters for a second.

Q. How easy was it to shake off your character at the end of the day?
Jason Isaac: I was doing a gangster series in America at the same time which, although it’s realistic, is not real. But I found the amount of research that I did for this… the amount of diaries and contemporary accounts that I read, and the specificity of it all… I thought I knew a lot about this period but the almost unimaginable horror and potential of man’s inhumanity to man stayed with me for a long time. It made me feel very, very depressed. There were a lot of things I didn’t know about the things that people did to each other.

I’m not talking about the slaughter in the gas chambers – that I knew – or even the people locked in carriages for weeks to get to the gas chambers having to eat each other and strangle their children rather than keep them in pain… you know all kinds of things like that. But I’m talking about the indignities of people who were your friends and neighbours, and contemporaries, just being given power and that power allowing them to do things that are beyond horrendous. They’d take your business from you, force themselves on you sexually, and take delight in all kinds of sadistic acts mentally and physically.

I think it reminded me of something I knew intellectually, but now I knew in a more visceral way – that we’re all capable of those things if the context is right. And we need to keep our eye on the context all the time to make sure it’s not nudging in that direction.