Yahoo Lifestyle Benedict Cumberbatch Talks Portraying A Father’s Grief In ‘The Thing With Feathers’ & Why He Loves Producing — Berlin Film Festival
Benedict Cumberbatch and writer-director Dylan Southern arrived in Berlin for the European bow of their family drama The Thing With Feathers, which recently had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.
Cumberbatch talked about how he sees grief and despair differently in his life, producing under his SunnyMarch label and also showered praise on the two young child actors that he worked with on The Thing With Feathers.
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The Thing With Feathers follows a young father (played by Cumberbatch) who is devastated by the sudden and unexpected death of his wife. Left with two sons, his sense of reality gradually slips as he is haunted by a seemingly malign presence in the apartment he shares with his children.
“A lot of this film is about letting go, and grief is also about letting go. Something that was there is no longer there,” said Cumberbatch. “You can say that that’s something that we do as actors. You definitely don’t want to take this work home in a literal sense, but in a more profound sense, learning as an artist or as a human being, it’s about letting go, just leaning in and having faith, rather than to over-study and overthink.”
Adapted from Max Porter’s novel “Grief is the Thing with Feathers,” the film is written and directed by Dylan Southern (Meet Me in the Bathroom) and also stars Richard Boxall, Henry Boxall, Sam Spruell and Vinette Robinson.
Porter’s novel was named a Sunday Times ‘Top 100 Novel of the Twenty-first Century’ and it was also adapted into a stage play that opened in Dublin in March 2018, and then toured to New York, Galway and London.
Southern said: “Structuring the film around the chapters, each pertaining to a different character came from a desire to stay true to Max’s book, where he is cycling through chapters by the boys or the crow, speaking in the past tense and very much feels like they’re looking back at this time from the future.”
Cumberbatch added: “I like material that allows the cinematic language to be seen and imagined in a non-verbal way,” said Cumberbatch. “This subconscious thing, the dream state, as a kind of manifestation of grief in the film… the fact that the father has lost his wife and he realizes that and breaks down in remorse and asks for the forgiveness — it’s definitely written into the script in the psychological way, but also in a pseudo- and semi-conscious way as well. Both of those states are really interesting because a lot of things are very non-verbal — unlike me, I’m very, unfortunately, very verbal.”
Cumberbatch also highlighted his friendship with Southern and said that they got along very well together, which allowed him to portray the emotional vulnerability of the father in his fullness.
“Children, a prosthetic giant crow suit and bits of tape on the floor for a dead wife, as opposed to an actual human — there were lots of things that weren’t always the perfect conditions for being vulnerable when making the film,” said Cumberbatch. “But I felt very supported and helped, primarily because of the friendship I had with this guy [Southern], which came about even before the working relationship.
“We had a lot of fun in pre-production, sometimes too much. So I knew there was trust and a good taste of cinema — both the art and artifice of it, and how to meet in the middle of both.”
Cumberbatch added that the film challenges traditional notions of masculinity — something that he looks for in scripts.
“Uncertainty and emotional vulnerability are not top of the agenda of the alpha male or the strong man image of what masculinity is, so I’m very happy to be part of storytelling that goes in the opposite direction of that,” said Cumberbatch.
“There is a massive difference between grief and despair,” added Cumberbatch. “Despair doesn’t have hope, despair is when you’re lost to grief. Grief is something you can live with… and I think this is true of art, where paying attention is the beginning of devotion, and anything that involves an act of devotion becomes a sacred act, so therefore you are then engaged with something of profound meaning, whether that’s in your work, belief or your practice, or how you relate to the world.”
Cumberbatch also spoke about his producing endeavors through his SunnyMarch label.
“I like producing because I can create an atmosphere for honest work, difficult work and for challenging work, and give a platform to new artists and people who are arriving with a fresh or new mode of speaking the truth, and hear what they have to say and give us culturally,” said Cumberbatch.
The Thing With Feathers, is produced by Andrea Cornwell with SunnyMarch’s Adam Ackland and Leah Clarke. The script was developed with Film4, which also executive produced and co-financed.
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