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    ‘The Instigators’ Review: A Star-Studded Boston Heist Movie

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    Casey Affleck and Matt Damon star in a Boston heist that goes sideways.The best joke in “The Instigators” is a crack about the public school curriculum in Quincy, the suburb just south of Boston that outsiders never pronounce correctly. (It’s closer to a “z” than an “s.”) It feels like an inside joke, as do later affectionate jabs at other Greater Boston locales, lingo and corrupt politicians. This is sort of a heist movie, but it is first and foremost a Boston movie, full of Boston guys and Boston accents and (South) Boston places and Boston humor. Heck, “The Instigators” is practically Boston: The Immersive Experience.It will surprise no one to learn that it’s produced by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, and co-stars Damon alongside the movie’s co-writer, Casey Affleck. Its other writer is Chuck MacLean, the creator and executive producer of “City on a Hill,” the three-season Showtime drama about, you guessed it, Boston.The director of “The Instigators,” Doug Liman, is a born and raised New Yorker. But both he and Damon found collaborative success in 2002 with “The Bourne Identity.” This is their first project together since that hit, and it’s studded with stars: Alongside Affleck and Damon, there’s Hong Chau, Michael Stuhlbarg, Alfred Molina, Ving Rhames, Paul Walter Hauser, Toby Jones, Ron Perlman and the rapper Jack Harlow (in his second feature film role).Somehow, in 2024, all that wattage still only merits a one-week limited theatrical release in the August dead zone and a quick hop to streaming. Given a few weeks in theaters to pick up steam, I can imagine it doing well, mostly because it’s so easygoing. “The Instigators” starts out like an “Ocean’s 11” riff, with a group of petty thieves gathered by a stormy crime boss, Mr. Besegai (Stuhlbarg), to pull off a big job and then never speak of it again. It seems the sitting governor (Perlman, ideally cast) is a crook, which all but guarantees his re-election — and the cash bribes that will be brought to his victory ball make it an ideal job.Some of the group, like Rory (Damon), really need the money; he’s depressed and desperate and late on his child support, and his therapist (Chau) is worried about him. Others, like Cobby (Casey Affleck) and Scalvo (Harlow), are just the kind of guys who do this kind of thing. But Mr. Besegai is not Mr. Ocean, having snagged none of his breezy luck. Everything goes wrong right from the start, and Cobby and Rory find themselves thrown together in a comedy of blunders.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Drive-Away Dolls’ Review: A Mirthless Joyride

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      Directing without his brother, Ethan Coen brings the usual mix of highbrow references and petty crimes, but this road movie just stalls out.The title of Ethan Coen’s leaden romp “Drive-Away Dolls” summons up the vulgar excesses of old-school exploitation cinema, with its horrors and pleasures, carnage and flesh. If only! The promising setup involves two friends — the dreary duo of Margaret Qualley as Jamie and Geraldine Viswanathan as Marian — who, during a 1999 road trip from Philadelphia to Florida, come into possession of a briefcase wanted by some bad, violent men. There will be blood, yup, if not enough to obscure the inert staging, D.O.A. jokes and wooden performances.This is the most recent movie that Ethan Coen has made without his brother, Joel, his longtime collaborator. (Ethan also made the 2022 documentary “Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind.”) To a degree, “Drive-Away Dolls” seems of a piece with the Coens’ practice of playing with story forms (film genres and otherwise), which they have consistently satirized, upended and all but gutted. Mixing the ostensibly high with the putatively low, they sample and riff on populist and rarefied sources, the spiritual and the material. This can create a fascinating doubling in the sense that there’s the movie in front of you and its layered references, all of which can flow together when they don’t congeal, which alas happens here.Written by Coen and his wife, Tricia Cooke, “Drive-Away Dolls” opens on an old-style neon bar sign spelling out the word “Cicero,” immediately suggesting that you’re in familiar Coen territory. This nod to the philosopher puts you on alert, but it also feels like bait for those aficionados eager to sift through signs and meanings (which can be a self-flattering exercise for filmmakers and for viewers). Soon enough, the camera is prowling inside the bar where a panicked-looking man (Pedro Pascal as the Collector) sits in a booth clutching a briefcase to his body. After exchanging words with a curiously hostile waiter, the Collector scurries down a shadowy Chandleresque mean street before taking a fatal turn into a nightmarish alley.This particular briefcase contains another of moviedom’s great whatsits, one of those mysteries that, like knowledge itself, some people have, others are desperate to obtain and still others eventually regret having. After some character introductions — enter Jamie, Marian et. al. — and pro forma scene-setting, the movie gets down to business and the briefcase changes hands. For reasons that make sense mostly as a screenwriting contrivance, the two friends secure a car from a guy named Curlie (Bill Camp) and hit the road, with plans to visit Marian’s aunt in Tallahassee. There’s some sweet, sticky stuff, too: Jamie, who has broken up with her girlfriend, a tough cop named Sukie (Beanie Feldstein), thinks Marian needs to get laid. Marian does too, so there are more bars in their future.The women’s journey proves eventful; yet while they rack up both miles and conquests, and despite some flashy editing, “Drive-Away Dolls” remains inert. After their car blows a tire, Jamie and Marian find the briefcase in the trunk along with a hatbox. The two cases contain clues — by turns grisly and notionally amusing — which fit into a larger story that incorporates enough dildos to secure the movie its R rating; nods to Henry James; a dog named after Alice B. Toklas; and assorted attractions, including a family-values politician (Matt Damon), a dapper gangland boss (Colman Domingo as the Chief) and a couple of quarrelsome cartoon minions (Joey Slotnick and C.J. Wilson as the Chief’s Goons).We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Maestro’ and the Fake Nose Hall of Fame

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      “Maestro” isn’t the first time a supersize sniffer set off a whiff of controversy. Here’s a look at the most notable schnozzes onscreen.In August, the first trailer for “Maestro,” a biopic of Leonard Bernstein, the composer of “West Side Story” and so much more, set off a backlash almost immediately: Bradley Cooper was wearing a prosthetic nose for the title role.Critics on social media accused the star, who is also the director, of playing into an antisemitic trope with the Size XL prosthesis — and asked whether someone who is Jewish would have been more sensitive about makeup choicesWhile Cooper and Netflix, where “Maestro” will begin streaming on Wednesday, declined to comment. In a statement at the time, Bernstein’s three children, who had been working with Cooper on the film, came to the actor’s defense, noting in a series of posts on X, “It happens to be true that Leonard Bernstein had a nice, big nose.” (The family declined to offer additional comment.)It’s hardly the first time an oversize septum has made an onscreen appearance or courted controversy. Here are 12 of the most memorable fake noses in cinematic history, sorted by size from dainty 🥸 to elephantine 🥸🥸🥸🥸🥸.Orson Welles, ‘Touch of Evil’🥸Universal PicturesLike Edmond Rostand’s poet and swordsman, Cyrano de Bergerac, Orson Welles was obsessed with his nose. (He believed his was too small; it was, of course, completely normal.) But instead of channeling his fixation into a healthy pursuit like, say, helping another man win the affections of his own beloved, he sported dozens of fakes over his career. One of the largest was the pugnacious pair of nostrils he wore as the corrupt police captain Hank Quinlan in the 1958 murder mystery “Touch of Evil.”Nicole Kidman, ‘The Hours’🥸Clive Hoote/Paramount PicturesNicole Kidman may have delivered a stirring performance as Virginia Woolf in “The Hours” (2002), but Denzel Washington joked that it was the prosthetic beak she wore that won her the best actress Academy Award. (“The Oscar goes to, by a nose, Nicole Kidman,” he joked when announcing her win.) Kidman wore a fresh one each day on set, though she told The Associated Press that she hung on to a silver one she was given when shooting wrapped.Ralph Fiennes, ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2’🥸Warner Bros.Is that thing even functional? Probably not; snakes don’t have noses — just nostrils — and smell with their forked tongues. We wouldn’t be surprised if J.K. Rowling’s reptilian baddie in this 2011 franchise finale had one of those, too. But at least we may finally have an answer as to what Voldemort’s unnaturally long fingers are good for.: Nose-picking.Meryl Streep, ‘The Iron Lady’🥸Alex Bailey/Weinstein CompanyLike Kidman, Meryl Streep rode the prosthetic nose she donned to play the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in Phyllida Lloyd’s 2011 biopic to an Oscar win (her third). But this time, the transformation’s genius was in its subtlety — when the first photos of Streep on set were released, the press made nary a peep about the nose.Laurence Olivier, ‘Richard III’ 🥸🥸Laurence Olivier as Richard IIILondon Film ProductionsUnlike Welles, Laurence Olivier didn’t habitually don a fake nose for his roles because of a perceived insecurity about the size of his own; rather, it was just one of the suite of theatrical accessories, including masks and wigs, that he, and many other actors, used transform into various characters. In “Richard III” (1955), which Olivier also directed, his character’s nose is, as one blogger put it, “majestically prominent.”Rudolph, ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’🥸🥸Rankin/Bass Productions and NBCWith a workshop of Santa’s elves nearby in this 1964 special, the best Rudolph’s dad, Donner, could do to help his son fit in at school was make a fake nose from mud? He won’t be winning any father-of-the-year awards for that effort.Margaret Hamilton, ‘The Wizard of Oz’🥸🥸🥸MGMMargaret Hamilton came by some of the goods to play the Wicked Witch of the West naturally: She was known for her overlarge nose, which her own father had encouraged her to have surgically altered. But she got the last laugh when she landed the role of the now-iconic villain in “The Wizard of Oz” (1939) — for which her nose was made even longer (and greener).Matt Damon, ‘Ocean’s Thirteen’🥸🥸🥸Warner Bros., via AlamySure, there are performers with bigger noses on this list, but Matt Damon might be the only one who planned a con around his. In this 2007 sequel, his character, Linus, dons the prosthesis — which Damon nicknamed “The Brody” in a nod to the actor Adrien Brody’s well, you know — in a bid to disguise himself and gain access to a case full of diamonds.Steve Carell, ‘Foxcatcher’🥸🥸🥸Scott Garfield/Sony Pictures ClassicsSteve Carell’s souped-up schnozz in this 2014 true-crime tale may have left some people scratching their heads — the real-life version of his character, John du Pont, the millionaire wrestling enthusiast-turned-murderer, wasn’t well known, so the attention to detail seemed excessive. But the nose did serve another purpose: It made audiences forget they were staring at Carell, who was known mainly for comedies at the time.Alec Guinness, ‘Oliver Twist’🥸🥸🥸🥸United Artists, via Alamy StockCharles Dickens wrote Fagin in “Oliver Twist” as a thoroughly antisemitic villain, and in the 1948 film adaptation, Alec Guinness, the non-Jewish actor who played the character, spoke in a droning lisp and appeared with hooded eyes and an enormous prosthetic hook nose. The nose was deemed “incredibly insensitive,” as The Jewish Chronicle wrote, and it provoked significant anger from Holocaust survivors.Billy Crystal, ‘The Princess Bride’🥸🥸🥸🥸20th Century Fox, via AlamyBilly Crystal was already so funny in “The Princess Bride” (1987) that the director, Rob Reiner, claimed that he had to leave the set during Crystal’s scenes as Miracle Max because he was unable to contain his laughter. Adding a bulbous tomato of a nose took Crystal’s physical comedy over the top. (Mandy Patinkin, who played Inigo Montoya, actually bruised a rib trying to stifle his own chuckles.)Steve Martin, ‘Roxanne’🥸🥸🥸🥸🥸Columbia PicturesYou could land a bird on that thing (which the director, Fred Schepisi, did.) Steve Martin’s five-inch appendage for the 1987 film took 90 minutes to apply every day and two minutes to remove. “God how I hated that thing,” he told The Washington Post. More

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      ‘Oppenheimer’ Review: A Man for Our Time

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      Christopher Nolan’s complex, vivid portrait of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb,” is a brilliant achievement in formal and conceptual terms.“Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan’s staggering film about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man known as “the father of the atomic bomb,” condenses a titanic shift in consciousness into three haunted hours. A drama about genius, hubris and error, both individual and collective, it brilliantly charts the turbulent life of the American theoretical physicist who helped research and develop the two atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II — cataclysms that helped usher in our human-dominated age.The movie is based on “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” the authoritative 2005 biography by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. Written and directed by Nolan, the film borrows liberally from the book as it surveys Oppenheimer’s life, including his role in the Manhattan Engineer District, better known as the Manhattan Project. He served as director of a clandestine weapons lab built in a near-desolate stretch of Los Alamos, in New Mexico, not far from a cabin that Oppenheimer had, he and many other of the era’s most dazzling scientific minds puzzled through how to harness nuclear reactions for the weapons that killed tens of thousands instantly, ending the war in the Pacific.The atomic bomb and what it wrought define Oppenheimer’s legacy and also shape this film. Nolan goes deep and long on the building of the bomb, a fascinating and appalling process, but he doesn’t restage the attacks; there are no documentary images of the dead or panoramas of cities in ashes, decisions that read as his ethical absolutes. The horror of the bombings, the magnitude of the suffering they caused and the arms race that followed suffuse the film. “Oppenheimer” is a great achievement in formal and conceptual terms, and fully absorbing, but Nolan’s filmmaking is, crucially, in service to the history that it relates.The story tracks Oppenheimer — played with feverish intensity by Cillian Murphy — across decades, starting in the 1920s with him as a young adult and continuing until his hair grays. The film touches on personal and professional milestones, including his work on the bomb, the controversies that dogged him, the anti-Communist attacks that nearly ruined him, as well as the friendships and romances that helped sustain yet also troubled him. He has an affair with a political firebrand named Jean Tatlock (a vibrant Florence Pugh), and later weds a seductive boozer, Kitty Harrison (Emily Blunt, in a slow-building turn), who accompanies him to Los Alamos, where she gives birth to their second child.It’s a dense, event-filled story that Nolan — who’s long embraced the plasticity of the film medium — has given a complex structure, which he parcels into revealing sections. Most are in lush color; others in high-contrast black and white. These sections are arranged in strands that wind together for a shape that brings to mind the double helix of DNA. To signal his conceit, he stamps the film with the words “fission” (a splitting into parts) and “fusion” (a merging of elements); Nolan being Nolan, he further complicates the film by recurrently kinking up the overarching chronology — it is a lot.It also isn’t a story that builds gradually; rather, Nolan abruptly tosses you into the whirl of Oppenheimer’s life with vivid scenes of him during different periods in his life. In rapid succession the watchful older Oppie (as his intimates call him) and his younger counterpart flicker onscreen before the story briefly lands in the 1920s, where he’s an anguished student tormented by fiery, apocalyptic visions. He suffers; he also reads T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” drops a needle on Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” and stands before a Picasso painting, defining works of an age in which physics folded space and time into space-time.This fast pace and narrative fragmentation continue as Nolan fills in this Cubistic portrait, crosses and recrosses continents and ushers in armies of characters, including Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh), a physicist who played a role in the Manhattan Project. Nolan has loaded the movie with familiar faces — Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Gary Oldman — some distracting. It took me a while to accept the director Benny Safdie as Edward Teller, the theoretical physicist known as the “father of the hydrogen bomb,” and I still don’t know why Rami Malek shows up in a minor part other than he’s yet another known commodity.As Oppenheimer comes into focus so does the world. In 1920s Germany, he learns quantum physics; the next decade he’s at Berkeley teaching, bouncing off other young geniuses and building a center for the study of quantum physics. Nolan makes the era’s intellectual excitement palpable — Einstein published his theory of general relativity in 1915 — and, as you would expect, there’s a great deal of scientific debate and chalkboards filled with mystifying calculations, most of which Nolan translates fairly comprehensibly. One of the film’s pleasures is experiencing by proxy the kinetic excitement of intellectual discourse.It’s at Berkeley that the trajectory of Oppenheimer’s life dramatically shifts, after news breaks that Germany has invaded Poland. By that point, he has become friends with Ernest Lawrence (Josh Hartnett), a physicist who invented a particle accelerator, the cyclotron, and who plays an instrumental role in the Manhattan Project. It’s also at Berkeley that Oppenheimer meets the project’s military head, Leslie Groves (a predictably good Damon), who makes him Los Alamos’s director, despite the leftist causes he supported — among them, the fight against fascism during the Spanish Civil War — and some of his associations, including with Communist Party members like his brother, Frank (Dylan Arnold).Nolan is one of the few contemporary filmmakers operating at this ambitious scale, both thematically and technically. Working with his superb cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, Nolan has shot in 65-millimeter film (which is projected in 70-millimeter), a format that he’s used before to create a sense of cinematic monumentality. The results can be immersive, though at times clobbering, particularly when the wow of his spectacle has proved more substantial and coherent than his storytelling. In “Oppenheimer,” though, as in “Dunkirk” (2017), he uses the format to convey the magnitude of a world-defining event; here, it also closes the distance between you and Oppenheimer, whose face becomes both vista and mirror.The film’s virtuosity is evident in every frame, but this is virtuosity without self-aggrandizement. Big subjects can turn even well-intended filmmakers into show-offs, to the point that they upstage the history they seek to do justice to. Nolan avoids that trap by insistently putting Oppenheimer into a larger context, notably with the black-and-white portions. One section turns on a politically motivated security clearance hearing in 1954, a witch hunt that damaged his reputation; the second follows the 1959 confirmation for Lewis Strauss (a mesmerizing, near-unrecognizable Downey), a former chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission who was nominated for a cabinet position.Nolan integrates these black-and-white sections with the color ones, using scenes from the hearing and the confirmation — Strauss’s role in the hearing and his relationship with Oppenheimer directly affected the confirmation’s outcome — to create a dialectical synthesis. One of the most effective examples of this approach illuminates how Oppenheimer and other Jewish project scientists, some of whom were refugees from Nazi Germany, saw their work in stark, existential terms. Yet Oppenheimer’s genius, his credentials, international reputation and wartime service to the United States government cannot save him from political gamesmanship, the vanity of petty men and the naked antisemitism of the Red scare.These black-and-white sequences define the last third of “Oppenheimer.” They can seem overlong, and at times in this part of the film it feels as if Nolan is becoming too swept up in the trials that America’s most famous physicist experienced. Instead, it is here that the film’s complexities and all its many fragments finally converge as Nolan puts the finishing touches on his portrait of a man who contributed to an age of transformational scientific discovery, who personified the intersection of science and politics, including in his role as a Communist boogeyman, who was transformed by his role in the creation of weapons of mass destruction and soon after raised the alarm about the dangers of nuclear war.François Truffaut once wrote that “war films, even pacifist, even the best, willingly or not, glorify war and render it in some way attractive.” This, I think, gets at why Nolan refuses to show the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, world-defining events that eventually killed an estimated 100,000 to upward of 200,000 souls. You do, though, see Oppenheimer watch the first test bomb and, critically, you also hear the famous words that he said crossed his mind as the mushroom cloud rose: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” As Nolan reminds you, the world quickly moved on from the horrors of the war to embrace the bomb. Now we, too, have become death, the destroyers of worlds.OppenheimerRated R for disturbing images, and adult language and behavior. Running time: 3 hours. In theaters. More

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      How Chris Messina Forced Matt Damon to Up His Game in ‘Air’

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      The “actor’s actor” ad-libbed so many funny threats that the movie star couldn’t keep a straight face and resorted to improvisation to keep up.Chris Messina has a hard time admitting that he’s funny.Even after his hilarious turn as a silver-tongued sports agent in “Air” and six seasons as a drolly charming doctor on the sitcom “The Mindy Project,” he is surprisingly self-critical when it comes to his comic abilities.“Comedy is so hard,” he said in a recent video call from his home in Los Angeles, adding an expletive for emphasis. “It’s hard to land a joke. So I still struggle with that. I’m best when I either don’t know it’s a comedy or don’t play it as a comedy — then you might find me funny.”This is difficult to believe if you’ve seen “Air.” As Michael Jordan’s outrageous, surly representative David Falk in the story of the creation of the Air Jordan sneaker, Messina is uproarious, screaming and swearing his way through fever-pitch negotiations with voluble panache. In the most memorable exchange, Messina calls the Nike scout and marketer Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) to lambaste him for secretly visiting the Jordan family. Messina goes utterly ballistic, hurtling around his office as he barks threats and insults involving various bits of bodily anatomy. The Ringer described him as the film’s “foul-mouthed” M.V.P.“Phone calls are usually just a bore,” Messina said thoughtfully, displaying an open and eager friendliness, pleased to be discussing the details of a craft he clearly loves. “There’s no one on the other line — sometimes there’s a script supervisor reading the lines off-camera.”Messina in “Air.” His scene partner, Matt Damon, was laughing so much that there were no usable takes of the character straight-faced in that sequence.Ana Carballosa/Amazon StudiosBut for “Air,” the director Ben Affleck had the idea to shoot both sides of the conversation simultaneously. He set up Damon and Messina in offices down the hall from each other, and had two sets of cameras rolling at the same time. “It felt more alive,” Messina said. “Matt and I could talk over each other, then we could improvise, then we could come together and say, ‘How about we change this to this?’ And then go back to our offices and keep going.”As Affleck told me in a recent phone interview, “All of the great lines in that scene are Chris’s improvisation.” And those improvisations, he said, had a particularly strong impact on Damon. “Matt could not keep a straight face. I had to use Matt laughing because there wasn’t a take of him playing it straight. He tried to play it straight, and he just couldn’t.”Damon explained that “it was already really funny on the page.” But when Messina came up with threats, “it dictated how I had to play the scene,” Damon said. “I had to start ad-libbing. I started talking to the background artists next to me, going, ‘It’s David Falk on the phone, sorry,’ and I just started laughing.”“Air” is Messina’s third appearance in an Affleck-directed film, after the Oscar-winning drama “Argo” and the period crime tale “Live by Night.” Affleck said, “I always look for work for Chris because he’s always so good. Every time he’s had the opportunity, he’s always done more than I envisioned or imagined.”Though “Live by Night” was not a commercial success, Affleck said he was “particularly proud” of Messina’s performance, for which he gained 40 pounds. “I said he could wear a body suit. He said no, it wouldn’t be the same,” Affleck said. “I can’t say enough good things about him.”Damon echoed the sentiment, describing his co-star as an actor’s actor, the kind “all the other actors always talk about. Did you see him in this? Or, he’s in that, that’ll be good.”Messina’s career started on the stage. A “tried and true New York theater actor” from Long Island, as he put it, he plied his trade “mostly Off Broadway, and Off Off Broadway, and sometimes Off Off Off Broadway, in the Bronx and in Queens and on the Lower East Side.” He speaks of those scrappy early days with a nostalgic air, reminiscing about plays “where the actors outnumbered the audience, or where, when it rained, it would leak on the stage,” he said. In short, he loved it.For a long time, Messina yearned to find glory the romantic way. “I really thought, stupidly, that Mike Nichols would discover me in a play and put me in ‘The Graduate 2,’ you know? I had read about Dustin Hoffman. But that never happened.”Instead, Messina transitioned to the screen. After a couple of small, forgettable parts in films like “Rounders” (with Damon) and “The Siege,” he landed his breakout role, on the final season of the funeral-home drama “Six Feet Under,” playing the amiable, strait-laced lawyer Ted Fairwell, the love interest of Lauren Ambrose’s Claire. On the strength of his work on that HBO drama, he began landing high-profile films, including Sam Mendes’s “Away We Go” and Woody Allen’s “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” as well as recurring parts on the cable dramas “Damages” and “The Newsroom.”Matt Damon said Messina was the kind of actor “all the other actors always talk about. Did you see him in this? Or, he’s in that, that’ll be good.”Amanda Hakan for The New York TimesMost viewers, though, probably know Messina best for his work on “The Mindy Project,” starring as the sometimes ill-tempered, sometimes charismatic Danny Castellano opposite the series creator, Mindy Kaling. When casting began in 2011, Kaling was specifically seeking actors she “hadn’t seen do a lot of comedy” or, if they were experienced, “weren’t the usual suspects they always send you,” she said in a recent interview.She knew he was perfect straight away. Describing him as one of the most comical actors she’s worked with, she said Messina was “so rooted in the truth of his character that he can’t help but be funny.”She attributes that expressly to the fact that he is not a traditional comedian. “Your average sitcom actor wants to hit their moments, make the day, and go home. Chris isn’t like that,” she said. “It’s almost exhausting, the level of honesty and truth he brings to every scene. He was really listening to my character and reacting if the character did something funny or absurd. He made me a better actor. I was listening better when I was with Chris, because he set the bar so high.”Although Messina proved well suited for the role, he originally didn’t even want to do it, turning down the part multiple times before relenting. (“Mindy wouldn’t take no for an answer,” he explained.) He was, he said, “very worried about every aspect of it,” including the commitment to a network comedy with 20-plus episodes per season, potentially for many years — perhaps making it more difficult for him to do the kind of serious work he dreamed of as a performer.“I wanted to do ‘Dog Day Afternoon.’ I wanted to do ‘Midnight Cowboy,’” he said. Though he liked the role and Kaling, “I was afraid of it running forever.” And, of course, he was afraid of something else: the genre. “I was afraid of not being able to keep up with them comedically,” he said. “I am afraid of jokes.”On the other hand, being afraid is what Messina wants. “Being scared of a role, of an opportunity, being challenged, that’s what I’m looking for. Maybe it’s corny or too actorly, but I do like finding closed doors inside of me.” More

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      Camille Cottin, de “Dix pour Cent” à Hollywood

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      Après le succès fulgurant de la série aux USA, la comédienne joue avec Matt Damon dans “Stillwater”, de Tom McCarthy. “Vous ne pouvez quasiment pas la quitter des yeux quand elle est à l’écran,” dit le réalisateur.The New York Times traduit en français une sélection de ses meilleurs articles. Retrouvez-les ici.Au coeur de la pandémie, à mi-chemin entre les sorties de “Ted Lasso” en août et de “Bridgerton” en décembre 2020, vous êtes peut-être tombé par hasard sur la série française diffusée sur Netflix “Dix pour cent” — “Call My Agent!”, en anglais — une parodie de l’industrie du divertissement à la fois tendre et absurde, vue depuis une agence artistique parisienne dont les agents, pour la plupart des amateurs de cinéma au grand cœur, se soumettent aux caprices de leurs clients très exigeants.Dans ce cas, vous êtes parmi les millions de spectateurs à avoir découvert Camille Cottin, l’actrice française qui incarne Andréa Martel, une dure à cuire aux yeux verts perçants qui s’échine à maintenir son agence à flot tandis que sa vie privée est en pleine désintégration.La série est l’une des rares à nous avoir remonté le moral pendant la pandémie. Elle a aussi incité le public américain à s’aventurer vers d’autres séries étrangères comme “Lupin” ou “Money Heist” (“La Casa de Papel”), à condition de surmonter “la barrière des sous-titres d’un pouce de haut” évoquée par le réalisateur de “Parasite” Bong Joon Ho dans son discours aux Golden Globes de 2020. Le succès de “Dix pour Cent” a inspiré des spin-offs en Grande-Bretagne, au Québec et en Turquie. Et il est maintenant question d’un long métrage qui verra Andrea Martel partir pour New York.Pourtant Camille Cottin, 42 ans, formée à la fois au théâtre et à la comédie à sketches, est passée complètement à côté du phénomène qu’est devenu “Dix pour cent” aux États-Unis. Et pour cause: elle était confinée à Paris avec son mari et ses deux jeunes enfants — au final aussi malheureuse que nous.“J’étais bourrée d’inquiétudes pendant la pandémie et je me sentais assez tétanisée”, nous a confié Cottin lors d’une interview par vidéo, en anglais. “Je voulais être créative, mais je ne l’étais pas du tout. Et j’avais aussi le sentiment que je ne pourrais plus jamais retravailler. J’avais peur.”“Et là, vous me dites que pendant la pandémie, tout le monde regardait “Call My Agent!”. J’étais à mille lieues de ça, au contraire, je me sentais enterrée vivante”, a-t-elle ajouté avec un rire sombre.Camille Cottin en agent artistique dans “Dix pour cent” — “Call My Agent!” aux USA — entourée de Grégory Montel, à gauche, et d’Assad Bouab.Christophe Brachet/NetflixCottin menait cette interview dans la voiture qui la ramenait chez elle après un essayage de robes pour le Festival de Cannes. (Pour les fans de “Dix pour cent”: ce n’était pas une robe à plumes comme celle qui embarrasse Juliette Binoche à la fin de la Saison 2). Dans son nouveau film “Stillwater”, Cottin est Virginie, une comédienne active et mère célibataire qui vient en aide à un père plein de remords — Matt Damon— venu à Marseille avec un plan mal ficelé. Pour la critique du New York Times Manohla Dargis, elle est “électrique”. Vanity Fair qualifie sa performance de “brillante et attachante”.La scène dans la voiture était un peu moins glamour. Sa fille de 6 ans dormait profondément, la tête sur les genoux de maman. Et quand la voiture s’est arrêtée, j’ai vu Cottin, multitâche, en pleine action, sa fille ensommeillée et une boule de taffetas rose sur un bras, son appel vidéo toujours en cours au bout de l’autre, le ciel lumineux de Paris en arrière-plan. Elle s’est interrompue un instant pour coucher sa fille, puis a poursuivi la conversation assise sur le carreau de sa salle de bain — un compromis qu’elle a fait avec son enfant qui lui avait demandé de ne pas trop s’éloigner. Puis son mari, Benjamin, rentre à la maison. “Le père est là !” s’exclame-t-elle. “Si ç’avait été Virginie, elle aurait eu à gérer cette situation seule”.Après un petit rôle en 2016 dans “Allied”, un film avec Brad Pitt, avec “Stillwater” c’est cette fois un public américain bien plus large que Camille Cottin a l’occasion de toucher. Il s’agit là sans doute d’un rôle qui la fera officiellement passer aux Etats-Unis, du statut d’actrice française peu connue à celui de sensation mondiale. Avant la fin de l’année, on la retrouvera aussi aux côtés de Lady Gaga et d’Adam Driver dans “House of Gucci” de Ridley Scott, où elle incarnera Paola Franchi, la petite amie de Maurizio Gucci (Driver). Et elle devrait retrouver le rôle d’Hélène, membre influente de l’organisation criminelle des Douze, dans la série “Killing Eve” de la BBC.Le public étranger a découvert le talent de Cottin bien avant que nous, les Américains, ne soyons confinés chez nous. Quand “Call My Agent!” est passé à la télévision britannique, Cottin a pris conscience que la série avait trouvé un public outre-Manche. C’était en 2019, et elle participait à un festival de directeurs de casting à Kilkenny, en Irlande, avec son propre agent français. Soudain, elle s’est retrouvée au centre de l’attention.“Ils me disaient, ‘Oh je peux faire un selfie avec vous?’ et moi je disais: ‘Quoi? Mais vous êtes le directeur de casting de James Bond!’,” se souvient-elle avec un éclat de rire.C’est grâce à ce voyage, puis à un deuxième à Londres, qu’elle a été castée dans “Gucci” et qu’elle a rencontré le producteur de “Killing Eve”.Camille Cottin dit qu’elle a beaucoup moins d’assurance qu’Andrea, son personnage dans “Dix pour cent”. “Quand je dois faire un choix, ça me prend longtemps, toujours trop longtemps. Et je demande l’avis de tout le monde.”Tania Franco Klein pour The New York TimesMais “Dix pour cent” n’a pas joué dans la décision du réalisateur de “Stillwater”, Tom McCarthy, d’engager Cottin — il n’avait pas encore vu la série quand il l’a rencontrée. Il a engagé la comédienne sur la base d’une audition dont il dit qu’elle les a stupéfiés, lui et ses co-scénaristes, Thomas Bidegain et Noé Debré.“Vous ne pouvez quasiment pas la quitter des yeux quand elle est à l’écran”, a-t-il dit récemment, lors d’une interview depuis la France. “Elle est un peu éparpillée, un peu dans tous les sens. Elle est drôle, elle a de l’autodérision, elle est empathique. Elle est coriace. Elle est directe. Et je continue à ressentir tout ça après l’avoir vue pendant un an et demi en salle de montage, chaque moment avec elle est intense.”Pour Cottin, le personnage de Virginie, qui est ouverte, maternelle et toujours à la recherche de quelque chose à réparer (comme le rustre venu de l’Oklahoma qu’incarne Matt Damon), est son quasi-double.“De tous les personnages que j’ai eu à jouer, Virginie est celui dont je me sens le plus proche”, dit-elle, même si c’est l’un des rares rôles qu’elle ait tournés en anglais. “Nous avons la même énergie. Et jusqu’à maintenant, on m’a surtout castée dans des rôles de femmes plus tendues. Un peu plus dans le contrôle.”Cottin est d’un naturel désarmant, évident dès le premier contact, en totale contradiction avec le vernis glacial de son personnage dans “Dix pour cent”. Elle ne se prend pas trop au sérieux — McCarthy dit qu’elle est “gaffeuse” — et on réalise vite son grand potentiel comique. Celui-ci se révèle au grand jour dans son rôle français le plus connu, le rôle principal de l’émission TV humoristique “Connasse”. Parmi d’autres exploits, elle y escalade la grille de Kensington Palace dans l’espoir de rencontrer le prince Harry.Camille Cottin avec Matt Damon et Lilou Siauvaud dans “Stillwater”. Elle a décroché le rôle sur la base d’une audition avec le réalisateur Tom McCarthy, qui n’avait pas vu “Dix pour Cent”.Jessica Forde/Focus FeaturesDominique Besnehard, l’un des producteurs de “Dix pour cent”, dit de Cottin qu’elle est “celle qui est jolie, mordante, audacieuse” et qui, dans le rôle d’Andréa, “est très douée pour passer de la dureté à la fragilité”.Pour Cottin, Andréa est un personnage qu’elle admire et comprend à la fois, mais qu’elle ressent très éloignée de sa propre personnalité.“J’ai beaucoup moins d’assurance qu’Andréa. Elle est plus sûre d’elle, plus stratégique et plus douée pour prendre des décisions”, estime-t-elle. “Quand je dois faire un choix, ça me prend longtemps, toujours trop longtemps. Et je demande l’avis de tout le monde.”Si Cottin ne manque certainement pas d’assurance quant à sa carrière, en tant qu’actrice quarantenaire, elle est très consciente que les succès qu’elle connaît aujourd’hui ne présage en rien de l’avenir.“Peut-être que si j’avais 20 ans, je me dirais : ‘Oh mon Dieu, je vais peut-être décrocher un Oscar’,” dit-elle en riant, d’un accent américain moqueur. “Ce n’est jamais vertical. Vous pouvez faire un pas, vous pouvez penser que vous êtes arrivée au sommet et puis soudain, vous pouvez descendre. Rien n’est une ligne droite. Pour moi ces projets sont des voyages, des voyages magnifiques. Je ne peux pas dire ‘Oh, maintenant que j’ai fait ça, je peux vous dire ce qui va suivre’, parce que je ne le sais pas. Et ça ne veut pas dire que ça arrivera de nouveau.”Besnehard estime qu’elle pourrait mener une carrière comme Binoche, avec des rôles à la fois en France et aux États-Unis. “J’espère que les Américains ne la monopoliseront pas”, prévient-t-il.Pour McCarthy, la trajectoire de Cottin est bien plus claire.“Je prédis de grandes choses pour Cami, et pas seulement grâce à notre film, dans lequel je la trouve sensationnelle, mais simplement parce que son heure est arrivée,” assure-t-il. “On le sent, quand quelqu’un a mérité un moment dans sa carrière et a travaillé le temps qu’il a fallu, et est prêt à en prendre les rênes.” More

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      ‘Stillwater’, l’autre tragédie américaine

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      Dans le dernier film de Tom McCarthy, le rôle tenu par Matt Damon est sur-travaillé, d’une réserve plombante. Mais l’électrique Camille Cottin donne de la force à son personnage et de la gravité à ses scènes.The New York Times traduit en français une sélection de ses meilleurs articles. Retrouvez-les ici.A l’évidence, quand les films americains veulent parler des États-Unis, qui plus est de sujets grandioses, profonds ou symboliques, ils ont tendance à retenir leurs coups. Cette timidité peut s’expliquer de différentes façons, au rang desquelles la peur de heurter la délicate sensibilité du public figure évidemment en bonne place. C’est ainsi que des récits éminemment politiques ne prennent que rarement parti, et que des films au ton très sérieux comme “Stillwater” finissent par couler sous le poids de leurs bonnes intentions.Dans “Stillwater”, le dernier opus du réalisateur Tom McCarthy (à qui l’on doit notamment “Spotlight”), Matt Damon joue Bill Baker. Il coche toutes les cases du personnage-type acculé par les déboires du capitalisme tardif, y compris les jobs qui ne mènent nulle part, les agonies familiales et la masculinité blessée . Il offre aussi une touche d’exotisme à l’hollywoodienne : il vient de l’Oklahoma. Ancien toxicomane, Bill alterne désormais entre le maniement du marteau et la prière. Fier, dur, solitaire, et dont l’impassibilité peine à cacher la violence qui l’habite, il mène une petite vie morose dans une petite maison morose. Il ne dit pas grand-chose, mais présente tous les symptômes du blues de l’homme blanc.Il traîne aussi un fardeau, en la personne de sa fille, Allison, (l’erreur de casting Abigail Breslin), qui purge une peine dans une prison marseillaise, condamnée pour le meurtre sauvage de sa petite amie. L’histoire conçue par McCarthy (qui a co-écrit le scénario avec d’autres auteurs) s’inspire de celle d’Amanda Knox, une Américaine étudiant en Italie condamnée pour un meurtre remontant à 2007. Une affaire qui avait fait un scandale international. La peine de Knox a finalement été annulée, et son retour aux États-Unis immortalisé par de sordides gros titres dans la presse, des livres, des documentaires et, en 2015, par un long-métrage alimentaire avec Kate Beckinsale.À l’image de ce film-là, qui traite des travers de médias vampiriques et sensationalistes, “Stillwater” s’intéresse moins aux détails de l’affaire Knox qu’aux lecons morales que l’on peut en tirer. Juste après la scène d’ouverture, puis un tour de l’habitat naturel de Bill — un paysage gothique industriel et des diners de malbouffe peu fréquentés — il rend visite à Allison, un voyage qu’il a déjà entrepris à plusieurs reprises. Cette fois, il reste. Allison pense avoir une piste pour prouver son innocence, plongeant son père dans une enquête sans fin, qui pendant un moment, accélère le rythme du film.Loin d’être un cinéaste intuitif ou innovant, et comme beaucoup d’acteurs devenus realisateurs, McCarthy se montre plus apte à diriger des acteurs qu’à raconter visuellement une histoire. Filmé par Masanobu Takayanagi, “Stillwater” rend plutôt bien — c’est sérieux et professionnel — et Marseille fait son effet, par son soleil et sa face sombre, en faisant peser une atmosphere écrasante sur Bill qui parcourt la ville de long en large en quête d’indices et de méchants. Pas en reste non plus, l’acteur franco-algérien Moussa Maaskri, sous-utilisé, tire son épingle du jeu en incarnant l’un de ces détectives privés sournois et désabusés qui, comme le spectateur, a déjà tout compris bien avant Bill.Il se passe beaucoup de choses, y compris une relation soudaine et peu convaincante avec une comédienne de théâtre française appelée Virginie (l’électrique Camille Cottin, de la série “Dix pour cent”, ou “Call My Agent!” sur Netflix). Le personnage est un fantasme, un ange gardien avec un corps de rêve et une môme adorable (Lilou Siauvaud). Parmi ses autres traits peu crédibles, elle ne s’agace même pas du fait que Bill ne parle pas un mot de français. Mais Cottin, interprète charismatique dont la fébrile intensité crée sa propre force gravitationnelle, vous tient en haleine. Elle donne de la force à son personnage et de la gravité à ses scènes – un soulagement vu la réserve plombante de Bill.Il y a peu de joie dans la vie de Bill; le problème, c’est qu’il y a aussi peu de personnalité. Il est clair que Damon et McCarthy ont pensé l’homme sous toutes ses coutures, de ses chemises à carreaux à sa démarche bien crispée. Son personnage a l’air de souffrir de constipation depuis des semaines; surtout, il semble sur-travaillé, le fruit d’une conceptualisation trop poussée sans assez de sentiment, d’humanité identifiable ou d’idées bien définies. Et comme Bill ne parle pas beaucoup, il n’émerge qu’à travers ses actes et sa présence corporelle contrainte, ses yeux baissés et son visage en partie dissimulés par la visière baissée de sa casquette de baseball.On a ici affaire, comme on dit dans le milieu, à une performance engagée. Mais c’est aussi une performance frustrante par sa platitude. Davantage concept que personnage, Bill n’est pas ce père spécifique, cet Américain mal à l’aise à l’étranger : il est un symbole. McCarthy dévoile son jeu dès la première scène en Oklahoma, avec ce plan de Billbien cadré au centre de la fenêtre d’une maison qu’il aide à démolir. Une tornade a traversé la région, rasant tout sur son passage. Lorsque Bill s’arrête pour regarder autour de lui, prenant conscience des dégâts, la caméra s’attarde sur les survivants en pleurs, les décombres et la ruine. Un bon début, riche de potentiel; mais, au fur et à mesure de l’histoire, il devient évident qu’il ne s’agit pas juste d’une catastrophe, naturelle ou pas. Il s’agit d’un présage.A l’image de “Nomadland” et de nombre de film présntés au festival de Sundance, “Stillwater” se saisit de la figure classique de l’Américain stoïque, l’individualiste endurci qui, à ne compter que sur lui-même, s’enferme dans un piège, une voie sans issue et — si toutes les pièces du puzzle narratif s’assemblent — une tragédie. Et tout comme “Nomadland”, “Stillwater” tente de dire quelque chose des États-Unis (“Ya Got Trouble” — “Vous avez des ennuis”, comme le chantait The Music Man dans la comédie musicale éponyme) sans risquer de se couper du public en citant des noms ou en soutenant une position idéologique. Les temps sont durs, les Américains aussi (du moins dans les films). Ils gardent le silence, ils persévèrent, les yeux plissés face au soleil et au vide. Il leur arrive bien des malheurs, et c’est forcément de la faute de quelqu’un — et pourtant tout est tellement vague. More

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      When Matt and Ben Met Nicole: How They Came to Write ‘The Last Duel’

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      For their first writing reunion since “Good Will Hunting,” Ben Affleck and Matt Damon collaborated with the writer-director Nicole Holofcener on a period drama.It’s been nearly 25 years since Matt Damon and Ben Affleck wrote and starred in “Good Will Hunting,” and cemented the kind of Hollywood partnership where one name is rarely spoken without the other.But for their first writing reunion since then, “The Last Duel,” the men didn’t want just another version of The Matt and Ben Show. What they did want for this historical drama about a woman who was raped, and the men who refuse to believe her, was a female collaborator. And so they sought out the writer-director Nicole Holofcener, celebrated for her nuanced observations of thorny contemporary women in movies like “Enough Said” and “Friends With Money.”“The Last Duel,” directed by Ridley Scott, based on Eric Jager’s 2004 book and in theaters Oct. 15, depicts France’s final officially sanctioned trial by combat: In 1386, Jean de Carrouges, a knight, and his friend-turned-rival, Jacques Le Gris, a squire, are ordered to fight to the death after Carrouges’s wife, Marguerite, accuses Le Gris of raping her, and he denies it. Whoever survives will be proclaimed the winner as a sign of divine providence. Should Carrouges lose, Marguerite will be burned at the stake for perjury.The film, set amid the brutality of the Hundred Years’ War, is divided into three chapters — the “truth” according to Carrouges (played by Damon), Le Gris (Adam Driver) and finally, Marguerite (Jodie Comer). Damon and Affleck wrote the male perspectives, while Holofcener wrote Marguerite’s.“The heaviest lift in the architecture of this screenplay was the third act, because that world of women had to be almost invented and imagined out of whole cloth,” Damon said. “The men were very fastidious about taking notes about what they were up to at the time. But nobody was really talking about what was happening with the women, because they didn’t even have personhood.”“This is an adaptation of a book that we read,” he added, “but Nicole’s part is kind of an original screenplay.”Ben Affleck, left, Nicole Holofcener and Damon. Affleck sent her some pages he and Damon had written. “They weren’t good,” Holofcener said, “but they were good enough for me to say, ‘I want to work with these guys.’”From left: Magdalena Wosinska for The New York Times; Dan MacMedan/Getty Images; Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesOn a spirited video call in late August — Damon in Brooklyn, Affleck and Holofcener in Los Angeles — the three discussed the intricacies of their collaboration and of portraying sexual assault during a violent period when women were little more than chattel. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Let’s start at the beginning. Matt, it’s December 2018 and you’ve just read Jager’s book. What happened next?MATT DAMON Ridley and I had been looking for something to do together since “The Martian,” and we’d had a few near misses. So I sent it to Ridley, and he loved it. In March 2019, Ben came over for dinner, and he took the book that night and called me at 7 the next morning and said, “Let’s do this.” And that was how we set off to writing. But very quickly, through a bunch of different conversations we were having with a bunch of people, we decided that it would serve the story best if we found the best female writer we could to write the female perspective.NICOLE HOLOFCENER [Dryly] Plus, Ridley and I have been looking for something to do together for years.DAMON [Laughs] Oh, now I’m an [expletive]. Oh, God.HOLOFCENER No — no. Am I making fun of you? I didn’t mean that. I was just thinking about how different my sensibility is from Ridley’s. That’s all.DAMON Yeah, yeah. Well, Nicole was our dream writer and our first choice. And thank God she said yes. And she said yes in large part because Ben, behind my back, sent her about 10 or 15 pages that we hadn’t shown anybody. And I was so embarrassed, like professionally embarrassed, that he sent them to Nicole Holofcener.HOLOFCENER They weren’t good, but they were good enough for me to say, “I want to work with these guys.”DAMON I think they were bad enough that she was like, “Oh, these guys need help.”HOLOFCENER Bad enough so that I wasn’t intimidated to be able to write for medieval language, at least in English. But they’re so talented, and I was immediately very flattered. The only hesitation I had was, “Can I come out of my own little world and write about something like this?” And as soon as I started and I got their support, I found that I could do it.Jodie Comer as a 14th-century woman who accuses a squire of raping her.Patrick Redmond/20th Century StudiosSo why three chapters?BEN AFFLECK Very quickly, we recognized that the film has a clear point of view on who’s telling the truth. And that this incredibly heroic character, Marguerite de Carrouges, had this story that deserved to be told. It was evident that it was going to be an exploration of the dynamics of power, roots of misogyny and survival in medieval France. It had all the elements of what makes a story really great to tell — the idea of an unreliable narrator, a second unreliable narrator and then a kind of reveal of what happened through the eyes of a character who was both the hero and whose humanity was denied and ignored.HOLOFCENER But also, you get the fact that it wasn’t black and white to the men, and it was so black and white to the woman about what happened. So, the male point of views offer this perspective of male delusion.Nicole, Marguerite wasn’t nearly as fleshed out in the book. How did you go about creating her world?HOLOFCENER I did research about what women were like then and what they had to put up with. I gave her a friend to be able to talk to. I knew that she would have to take over the estate when he was away fighting. So I read up, “Well, what did they do?” Took care of the animals and the horses and the harvesting. And I really tried to imagine just how awful it was for her and how she dealt with the awfulness. Her life was pretty bad being married to Jean de Carrouges and so when she was violated, she had nothing to lose, really. I mean, she was going to suffer. She had the potential of suffering dearly and dying, but at that point she was just tired of having no voice.How do three writers keep things straight?AFFLECK Once the script got close to a completed stage, then it got passed around, emailed. In fact, one of the biggest challenges was the maddening technological aspects of keeping up with various versions — that they had included everyone else’s changes.HOLOFCENER We kept working off the wrong drafts. It was like: “Wait a minute. I took that line out two months ago. Why is it still there?” We’re not the most technically savvy.DAMON We had one of those moments where I think we’d done half a day on one of these things and we’re realizing, “Oh no, this is the wrong draft,” and then you have to try to go through and figure out what you’ve done.HOLOFCENER Matt doesn’t even have a laptop. So don’t get me started.How did you make sure you were portraying Marguerite’s rape accurately without exploiting it?AFFLECK We were especially sensitive and careful to really listen and do research, whether it was consulting with RAINN [an organization that helps victims of rape, abuse and incest], survivors of assault, historical experts, women’s groups, and trying to allow all of those other experiences to inform the story and make it as authentic as possible.HOLOFCENER I think that those organizations really, really wanted to make sure we were making it clear what the truth was — that this is not “he said, she said.” This is not ambivalent.AFFLECK We had questions like: “Are we whitewashing if we don’t show the emotional toll and the severity of this? To what extent does it become too much? And where do you feel the bounds of tastes are?”HOLOFCENER A lot of it was about how often do we see the rape and how long is it? How long do we have to suffer through this? That was a topic of conversation. And so we took their notes seriously and did a lot of trimming. We had to show some scenes twice, but it was necessary. We had to see the rape twice, as disturbing as it was to watch.Damon and Comer in “The Last Duel.” The writers had to decide how much of the attack to show given that it would be repeated to show different perspectives.20th Century StudiosWhat choices did you make to either stick with or depart from the book?DAMON The biggest departure is the rape scene. Marguerite de Carrouges, what she said in court and over and over again to an ever-widening group of people and eventually all of France, was that Jacques Le Gris entered her home with another man, Adam Louvel. We have in the movie Louvel coming in, but then Le Gris tells him to leave. In Marguerite’s actual testimony, the rape was much more brutal. She was tied down and gagged. She almost choked to death. And Louvel was in the room.HOLOFCENER [Le Gris] told himself he loved her.AFFLECK What was fascinating was the degree to which this behavior and attitude toward women was so thorough and pervasive, and the vestigial aspects that are still with us today. That’s really powerful. What we have hoped is people will look at it and go: “Have I always understood how my actions were being perceived by others? Have I always recognized other people’s reality, truth, perspective, in the course of my behavior?” And maybe reflect on that.Ben, I understood that you were originally going to portray Le Gris. And then you decided to play the libertine Count Pierre d’Alençon instead of facing off against Matt onscreen. Why?HOLOFCENER He came to his senses.AFFLECK What happened truly is that —DAMON We heard Adam Driver was interested. [Everyone laughs.] More