By James Mottram
“What I liked was that here was an opportunity for a film to be neither deeply conservative and Sunday school, and neither hugely revisionist,” says Joseph Fiennes. “There was a balance to be had, where you could invite an audience of all faiths and beliefs to sit in the auditorium and enjoy a wonderful piece of cinema.” The new historical thriller, Risen, takes a decidedly unconventional approach to the oft-told crucifixion story. Co-written and directed by Kevin Reynolds (Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves, Waterworld), this taut procedural sees Fiennes – the ever busy star of films like Shakespeare In Love and Strangerland, and TV series such as Camelot and American Horror Story – play Clavius, a veteran Roman military tribune tasked with solving the mystery of what happened to Jesus in the weeks following the crucifixion, in order to disprove the rumours of a risen Messiah and prevent an uprising in Jerusalem. But along with his protégé, Lucius (Tom Felton), the burnt out soldier quickly realises the gravity of his mission, and the complex web of motivations from his superiors that drives it.
Though still youthful and impressively physical at 45-years-of-age, Fiennes’ character is weary and emotionally broken down beyond his years, and the actor effectively taps into the demons that plague him. “Clavius is at the end of his military career,” Fiennes says. “He’s exhausted, and possibly suffering from what we’d now call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. With the accumulation of death and crucifixion that he’s witnessed, he’s just exhausted. He’s prepped for change, and he’s vulnerable to change. He’s spiritual and has a philosophy and integrity and he’s in the place for a change. You could also say that it’s all part of God’s plan. If you were religious, you could say, ‘This is interesting: maybe the plan is to choose someone of his dynamic to do this job.’ I like that. There are a lot of threads that you could draw from.”
Obviously unable to hang with Roman centurions to prepare for the role, Fiennes instead went to the contemporary equivalent, meeting with a number of police detectives to get a feel for Clavius, who deals with death every day in order to find answers and force change. “Sometimes I have ideas,” Fiennes says of taking this route for his research. “It’s just about finding a way in. I don’t know if those ideas are right or wrong. But with Risen, the film is structured as a number of interrogations. I wouldn’t know how to interrogate anyone, so I was like, ‘Okay, let me go to a professional who deals in murder investigations.’ What came out were a couple of things. It was interesting…this one cop talked about why detectives smoke. Columbo, why does he smoke? Well, he likes cigars, but also, he’s got the smell of death in his nostrils. And when you go home after you’ve seen dead bodies, you smell. Once you’ve smelt that, it’s in your psyche. You can’t get rid of it. Clavius is always washing and cleansing. He has a rosemary plant, and he’s always trying to get rid of the smell of death. And I think that goes back to that point that he’s prepped and ready for change; he’s saturated to a point. And then he gets this moment of redemption, which religious or not, we can all adhere to. He gets the sense of a second chance, and that’s another theme in the movie. He gets to meet Christ, and he gets offered a second chance. The film is about redemptive power, and I like that. It doesn’t have to be religious.”
The Christ that Fiennes meets in Risen is played by New Zealand-born actor, Cliff Curtis (Fear The Walking Dead), who chose to avoid his co-star for the duration of the shoot, feeling that their separation would create an appropriate sense of distance between these two men on opposing sides of the theological divide. Curtis also chose to regularly wash the feet of the actors playing his disciples in the film. “Every actor has their own way in, and their own methodology, and I respect that,” Fiennes says. “I love that, because it’s all about claiming the territory and the character, and setting up an environment for the creativity and the energy to work. Likewise, I kept away from Cliff and the actors playing the disciples, until we were filming. But I would hear the tent next door roaring with laughter as jokes were told, and I would hear how they went out to dinner that night, and I was just feeling lonely with Tom Felton in another tent – I was fiercely jealous but not showing it! So it was nice when I was finally accepted into this group. On a serious note, it’s all about laying down the platform for the narrative and the characters to play out. It was three months of no eye contact or talking. For Clavius, Christ doesn’t exist for much of the story, and I wanted to save that moment. It’s a very complex and emotional moment, and a big turning point for Clavius. So we were working very hard to ramp that up for the cameras.”
And what about Joseph Fiennes himself? Is he a religious man? Did he go to church every Sunday as a boy? “I did that, yes,” the actor replies. “I wouldn’t say that my childhood was fiercely religious. I’m baptised Catholic, but I’ve lapsed in every which way. But I think that there are certain values in my life that I adhere to that I learnt as a kid.”
Risen is released in cinemas on February 18.
