“When [the acting] is good, you just don’t see it. It’s seamless.”
Director Jim Sheridan barely had to direct Daniel Day-Lewis across their three film collaboration. “Casting is 99% of it” and Day-Lewis was such a technically perfect actor, the best of all time according to Sheridan, that Sheridan would sometimes nudge him a bit, to mess him up. “Daniel is so perfect.. my job, if I had one, was to mess it up… make it feel as real as I could.”
Sheridan found Day-Lewis’s intense commitment as a plus. Through full embodiment of character, Day-Lewis is able to convey emotional truth and believability to the audience. “You can’t act that” Sheridan says, and Day-Lewis’s physical embodiment of the character enabled to him transcend his own performance.
“Belief system” is the paramount communicative quality of a movie for Sheridan, and he strives for it in his films. After preparation, he steps back and lets the actors do their portrayal. Day-Lewis remarks, “in the case of Jim, I don’t need to read his stories I know he can write…apart from anything else, the script is completely meaningless because we always throw it away when we’re working anyhow [laughs].”
My Left Foot via Irish Times.
This unique approach contributes to their fruitful film collaboration of My Left Foot (1989), In the Name of the Father (1993), and The Boxer (1997). (Some spoilers ahead).
My Left Foot (1989) tells the true story of Christy Brown, an Irish writer and artist born with cerebral palsy who wrote and painted with his left foot. As the legend goes, Day-Lewis read the script and thought the opening scene of the film, where Brown uses his foot to operate a record player, would be impossible for anyone to perform. Through his great dedication and immersive process, Day-Lewis succeeded on the first take and portrayed Brown with a well-rounded complexity throughout the film, earning an Oscar for Best Actor.
Brown was a difficult man at times, and Roger Ebert writes of the film: “It is not an inspirational movie, although it inspires. It is not a sympathetic movie, although it inspires sympathy.” The film has a layered effect that is a successful synthesis of Day-Lewis’s performance and Sheridan’s writing and direction.
The film is an Irish story. Jim Sheridan is Irish and Day-Lewis, while raised in Britain, had an Irish father (the poet Cecil Day-Lewis) and maintains dual-citizenship. Ireland looms large in their next two films. Through their collaboration, I was able to explore a part of my own heritage.
Father-son scene from In the Name of the Father (1993).
In the Name of the Father (1993) documents the wrongful arrest and prison sentence of Gerry Conlon, one of the “Gilford Four,” for an IRA pub bombing in London during the 1970s. The then 20-year old Conlon was from Belfast and in the wrong place at the wrong time the night of the incident, occurring at the height of the Troubles. Though it is beyond the scope of this article to dive deeper into the political and civil context, Conlon’s family, including his father, were arrested too. The film documents the short time prior to the incident, his arrest and conviction, his sentence, and the eventual case that freed him 15 years later. His father, Giuseppe Conlon (played by the late Pete Postlethwaite) died in prison before the acquittal.
Along with the well-told story of injustice and recent history, the film, at its heart, is about their relationship and coming of age through extradorinaiy difficult circumstances. While few of us can relate to the events of the film, we can feel the strong emotions the characters go through and use that awareness to dwell on our own lives. In that sense, the film is quite brilliant.
Their third and final film, 1997’s The Boxer, is a fictional narrative about a former fighter who returns to Belfast after doing a 14-year prison sentence from his IRA activity in his youth. Thrust back into the still active political conflict, he looks to return to boxing, find home again, and live a life of dignity. With a chance for a peace deal led by his now-married girlfriend’s father (an IRA leader played Brian Cox), Danny Flynn’s (Day-Lewis) return and reconnection with his now-married former love (Emily Watson) upsets an IRA lieutenant.
The Boxer.
The film blends boxing, political drama, and romance in a seamless way. It has a lot of ambition—some reviewers have written too much so—but I find, similar to Sheridan’s two previous films, that the movie shows how various forces weigh on our daily lives. I haven’t mentioned the intense preparation that Day-Lewis has done for each of these roles, but it is worth noting that for The Boxer he trained for a few years with Irish boxing legend Barry McGuigan and others. The three boxing scenes in the film are well-performed and visceral. While overall this character called for a more understated performance than some of his other roles, Day-Lewis’s gestures and glances convey the depth of emotion contained in this quiet man who used solitude and training to better sustain his time in prison.
Likely less well-known to today’s audiences, My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father, and The Boxer are worth viewing. Today, we have successful large franchises, prolific television series, and thriving festival circuits with great work. Intriguing original films still find release as well from studios. But often I find myself heading to prior decades, finding narrative gems produced with modest budgets. These films by Jim Sheridan remind me why I love the feature film medium.
All three are a nice demonstration of what effect a unique film can have and how a director and actor can collaborate to touch the heart, mind, and soul.
- GJF
Daniel Day-Lewis in The Boxer (1997) via Tumblr.