‘These Gambles, You Just Have To Push For Them At That Point’

Colin Farrell tackles the effects of gambling addiction in Ballad of a Small Player, directed by Academy Award winner Edward Berger.

Set in the city of Macau, also known as the “Vegas of Asia”, Farrell portrays Brendan Reilly -who goes by the name of Lord Doyle- an Irish aristocrat who is running away from his demons and from his gambling debts.

Farrell once again delivers a career’s best with a magnetic, vulnerable and brilliantly unhinged performance, as he manages to capture the tension, the extravagance and the sense of irrationality and urgency his character is facing.

Impeccably dressed in red and green velvet -but always wearing his yellow lucky gloves- posing as a Lord and convinced that he managed to hide his true identity, Lord Doyle relies on his looks to avoid arousing suspicions.

During an interview over Zoom, Farrell told me: “One thing that put the spotlight on the extravagance of the character as you put it nicely, were the costumes. The first time Lisy Christl came to my house with the costumes, I had no idea what Doyle was gonna be wearing. I thought it was going to be maybe brown or black suits, something that was a bit more of a simple color palette. And when I saw the green velvet and the satin and all these different materials, the texture and colors and how bright and kind of full of pump everything was, it gave me a really good notion of how this character was going to move through space, you know, how he was presenting himself as this kind of Lord that he was making other people believe that he was.”

The photography of Ballad of a Small Player is outstanding and Berger and his director of photography James Friend, managed to capture the essence of the vibrant neon aesthetic of Macau, a city that acts a full-on character, slowly swallowing Doyle.

Farrell pointed out the “sensory overload” he felt as the character when filming in Macau and said that he “was aware that it was an incredibly operatic world” that they were inhabiting.

On his actor/director of photography relationship, he said, “I just observe what they’re doing, I’ve had conversations with the directors of photography that I’ve worked with about what they’re doing, about lightning and stuff, and you just trust in their artistry. James was so active, he was so engaged with every part of the process, he was driven, really focused, really passionate about bringing the story he’s part of to life. And him and Edward work extraordinary well together, they’re dear friends, they both did Patrick Melrose, All Quiet on the Western Front of course, so James was a joy to be around. I knew that the film was gonna look extraordinary, and it was down to James’ brilliance.”

Berger added: “But you know, James is not just a DOP. He’s a storyteller, a really good storyteller, who takes the camera as a tool to tell that story.”

I then asked Berger about his choices of lenses and angles to shoot those stunning and overwhelming scenes that give this bigger-than-life feel to the film. In the latter, we also learn about the hungry ghosts, the greed-driven Buddhist ghosts with a very large mouth and that never know when to stop.

Loyd fears those ghosts but when he indulges in gargantuan feasts and games, we can see the character slowly becoming a hungry ghost himself, as the close-up shots focus on his mouth.

Berger said. “Thank you so much for noticing all that! We spent a lot of time… There’s a rough idea of that when you’re writing because you push the writer to go in a certain direction, the way you think you want to shoot it, but that’s very rough. There’s a few words that we take going into the movie, you know like ‘Let’s be bold, lets’s be different, expressive, operatic!’ That allows us to think a certain way, that allows the entire crew to think a certain way. It opens up doors in our minds. And then you know, like Lisy bringing that type of costume, I sit down with James probably for about 2 months in pre-production and we plan every single shot . And we do have lenses in our heads like ‘For this close-up, it should be much wider than a normal, pleasant looking close-up.’ But then it very much depends on how Colin plays it, because it’s still a rough skeleton, well not that rough, it’s pretty accurate, but it’s still a skeleton, I don’t want to cling to it.”

He added: “Then we usually talk though a scene, a rehearsal or shoot the first wide shot or whatever the process is, and then we decide to place it this way, or because we shot that scene yesterday, we really need an accent now on a certain moment. And that influences the decision on the lens and how close to get, and so forth. It’s very fluid as the movie goes on.”

Loyd is described as a gambler with a pair of lucky gloves throughout the film, so I asked Farrell and Berger, two of our best working creatives, what their own ‘gambling’ moment was in their respective career.

Farrell said, “I remember when I did Tigerland, my first American film with Joel Schumacher, and he took a big chance on putting an Irish kid, who was was 22 or 23 at the time, to be at the center of that film.”

He added: “ I hadn’t done much work up until that point, I had done a little bit of theatre, a little bit of television. But Joel took a big punt on me and one of the clearest memory I have is that I had a meeting with Arnon Milchan, who was the main producer on Tigerland. Joel wanted to hire me, as the director, but Joe was hired by Arnon. I went to his office and had a meeting with him and he was so clear, he said to me: ‘Look, we’ll work with you again. But are you sure you can do this part? Because you’re an Irish kid, you’re going to be playing a Texan, there’s a lot of work to do, you’re gonna be the center of this film. If this doesn’t work out for you, this will harm any potential you have for a career. So I’m telling you, we will work with you at some stage, but this might be a little bit too much for you.”

And that is the moment Farrell risked it all for his first U.S. movie. ‘He really put me on the spot! And I totally bullshitted him and said ‘No I can totally do it!’ I totally lied! I was a nervous wreck but it was really honest, a kind of honest approach I remember thinking. So that was a bit of a gamble, kind of calling my own bluff, and bullshitting Arnon and telling him I had more belief in myself that I actually had at the time. But it worked out.”

Berger also recalled his first chance at directing a U.S. project, which was the TV series The Terror. He said, “I think I had a similar thing the first time I had a door opening for me in Los Angeles. I had made a small movie called Jack, it was before All Quiet on the Western Front. I had done a series called Deutschland 83. So very few people knew me. And they sent me the script for this TV series, I had never read anything like it. It was called The Terror, it was beautiful.”

He added: “But Jack was a small movie, one camera, one kid. The Terror was so big! I had no clue how to do it! And I said it to my best friend, who’s a writer and he said ‘That’s such a good script but do you know how the hell to do this?’ I said I had no clue, ‘But if I don’t go for it… I’d love to try this!’ I kinda gambled and had a meeting with the writer David Kajganich, who I am now doing another movie with, he became a great friend. But I also kind of bullshitted my way in, I don’t think I said ‘’I know how to do this!’’ But ‘’I can find out how to do this! ’’ These gambles, you just have to push for them at that point, when you feel ‘’I want to do it!’”

Ballad of a Small Player is now available on Netflix.