We’ve seen some fantastic short films over the last year, with Terry Gilliam’s The Wholly Family being a particularly delightful way to spend twenty minutes, and I found watching Elfar Adalsteins’ Sailcloth a completely captivating experience.

Not to wander too far into spoiler territory but the dialogue free short tells the story of a day in the life of a hospital bound widower making an important decision to break free from his surrounds. Adalsteins has enormous good fortune in his leading man as John Hurt delivers a powerful and soulful performance.

I was able to speak with John Hurt this week about the film, his support for the short film format and the difficulties of films being tied to the source material.

We inevitably touch on spoilers for the film, which is being considered for an Oscar and will hopefully be available to watch online at some point. Follow the film’s Facebook page for those kinds of details, but do see it if you can.

 

HeyUGuys: Sailcloth is a wonderful story, and it’s all carried by your performance. How was it working with such a young director to achieve that?

It’s a very personal film to Elfar [Adalsteins] but he’s wonderfully matter of fact about it when you’re working with him. He doesn’t put in on you, and doesn’t say ‘This is really personal to me, you know…’. Therefore it’s very nice working with him.

It’s dedicated to the memory of his grandfather – what discussions did you have with Elfar about the character?

It’s all in the script, the script is, as always is, my springboard for the imagination. He never said ‘I think you should be feeling this, or thinking this.’ That’s not what he wanted to do, and I think it was inspired by his grandfather and I think he wanted to make it as some sort of indication for him.

So much conveyed by the details of your performance, the care you take with your movements, and there’s a distinct wit to the character; the cigar in the toilet, causally walking through the halls as the sprinklers are going off…

Yes! It’s kind of Buster Keaton that isn’t it?

Was the absence of dialogue freeing?

Well, it meant I didn’t have to learn it! I love working vocally, I love working with image and sound and working with image alone. It was very well conceived and it was very clear when you read the script the exact direction he wanted to go and it was a joy to do. We shot it all in St Mawes, and you can’t be in a nicer place, although we had a couple of rough days on the boat where there was a lot of stuff to get. He knew what he wanted, he is definitely a proper filmmaker.

And the festival success is an indication of how well the film is being received, and you’re also a judge for the Virgin Shorts I believe.

Yeah, but those are really short, we’re talking two minutes and ten seconds, that sort of thing. But that’s enough time to be able to tell if a director understands what an image on screen giving the information means. There’s a distinct difference between what is literature and what is cinema. A short film is great thing if the story isn’t too complicated and the best short films are about one idea.

And Sailcloth does have a single idea.

It does, but it’s a complicated idea. An image on screen tells you enough to drive the story, you don’t need any literature at all. It’s difficult in most filmmaking because most filmmaking insists that we get the stories from books, which is probably the worst source for making films you can think off. As I say the two languages are not only different but there’s at opposite ends of the pole. So you finish up with what Hollywood has provided us with which is basically literate stories with pictures and that’s not cinema.

I spoke with Tomas Alfredson about adapting Tinker Tailor Solider Spy and how you couldn’t just do John LeCarre’s book on screen, he had to find new ways to tell the story.

Well, that’s the marvellous thing about Tomas – he’s a real maker of cinema. What is so gratifying about Tinker Tailor is that it is the image on screen that is the driving force of the piece. That is what takes you forward. That is the information, and he’s quite right because to take a very involved book and you give yourself just so many problems. Why do we not trust writers who write for film?

In Sailcloth I don’t know how detailed the script was, but it seems it was written very much as a piece of cinema and so much had to come from you and it is a true performance…

And that’s also what Tomas was pushing for as well and he’s a terrific find and a fantastic filmmaker.

There is so much from performance here too, with the direct focus on your character’s journey, so much so that you’re never in any doubt as to what you are feeling. Though it’s a sad fate, it feels like more of a celebration.

Yes, I think so. I honestly didn’t treat it as sad, I treated it as celebratory. It seemed to me to be a celebration of [his and his wife’s] lives together. I assumed that he’s thinking, ‘Ok, I’ll join her now.’ But even if he’s not thinking that he is, in a celebratory way, saying, ‘I don’t want any more of this, without her.’ I never felt that he was a depressed man.

There was a lovely moment when you waved to the boy on the beach, which could have been a wave goodbye, but it seemed to me as if your character was saying ‘Enjoy every moment.’

Absolutely, as he was enjoying himself, using his bed sheets as a sail rather than dying in some horrible hospital. It’s likely he had a terminal disease and thought, well, ‘Bugger this, I’m not going out that way…I’ll do it myself and I’ll enjoy it.’ You can look at it in several different ways, but whichever way you look at it it’s always as a celebration rather than a depression. And it’s generally because people say that because it is suicide it has to be sad. It’s doesn’t.

It’s a choice.

It is a choice, absolutely. Certainly better than being swept out with the hospital litter!

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