Can the rumours really be true? Has the famously gruff director Ridley Scott finally gone gooey? Yes, the cigar-smoking legend, creator of doom-laden fantasies such as
Alien and
Blade Runner and grisly, hard-hitting epics such as
Gladiator and
Kingdom of Heaven, has produced his very first sweet-scented romance.
A Good Year, the story of the merciless banker Russell Crowe’s emotional salvation in the vineyards of Provence, arrives on our screens complete with candle-lit dinners, rain-soaked kisses and a brazenly rose-tinted finale.
“It’s probably my ‘lightest’ film to date,” admits the 68-year-old film-maker who is Britain’s only bona fide mogul, the owner of Shepperton Studios, the head honcho at Scott Free Productions and the advertising giant Ridley Scott Associates. And a genuine knight to boot — “for services to the British Film Industry”.
Despite being a self-confessed “screamer” on set, with a fearsome martinet’s reputation, Scott in person is curiously cuddly, warm and overwhelmingly avuncular. He describes A Good Year’s genesis in a boozy afternoon with Peter Mayle, the bestselling author of A Year in Provence — they both own houses with modest vineyards in the Luberon area of Provence, they both like wine, and so, hey presto, a modern romance is born.
He talks about the heartfelt human need for redemption, forgiveness and acceptance, before adding, teasingly: “There’s a lot of me in there.” He also talks about the look of the film, and of avoiding postcard prettiness, and of reining in his urge for stylistic excess.
I suggest that being a so-called “stylist” has been the bane of Scott’s career, ever since graduating from the Royal College of Art with first-class honours and segueing into movies via BBC TV serials (Z-Cars, The Informer) and the world of commercials. In fact, from his very first film, the 1977 sword-fighting romp The Duellists, right through Blade Runner, Black Rain and Hannibal, his movies have been accused of superficiality and its attendant trait, emotional aloofness.
“It’s always been the way with me,” he says, phlegmatically. “I can’t shake it, and I don’t want to. The Duellists was criticised for it, and it’s like, you know (barks), ‘F*** off!’ It taught me not to read reviews. Besides, it was my first film, and I nearly got the Palme d’Or at Cannes!” (He claims he was told that that year’s laureates, the Taviani Brothers, won for political reasons.) But why is being a director with a painterly eye seen as such a terrible thing? Why is someone like Scott — who sourced the work of William Blake for his Tom Cruise fantasy tale Legend, the 19th-century French painter Jean-Léon Gérome for Gladiator, and the modern artist Syd Mead for Blade Runner — so difficult for a contemporary audience raised on movies about movies about movies? For all the energy of modern British film-makers such as Danny Boyle, or the empathy of Shane Meadows and the comedic wiles of Richard Curtis, no one in this country, and few in the wider world, can touch Scott for what he can do within a film frame. He paints with light. And it’s not emotionally cold either, it’s just dense with imagery and, like all paintings, full of symbol and metaphor.
“They think I’m a cold bastard,” says Scott, ruefully. “But it’s like, give me a definition of sentimentality. Is it a good thing or a bad thing? In my book it’s bad. It’s unearned emotion.”
Nevertheless, as an up-and-coming film-maker, he must have been tempted to quit when assailed by early flops such as Blade Runner, Legend, and 1492: Conquest of Paradise (all of which are now classics). He smiles. “We were all brought up tough. My younger brother Tony, and my elder brother Frank, too. We’d bounce back. I’d be down for a day, and then I’d be charging down the office, going, ‘What are we gonna do next!?’ ” Yes, the brothers Scott. Tony, the younger brother, is the hotshot Hollywood director of Top Gun, Crimson Tide and True Romance. But Frank, the eldest, died from skin cancer just before Ridley launched himself into Blade Runner. Did Frank’s death find its way into the questions of mortality that define that science-fiction standard (most famous line: “Time to die”)? “Frank was a sea captain,” he says. “He got melanoma from standing on his bridge with no bloody shirt on. I saw him till the end, and was seriously affected by it. I figured I had to work, so I picked Blade Runner because I thought it would be a quick start, and I had to get occupied. Because it really got to me.” He pauses, and his eyes seem to fill with ghosts. “When you lose your brother,” he says, in a whisper, “It’s a big thing. So yes, Blade Runner is all about mortality. I was in a very dark place when I was making it.”
Perhaps this is the answer to the Ridley Scott conundrum. That he’s always been emotional, he’s always had emotion in his films, but it’s just harder to find than most because it’s so deftly done, and so surrounded by the gilt edge of aesthetic beauty. A Good Year is an anomaly only because it’s so unguarded, because the emotions are so available.
Which way will his next film — the reason we are having to meet in New York — go? Called American Gangster, it’s a 1970s crime flick with Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington playing, respectively, a fearless narcotics officer and a famous Harlem gangster. What can viewers look forward to? He answers, confidently, with two words. “Denzel. Russell.”
The director has numerous other projects on “the side burner” and has just released his DVD director’s cut of Kingdom of Heaven. As he approaches 70, will his energy and drive ever fade? “I don’t think so,” he says. “Although I have started painting again.” Which is something he regrets telling his friend and Royal College classmate David Hockney when they met recently. “I mean, he’s done these watercolours, of Morocco, and they’re like Matisse! You think you can do that, but you just can’t.” He shakes his head, looks down at the ground, and inside you can only imagine all the worlds that are left for Ridley Scott still to conquer.
A Good Year is released on Oct 27; Kingdom of Heaven is out on DVD. Ridley Scott discusses the highlights of his film career in an exclusive interview, at timesonline.co.uk/film
