{"id":32091,"date":"2025-08-30T03:16:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T03:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/32091\/"},"modified":"2025-08-30T03:16:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T03:16:07","slug":"ballad-of-a-small-player-director-edward-berger-on-colin-farrell-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/32091\/","title":{"rendered":"Ballad of a Small Player Director Edward Berger on Colin Farrell Movie"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEdward Berger<\/a> has left the secret hallways of the Vatican in \u201cConclave\u201d for the glitzy world of Macau in his latest film, \u201cBallad of a Small Player<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the movie, Colin Farrell<\/a>\u2018s character Lord Doyle plays a gambler who can\u2019t quite beat his addiction and losing streak. As Lord Doyle sits at the baccarat tables, looking to win to pay off his debts, Tilda Swinton\u2019s Cynthia Blithe is on his tail, and along the way, a mysterious ghostly benefactor (Fala Chen) stakes her claim on him.<\/p>\n

\n\tNetflix<\/a>\u00a0has slated the film for a prime release: It opens in U.S. theaters on Oct.\u00a015, arrives in the U.K. and Ireland cinemas on Oct.\u00a017, and debuts on the streamer on Oct.\u00a029.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking with Variety ahead of the film\u2019s Telluride screening, Berger explained he worked closely with his go-to cinematographer, James Friend, to ensure audiences are placed firmly at the center of a character\u2019s heart. Berger said, \u201cThis story is a first-person perspective story. We want to go every step with Colin Farrell. We want to sweat, we want to laugh, we want to cry with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTo achieve that, Berger and Friend spent time discussing the camera. But even before filming and during their scout, Berger noted how \u201cMacau is such an over-the-top place. It\u2019s so over the top; the humidity, the colors, music and fountains, there\u2019s an overload of senses. I wanted to create a pop opera full of humor, drama and contradictions. That\u2019s what drove my conversations with James.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHere, the two discuss centering the camera on Colin\u2019s performance and creating Macau as a character.<\/p>\n

\t\tThat opening sequence drops us in this gaudy world of Macau, almost like a trippy Las Vegas. How did you prime it as a character?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tJAMES FRIEND: <\/strong> I had no idea what to expect when the script landed on my desk, and I obviously started reading it because it came from Edward. I read it, and I thought, \u201cHow far down the sort of Colonel Kurtz River can this guy go in this environment? How insane is this place for him to become a product of his environment? It was only when Edward and I went there for the first time, I was floored. The scale of the buildings and the streets is overwhelming. So, on camera, you don\u2019t want it to be too overwhelming for the audience, because you need to get into the grounded nature of what Lord Doyle\u2019s going through. So, we just reacted to our environment and built upon that. The city is a little bit schizophrenic. Everything revolves around gambling, but during the day, it\u2019s quiet. But when the sun goes down, the lights come on, and it\u2019s like the opening of the Olympics with billions of kilowatts streaming through the city. We wanted to show the different sides of Macau because there is a sad side to the to the place, which is very much reflected in Lord Doyle\u2019s character, and that, for me, was more challenging, trying to capture something which, at one level, almost felt like a documentary, and then at the other level, something that shot on large format and felt bombastic.<\/p>\n

\t\tHow did you want to introduce Lord Doyle in the way he presents himself and how you\u2019re framing him? Early on, he\u2019s literally descending on the escalator. What did you want to show?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tEDWARD BERGER<\/strong>: I love that shot so much. It twists from the side, and it\u2019s kind of his descent into this hell. All the lights are dancing, and it\u2019s James playing around with this wonderful, crazy mind that he has, and is full of visual ideas and trying to find expressions for that descent. A lot of it comes from long conversations, putting one shot after another and really trying to understand the best way to represent what Lord Doyle is going through.<\/p>\n

\n\tFRIEND<\/strong>: I looked at this film a bit like Dante\u2019s Inferno. All these different levels of hell, and how deep down that river do you really go? We would go to some of these quite grotty gambling dens. As Ed says, he\u2019s descending into hell, and naturally trying to frame it. I thought, \u201cWhat if I do put the camera on its side at this moment and rotate it? Is that too much? Is that too discombobulating?\u201d But also thinking about the nature of the scene and where Colin\u2019s character is at that point in the story, it just seemed to be a kind of perfect move.<\/p>\n

\t\tIn another scene, Lord Doyle is stuffing his face with lobster and chocolate cake in his room. Meanwhile, there\u2019s the spiritual aspect going through his mind. What did you want to impart to the audience?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tBERGER:<\/strong> He very much turns into what Dao Ming predicted, that vision of hell and the hungry ghost. He eats and eats. We tried to find an expression of that. Very often, we start with a wide shot to get an impression of the place. But in this case, because Colin had to eat so much, we started with the close-ups. The scene consists of a lot of shots. I remember standing there with [camera operator] Danny Bishop and we didn\u2019t rehearse it, because there was nothing that we wanted to rehearse. We just asked Colin, \u201cWhat are you going to do? He said, \u201cWell, he\u2019s probably going to sit in his chair, and I\u2019m probably going to go for this lobster here, and I\u2019m going to go for the cake and drink the champagne. Is that okay?\u201d Danny said, \u201cYeah, let\u2019s shoot,\u201d and he just operated, following whatever Colin was doing. One of the interesting things that really influenced that scene was music.<\/p>\n

\t\tIn what way did music influence that scene?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tBERGER: <\/strong>The Bach Cantata came about because I was sitting with James, and I kept hearing this music. I was like, \u201cWho the hell is listening to music?\u201d I realized it was Colin, listening to this piece of music. I went up to him and asked. He said, \u201cI\u2019m trying to get into the mood.\u201d And that just goes to show how in tune Colin is with the movie. He knows exactly what type of movie this is, and he delivered this music for the scene just by listening to it to get into the mood.<\/p>\n

\t\tJames, talk about how you captured this scene because he\u2019s gorging on the food relentlessly, like an addict.\t<\/p>\n

\n\tFRIEND: <\/strong>The man never complained, once. He never said, \u201cI\u2019m full\u201d or \u201cThat\u2019s disgusting.\u201d He was into it. So, we chose this handheld approach, and we shot the whole thing on a 12mm lens, a fisheye lens to distort the audience\u2019s view of the world. And, it works really beautifully in that instance, to the point where I had to use entirely natural light for the scene because we were seeing the whole room. We wanted to go in completely free and liberated to react to what Colin was going to do.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis interview has been edited and condensed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Edward Berger has left the secret hallways of the Vatican in \u201cConclave\u201d for the glitzy world of Macau…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32092,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[13243,9441,25193,9442,18,117,19,17,327,25194],"class_list":{"0":"post-32091","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-ballad-of-a-small-player","9":"tag-colin-farrell","10":"tag-creative-collaborators","11":"tag-edward-berger","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-movies","17":"tag-telluride-film-festival"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}