{"id":164549,"date":"2025-08-21T19:21:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T19:21:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/164549\/"},"modified":"2025-08-21T19:21:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T19:21:15","slug":"edward-berger-on-his-colin-farrell-movie-ballad-of-a-small-player","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/164549\/","title":{"rendered":"Edward Berger On His Colin Farrell Movie ‘Ballad Of A Small Player’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEXCLUSIVE<\/strong>: After following his Oscar-winning muddy World War I epic All Quiet on the Western Front<\/a> with the Vatican for Conclave<\/a>, director Edward Berger<\/a> has taken another radical turn, this time to the gaudy glitz and desperation of the Macau casinos for Ballad of a Small Player<\/a>. A Rowan Joffe-scripted adaptation of the Lawrence Osborne novel, the film premieres at festivals including Toronto and Zurich, followed by an international premiere at Zurich and a limited theatrical run before landing on Netflix<\/a> in late October.<\/p>\n

\n\tColin Farrell plays Lord Doyle, a gambler whose losing streak at the baccarat tables in Macau is the kind that leaves some taking actual nosedives from balconies high up in the glassy glitzy towering casino hotels that dominate the strip. Lord Doyle\u2019s being pursued by an uptight watchdog (Tilda Swinton) sent by those holding the bag on his considerable debts, and his salvation may come from a mysterious ghostly gorgeous benefactor (Fala Chen) who stakes Doyle when no one else will. Baccarat is a game of chance and superstition over skill, and the payoff here is what Farrell does with his sweaty, sartorially-challenged character of dubious royal lineage as he circles the drain, which seems to be the closest he come to a royal flush.<\/p>\n

\n\tUp for an Emmy for The Penguin, Farrell\u2019s performance should put him in the Oscar conversation, as it might for Berger. Though not one for the gaming tables himself, the director here discusses his high-stakes gambles in spurning sure bet franchise jobs like Ocean\u2019s Eleven and James Bond for movies that on the surface bear little resemblance to each other.<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE:<\/strong> Last time we saw each other, you were premiering Conclave in Telluride, and rumors were flying that you would direct the next James Bond. Hard not to notice that your protagonist here is a baccarat player in Macau, but instead of a cool 007 veneer, your protagonist is a con man marinating spectacularly in anxiety, self-basting in flop sweat as his losses mount and his ruse catches up to him.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tEDWARD BERGER<\/strong>: He might be trying to look as cool as James Bond, but he\u2019s obviously failing.<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE:<\/strong> What\u2019s also striking is how different this movie is from All Quiet on the Western Front, and Conclave. Is there any connective tissue between these three films?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Colin<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tColin Farrell in \u2018Ballad of a Small Player\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNetflix<\/p>\n

\n\tBERGER<\/strong>: I have come to believe you don\u2019t pick these films; they pick you. This movie felt ready in terms of what I wanted to say, what I felt inside, it just comes out of you It, it\u2019s what you feel like saying right now. But I realize in hindsight these films that I\u2019m picking, or are picking me, are not too dissimilar. They are all told from a single perspective, following one person and really creeping into this person\u2019s brain and really taking the audience on a ride of what this person\u2019s feeling on a path. They\u2019re all on a path of, in a way, toward liberation or to find some kind of haven of peace. Felix Kammerer found in death in All Quiet, Ralph Fiennes rediscovered his faith in Conclave. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE:<\/strong> Though you spent years paying dues, y<\/strong>our progression in the past couple of years has made stars want to work with you, something that can only get better after they see the performance you helped coax out of Colin Farrell here. Though you did not take on the next Ocean\u2019s Eleven film, your next, The Riders, will be a vehicle for Brad Pitt, and you\u2019ll bring Matt Damon\u2019s amnesiac assassin back in a Bourne Identity film after Universal just made a massive deal with the Robert Ludlum estate. You\u2019ve got a time travel film with Austin Butler, and there should be no shortage of actors raising their hands to play Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent who spent a year in a Russian jail on bogus spying charges. How did you get Brad Pitt for your next film?<\/p>\n

\n\tBERGER<\/strong>: All you\u2019ve mentioned is development, but the one thing I\u2019m sure of is that early next year we\u2019ll shoot The Riders with Brad. The script is ready, the financing is there, and Brad is ready. It\u2019s just a beautiful journey, that movie.<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE:<\/strong> I watched F1 at its Radio City Music Hall premiere and Pitt always reminded me a bit of Steve McQueen, an actor who held the screen so well. After Once Upon a Time\u2026In Hollywood<\/strong> and F1, Pitt is right there. The miles have worn well on him, and he still has his hair.<\/p>\n

\n\tBERGER:<\/strong> The Riders is a real character piece. We\u2019ve got, I would say, the biggest movie star in the world, making a real character movie and really going for it. In this film, we pick up his character on a journey that starts with him building a house. He\u2019s a real man, man. He\u2019s not like me. This guy can build a house. We meet him as he is building a house for his family, he\u2019s the real provider, the real traditional man, and then he is on the journey to find his wife who\u2019s gone suddenly. And all this manhood, all this masculinity just strips away and falls apart and all we are left with is a heap of a human being, a small human being with all his frailties. To dissect this person through Brad Pitt, I think is a beautiful task. To really see someone unravel and everything he\u2019s relied on up till here as a character is suddenly taken away from him. And just the core of his being is left behind, and he needs to find what that is. I think that\u2019s a great journey that touches on the history of Europe. We take him from Ireland to Greece, to Brussels to Amsterdam and back to Ireland. It\u2019s a massive odyssey throughout Europe, during which he falls apart. And I can\u2019t wait to see Brad do that.<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: Since his small but electric turn in Thelma & Louise, Pitt always seemed to be trying to prove he was more than handsome, that he was a real actor. He was validated by his Oscar for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and probably doesn\u2019t have much to prove. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tBERGER<\/strong>: I don\u2019t think that\u2019s true. Everyone has to prove something to themselves, always, unless you want to allow yourself to get tired, and Brad never gets tired. I think it\u2019s beautiful that he chose our movie to prove that side of himself. It\u2019s harder for him to find those challenged and I\u2019m thrilled he has chosen this challenge. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: You\u2019ve been on the other side of this, after All Quiet on the Western Front got nine Oscar nominations and won Best International Feature. Suddenly, you\u2019re the pretty girl everyone wants to ask to the prom. Now you\u2019re doing the same thing with the likes of Colin Farrell, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, whose slots are coveted. How did you get him to say yes? \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tBERGER<\/strong>: Two things. Remember when we spoke last year and you revealed I was going to do Ocean\u2019s and I tried to guide you that I was not doing it, and don\u2019t print it?<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: In my defense, your guidance was very subtle and it was a helluva good rumor\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tBERGER<\/strong>: You still did because you had too many sources telling you that I would. We were talking at that time, Brad and I, and yes, was I seduced by the thought of making something like that. I\u2019m from a small place in Germany. I\u2019ve never had those opportunities. And suddenly Brad Pitt and George Clooney and Julia Roberts and Matt Damon, I would be able to make a movie with them. Ballad of A Small Player was a hard movie to make, and I felt like, wouldn\u2019t it be great to make a studio picture? The studio needs that movie, the stars want the movie, \u00a0as does the audience. Everyone needs the movie. It\u2019s a franchise. I can pay my crew. I can have fun with them. It\u2019s a temptation. But deep down inside I knew it\u2019s not my movie, it\u2019s Steven Soderbergh\u2019s movie. He invented that, beautifully. He made them, and I\u2019m just following in his footsteps. What is new for me?<\/p>\n

\n\tI love those movies, but in essence, I don\u2019t know what to add to what the great Steven Soderbergh did. And so in the end, I had to sleep eight hours. And I think maybe when I met you, I\u2019d slept a week. But during the shooting of Ballad, it was tempting because I was so tired. And then I wrapped, I went to bed, slept eight hours, and realized, it\u2019s not me. I called Brad because we had talked a bunch of times. I knew he was open to doing something, and I basically said, I\u2019m sorry, I don\u2019t want to do Ocean\u2019s and hope I haven\u2019t offended you. But I have this great script that I would love you to look at because I think it might be a challenge for both of us. He was shooting F1 in Abu Dhabi at the time, I think reshoots or pickups, because of the strike and the pandemic and everything at the circuit, the F1 shoot went on forever. He read it in two days and called back and said, I want to do it. It\u2019s the best script I ever read.<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: Wow\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tBERGER<\/strong>: He was in, that quickly. It took no time. He was very gracious about the Ocean\u2019s thing and very fast in reacting to this. And then I met him, and Cully is described in the book as not the most handsome guy, more like a brawler, kind of an ugly guy with a scar in his face. I don\u2019t quite know how to talk about Brad Pitt\u2019s looks, but I sit across from him, and he\u2019s obviously a really gorgeous man. I look at him and I approached the stuff in the script, where it says, he\u2019s kind of not so handsome, he has the scar in the face. He says, yeah, to me it just means wounds. That means healing. And he has this really simple way of cutting right through it. Let\u2019s not talk around the thing. Let\u2019s just cut straight to the chase and make it simple. What do you call that part of the country, Missouri? It\u2019s no bullshit. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: Turning down the Ocean\u2019s movie reminds me of the story you told me about finishing film school, knocking on the Good Machine door, working on Ang Lee\u2019s films, and then turning down a full-time job there because it would have been the easy path\u2026.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tBERGER<\/strong>: Oh, it\u2019s the same thing. You\u2019re right. Full circle. I always keep doing that. I\u2019ll see Ocean\u2019s and have a great time, have my popcorn, but hopefully I\u2019ll be thinking, I wasn\u2019t the right guy to make this.<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: Back to Macau and Colin Farrell and his towering character arc<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\n\tBERGER<\/strong>: It\u2019s an emotional journey of a man stripped of all the facades and what he thinks of himself. It\u2019s him at rock bottom. What does he do? If all those characters \u2013Felix and Ralph \u2013 are on a path to liberating themselves from their past, where Colin starts out is\u2026he\u2019s utterly, completely empty, in the spiritually emptiest place on earth, in search of a small haven of peace. That\u2019s not too dissimilar to Ralph\u2019s journey in Conclave, but in a very different environment, with very different technical challenges. I felt like an urge, after the controlled architecture of Conclave, to really have in a way a pop opera that is colorful and bold and humorous and tragic all at the same time. And find a genre that doesn\u2019t really exist in the world and make something that is really different from anything I\u2019ve done before, or anything I\u2019ve seen. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Colin<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tColin Farrell and Fala Chen in \u2018Ballad of a Small Player\u2019<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: I\u2019ve covered Colin\u2019s trajectory since he came off the stage in Ireland to be touted as the next big male star, making $5 million for movies like SWAT, and probably more for Minority Report, Alexander and the Total Recall remake. That superstar trajectory didn\u2019t happen, and he got caught up in the excess that often faces young actors. I saw him in In Bruges and thought, Martin McDonagh knows how to pull a performance out of him, and did it again with The Banshees of Inisherin. He goes for broke in your movie, and it might be the best thing he\u2019s done. How did you know?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tBERGER<\/strong>: We know what we know about Colin from the newspapers and from his past. I don\u2019t know more than you do, and I don\u2019t intend to pry. It\u2019s his private life, but he\u2019s very open with it and so he\u2019ll tell you the same thing. So he\u2019s obviously had his past with addiction. We never talked about it, I didn\u2019t say, oh, maybe you can put your past experience to this movie. I assume he takes a lot of what he has to do from his past. You don\u2019t need a history of addiction to be a great actor, to be able to inhabit a part like this; a person without a history of addiction could do it as well if they identify with this character, because we all have that inside of us. We all have that. There was an emptiness that I was feeling at the time. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: Why? You came out of nowhere with All Quiet on the Western Front, and knew what you had with Conclave. You made a movie about the election of a pope, and visually it was sumptuous and there was highly dramatic twists and turns, with fabulous performances. I mean, why empty?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tBERGER<\/strong>: Maybe because of all that? I really don\u2019t know. I can\u2019t analyze myself, but I think maybe it\u2019s because, and this is kitchen sink stuff I\u2019m almost embarrassed to say, and I haven\u2019t really thought it through. But I had worked a lot, and that tends to make you feeling empty when you don\u2019t have a balance. And secondly, when you suddenly, I\u2019d been locked inside of German television and film industry for a long time. In a small place. And when you break out and suddenly are there where you always wanted to be, but never thought it could be possible, you realize, oh fu*k, but I\u2019m still Edward. I\u2019m still just that same guy with all the same faults, and nothing actually changed. You don\u2019t find happiness in making Conclave; you\u2019ve got to find happiness within yourself. That\u2019s what you realize. It\u2019s not reaching the big goal, making Conclave and Ballad and making the next movie with Brad. That is wonderful, but I\u2019m still going to have to deal with it. I\u2019m just Edward like you are just Mike, with all my flaws and shortcomings. That won\u2019t change. And so you\u2019re going to have to find happiness within that. And I think that\u2019s probably where the emptiness came from at that time.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat emptiness is probably not too dissimilar in a much, much smaller and undramatic and not cinematic way that you could film to what Colin\u2019s Lord Doyle or what any other addict must have felt in that time. I don\u2019t believe that you need Colin\u2019s history to be able to play this part. But what I did learn from Colin, and I really mean learn by watching him, just being around him and observing because he never taught me\u2026is what an artist this perfectionist is, what incredible gift a person like that has. Colin is probably the warmest, most big hearted, empathetic, generous person I\u2019ve ever met. And so the movie ended up being a love letter to him and to his performance, and to his dedication to making himself vulnerable and open. He was so open to undressing emotionally in front of everyone, and baring his soul. And it\u2019s very difficult to do. I did learn from Colin, I\u2019ve never learned from anyone else how hard it\u2019s, but what a true artist is and what a true beautiful artist this man is.<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: He purports to be of royal lineage, but he is ducking hotel staff, and struggling to turn his luck at the baccarat tables. You\u2019ve got all these fascinating characters swirling around him. Tilda Swinton as this uptight investigator sent by his debt holders and closing in on him, with secrets of her own, Fala Chen playing this mysterious benefactor who herself seeks redemption for staking the wrong degenerate gambler. \u00a0While most of these gambling movies shoot in Vegas, Macau is that on steroids and a most fascinating location you maximized visually. \u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBERGER<\/strong>: So a lot of times, this is just instinct, not analytical. I don\u2019t sit there and go like, oh, this is what I want to do. And then I realize while I do it, or actually while I edit it, or even when I talk to you about what it is all about and why it drove me there, in a way some silly therapy. But you are right that it is a little bit of a reaction to the last movie, the \u00a0a controlled, slow paced, deliberate environment with conclave. I wanted to explode that, burst that open, hit that in the face with a baseball bat. I read this wonderful interview with Bruce Nauman, the artist who coincidentally had a show in Hong Kong that I saw when I was shooting there. He said, I want to make art that hits or try to make art that hits people in the face with a baseball bat. This is what Macau is; it kind of hits you in the face with a baseball bat. There\u2019s loud music there, fountains, an explosion of money and luxury. There\u2019s too much of everything, and it\u2019s overwhelming. That felt like a great contrast to Conclave. Life and instinct guides you to these things, where you go from the darkly serene world of the Vatican to this utter chaos. My favorite scene is the one where Colin eats all this food at once, just gorges himself, and it\u2019s not enough to fill the void. It felt very resonant to me because suddenly, first of all, it was something I felt inside and I felt like, oh, how do I build this? And secondly, I felt it\u2019s what the world feels like. We\u2019ve got everything we are when a world completely out of a world that\u2019s completely out of whack. So it is with capitalism, and that is just rampant in places like Macau and with societies that have lost its compass. That\u2019s basically what the movie\u2019s about. It\u2019s Colin\u2019s journey. I was thinking, I set out to make a movie, but this one guy who\u2019s lost his compass, lost his purpose in life looking for a small haven of peace.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s actually what we all are right now; money everywhere, opportunities everywhere, luxury everywhere. But not for everybody, only for a very few. And when you have it, what do you do with it? Nothing. It doesn\u2019t make us happy. And so that\u2019s suddenly, suddenly, that\u2019s what drew me to it deep down inside.<\/p>\n

\n\tDEADLINE: Farrell\u2019s work as the title character in The Penguin has him up for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Anthology Series or Movie, one of 24 Primetime Emmy nominations that show has gotten. He has spoken a lot about the arduous task of nature of sitting in a makeup chair for three hours a day. How much of a delight was it for him to make this movie, where the prosthetics come from inside him, and it\u2019s all acting chops, a culmination of what he learned since he was a kid coming up and on the Irish stage age and then in Hollywood, to hit this high-water mark with you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tBERGER: <\/strong>That\u2019s great to hear if you perceive it that way. I think he really enjoyed it. He enjoys any role. What is amazing to me with The Penguin is, he has like 10 pounds of prosthetics on his face, and you still feel the vulnerability in that guy\u2019s eyes. It\u2019s amazing how he does it. And here he didn\u2019t have it, and it\u2019s beautifully put. He just has it inside, and from all those movies, but it is just him, right? It\u2019s just him. no one else there. And I think it\u2019s quite a burden, but also quite a pleasure.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Colin<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tColin Farrell in \u2018Ballad of a Small Player\u2019<\/p>\n

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