http://youtu.be/FiGKfZ8DEhM
Coaxing a career-best performance from the archetypal silver fox Richard Gere, first time director/long-time industry presence Nicolas Jarecki has struck gold with his genre-blending debut featureArbitrage. Featuring heavily on the global festival circuit this year,the film concerns fraudulent hedge fund magnate, Robert Miller, whose methodical disposition begins to frazzle when his mistress winds up dead during the onset of a particularly shady merger. In Miller, Jarecki and Gere have created a well-wrought, Trumpesque character that never ceases to hold our attention, despite being a bit of a bastard.
The title of the film is interesting, as it has an implied dual meaning. Can you explain exactly what you meant by it?
I like the title because it’s a business term which means to buy something inexpensively and sell it for a higher price, simultaneously. The way you do that is by exploiting a special knowledge or abilities that you have. So there’s a certain concept of exploitation built into it. That was something that the character Robert Miller was up to in his business life but I also thought it was a good description for his personal relationships, you know, that he was an emotional arbitrageur.
The film suggests that those with power and influence get to play by different rules, both in life and business. A character like Jimmy on the lower end of the spectrum is easily manipulated, while Miller’s daughter Brooke, one of the films only honest characters, must too accept power structures, despite being on the higher end. Was exploring power relations your main objective with Arbitrage?
When we began working on it, we tried to identify a theme and we came up with the question “Will you give up the power you love to hang on to your last shred of humanity?” The film is really about going between those poles; It’s about power, money and control. I think in a way Jimmy may be the most honest character, but Miller’s argument with his daughter is important. It’s easier for her to have her exalted moral views because she’s to the manor born and she has all this opportunity. So when he’s in Central Park with her, maybe he would love to charm her back to his side, but what he ends up saying is “Who do you think you are? You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me.”
And then that great line, “You’re not my partner, you work for me”.
I’d love to take credit for that line, but what happened was that we did a month of rehearsals, in which Brit, Richard and I worked on that scene a lot. But actually Richard came up with that line in one spontaneous rehearsal, and I thought “That’s great. We have to put that in. He got the character in one.”
Robert Miller is an intriguing character. On surface level he appears to have it all, but when you look beneath he’s plagued by a tempestuous affair and money concerns. At the same time he seems to be seeking redemption. You were involved in the production of Tyson, who can be seen as a similarly conflicted character. Is there something that draws you towards redemptive characters?
I think so, definitely. I grew up on this diet of seventies Hollywood films; Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, The French Connection. I like the tortured anti-hero protagonist, where you’re not really sure if you’re on their side or not. There’s something sexy about that to me, but ultimately you can identify with them. We all make weird choices all the time and are forced to reckon with our own honesty, the easier choice, or the choice that will get us the thing we want. I like the human side of that character, and it attracts me for sure.
Richard Gere is one of those rare actors that actually seems to improve with age. Did you give him any specific direction or let him have a bit of free reign with the character?
We did one month of rehearsal which is really quite a lot, considering the film was made independently and we were outside the system on our own. We didn’t have a lot of time or money but what we did have was passion for the material, and so in this month we did a lot of research. My parents are from the financial world, so I have access to a lot of those minds and I took Richard and Brit and others and introduced them to hedge fund managers. We got to explore that world a lot ahead of time and build a relationship. So by the time we got on set, it was clear how we thought we were going to play it. Actors love specific direction so saying something like “Be angry” is not particularly useful, but if I say something like “Pout”, then it’s a playable action. My job was to watch over what was happening once the plan was in motion and then titrate it a little bit.
You mentioned that Richard came up with a line earlier. Were there a lot of independent suggestions for the characters from the actors?
I’m not precious about my script, but I like laying everything down in rehearsal so we have an opportunity to refine it. Certain passages of the film I thought had a little poetry to them, like the restaurant scene when Miller’s trying to sell off his company, there’s kind of a David Mammet pattern I ripped off there. Tim Roth came in and he had a totally different idea of his character Detective Bryer than I did. Whereas I’d imagined this buttoned down, staid man, Tim came in ferocious like “Fuck that! This cocksucker thinks he’s getting away with this, a cold day in hell. I’ll throw the wife in jail. I’ll throw the daughter in jail with the black kid. Let’s see how she likes sharing a fucking cell with the black kid”. So I was like “Tim, wait, let’s reign it in a bit” and he’s like “I’m not reigning in a goddamn thing. Fuck them!” So, that was great because I think he actually brought this goofy manic madness to the character and made something original with it, and so I encouraged that.
It’s interesting that his character is a good cop but he’s not exactly innocent either and is prepared to go beyond the law at times.
Well, I think he’s frustrated. He’s in New York, has been doing this a while and the city has really gentrified over the last twenty or thirty years. There’s an evolution of this moneyed super class which has taken over everything, so it’s impossible for the working man to make an existence in New York now. I think the abuse of power is real, so he’s perhaps unscrupulous, but what we talked about a lot while making this movie was characters doing the wrong things for the right reasons. That was something which appealed to me to explore.
Arbitrage also features a talented young cast (Brit Marling, Nate Parker). Is it tougher to make casting selections with such a large amount of young talent out there?
What was nice about this cast was that we had three heavyweights; Gere, Sarandon and Roth and then three younger newer actors; Marling, Parker, Casta, who are all sort of starting out, though Nate has been around a little bit longer and is sort of the most pro of that group. He’s a phenomenal actor, I really think he could be like the next Denzel. But there was a nice energy with the older actors playing off the younger actors and seeing that dynamic happen. It really brought spontaneity to the set.
Other films about high finance, like Wall Street, are often fluffy and don’t confront the business aspect of things. Arbitrage concerns a trail of money leading up to a certain point, but doesn’t spell everything out. The viewer needs to have a bit of knowledge about the way things work. Do you think it’s more exciting to drop the viewer in the deep end a little bit?
I think people like coming into worlds that they don’t necessarily know a lot about but can learn something from and feel like they got some inside knowledge. I tried to be as real as possible with this movie. Like I said, my parents are traders, I know these types of people, and I know this world. I used to be in the business world myself so I worked very hard to make sure that this material was vetted by real minds. I had the heads of major investment banks and big lawyers reading this screenplay before we shot it. I think people can get into that. It might require them to keep up but also we didn’t bog it down with jargon and make it just a boring numbers movie. You’ve got the thriller aspect, the investigation and blood crime which I thought was really important too because I enjoy when a movie can blend genres a little bit. It’s a cinematic cocktail of “Murders and Mergers”.
Arbitrage premiered at Sundance and also featured at JDIFF. How important is the festival circuit as an outlet before the film is released?
It’s absolutely invaluable. The festivals provide a great springboard and it’s always nice to see people coming together for a shared interest in film. Film is the theatre of ideas. It’s the closest thing we’ve got left to people being able to think about larger topics than their average life. We’ve been now to Abu Dhabi, Zurich, Saint Sebastian, Dublin, London. For these different cultures to welcome us and embrace the film and this particular weird, heady vision of New York and the gilded age crashing down, it’s an honour to share that with different cultures and see how they have their own reaction to it.
Arbitrage is in cinemas now.
words // Cathal Prendergast
