“People lay the foundation for you”: The directors who inspired Gary Oldman on ‘Nil by Mouth’
Seemingly not content with being one of his generation’s finest actors, Gary Oldman revealed himself to be a filmmaking force to be reckoned with when his astonishing debut feature Nil by Mouth premiered at the 1997 edition of the Cannes Film Festival.
A raw, searing, and unflinching working-class drama that quickly gained a well-earned reputation for being one of the best British films of the decade it was a remarkably accomplished first movie from a talented actor nobody could have predicted would move so swiftly and seamlessly behind the camera.
Nominated for the Palme d’Or and the recipient of a Bafta for ‘Best British Film’, Nil by Mouth is far from being an easy watch, but it’s an essential one. With Ray Winstone in career-best form, Oldman uses the sparsity of his story and setting to paint a portrait of a lifestyle that’s as bleak as the worldview of those living it.
A family gradually losing itself to the perils of addiction and dysfunction, the entire production, from script and stars to composition and execution, is a tightly coiled spring of rage, fury, bile, and broken dreams. In an instant, Oldman had marked himself out as an auteur with an incredibly bright future, not that anybody could have predicted at the time that he’d never do anything like it again.
It’s been almost three decades since Nil by Mouth first took the British independent scene by storm, and yet it still endures as the one and only time Oldman has received credits for writing or directing. It’s one of the only things about his career that could be called a disappointment if only for the fact there was a limitless promise on display.
As an intimate drama zeroing in on everyday British life, the nation’s great social realists who came before were always going to be important influences on Oldman’s approach, whether it was intentional or not. However, two American auteurs also made their presences felt, even if the filmmaker wasn’t quite as willing to accept one of them.
“I think people lay the foundation for you,” he explained to Film Scouts. “I don’t know if there could be a Nil by Mouth without people like Tony Richardson, Ken Loach, Mike Leigh. I guess it follows in the tradition of that type of British film. And John Cassavetes. That was something my chief editor pointed out to me. ‘And Scorsese’, he said.”
As much as Oldman tried to downplay the Scorsese influence while embracing the Cassavetes of it all, a director much more experienced than him seconded the visibility of Mean Streets and Taxi Driver creator’s fingerprints, with a touch of Italian neorealism thrown in for good measure.
“I readily admit that Nil By Mouth is not so much influenced by as it is inspired by Cassavetes. I don’t see Scorsese in there anywhere. Yet, when Stephen Frears came up to the editing room and I showed him 20 minutes – we were still editing at the time – even he said, ‘It’s so vivid! It’s like Marty’. And my friend Peter Medak said it reminded him of [Pier Paolo] Pasolini.”
Earning Scorsese comparisons from peers without even trying is an impressive achievement, leaving Oldman with no choice but to accept how the New Yorker exerted an unwitting influence over his South London story.
