“I love him”: The filmmaker Tim Roth called “fucking divine”
When you have a filmography like Tim Roth does, it’s almost impossible to single out your favourite collaborators because you’ve spent so long working with the best. Ranging from his several iconic collaborations with Quentin Tarantino to his appearance in the 2017 return of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, Roth has amassed an incredibly vast amount of experience over the years.
While many immediately associate Roth with Tarantino’s oeuvre, especially Pulp Fiction, Roth’s body of work stretches far beyond those popular hits that everyone loves. When it comes to reflecting on his career, the English actor has his own set of favourite outings that remain embedded in his mind as he continues venturing into new projects.
One perfect example of this is Michael Haneke’s 2007 English-language remake of his own movie, Funny Games, which starred Roth alongside Naomi Watts as a married couple who find themselves in an unbelievably grim situation. While some prefer Haneke’s original 1997 work, the filmmaker insisted that the English version was necessary to drive his message home to American audiences.
In a conversation with Rolling Stone, Roth reflected on his participation in the project and said that it was among the most difficult experiences of his extensive career. However, that drove him to achieve greater levels of acting excellence, particularly because he was working with one of the finest auteurs in the contemporary cinematic landscape.
While talking about the shoot, Roth said: “That was one of the toughest things I’ve ever done. Michael Haneke is fucking divine, and I love him, but that movie was shot in sequence. So you start your day going, ‘Oh, I’m about to get stressed.’ Then, day’s over, stop. Next day: Pick it right back where you left off, extremely stressed … then day’s over, stop.”
The actor added: “Next day: even more stressed. Repeat. It was like that for the whole shoot. They’d come out to get me between shots where I’d be smoking and just go, ‘Tim, are you okay?!?’ And I’m just [mimes trembling, wide-eyed, waving folks away]. Also, the little boy playing my son looked exactly like my son did at the time, so I’d go into those scenes and find myself becoming incredibly upset. It was tough.”
An unsettlingly direct critique of the violence inherent in American cinema, Haneke pulled the audiences into a world of irrational misery and did not let them escape, almost cruelly dangling the illusion of a way out in front of them. Due to the social context of the remake, some fans consider the 2007 version to be the superior movie, which signals that Haneke’s quest to make a shot-for-shot remake of his own work paid off.
