The one movie Jude Law needs everyone to see: “If you haven’t, you must”
Jude Law’s versatility has made him one of the defining British actors of his generation – his charm and looks allowing him to oscillate between the loveable, befuddled handsome British man in endearing romcoms to dark and complex characters in dramas.
Films like The Talented Mr Ripley – his breakthrough role – allowed Jude Law to explore his dark side, while remaining the titular good looking playboy of high society, while Road to Perdition took this darkness further, transforming Law into a ruthless villain. Then, in Closer, the emotionally complex tangled love triangle drama, Law displays a deceitful edge, toying with infidelity, once again playing up his familiar elusive charm to detrimental effect.
It’s these roles that draw on certain elements of one of Jude Law’s favourite films, the 1955 thriller, The Night of the Hunter. Charles Laughton’s only gig as director, The Night of the Hunter, is one of the truly disturbing masterpieces of its generation, at once a dark and disquieting film of violence and misogyny, and also a childlike fable meandering between our discordant dreams and reality. The film is actually a Christmas movie, although this is quickly forgotten amidst the darkness of the plot.
Set in Depression-era West Virginia and based on a novel by Davis Grubb, Robert Mitchum (Cape Fear, 1962) plays Reverend Harry Powell, a serial killer posing as a priest whose menacing religious misogyny fuels his insatiable appetite for cash and leads him to carry out acts of blood in the name of the Lord. It’s a formidable performance from Powell, whose child-hunting preacher persona portrays the push and pull between good and evil and the power of religion as a corrupting force.
Serving time in prison, Powell meets condemned murderer Ben Harper, who confesses to hiding $10,000 in stolen loot. Inevitably, once Powell is released, his obsession with finding the money takes him to Harper’s widow and her two children, at which point the story becomes as much about their imagination and innocence as it does about Powell’s darkness.
Jude Law recalls being shown the film by his mum at around the age of 13, and being deeply shocked by its darkness, describing this “terrifying nursery rhyme” that appears on screen halfway through the film. “That’s a classic, and if you haven’t seen it you must”.
In one particularly disturbing scene he recalls, Powell has just got out of prison and, heading straight to a strip joint, puts his hand in his pocket, at which point a flick knife appears through his trousers instead of an erection, in a “shocking” but now iconic image.
It has to be said, The Night of the Hunter is made way more disturbing and nightmarish by the Expressionist-influenced noir cinematography of the great Stanley Cortez, who teeters on the edge of reality, challenging audiences to question their sense of truth.
This line between truth and lies is a balance Jude Law often teeters between in his films. From the religious corruption in The Young Pope, an HBO mini series he starred in, to the lies and infidelity in Closer and performative class dynamics in The Nest, Jude Law has found his calling in the complex character dynamics of his past influences.
