Vera Farmiga’s most disappointing movie: “They just cashed in and checked out”
Many actors have been vocal about their dislike of movies they’ve starred in. Matt Damon, for example, famously called The Bourne Identity script ‘unreadable’, while Robert Pattinson notoriously hated filming the Twilight franchise.
While it’s fair enough for an actor to grow tired of a script, especially multimillion-dollar franchises like the Twilight series, where actors are locked into long contracts, smaller budget films can suffer when actors take their cheques and tap out.
For actress Vera Farmiga, this is a story she was all too familiar with while filming In Tranzit, a 2007 romance drama directed by Tom Roberts and set in post-World War II Soviet Russia. Farmiga starred as Natalia in the film, a kind doctor posted at a transit camp in Russia, who treats German prisoners of war there with dignity, despite the harsh conditions and political divisions.
She was joined by a stellar cast, including John Malkovich as the evil Russian officer and Daniel Brühl and Thomas Kretschmann as the German prisoners of war. But, according to Farmiga, her fellow actors were not committed to the film. “I was so disappointed,” she told Behind the Lens in an interview, adding, “A lot of the actors checked out. Like they just cashed in and checked out”.
Farmiga conceded that the filming location was not conducive to a positive filming setup, where Shooting took place in Russia near St Petersburg, in freezing weather conditions, which lent to a miserable environment.
“It was very cold and we were shooting at an old cement or glue factory,” the actor recalled, “There were dead horse parts everywhere. I remember it just being so grim and bleak and freezing. I was happy to be in St Petersburg, but where we were shooting was a scenario in which a lot of these divas were just ungrateful.” The divas in question were the checked-out actors, many of whom struggled with the shooting in such a depressing location.
This lack of commitment could have been a factor in the film’s limited critical reception. Much of the criticism around the film centred on the two-dimensional characters, whose lack of emotional depth and complexity meant audiences felt unable to invest in the storyline. Farmiga admitted that she never followed the movie’s success after its release, and kept a low profile due to the dynamic between the actors and crew on set: “I remember that film, I’m not sure how it turned out,” she confessed, “I never quite tuned in because the experience was one with a lot of complaining”.
She later turned to the horror genre, becoming well-known for her role as paranormal investigator, Lorraine Warren, alongside husband Ed Warren, played by Patrick Wilson, in The Conjuring franchise, the latest of which, The Conjuring: Last Rites, is due to be released September this year.
Set in Pennsylvania, The Conjuring is a far cry from the freezing temperatures of St Petersburg, and Farmiga evidently hasn’t felt the need to check out, but perhaps to cash in, with the ninth and, allegedly, final instalment of The Conjuring franchise under her belt.
