ZONE FILM CHALLENGE: SAM NEILL SHOWCASE

Spoilers for Possession (1981, dir. Andrzej Zulawski) and The Piano (1993, dir. Jane Campion)

John Wright: Hello everybody, coming at you with another edition of the Zone Film Challenge. Our first ever Showcase honors someone that many of you know from Jurassic Park, but that is only the shallow end of his canon. I am, of course, speaking of New Zealand’s own Sam Neill.

Alex McDonough: Sam Neill is an actor who I think everyone is relatively familiar with. He had his moment in the 1990s but most people think of him as solely the Jurassic Park guy or as this distant third to more popular actors. Growing up, for whatever reason, I always associated him with Pierce Brosnan, I’d always mix the two up although they’re very different people. I think I saw Goldeneye and Jurassic Park around the same time. Anyway, Sam Neill is a very impressive actor who falls into the shadows a lot, he’s an interesting man, one New Zealand’s most prominent actors, although he’s originally from the UK, moved to Christchurch when he was five or six so for all intents and purposes, he’s as much of a Kiwi as most Kiwis are.

JW: It’s interesting you bring up that he’s mostly known as the Jurassic Park guy because that late ‘80s, early ‘90s period was his bite of the apple of mainstream appeal but he’s been working more or less without interruption up until the present day from the late ‘70s.

AM: He’s been a consistent character actor.

JW: Oh, extremely.

AM: He’s almost entirely on television now with rare appearances in films, mostly produced in New Zealand.

JW: Yeah, so a guy who made his money and now is content to come out whenever he needs to renew his SAG insurance and wants to put a sun room on his house or whatever.

*laughing*

Before we get away from it, Jurassic Park was the one movie we were not allowed to pick for this one because it was too obvious. I do think it is interesting that we mostly refer to him as the Jurassic Park guy because he hasn’t gone back to the well for the Jurassic World films. He was in Jurassic Park III but beyond that, he’s done very little to associate himself with the franchise beyond the first movie.

AM: If I’ve read the reports correctly they’re intending for him to come back for this next one but he has been one of those holdouts who has been like “I don’t want to come back.” He doesn’t seem to regard the franchise with much esteem. He seems to think it’s schlocky blockbuster crap but they’re bringing him back for this last one, come hell or high water. Maybe he’ll get eaten by a dinosaur in his first scene.

JW: And I think that’s a good way to pivot to the duo of films that we decided to talk about for the Sam Neill Showcase. The first of which is his personal favorite film that he has been in; Possession, made in 1981, and The Piano, which won some significant acclaim in 1993.

AM: Yeah, although he might be the least successful part of The Piano, not in the actual film text but in its reception, but we’ll get to that.

JW: We certainly will.

AM: Possession is a fascinating film and Sam Neill is just one part of why it’s fascinating. His co-star, the real highlight, is Isabella Adjani, who does timeless work in it. You watched Possession for the first time, real quick on it, if you can sum up Possession.

Do You Have A Brief Summary, Fifteen Words Or Less?

JW: The most divorced movie ever made.

AM: *laughing* Yeah, that’s correct.

JW: Extremely, extremely good though. There’s nothing quite like it, which is a cheap comment but in this case; completely accurate.

AM: Yeah, Possession is a real nightmare of a film.

JW: Without wishing to get too far ahead of ourselves, it really does have that feeling of you are watching someone else’s nightmare.

AM: It’s surreal and excels at dislocating you from your sense of time and place. I watched it for the first time about three months ago and I still think about it daily. It’s likely one of my top ten horror films, not to get distracted about Possession.

“…Possession was one to be notched in the win column for my theory that all films are ultimately comedies.”

What is Sam Neill’s role in it? What’s his character like?

JW: Sam Neill plays a guy named Mark who is trying to resolve some marital strife with his wife Anna (Isabella Adjani), and, to be blunt, it’s not going well. They have a young son, there’s a back and forth about who will be responsible for him and it comes out very quickly very early on that Isabella Adjani is having an affair with someone but it’s not that straightforward.

AM: Oh yeah.

JW: Suffice to say. Neill doesn’t put on an American accent for this, he’s speaking in what I think is his natural voice. Just to dip a toe into the cast and crew background; Andrezj Zulawski, the director, went through a divorce before making this movie and I’m not sure what the circumstances of Zulawski’s own marital separation were but Sam Neill’s character in this does not come off very well, he’s not a nice guy.

AM: No, he’s petty and mean.

JW: At one point, physically abusive. It’s all a very raw and real portrayal of a relationship coming apart.

AM: Yeah, one of the opening scenes after a meeting at his job — which I never quite figured out what was -

JW: See, I wanted to bounce this off of you as well because I could not parse that part of the movie either.

AM: Honestly, that’s it’s own separate article because there is so much to unpack — but the scene where he’s coming home and his child is sitting in refuse and their own filth and has clearly been neglected for weeks. You get a sense of the rage he’s feeling at that moment. But what’s striking is the way that the film makes you side against Sam Neill, that he’s taking this way too far, that he’s not any better, it critiques itself.

JW: Yeah, it does indicate a — it’s indicative of something about the person who wrote it.

AM: Yes.

JW: In a good way I think, but also in a lot of negative ways. *laughs*

“It’s a superb bad time.”

AM: Neill does a lot of heavy lifting there in order to make this character seem reprehensible.

JW: I think he needs to do a lot of heavy lifting in general because Adjani’s portrayal of Anna, and part of what makes it so lightning in a bottle, is that she’s very ephemeral, you can’t really nail down what is compelling her to behave as she does— so Neill has to be simultaneously a monstrous guy that anybody would leave and the reasonable, sane party which is an incredible balancing act not only on the part of the script, but on his part as an actor.

AM: What would you say is Neill’s strongest moment in the film?

JW: It’s tough to say. If I may digress for a moment, I realized he’s got what I call the Jeffrey Combs toolset for horror movie leading men. Jeffrey Combs, if you are not aware, starred in Re-Animator and From Beyond, both directed by Stuart Gordon, and I’d say, in a similar area code to Possession, in that they’re extremely funny but horror-tinged. Possession is much less a comedy and more a horror movie though, there’s far less schlock. Anyway, they’re both extremely good face actors, they’re both very good at looking a little crazy, unbalanced, annoyed, enraged but they’re also good at being a regular schmuck caught up in supernatural goings-on.

Anyway, the strongest moment, the moment I always come back to has nothing to do with any of the horror element per se - when he just finally snaps and starts slapping Isabella Adjani, and his face is all twisted and they’re screaming at each other. Her mouth is full of blood, it’s so raw. The word I’m gonna come back to a million times is “raw.”

AM: It’s intense. Possession is the film that sold me on Sam Neill because previously I thought of him as the “Jurassic Park guy” but watching it made me consider him as an underrated talent who could do this physical acting that I had never really attributed to him. I like Event Horizon a lot, in large part because of his performance but I thought that was a one-off. With Possession, I get the sense that Wild Neill is actually more of his strength and isn’t a one-off. Event Horizon is a lot campier and it allows Neill to belt.

“It really speaks well to Neill that he is able balance out a performance that is that unrestrained and that emotionally strenuous.”

JW: This is the way the Brits (and by extension the Aussies) train their actors, the good ones anyway, the fundamentals are always rock solid. They can all kind of do everything. Stage fundamentals show through. I do think this movie made me want to see more horror work from Sam Neill, like Omen III and Event Horizon.

AM: How did Neill do against Isabella Adjani or his other co-stars?

JW: Notably, Heinz Bennett as a weird foil to Sam Neill.

AM: Heinrich is the funniest fucking character.

JW: Oh my God, he’s the best. I don’t even want to talk about it because we’ll be here all night but like — Possession was one to be notched in the win column for my theory that all films are ultimately comedies. Isabella Adjani is the most famous performance in this movie and she’s just like, a tornado. She acts harder than your favorite actor acted in their favorite performance. It’s so much, it’s just so much. I’m reminded of the story about how when they were shooting Twin Peaks, David Lynch would tell Dana Ashbrook “more energy, more energy, more energy” after every take. It speaks well to Neill that he is able to balance out a performance that is that unrestrained and that emotionally strenuous.

AM: Yeah, I would say that he does what he can to measure up to Adjani. He goes a long way to do it but Adjani is just — that scene in the subway tunnel, man.

JW: Mhmmmm.

AM: Moving on, are there any actors that remind you of Neill? You mentioned Jeffrey Combs earlier.

JW: A lot of those horror movie leading men have a similar set of tools. I guess you could say there are two types of horror movie leading men; there are the Bruce Campbell’s, who are square-jawed and dopey, and the Sam Neill’s/Jeffrey Combs’ who are emasculated, impotent, but also monstrous in their own way. Patrick Wilson is a modern analogue.

AM: Oh yeah, interesting pick, Patrick Wilson. He’s got a similar plainness to him where he could go either way.

JW: I think this does come back to our Dune discussion talking about Barry Keoghan and Miles Teller having that face where it always looks like they’re up to something. Sam Neill has a similar thing going on.

AM: Sam Neill has a devilish grin.

Do You Recommend The Film That You Watched?

JW: Oh, of course. To anybody. Well, maybe not to anybody.

AM: Yeah, you’ve got to have a threshold for horror.

JW: If you’re like me and you’re not really a horror guy per-se but you’re always interested in something different, and you don’t mind doing some stuff that will scare you; give it a try. I personally do not do well with jump scares, like I can’t sit still and anticipate being startled. Possession didn’t give me any problems with that. Just a lot of bad, bad vibes that you feel in the pit of your stomach. If you can deal with that, you should watch this movie ASAP. It’s a superb bad time.

“The most divorced movie ever made.”

AM: Lastly, any Sam Neill performances that you’re desiring to see?

JW: Like I said, Omen III, Event Horizon. I would be interested to watch the film that you picked because my understanding is that you enjoyed it a fair bit. I would be interested in seeing some of the Oceania region films he’s been in.

I think that’s as good a point as any for us to transition to our second offering for this Challenge; The Piano.

What kind of Neill is on the menu for this film, what is his character like?

AM: Much the same.

*Laughs*

Yeah, he plays another emasculated petty, angry, impotent man who’s trying to like control a woman. The film is not as terrifying or alienating as Possession. It’s a good period piece and he plays quite well in it.

JW: So fifteen words or less, summarize The Piano, what’s it about?

AM: Woman, stuck between two lovers, picks lesser of two evils.

JW: I didn’t count if that was 15 or less but I’m gonna take your word for it

AM: That was about 12, I was counting it out on my hands.

JW: That’s what I did for Police Story so it’s all fine. I know this movie received an Academy Award of some kind, were there any individual accolades for Sam Neill?

AM: So, Sam Neill did win one award for this movie… sorry, no, he didn’t win. He was nominated for only one award. Now, The Piano won a ton of acting awards across dozens of award ceremonies. Sam Neill was only nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the Australian Film Institute Awards, and he was the only person in the cast who didn’t win the award. Keitel won Best Actor, Paquin and Hunter won their respective awards. The film own Best Picture, it won Best Director, like it swept that year. All except for Sam Neill. He was the only one who sat down the entire time.

JW: That sucks because I’m sure he had something prepared. He’s like tearing it up and throwing it in the garbage on the way out.

AM: He’s just using his speech to wipe away his tears as everyone else goes up to the stage to accept their awards.

JW: It’s okay, we like you Sam Neill.

AM: This ties into my general idea that Sam Neill is consistently overlooked. Although Sam Neill previously won Best Actor for Evil Angels in 1989 at the AFI’s so y’know

JW: He’s got something on the mantelpiece already.

AM: Yeah he’s got something.

JW: So what was, if you had to pick a signature moment from The Piano.

AM: It can be tough with The Piano because it is built so much out of very subtle passive aggressive moments between characters. Their quiet hostility builds and builds until there’s this explosion of energy. The best moment of it is the moment where Sam Neill’s spying on Ada [Holly Hunter], who is cheating on him. He’s spying on her having an affair with George [Harvey Keitel] and you just see him peeking through the warped wood of the shack and you just see his soul crumble, you just see his body tense up as he gazes at these two characters embracing each other and his face contorts and then drops.

JW: That face-acting man!

AM: He really is able to play it.

JW: Okay look, I don’t wanna spoil Possession too much but it is a 40 year old movie at this point

“This ties into my general idea that Sam Neill is consistently overlooked.”

AM: I was gonna put a spoiler warning on these anyway so go ahead

JW: I was just going to say we have picked two movies where Sam Neill gets cucked. Once by Harvey Keitel which is already not good, once by a pseudointellectual German man, and once by [REDACTED].

*laughs*

So, that’s really what the Sam Neill showcase is all about; Sam Neill getting cucked

AM: Sam Neill gets cucked a lot on screen. It’s very funny. He’s got a similar thing to what Ray Liotta’s got going on right now.

JW: Oh man I didn’t even think of that.

AM: Ray Liotta’s been in like three movies in the past two years where he gets cucked. It’s really funny, it keeps happening. That voyeur scene though; that seems better than even the grand moment of spectacular violence where he cuts off Holly Hunter’s fingers.

JW: Oh my God!

AM: He’s a bad guy.

JW: Bad man!

Harvey Keitel, obviously in the early 1990s a name with a lot of heft in Hollywood. How would you say Sam Neill stacks up to him in terms of being the other leading man? How does he stack up to Holly Hunter and Anna Paquin?

AM: All four of these actors are incredible and they play off each other very well. Anna Paquin, this was among her first film roles. She was 11, maybe? She’s a real talent. Holly Hunter plays someone who can’t speak so her performance is solely conveyed through her face. Harvey Keitel is great as this brusque, uncivilized, very hostile and forthright person who possesses this raw sexual energy. It’s very much like a romance novel in that way. Sam Neill does good work as this weepy, passive aggressive geek. He talks way more than the others and he’s always trying to short-change them. Because he’s the most formal person on the island, he considers himself the most civilized person, he’s able to present all these things as if it’s his way or the highway.

He reminds me a lot of, if you’ve seen the Deadwood pilot, Timothy Omundson’s character, this city-dweller who goes out West, thinks he’s hot shit and that he’s smarter than everyone and that he can buy their loyalty and their respect because he’s got the clothes for it, but he has no actual power and everyone around him knows that he’s weak. So for Neill, it’s a matter of him rejecting his clear impotence in this scenario until it breaks him.

JW: So again, parallels here. We’ve got two performances where Sam Neill is both completely monstrous and somehow the reasonable party or at least presenting himself that way.

AM: He presents himself that way but he’s definitely unreasonable. He thinks he’s being reasonable, and there’s points in the film where he tries to hash out- he’s like “Why don’t you love me? We can work this out.” He tries to make these ultimatums but he’s never able to accept the reality of the situation and that’s what ends up breaking him entirely and ruining his life. He and Keitel contrast each other brilliantly. You see where Sam Neill’s character is failing as an individual, as a lover, and where Keitel makes up that deficit even though Keitel has got his own problems as an individual.

JW: I’ll pose the same question back on you: What actors remind you of Sam Neill? Who do you think he’s in the same bin as?

AM: So previously, when I was five, I thought of Pierce Brosnan. That’s not correct. I mentioned Timothy Omundson, who’s a somewhat overlooked character actor. He was on Deadwood, he played Lassie on Psych. I think he works. I think they’re both able to do these guys who think they’re on top and really think that they can control the situations that they’re in but they’re always out of their element.

JW: So, what we’ve come back to here then is that Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park is the guy that every other Sam Neill character thinks he is.

AM: Exactly. To use Jurassic Park as an example, the idea for that character is that he’s supposed to be like Indiana Jones, he’s supposed to be like Harrison Ford.

JW: Yeah, the visual iconography is there.

AM: But Sam Neill is not Harrison Ford. Sam Neill is a guy whose characters want to be Indiana Jones. It’s tough to find past or present corollaries for an actor like this because they’re very good at shifting themselves into the background. He’s a very talented actor and his brief flirtations with headline roles have less to do with his quality as an actor and more to do with how wishy-washy Hollywood is, how you can find yourself in demand one day and completely out of demand the next.

JW: So, it’s important to make your money while you can, which he appears to have done.

Now, Point Blank, Do You Recommend This Film?

AM: Yeah! It’s directed by Jane Campion, who just released The Power of the Dog for Netflix. The Piano is a well-shot, well directed period piece. It’s got a very gentle sexuality to it that is uncommon in a lot of films. You see Harvey Keitel’s butt in it, repeatedly. You also kind of see his dick but the man is bare-assed for a lot of the film. It’s a beautiful looking film with a good love triangle at the center with nuance to it. It’s not a teenager’s film, but it definitely has the pull of a romance novel your mom would read if those things were still in vogue. Are they still in vogue? I dunno.

“…it’s a matter of him rejecting his clear impotence in this scenario until it breaks him.”

JW: They’re still in print, I dunno if they’re still in vogue.

AM: Yeah, but it’s got that kind of-

JW: It’s a bodice ripper.

AM: It’s got that Buff Dude On The Cover energy but a lot more grounded. Harvey Keitel’s no Fabio.

JW: As A Parting Shot, Where To Next In The Neill-Verse For You?

AM: You mentioned Omen III and I’ve always wanted to see Omen III. In Omen III, he plays Damien who has grown up to be a US Ambassador and fulfills his destiny as the Antichrist or attempts to. He’s really young, maybe released around the same time as Possession?

JW: Yeah, it was the same year as Possession.

AM: The other film I’d like to see is the one he won Best Actor for at the AFI’s, that is Evil Angels. I’m interested in that because he won that award for it, so it’s a small piece of the Australian film scene, and the film itself sounds pretty interesting. It also stars Meryl Streep and overall sounds like a solid true crime drama/fictionalization

Wanna take the Challenge? Next week’s prompt is: Animated Oddities. Watch an animated feature film not produced by a lesser-known studio (No Disney, DreamWorks, Pixar, Illumination, or Studio Ghibli, exercise your own judgement, expand your horizons)