It’s dealing with big ideas with a very small cast and a driving relationship between a father and son.” But “there are other aspects”, he says, “that make this a western very much of our time”.įortunately for Nelson, there are plenty of roles in which he does belong, even if few of them offer as generous a showcase as Old Henry. He plays a widowed farmer whose violent past resurfaces after a badly wounded man is discovered near his home. It’s a tight and engaging piece of work with a somewhat deceptive modesty to its scope. Set in rural Oklahoma in the year 1906, the film makes good use of its classic rugged backdrop. “There’s the scope of a real western, but it’s also a quite intimate story,” says Nelson, “much of which takes place either in or just outside of a very small house. Nelson’s latest project Old Henry, which he refers to as a “micro western”, gives him the rare chance at a lead role. When I set out 30 years ago, that’s precisely the career I fantasised about having.” I’m not sure if it’s the way I’d feel regardless or whether I’ve been backed into this by genetics, but I like it this way. “And, frankly, those are the kinds of characters I want to watch. So they opted for Nelson, then better known for his off-camera work as the director of Eye of God, the film adaptation of a stage play he had written. Nelson’s Delmar was a few Homers short of an Odyssey: a kind-hearted but simple man who follows Clooney and Turturro around with blank credulity. But for Delmar, the brothers wanted an actor who couldn’t afford vanity, who wouldn’t “have their feelings hurt” by the frequent Clooney close-ups. Clooney’s other chain-gang mate, John Turturro, was happy to cede the spotlight, having worked with Joel and Ethan Coen before on Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink and The Big Lebowski. The Coens knew they were filming in widescreen, with a lot of three-shots of the film’s central trio of characters, and that this would require an unusual amount of close-ups of the film’s lead, George Clooney. To devotees of the Coen brothers, Nelson is a familiar presence thanks to his two collaborations with them: as fugitive naïf Delmar O’Donnell in the dust bowl odyssey O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), and as the titular singing cowboy in the masterful anthology The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018). Nelson explains that he was offered the O Brother role – his breakthrough – precisely because of his lack of celebrity. “You’re not going to put me in the lead of a romantic comedy,” he jokes, from his home in New York. He’s capable of wringing broad humour and heart-pinching pathos from just about any script, though he’s best known for his enviable repertoire of goofballs and eccentrics – a niche that he has inhabited as well as just about anyone. The same could certainly be said for Nelson’s many screen appearances: the 57-year-old is a scene stealer whose first-rate character work can elevate a film, even if he’s only got a few lines. A life should be lived in pursuit of tikkun olam.” He’s referring to the concept in Judaism, he explains, that means “repairing the world – leaving it somehow better than when you got here”. “She and her parents passed down the credo that we are lucky to be alive the very fact you’re here is something you have to earn. “My mother is a holocaust refugee,” says the star of Watchmen and O Brother, Where Art Thou?, in a voice that only half resembles the gravelly southern drawl he often adopts on screen.
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