Kingsley: a portrait artist at work

The quest of Massoud Behrani is as ancient as dramatic literature. It’s a search for home that is also a quest for a new self. Few actors could come better equipped to play such a role -- the starring part in the new DreamWorks film, “The House of Sand and Fog” -- than Academy Award winner Ben Kingsley.

The high-powered drama shows us a man in jarring transition. When the Islamic Revolution ousted the shah of Iran in 1978, Behrani, a colonel in the Iranian army, was stripped of power, honor and country. He took his family to America, but his journey was more perilous than the average immigrant’s. The pride that won him prestige in his native land clashes with the indignities of a new reality he never asked to face.

The story’s main conflict: Behrani sinks all he has into a seaside California bungalow being sold for a fraction of its market value. The problem is, it’s up for auction because the rightful owner -- the bewitching Kathy Nicolo (Oscar winner Jennifer Connolly) -- has been mistakenly evicted. A cop (Ron Eldard, late of “Black Hawk Down”) tries to win her affection by helping her get it back by any means necessary. All take aim on the house of sand and fog.

For Andre Dubus III, who wrote the bestselling 1999 novel on which the film is based, and Vadim Perelman, its first-time director, only one actor was right for the role.

After exploding on the international scene as Mohandas Gandhi in 1982, Kingsley has only deepened his skill at inhabiting a wide range of characters. Behrani’s relations with his wife, Nadi (Shohreh Aghdashloo), and son Esmail (first-timer Jonathan Ahdout) interested Kingsley.

But Kingsley’s notion of acting itself as a “hunt” may link him most strongly to the character. In an interview, the actor, who was knighted in 2001, spoke of his craft, of playing Behrani and of his quest for authenticity.

Question: Let’s start with film acting; if it’s art, what are your brushes?

Answer: There’s a palette, there are colors, there’s a canvas. As a portrait artist, I have to make similar choices to a painter. I choose the size of the canvas. Before I lift canvas onto easel, I’ve limited its size. Then I must decide how much of the face will be on the canvas, how much of the head and shoulders. The raw materials are my body, voice and imagination.

Q: How does the written word narrow your frame?

A: I’m limited by the text on the page -- in a wonderful way. I’ve always warmed to those limits. In the first 10, 15 years of my career, with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre, I developed a hunter’s instinct to make what was on the page work. Not to change it to make it work but to faithfully make, say, that extraordinary line of Shakespeare’s work. In week one of rehearsals, a line might seem incomprehensible; in week four, you might realize, “That’s it! This word is ironic, that one is held in the air for examination.”

Take Hamlet, which is a milestone in any actor’s career. I was offered that role for the RSC [in 1975]. I looked at the text and thought, “This is impossible; you don’t have the strength, the stamina, the cleverness to play the most intelligent man in dramatic literature.” But the absolute joy I found in hunting for Hamlet was in [developing] a portrait for the audience which made it inevitable that that man would say that particular line in that way.

Q: Is that interpretation defined by who you are?

A: Oh, boy; here’s where it gets tricky. An actor is only as good as what he or she knows, as what he or she is capable of experiencing or feeling. Unless, of course -- sometimes this happens -- the very action of creating a character gives you the growth necessary to portray [him].

When I set forth to construct this portrait of Hamlet, I think I activated parts of my brain I didn’t know I had. Even though there can be a gap between [your] experience and the experience the role demands, if you’re lucky, if you have a great director and great people around you, that experience can be the creating of that character.

Q: Did such a thing happen with Behrani?

A: Well, I’m fascinated by the military. Acting, especially film acting, is a hierarchical, disciplined world. You have a commander in chief, people with huge responsibilities, a system. I like systems, hierarchy, order. Without them, films wouldn’t be made. Without discipline, no painting would ever be painted; no musical note would get on the page.

Q: Did you discover a military essence in yourself?

A: To play a warrior, in the mythical sense, appealed to me. In studying this text, I realized you could have placed the journey of Behrani, and his meeting with this beautiful, narcotized witch [Connolly], 2 1/2 thousand years ago, and it would still be the same story. That gave it a purity. The purity of that myth fed into the purity of Behrani, inasmuch as he is a warrior.

He’s a warrior without a battlefield. He had a king; he had a landscape, which he once called Persia. He watched his king disappear, then watched his rank, country and son disappear. He was on a cross, wrenched from all directions. He was a warrior who shouldn’t be provoked in certain areas of his authority, his manhood, his relationship with his family, his rank.

Q: The film provokes him in just those ways. Do you enjoy playing a man under duress?

A: Dramatic literature can place in front of the audience that wonderful opportunity. It’s marvelous for the actor to know that at a particular moment, the worst thing you can do to that character is being done to that character. If my character doesn’t feel hugely shaken, misunderstood, threatened, cornered by [that] moment, then I haven’t got him right.

Q: Can you give an example?

A: In one scene, a deputy [Eldard] enters my house illegally, intrudes, threatens my family and leaves. He’s a man of very low rank -- a deputy! [Behrani] used to have an army; now, every molecule in him is deeply, deeply disturbed. At that point, his wife, whom he worships and does everything for, calls him a liar.

Now, if I’ve “docked,” if I’ve found the right man, this is the worst possible thing in the world to happen to that man. If I haven’t, that scene won’t work; I [could] turn to the director and say [affects a dopey voice], “Uh, I don’t think I should hit her here, because....” You see? It goes all rubbery. But if I’ve got that portrait right, confined within the frames of that canvas I’ve chosen, it becomes inevitable, absolutely inevitable.

Q: In that scene, Behrani’s emotions escalate in discrete stages. So do the deputy’s. Yet you filmed it over several days. How do you stay in the emotion?

A: Ron and I understood the characters as men, understood what each man, with his manhood, thought he was defending. I was defending my woman; he was fighting for his. The women are in the background, but both men have, at the heart of that scene, a tribal defense of their women. Ron and I are tribal actors.

Q: It’s a simple scene but a raw one. How is such emotion realized on film?

A: Ron and I admire each other, so there’s a shorthand. Because we’re strong men, and respect one another, we each allow the other to see vulnerability. That’s a high currency on the film set -- to allow the other to see moments of great vulnerability. Having done that, there’s enormous trust. You’re hunting together for something.

Q: One quality of an enduring film seems to be that sense of being in a present moment. Are you discovering as you go?

A: I’m given credit for my preparation, but it’s an intuitive process. After Behrani has struck his wife, he brings a glass of orange juice into his son’s bedroom. I say to him, “I know I’m your role model, but don’t do what I do.” That’s an enormous thing for that father to say to that son [played by Jonathan Ahdout]....

No preparation in the world would equip me to walk through that door with that glass of orange juice if I’m not engaged with Jonny....

I honestly try and start from zero. I do this with all the technique at my command, I promise you, but if I can start from zero outside that bedroom door and honestly allow myself to be vulnerable to seeing Jonny in the bed, the scene becomes about Jonny.