Colin Farrell, star of the film ‘Ballad of a Small Player’, a story of gambling and debauchery in the strident Macao, directed by Edward Berger (‘Conclave’), considers that in the film it is clear that “we are all connected by our guilt and shame”, as he explained to EFE.
In the film, which competed at the last San Sebastian Festival, a debt-ridden gambler (Farrell) meets a soul mate (actress Fala Chen) who may hold the key to his salvation, while being pursued by a detective played by Tilda Swinton.
In an interview at the Festival, the 49-year-old Irish actor defends the advantages of feeling guilty, as happens to his immoral and selfish character when he discovers his friend’s fate, and this “wakes him up more than anything that has happened before” on his path to madness.
“Guilt is part of the human experience and is potentially an indicator that the moral compass has gone astray. I think guilt can be a teacher,” assures the star of ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’ or ‘The Penguin,’ who has publicly recounted a past of addictions.
In fact, it is the feeling of guilt and shame, as well as the compassion the woman feels for him, that somehow redeems him in the film, adapted from the 2014 book ‘The Ballad of a Small Player’ by British writer Lawrence Osborne.
“We are all connected not only by our hopes and our loves, but also by our guilts, our shames and our prayers for a better way forward,” Farrell stresses.
The character of Fala Chen, a casino employee who makes a living by lending money to hardened gamblers, is also eaten up by remorse, but finds a way out through her connection with this man even more lost than she is who she feels is worth helping and guiding. “She sees that childlike innocence in both characters,” the actress explains.
And that, as Farrell points out, “sometimes in life, human beings don’t believe they are worth saving or worth anything, and while I know you have to believe in yourself and not look to the outside world for affirmation, sometimes we can’t access our own inner selves.”
So, “it’s really lucky to have one or two people in your life who can wake you up through their compassion and let you know that you’re worth more than you really feel, and that you can’t live like this forever,” continues the actor, who acknowledges that “there are times when you’re so far underground that you’re just gone, you have nothing left.”
Farrell assures that when he agreed to play this character he didn’t feel he was exploring, “even unconsciously” his own addictions. “It was just a very good script,” he stresses, which deals with “guilt, hope, the possibility of change and all those infinitely fascinating things when you live in a world as in need of change as ours is today.”
The two main characters also have a common background: they have built an image that hides the shortcomings of a past that was surely much needed. “We all, whether we realize it or not, deal to a greater or lesser extent with our lineage, with everything that is passed down from generation to generation,” concluded Farrell, reported Agencia EFE.
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