With writer-director Scott Cooper’s fantastic new film, Hostiles, now playing in limited release, a few days ago I got to sit down with Christian Bale and Chief Phillip Whiteman (who helped Bale understand the Cheyenne culture while filming) for an exclusive interview. Bale talked about how he got involved in the project, what surprised him to learn while researching his role, how the film doesn’t shy away from depicting the brutal violence of the era, what it was like on set while filming, how Chief Phillip Whiteman helped him understand the time period and the importance of his morning prayers, and a lot more.

If you’re not familiar with the film, Hostiles takes place in 1892 and stars Christian Bale as a legendary Army Captain who reluctantly agrees to escort a dying Cheyenne war chief (Wes Studi) and his family back home to the tribal lands. Along the way, they encounter a variety of obstacles including helping a young widow (Rosamund Pike) whose family was murdered on the plains.The film also stars Adam Bach, Ben Foster, Q’orianka Kilcher, Tanaya Beatty, Jonathan Majors, Rory Cochrane, Jesse Plemons, Timothée Chalamet, Paul Anderson, Ryan Bingham, John Benjamin Hickey, Stephen Lang, and Bill Camp.

Loaded with amazing cinematography, fantastic production design, costumes that feel like they were transported from the era, and great work from all involved, Hostiles is one of those films that should absolutely be seen in a movie theater and on the biggest screen possible. Strongly recommended. For more on the film, read Adam Chitwood's review.

Check out what Christian Bale and Chief Phillip Whiteman had to say below.

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Collider: I think this is Scott's best film. I really responded to this. Everything about this film is very well done. You have a previous relationship with him. Is it something where he just picks up the phone or texts you and say, "I think I have something for you."

CHRISTIAN BALE: Yes, and he sent me Donald Stewart's original manuscript, written in the '70s, asked my opinion. I said, "I think it's fantastic. I think we can really work with this." He said, "Great. Let's start putting it together," and then he began with the writing, and slowly we formed it.

Why pick one project over another? Very good experience with Scott on Out of the Furnace, knowing that Masa was going to be shooting, and just a gut feeling of, "There is something that I'm quite obsessed about with this character and with this entire story. I can't quite put my finger on it. I don't need to. I'll discover that as I make it," and we like working together, Scott and I. It just clicks. It's a good relationship.

One of the things about the film is, even though it's taking place in the late 1800s, it's still relevant today, in terms of what it's dealing with. Can you talk about when you were researching the period, what surprised you or anything that you took away from researching for the role?

BALE: Yeah, and it's become more and more relevant as we were filming, and then since filming, with the notions of the other and division and hatred, this theme of hope and redemption and reconciliation, this kind of disgusting whimsy of Washington, which dictates life and death for men, such as Blocker, who is bigoted when you first meet him, but I believe in his way of thinking, and Chief Phillip will explain and you'll understand what I'm meaning, and his linear way of thinking is essential.

He cannot do what he does without accruing hatred, and then that hatred becomes real as his brothers in arms die next to him, and this man is someone who has known war his entire life. He would have been in the Civil War as well. I made up a backstory of Shiloh and the Hornet's Nest, but he's smart and he recognizes that the bigger picture of this is that Blocker is the attacker, and this is genocide, and that's exactly what they're perpetrating here, and Yellow Hawk is defending himself and his family and his way of life, and Blocker would do exactly what Yellow Hawk is doing were he in his shoes, but he's stoic and he represses everything, and as a leader in this linear way of thinking, he can't show any vulnerability.

So then we get this journey of how this man turns off hatred, with that huge guilt that he feels about doing so. He's rendering his brothers in arms deaths meaningless, and that's why so many conflicts just continue, because you don't want to admit that it was meaningless and people you love died for something that was meaningless, but he needs to go through that and the guilt of it, and he sees that expressed so much through the character of Rosalie, in that she's another damaged individual, but she's somebody who expresses that damage very openly, the opposite of Blocker, and then with Yellow Hawk, in recognizing a fellow warrior, who Blocker has a great deal of respect for but who has substance, family, love, a life, everything that Blocker lacks, and now Blocker is returning to humanity, and how is he ever going to be able to achieve that?

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Image via Entertainment Studios

Chief Phillip was absolutely essential in helping me understand, not just to be able to speak the Cheyenne language, but in understanding, and knowing entirely that there is a very different way of doing this, and that informed me so much and informed Scott, and because we shot chronologically, we were able to adjust because of that. And then, I just loved listening to the Chief, and he was so helpful and so instrumental in this film. Do you want to expand on that at all, Chief?

CHIEF PHILLIP WHITEMAN: I think that today we have an opportunity. We can continue to do the same things over and over again expecting different results, and come to the realization that we cannot solve a problem with the same mindset that created it, and I believe in science, and science is catching up with our native teaching that we are all connected, and that this opportunity right here, right now, is a way to come together as one, and the highest thought process is that we are all connected, and the lowest form of thought process that we are separate.

The linear brain and the circular brain has a lot to do with language and the clash of cultures that this country ... How can you own something that owns you? The native people, they had no concept of ownership, and their language is love based, and the linear language, it thinks in lines and corners, and it's direct. It's vertical. You learn to fight. The right brain, you learn to fight, not to fight. There's many different dimensions that's in our language, and overall, it's better to be kind and right, and love is what this world needs today.

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Image via Entertainment Studios

The film does not shy away from depicting what it would have really been like back then on the frontier, and it's pretty brutal at times.

BALE: I loved how Scott managed that, in terms of rhythm and the isolation that the people would have had, the complete lack of self-awareness that people would have had, no documentation of themselves, probably no real notion of what they looked like, certainly nobody saying, "Hey, your smile's a little bit weird. You should change that," just completely different from nowadays, and the rhythm of life being such that there's an incredible quiet and incredible stillness, a very hard life, and then sudden moments of violence, but not a swashbuckling kind of a violence, a very specific, brutal, very violent violence that is very quick as well, and then the stillness again but with the tragedy of what just occurred.

And I think that really heightened that violence and made it all about character rather than about the traditional Western, where the violence is something that you can embrace and sort of in a strange way enjoy, and thus you get kids who are playing cowboys and Indians, etc., because that's what the films all showed, that it was just a bit of fun. This shows it in a very different way, and as Scott describes it, it's not your father's Western, but as Chief Phillip said, and I think it really sums up Blocker's experience, you can't solve a problem with the same mindset that created it, and that's very much what Blocker's journey is about.

Yeah, I think that it's exactly what you just said, though, with the depiction, because it is so sudden and so brutal and then in an instant it's over, and Scott did a very, very good job with the script and also the staging of how everything is depicted on-screen.

CHIEF PHILLIP WHITEMAN: This was very real for me. I still live from the effects of historical trauma, and this language is a foreign language. It's my second language, and my first language is Cheyenne, and the understanding of looking at the creator from a linear perspective, it's a 180. It's inverted, and our principals are the same. Thou shall not kill. Thou shall not lie, and our guidepost is that we're supposed to value all of life, and it's better to let your enemy live, and so it's a completely inverted thought process to what happened to our people when we started this effects of this genocide process, and what's happening today, the mass shootings and the discrimination of women, that's nothing new to us. It's very much alive today as it was when it was four generations ago.

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Image via Entertainment Studios

Watching it, you feel like you've been transported to that time period. The costumes, the production design, the locations. I'm curious, if you could talk a little bit about what it was like on set and maybe how things changed as a result of your input, just how it came alive when you were there.

BALE: I think Scott and I both certainly enjoyed the challenge and the fact that we were deciding to go shoot in New Mexico in the most intense heat and wear the real, woolen uniforms, and we shoot chronologically, and you see us getting skinnier throughout the film, as our boots fill with sweat on a daily basis. Lightning. Incredible storms, the most amazing storms that I've ever witnessed. Double rainbows, fourteen of 'em. I counted during production. Shooting in chronological order made such a difference, because obviously you learn what you achieved in that one scene that was unexpected and therefore you can expand on that, although you don't need that for the next scene.

And then, films so often disintegrate somewhat into a battle between fighting the light timetables versus the creative process, and what Chief Phillip did was he started doing blessings in the mornings, and we would get the entire crew, and it was interesting because some crew refused to do it initially. It was like there was almost a paralysis, a knee-jerk reaction where they refused, absolutely wouldn't take part. Eventually, I believe almost everybody did, but the Chief would do these blessings in the morning, which of course is a nightmare for the ADs and the producers. They're saying, "Are you guys kidding me? You're going to stop and take however long it takes, allow its course to run, for a blessing?"

But I think ultimately, not only did it enhance a sense of unity between ourselves, the crew, everybody involved, and that is so essential on a film. It's horrible when you don't get that sense of unity and there's this lack of belief in what is being made by some people, so there was a wonderful sense of unity. I think it probably actually sped up our day, did exactly the opposite because we all were one and united by the Chief's blessing. He has a way of talking that, whether it's in English or whether it's in Cheyenne, is deeply truthful and moving and very poetic, and that was a wonderful thing for me, and as I would look around the circle, and sometimes right next to me, hardened stunt guys, horse wranglers, just weeping, and it really united us all together.

It made it a very special occasion, and this whole film is very raw, and it helped us to get to that place and to be able to be vulnerable and to be able to express or feel what it's like to do that and then hide it again, as in the case of my character, but to understand that, and the Chief was absolutely invaluable in that respect in what he brought spiritually to the film, which is highly unusual in films, but it enhanced it incredibly.

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Image via Entertainment Studios

CHIEF PHILLIP WHITEMAN: We love back and balance instead of punish back and balance, and you cannot go to a higher level by hanging on and clinging on to a lower level, and you cannot change and remain the same, and as we simplify common sense over common sense becomes uncommon practice and brought our character back to spirit and made it really simple instead of convoluted, it unified, and the message that you're seeing through the movie now, it's all spirit.

BALE: I remember one occasion when the three of us were sitting, and I was needed for a scene, and it was a scene with Yellow Hawk, but I had asked the Chief a question that I really felt I needed to understand properly before I could play the scene properly, and the ADs were going nuts, because they said to me, "Christian, we're ready," and I just stayed sitting with the Chief, and we stayed and we talked, and then they said, "Christian, we're really ready," and I said, "Okay, hold on. I just need to hear ..."

And you could see them getting nervous, and the Chief was explaining to me and talking, and then I understood, and I said, "Right. I'm ready. I get it," and to the ADs' relief, we, as you got on horseback riding up to the spot, and we got it, and it was one at most two takes because of understanding it completely and understanding and because of what the Chief and I had been discussing beforehand. I absolutely believe that without that, it would have taken multiple takes, so I think we actually ended up saving time.

And the Chief said to me ... I loved that comment you made to me that time. Once we were on the set, and we could see how nervous ... not Scott. He understood. He got it. He said, "Look, it's invaluable." But with many of the ADs, who were fantastic, but it's their job to keep things going, to see their nervous and then recognizing, "Oh, we got it. We got everything we needed. There was no need for that nervousness at all," and you said to me, "Sometimes it's very important to be on time, and other times it's more important to be in time," and that was definitely an in-time moment, and that's how I look at the relationship with the Chief throughout the film, and it was priceless.

CHIEF PHILLIP WHITEMAN: And I went through my own crisis. I went through my own Blocker moment. I almost walked off the set because of the clash of understanding of linear and circular. They wanted me to be as accurate as possible in a short time, and what we're doing here today is getting more by doing less, and doing it in time instead of on time, and also, too, it's like, well, Christian, his preparation, his open-mindedness, his open-spiritness, this movie would have been just another movie, but with Christian's understanding elevating to the level where I was coming from, now the results are being felt spirit to spirit.