In an exclusive interview for Collider, star Joel Kinnaman praised director John Woo’s work on Silent Night, an upcoming action film with no dialogue. Speaking with our very own Steven Weintraub about Season 3 of For All Mankind, Kinnaman also discussed how it is harder to act when you have no lines to support you on set.
Hong Kong director Woo is one of the most important voices in international action cinema, being responsible for classics such as A Better Tomorrow, Red Cliff, The Killer, Hard Boiled, and Face/Off. Woo is known for his highly stylized approach to set pieces, where chaotic action and slow-down effects help him build an unforgettable spectacle. In his next film, Silent Night, woo intends to revolutionize action cinema once more by excluding all dialogue from the feature. That way, the audience can focus entirely on the action on the big screen. Of course, it’s no easy feat to take all conversation from a movie, and only an expert filmmaker could risk doing so. But as Kinnaman puts it, Woo is no ordinary filmmaker. As Kinnaman reveals, the experience of working with Woo was:
“Pretty epic. I've never worked with a director... I mean, maybe Jonathan Demme who did a bunch of episodes on The Killing. He was up there. But I've never worked with anyone that tells so much story just by how he moves the camera. And it was fascinating to see. He tells the story in the way where he puts the camera, how he moves it.”
Silent Night also had a special script treatment for the film to keep the audience engaged with its story. Since Woo couldn’t count on expositive lines to convey meaning, the narrative of Silent Night had to follow a simple path. That’s why Silent Night focuses on a revenge story with a well-known structure we all can relate to. While we still haven’t seen a trailer for Silent Night, we know Kinnaman will play a vengeful father trying to get justice for the death of his son, who was caught in the crossfire of gang violence. Commenting on Silent Night’s script, Kinnaman said:
“It was the perfect kind of script to try this sort of cinematic experiment. It's a very dynamic action movie with a lot of heavy drama, but the actual plot is pretty simple. And I think you really want that in a film where you don't have any dialogue to explain to the viewers what's happening. So I think it's going to be pretty easy to follow, and hopefully you'll get all the emotion just through the eyes and through the action. And I hope it's going to be pretty damn epic. That's what it felt like when we shot it.”
Being part of a movie with no dialogue also challenges the cast. When asked if it was easier or harder not to have lines to memorize, Kinnaman was quick to say the experience was actually a lot more difficult. As Kinnaman explains it:
“Some people thought like, ‘Oh, that's easy. You don't have to learn any lines’, but it's not, because the eyes don't lie. And often the dialogue, it will help you get there. It would help you get emotionally there. So it's actually a lot harder to portray everything that you just have to have that kind of inner life and that inner motor and those thought processes going for real. You just can't hide. So I think it's very revealing when there's no dialogue. And so it was a great challenge, and I was very excited that he wanted to do it with me.”
There’s still no release date for Silent Night. However, since the movie wrapped filming earlier this year, it shouldn’t take long for us to get a first look at Woo’s next film.