“I don’t play heroes,” insists Harrison Ford.
It’s a rather remarkable statement from an actor whose portrayed more than his share of iconic big-screen good guys, from cocky interplanetary rogue Han Solo to intrepid adventurer Indiana Jones to crisis-wrangling CIA analyst Jack Ryan.
Instead, Ford has a different definition for his film protagonists: “I play guys who behave well under difficult circumstances,” he says. “I play people who have particular dilemmas and if it comes off as heroic, then that’s a cultural definition of the behavior.”
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In his latest film, K-19: The Widowmaker, Ford gets an ideal opportunity to prove his point–and explore cultural definitions of heroism–by essaying the true story of Russian submarine captain and stern taskmaster Alexei Vostrikov, who finds himself at the helm of an experimental nuclear sub on her maiden voyage at the height of the Cold War in 1961.
When the vessel’s reactor goes awry, Vostrikov finds himself under “difficult circumstances” indeed. He sends his crewmen in to repair the deadly radioactive device despite a potential mutiny led by his more humanistic second-in-command (Liam Neeson), who wants to get help from a nearby American naval ship instead.
Unwilling to surrender the latest pride of the Soviet fleet to the U.S. even to save his crew’s lives, and faced with the prospect of triggering World War III if his sub explodes, Vostrikov is a character painted in subtle shades of gray who sits on the horns of the thorniest dilemma of his life.
Ford found the story all the more compelling because it was true, and he was so intrigued by the challenging role he departed from the hugely successful Jack Ryan franchise to take it on. “It had to be understood that I was playing a character that would not be sympathetic at first,” says Ford, whose last turn at a more overtly unlikable character came in the horror thriller What Lies Beneath. “I enjoyed the challenge of that.”
The story behind the story
The dramatic events of 1961 and the heroism and sacrifice of the real K-19 crew were kept secret by the Russian government for three decades until the collapse of the Soviet regime. When director Kathryn Bigelow learned of the incident in a meeting with National Geographic (which helped produce the film as well as a documentary on the subject), she was immediately fascinated, but it took five years before her vision became a reality.
Bigelow, one of Hollywood’s few female big-budget action-movie directors, admits she had to prove to the K-19 survivors that she was going to tell the story of their struggles and their spirit accurately.
“[I was] met with some suspicion and some mistrust, especially given how Russians had been handled in the American media–it’s understandable. Who am I to tell that story?” she says. Attempting to assuage the skeptical Russians’ worries led to powerful emotional conversations and connections that further inspired her. “Basically you’re asked to give their lives and that experience meaning, and that was a huge request that I did not take lightly.”
Still, Bigelow knew that despite the tale’s natural elements of suspense, alterations would inevitably have to be made to make the film work on-screen and she took a little dramatic license with the historical facts (Ford’s character, for example, is a somewhat fictionalized version of the K-19’s real captain). “It’s intended as a character piece,” she says. “Yes, it’s a study of this boat as well, but I was more interested in the human drama.”
“They’re submariners, they’re not filmmakers,” offers Ford. “They’re Russians, they’re living a much different life. I think that their immediate reaction was that we should be telling their stories with their characters, as they understood it. But that’s really not the purpose of a theatrical motion picture.”
After meeting with survivors in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Ford–who also served as a producer on the film–also noticed how difficult it was to determine exactly what had happened during the crisis. “Because the submarine is so compartmentalized and because the information about what was going on was not necessarily shared by those in command, they all had much different stories about what happened,” he says.
“They didn’t all agree and it was a little confusing to sort it out, but I think finally what we were looking for was a dramatic telling of the story of their sacrifice and their devotion to duty. We were absolutely committed to telling the story of their devotion to duty, their heroism, their selflessness,” he adds.
“I was incredibly moved by their story of their struggle,” says Ford of meeting the submarine’s septuagenarian survivors. “This was the defining event of their lives, and they lived without being able to tell the story for a long time. It was a military secret, and they had a great devotion to each other even 30 years later, although [many of them] hadn’t seen each other.”
By the end, the K-19 survivors and the captain’s widow were won over by the filmmakers’ efforts. “The Russians have seen it now,” said Bigelow. “They’ve wept. They’ve said, ‘You actually treat us too kindly.'”
The casting call goes out
Once the central conflict between the film’s two leading characters (Neeson plays Mikhail Polenin, the ship’s original captain, who is replaced by Vostrikov but kept aboard
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as second-in-command) was established, “finding actors–finding human beings–that could embody those men [was] an extremely difficult task,” says Bigelow. “These are incredibly formidable men. Their grace under pressure is, I hope, obvious given the bones of the story.”
Casting such powerful presences was a challenge, though Bigelow says she always imagined Neeson in the part of Polenin, and was both thrilled and taken aback when he signed on: she then had to find a worthy adversary for the Oscar-nominated star. “The list was frighteningly short and at the top of it was Harrison. Never thinking that the universe would reward your first [choice]–I mean, it just doesn’t work like that,” she says.
“Liam’s great,” says Ford. “He’s a very capable, talented actor who devotes himself to the work with real discipline. He’s got a good head on his shoulders and a good heart.” When asked if he and Neeson, who share the rare distinction of having starred in different generations of George Lucas‘ Star Wars films and who have both taken direction from Steven Spielberg, ever compared notes about working with the two legendary auteurs, Ford answers simply, “No, we didn’t.” He thinks about it and repeats himself, as if the notion had never occurred to him on the set. “We’re neither of us the kind of actors that want to sit around talking about acting.”
Just say “Nyet”
Ford is willing to talk about one acting conceit in the film: Although all the characters in the film are Russian, they speak English on screen–and yet his character speaks in a Russian accent. “There was some question of whether or not we should be doing an accent, and I thought it would help remind us, always, that we were in a Russian context,” he explains.
“One of the most important things to do in this film was to maintain a Russian point of view,” Ford continues. “Besides which, I had an Irish co-star, real Russians on the crew, actors from England, actors from America–I think it helped unify the whole sound.
“It’s always important to reflect on your history and the choices you’ve made as a nation, to understand what shapes your national will,” Ford says. “I think in the context of the Cold War we’d opened a Pandora’s Box of nuclear potential. And the whole concept of a balance of power through mutually assured destruction is an idea that we should certainly think about, because it’s not necessarily the best way of dealing with things.”
“I think one of the things that was interesting to me was to not directly deal with or redress a situation where we demonize the enemy,” Ford adds. “It’s like Pogo [the opossum star of cartoonist Walt Kelly’s satirical comic strip] said–Pogo, one of my favorite political philosophers: I’ve seen the face of my enemy and he is us.'”
