In the new film “Inside,” Willem Dafoe goes it alone as an art thief who breaks into a billionaire’s luxury penthouse with only seven minutes to get in, snatch a few multimillion-dollar paintings, and get out.
While director Vasilis Katsoupis’ “Inside” is a heist flick, albeit a classy art- and architecture-themed one, things very quickly go from bad to worse.
The hacked alarm code doesn’t work, and failsafe measures lock down the apartment tighter than a bank vault. Dafoe’s character Nemo is trapped with no way out. The penthouse is his prison.
“I saw it as an opportunity to have certain performance and storytelling and filmmaking challenges that were very specific,” Dafoe says of his attraction to the screenplay during a recent video call. “The fact that there were no conventional scenes. The fact that I knew it had to be shot in chronological order was interesting. The fact that it’s basically one actor.
“All those things were interesting to me,” he says.
About that “one actor” comment – remarkably, it’s true. “Inside,” but for two short dream sequences, is entirely a one-man show as Dafoe goes through Kübler-Ross-like stages of being trapped inside the luxury penthouse: Denial, anger, discovering the water in the fish tank is not good to drink, depression after eating the brightly hued resident of the aquarium, and accepting you might die like a modern-day pharaoh, surrounded by fabulous art inside this tomb with a view.
How long is Nemo trapped? It’s hard to say exactly, but judging by beard growth and general dishevelment, it’s at least several months.
Dafoe says he doesn’t know either but then corrects himself.
“I’ll tell you how long I was there,” he says, laughing. “Thirty-two shooting days.”
In an interview, edited for clarity and length, Dafoe talked about what it was like during those 32 days as Nemo struggles to stay alive, his only human contact is the housekeeper he watches on the surveillance screens, his only hope to use the art and furnishings in the apartment to find a way out.
Q: That challenge, of an almost solo performance – what was it like to work that way?
A: You know, the truth is I don’t remember. In the respect that like the inanimate objects and the art and the space – and working quite closely with the crew and all the departments – I am like an object in the space. I never felt that alone.
And also because it’s not a conventional performance I’m not thinking about performance. I’m thinking about accomplishing things. I’m thinking about building a tower. I’m thinking about opening the can in a way that makes sense without a can opener. I’m thinking of finding what’s beautiful in the surveillance footage.
These are things I’m playing with. I’m not seeing acting. I’m not thinking about that. I’m doing things.
Q: Is there a freedom in that kind of work? Experimentation in trying different ways of moving through this space?
A: Yes. Yes, yes, yes. I’d say the majority of the film was sort of invented in the place when we were shooting, which was an interesting way to work. And sort of open-ended, where our actions are taking us is where they’re taking us. There’s no going back. No anticipating what happens at the end.
“We’re really kind of feeling our way along, and we’re afforded that luxury because we’re shooting in chronological order. Because we’re going to trash the house and there’s no going back.
Q: As time trapped inside passes, the art seems to matter less to Nemo. How did you view his psychological journey vis-à-vis his appreciation of the art?
A: When he gets stuck, his first preoccupation is how to survive. And then with time, once he solves, roughly speaking, those problems, he starts to deal with his surroundings. He starts to interact with the art. He starts to think about it. He starts to even work with it. And that process is interesting.
The fact that the same pieces of art at the beginning mean something totally different than they do at the end I like very much. Because that explores the idea that the inherent value of something depends on its context. It’s a simple concept, but we always assume that we give value judgment to everything, and it sticks.
And we forget that in another context it can have a completely opposite value. Something that is very desirable in one situation becomes a horror in another. And this luxurious place that many people would like to have for a home becomes this horrible, cold prison. How’s that happen? That’s interesting to me.
Q: The mural that Nemo makes starts as a single eye and grows to cover the entire wall. What does it say about Nemo’s internal journey?
A: I just remember that Vasilis wanted some sort of sun god thing happening. And someone in the art department had a kind of idea of what it should be but Vasilis didn’t really like it. With time, I said to him I would like to draw something, and I sketched something out roughly and he said, yeah, OK, let’s try that.
And there was a huge pleasure in that. Why I drew those particular things, it’s intuitive. It did express the state of mind I was in and incorporated some of the symbols and elements from some of the art I had been looking at in this 30 days of shooting. Because we were shooting in chronological order, when he’s drawing on the walls or he’s writing messages on the wall, that’s quite late. He’s already started to interact with the paintings.
Q: Tell me about your connection with visual art, or in particular, more conceptual things like Marina Abramović, with whom you’ve collaborated on a few things.
A: I’m always inspired by going to art galleries and visiting friends’ studios. There’s many things I enjoy about performance art. These are things that are mysterious and they make you think in a different way. And that’s always a gift because there’s a tendency to kind of circle up the wagons, get your opinions, get your thoughts, and kind of your life is about protecting those things.
Well, art is one of those things that’s slippery, and it’s going to speak to everyone in a different way. But it can really open kind of this Pandora’s box of mystery and different ways of thinking. And on some level, you can imagine the scenario in this film is almost like a long performance art piece performance. Marina, for example, did (a piece) where she lived in a cross-section of a house – like the boat in ‘The Life Aquatic’ – where you can see everything.
And she lived there and you saw her do everything – to cook, to sleep, to read, whatever she did. And you would just watch her. It’s not the same thing (in “Inside”), but there are performance art routes embedded in this idea, and I like that. Because it takes us away from regular life and makes us think in ways that expand our imagination.
Q: The art curated for the film is pretty incredible. Was there a piece or two that particularly spoke to you?
A: I really can’t single out one because the way I encountered them in the story was kind of tied to different moments. To tell you the truth, I was very happy with the drawing and the little altar I made here. That was very satisfying because it was taking a lot of details and a lot of objects that had accumulated from the story and ordering them in a way that I was trying to make sense.
We’re dealing with what’s there. We aren’t pointing to anything outside. And any time you do that in a movie is cool, because you’ve got a kind of truth on your side, because you’re not trading, you’re not being transactional.
You’re saying, ‘I give you this.’ You’re putting it out there and people will do with it as they will.
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