Martin McDonagh Calls 'Wild Horse Nine' His Most Political Film

Martin McDonagh declared his new black comedy "Wild Horse Nine" the most political film of his career, speaking at the Zurich Film Festival, where he received a Tribute to… Award.

"This is probably my most political film. That's why I find it very exciting to be releasing this monster into the world," McDonagh said.

"I feel like, in the modern day, there's perhaps a little too much artistic neutrality, or too much saying nothing, not having an opinion or being apathetic. I'm excited to be doing the opposite with this one."

In "Wild Horse Nine," two CIA agents, played by John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell, travel to Easter Island before the 1973 Chilean coup. McDonagh said the film's historical setting has acquired an unintended contemporary charge.

"So many things in the present day mirror a lot of those types of interventions in the past. You can actually hear lines that I thought were about 1973 being interpreted by a modern audience as being about Venezuela a few months ago or other places around the world," he said during a festival masterclass.

"The Russia jokes in the film are about their interventions in Finland 100 years ago, but we connect them to Ukraine now. I love that it has a resonance I wasn't necessarily aware of in the writing of it."

From Rejected Radio Plays to an Oscar

McDonagh looked back on his unlikely path into writing. He left school at 16 and spent a long stretch unemployed.

"Part of that was not wanting to have a real job or a boss. That has remained with me until now," he said.

He wrote radio plays that were all rejected — "Mostly by the BBC. But I don't bear a grudge" — before becoming an acclaimed playwright. He brought a film fan's sensibility to the stage.

"Things would happen that you wouldn't usually see on stage. Like cats exploding [in 'The Lieutenant of Inishmore']."

A pivotal moment came when he saw Al Pacino perform in David Mamet's "American Buffalo."

"I can still remember it to this day. He just came on stage and blew the whole theater away. It was this combination of a play, full of energy and swearing, amazing dialogue and this movie star who, well, you'd realize what acting really was when he was on stage."

McDonagh still writes "without the camera in mind," though he enjoys the freedom of screenwriting. "It's like when you don't go to the gym for a long time; that's where my theater brain is at the moment. But the muscle memory is still there."

The transition to cinema was not smooth. "It was the bad rejections that really inspired me. Maybe I thrive not on encouragement, but anger," he said.

His 2004 short "Six Shooter" won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film.

"It was probably the scariest situation I've been in artistically. But the wonderful thing was having Brendan Gleeson be part of it. He protected me from any interference. I couldn't have done it without his help and guidance," McDonagh recalled.

'I Used to Be a Hit Man'

He reunited with Gleeson on "In Bruges," the 2008 hit that also starred Colin Farrell as two hitmen hiding out after a botched job. McDonagh, who set the film in the Belgian city after a doomed date there, joked about the origins of his expertise.

"I used to be a hit man. People don't know that. They thought it just was plays and then films. It was plays, killing and then films."

"I went to Bruges not knowing anything about it. I was supposed to meet a girl on the second night, and she didn't turn up. It was this combination of thinking it was the most cinematic, undiscovered town I'd ever seen, and being bored as hell and just wanting to get drunk and get out of there."

Once again, he credited his leads with protecting him from studio meddling.

"Colin and Brendan were great partners in protecting me from any interference from the grown-ups. Who aren't usually grown up; they're children with a lot of money. It's the nature of Hollywood," he said, before adding: "I'm going to get in so much trouble. It's good that it's not being filmed, right?"

Room for Contemplation

McDonagh has long mixed shocking material with comedy, but he says his work is shifting. He now leaves room for quiet, tragic moments — a vein he mined with Frances McDormand's grieving mother Mildred Hayes in "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri," and now with Malkovich in "Wild Horse Nine."

"When they're great actors like Frances or John, you see the sadness in their eyes, and you fill in what they're thinking about. One of the ideas for John's character was to give him the entire palette of emotions. You know that John can do comedy, he can do rage and he can do contemplative, quiet stuff. But I'm making sure all those things are together in one package," he said.

"None of my films are sort of what I would call 'Hollywood movies.' They're not simple, feel-good stories. When actors of that magnitude who have maybe done some of those films, and know they're a little empty get to work on something different, it frees them up to show their brilliance."

He has no ambition to scale up. "Weirdly, I'm really happy with the trajectory or the level of films that I've made. I don't want a bigger budget. I don't even want more success. I just want to continue making films completely free from any interference from anyone. That's a perfect position to be in."

With "Wild Horse Nine," McDonagh now releases what he calls his most political — and most opinionated — work into that same interference-free position.