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He's played Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Strange, and adjacent voiced The Grinch but acting other a seven-foot (2.1m) crow whitethorn beryllium 1 of the strangest roles Benedict Cumberbatch has taken on.
Speaking astir his caller film, The Thing With Feathers, helium admits it's "a precise unusual job, there's nary getting distant from it".
If the imaginativeness of Cumberbatch wrestling with a elephantine vertebrate sounds similar the benignant of amusingly surreal movie you fancy taking a look astatine adjacent week, it's important to recognize that this is nary comedy.
While the film, based connected Max Porter's eclectic novella Grief Is The Thing With Feathers, the movie is astatine times disturbingly funny, but mostly it is an incredibly affectional instrumentality connected the heartbreaking mode we each process grief.
Cumberbatch plays a antheral whose woman has died suddenly, leaving him with their 2 young boys. The communicative itself is divided into 3 parts - dad, boys and crow.
Crow - voiced by David Thewlis - is simply a figment of dad's imagination, a benignant of "unhinged Freudian therapist" for him, according to Porter.
Cumberbatch, a begetter of three, said this surely wasn't a relation helium wanted to deliberation astir erstwhile helium returned to his ain household each night.
"I didn't instrumentality it home, I didn't speech astir it…You person to enactment accelerated erstwhile you're a begetter of 3 with a engaged location life, you know, it's precise contiguous the request they person of you, truthful you don't spell successful and speech astir your time crying your eyes retired connected a sofa with a crow punching you successful the face."
Since Porter's award-winning enactment was archetypal published successful 2015 it has built a cult following.
Using text, dialog and poesy to research grief from assorted characters' perspectives, the writer says the taxable substance is universal.
"Most of america are profoundly eccentric successful 1 mode oregon another, similar my father-in-law, seemingly a precise rational, blokey bloke, who's similar 'when my mum died, a wren landed connected the model and I knew it was my mum'.
"Grief puts america into these states wherever we are much attuned to the earthy satellite and peculiarly much attuned to symbols and signs. So, imagining a crow moving successful with the household really makes a batch of consciousness to people, whereas, weirdly, 5 steps to getting amended oregon get good soon oregon a hallmark paper oregon immoderate doesn't marque overmuch consciousness to the radical erstwhile you're successful that tempest of pain."
While the movie sees Cumberbatch represent a firestorm of emotions, helium says helium feels it's important to tackle weighty issues connected screen.
"It is simply a cosmopolitan experience, successful 1 mode oregon different you're 'gonna suffer idiosyncratic that you emotion during your life."
The film, helium says, explores grief done a antheral prism.
"At a clip erstwhile there's a batch of precise troubling influences connected men without pistillate beingness successful their lives, this happening of scapegoating and seeing the different arsenic a threat, each of that comes into play wrong the allowance of grief to beryllium a messy, scary, intimidating, chaotic, unruly and retired of power spot to beryllium arsenic a man.
"This is simply a movie that conscionable leans into the thought that it's alright to person feelings, you hide them oregon fell them astatine your peril."
The Thing With Feathers is retired successful cinemas successful the UK and Ireland connected 21 November.
English (US) ·