1 of 5 | Jared Harris, seen at the 2020 SAG Awards in Los Angeles, stars in “Reawakening.” File Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo
Jared Harris says his film Reawakening, making its U.S. debut on video-on-demand Tuesday, shows a married couple coping with a loss in different ways. When the film begins, John (Harris) and Mary (Juliet Stevenson) have been looking for their runaway daughter, Clare, for 10 years.
When Clare (Erin Doherty) returns, it forces John and Mary to confront the different ways they’ve been coping with their loss for a decade. John suspects Clare isn’t who she says she is and demands proof, while Mary would rather enjoy the reunion and not ask questions.
In a recent phone interview with UPI, Harris, 64, said the story is a mystery about John trying to confirm whether Clare is truly his daughter. The theme, however, is questioning whether John or Mary approach her the right way.
“Which version of dealing with this is the right version, if you want?” Harris said. “They’ve dealt with their grief separately but not communicating.”
For 10 years, John has been showing Clare’s digitally aged picture around the city, asking young people if they’ve seen her. Mary stays home.
“His wife doesn’t think that he’s going off and [expletive] prostitutes or having an affair,” Harris said. “His wife knows exactly what he’s been up to. He’s been looking for their daughter but they never talk about it.”
When Clare seemingly returns, the relief is short-lived. John still wants to discuss her leaving as a teenager and confirm details of her identity.
“That’s part of his curse, if you like, his wanting answers,” Harris said. “Juliet’s character is willing to live in ignorance and have it be bliss, but he’s cursed with wanting to know what actually happened. It’s a very male thing though, isn’t it? Wanting to know the details.”
Writer/director Virginia Gilbert was surprised to hear Harris describe John’s process as gendered. Gilbert said she would ask the same questions in John’s situation.
“I’m quite answer driven,” Gilbert said. “I would want to know about DNA but I do actually agree with Jared’s reading of it. One doesn’t ever want to stereotype but I suppose if you are stereotyping, there does tend to be a male approach to problems or crises or catastrophes. Can we fix this? What can I do? Much more active.”
Harris compared John’s inquiry to the Dutch thriller The Vanishing. In that film, a man obsessively searches for his missing girlfriend until the kidnapper offers to show him what happened to her. The character in The Vanishing volunteers to experience his girlfriend’s trauma to find his answers.
“He never gave up,” Harris said of John. “He’s been looking for her for 10 years and he would like to be rewarded on some level.”
Mary enjoys reconnecting with Clare, and John’s behavior only pushes Clare to be closer to her mother. Gilbert said both John and Mary’s reactions “have right on their side,” but Stevenson brought complexity to Mary’s decision to prioritize connection over facts.
“She just elevates what could be potentially, in the wrong hands, quite an unsympathetic or just completely opaque character where you don’t understand the psychology,” Gilbert said. “She not only makes her deeply moving and emotionally truthful but she illuminates that psychology which is quite a complicated psychology, I think.”
Gilbert also credited Harris with elevating her script. John has a panic attack when he returns home to find Clare there.
The original script described vision blurring and sound muffling, but Gilbert said Harris’ performance went beyond that. Harris said it just happened.
“When we were doing the scene. I just thought I would try something different and make it more interesting to Juliet, that she had something that she had to deal with,” Harris said. “She then had to calm me down and bring me into this room rather than just telling me this information.”
The film’s climax also rests on Harris. When John and Clare finally talk, the camera remains on Harris reacting to Clare’s story.
Harris said he delivers such performances in any scene between actors, but rarely does the camera capture the reactions.
“Normally, they’ll show the person who’s talking,” Harris said. “But any time you’re in a scene like that, you’re not just sitting there [thinking] ‘where’s my cue, when’s my bit?’ You’re living it, you’re experiencing it.”
Gilbert said she filmed Doherty’s side of the conversation too, and had to fight for her final cut.
“Even when I was watching it being filmed, to me it was absolutely mesmerizing,” Gilbert said. “A lot of people wanted me to cut it differently initially but when I started watching the performance, A, [I] found it absolutely compelling but also it was the right way to tell that part of the story because his character has been waiting for over a decade to hear this. And actually, I want to know how he’s taking it.”
Harris grew up discussing the craft of acting with his father, Richard Harris. Jared said those conversations usually arose after they would watch a performance together.
When Jared was at Duke University, he appeared as Sloane in a performance of Entertaining Mr. Sloane. Richard came to see the play and offered Jared his review.
“I’ve never forgotten the moment that he laughed about five minutes into the play,” Harris said.
Early in the play, the character Ed interrogates Sloane about pursuing his sister. Ed asks, “Does she disgust you?” and Sloane replies, “Should she?”
“Should she?” made Jared’s father laugh, and the actor recalled the car ride home after the performance.
“We were driving along and he suddenly says, ‘Acting is very simple, really. It’s a very simple thing. People like to overcomplicate it but it’s very simple. The secret of acting is this.'” Harris said. “I’m hanging on every word. He goes, ‘Acting is to act.’ I thought about it my entire life and sometimes I understand what he meant and sometimes it’s still a mystery.”
