GOING ALL IN

AFTER LAST YEAR'S TRIUMPHANT CONCLAVE , EDWARD BERGER IS BETTING BIG WITH GAMBLING SAGA BALLAD OF A SMALL PLAYER. EMPIRESPEAKS TO THE DIRECTOR AND HIS CAST ABOUT CAUSING CHAOS IN THE CASINOS OF MACAU

WORDS TOM ELLEN

“GAMBLING IS THE ONE ADDICTION THAT NEVER REALLY GOT ME.”

‘Lord’ Doyle (Colin Farrell) meets his match in the Crystal Tipps-inspired Cynthia (Tilda Swinton).

Colin Farrell shoots Empire a wry grin and continues: “In my younger years, I’d go to Vegas and spend three hours at a blackjack table, but that was more to do with the booze being free for as long as you were sitting there. So, I never got the gambling thing. But with any addiction — gambling, drinking, shopping, fucking — the roots are the same. It’s a spiritual malady.”

Lord Doyle — Farrell’s character in Ballad Of A Small Player — represents spiritual malady in human form. An embezzler on the run from the UK, Doyle is hiding out in the mega-casinos of Macau, across the harbour from Hong Kong, posing as an aristocrat while frittering away his stolen cash at the baccarat tables, holding out desperately for that One Big Win. In Buddhist cosmology, there is a dimension called the ‘realm of hungry ghosts’, populated by cursed creatures with huge bellies and tiny mouths, unable to ever satisfy their craving. This is where Doyle exists. “We often look in the wrong places to find contentment — myself included,” says Farrell. “And Doyle is an abject example of that.”

The film allowed Farrell to push new boundaries and face new challenges — from mining darker moments of his past to mastering an upper-class English accent and binge-eating an entire buffet (more on all those later). For director Edward Berger, too, Ballad was an opportunity to slip the leash and let loose. After the star-making one-two punch of his Oscar-winning All Quiet On The Western Front and last year's critically adored papal drama Conclave, Ballad allows Berger to go “totally over the top”, he says with a chuckle. “To create an operatic explosion of the senses. In some ways, [Ballad] is a reaction to Conclave being so serene, mathematical and austere,” Berger adds. “For this film, I wanted to go crazy. Like Doyle is crazy. Like Macau is crazy.”

What happens, then, when a piping-hot director and his stellar leading man decide to run riot and test their limits in one of the maddest places on Earth? As Empire discovers — all bets are off.

EDWARD BERGER WAS FRESH FROM grappling with another tale of addiction, wealth and chaos when Lord Doyle first came his way. It was 2018, and Berger’s TV miniseries