the

COVER Story

When The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby premiered at the Toronto International

Film Festival last fall, it was already an audacious project for first-time director Ned Benson: two separate films,

one subtitled Him and the other Her, about a relationship fracturing in the wake of a tragedy. Him was told from the

perspective of James McAvoy’s character, Her from the perspective of Jessica Chastain’s; run back-to-back, the two

films were stunning, deeply emotional and, one would think, wholly unmarketable.

Everybody told Ned Benson and Jessica

Chastain they could never turn their dream

project into two movies — but now it’s three By Steve Pond

Photographed by J.R. Mankoff

Eleanor Rigby Times Two

CANNES 2014 || THEWRAP | 25

“ Every single person along the way has said it should

be one film. But it will not be one film. Ever.”

~ Jessica Chastain

As buyers came calling in the wake of the film’s triumphant premiere, the filmmakers were adamant that they would only make a deal with a distributor who agreed to release it as two films. “Every single person along the way has said it should be one film,” Chastain told TheWrap in Toronto. “But it will not be one film. Ever.”

And now Benson’s drama, which was bought by the Weinstein Co. in Toronto, has come to Cannes as…one film? The movie will compete in the Un Certain Regard section under a shortened title, Eleanor Rigby, and it will play as a single two-hour film, as opposed to the two movies and three-hours-plus of the Toronto version.

But that doesn’t mean the original films are dead. “This is a third movie,” Benson told TheWrap. “The two films that played in Toronto are intact, and the plan is to release all three. But we were given the option to create a combined, shorter film that focused on them as a couple rather than taking different perspectives. It was not what I initially expected, but I sat with the editor, and when we came up with this cut we were really excited and submitted it to Cannes.”

When they played back-to-back in Toronto, the two films allowed the audience to make connection and fill in gaps as the story progressed, deepened and grew richer and more detailed. Together, Him and Her made for a shattering experience, a beautiful fantasia as fragile and striking as its shots of fireflies on a summer night. It left much of the crowd stunned; several of the cast members, including Chastain and Ciaran Hinds, had to compose themselves before taking part in the post-premiere Q&A.

“My hope is that all three versions get released—Him, Her and Them, which is what we’re calling it. And if there’s anyone who can do this, it’s the Weinstein Co. and Harvey.”

Benson’s hope, Chastain said, will absolutely come true. “The great thing

about this option is that it feeds two different audiences,” she told TheWrap. “There have been a lot of conversations, and I have been absolutely promised by Harvey and the studio that the two films will be available for an audience. My heart would break if they weren’t.” (In fact, the Him and Her versions will also screen in Cannes.)

The film is the culmination of a journey that began a decade ago, when Benson’s first short, Four Lean Hounds, screened at a film festival in Santa Monica. Chastain was a theater-trained actress who had just moved to Los Angeles with her grandmother, fresh out of Juilliard and looking for work. She won tickets to the festival on the radio, and was reminded of In the Bedroom by Benson’s short—“it’s very rare that you see that kind of restraint from young filmmakers,” she said. She approached him in the lobby and said she wanted to work with him, and the two traded numbers.

“I felt very young and completely out of my league when I made that short,” said Benson. “But I guess it was visually arresting enough for this young lady to see it at a festival and remember me. If I had to make a short for that one reason, it was completely worth it. Of all the people who could have come running up to me at a little film festival, that was about as good as it gets.”

The two became friends, and Chastain watched—and tried to help—as Benson landed his first two scripts on the Black List, but couldn’t get the films off the ground. The second of those scripts was the Him version of Eleanor

26 | THEWRAP || MAY 14, 2014

Rigby, which focused on a man whose wife has fled their old life and gone into hiding. “I gave it to Jess, and she read it and said, ‘Well, what happens to her?’” said Benson. “So I started exploring that, and all of a sudden it turned into a dialogue. I thought it was really exciting.”

He worked with Chastain and producer Cassandra Kulukundis to capture the female perspective, then went back to his original script to rework the scenes where the action overlapped. “And one day, when we were playing with the concept of Him and Her, I remember Jess saying, ‘Wouldn’t it be totally crazy if your first movie was actually two movies? Let’s try it!’”

Financiers balked at the idea for years, but Chastain’s spectacular 2011—which included The Tree of Life, Take Shelter and The Help, for which she was Oscar-nominated—suddenly made her marketable. “In a way, I feel like my career was born in Cannes,” she said of that year’s festival, at which The Tree of Life won the Palme d’Or and Take Shelter won Critics’ Week. “My first major red carpet was at Cannes at the Tree of Life premiere, holding hands with Brad Pitt and Sean Penn. Boy, that was baptism by fire.”

With a boost from Chastain’s newfound clout, Benson got enough money

to shoot both movies on a tight 40-day schedule, filming scenes from one character’s perspective and then the other’s. It presented a daunting acting challenge: In one version of the story Chastain was playing her character, but in the other she was playing the McAvoy character’s impression of her, which meant that crucial details—dialogue, movement, even clothing—were different.

“It’s super-weird,” Chastain said. “I approached it like it was two different women. They’re both Eleanor, but they’re two different women. Her is ‘This is Eleanor, this is my truth, this is everything I have.’ And Him is Connor’s perception of Eleanor, which is very different.” (The Them version playing at Cannes mixes both perspectives to focus on the relationship.)

At the Toronto premiere, Chastain said, “I came in with so much nervousness. Before, I was telling people, ‘Don’t read anything, don’t Google anything. If there’s something positive, someone will tell you.’ I was trying to protect Ned. I’d been there for all the false starts, all

the disappointments with someone that I really cared about and believed in. Finishing the film was very cathartic for all of us—and sometimes it’s more special to watch someone you love have their dream realized.”

And now they’ll go through it again with a new festival, a new audience and a third version of Eleanor Rigby. “It’s a broader experience, and it gives the audience more choice,” said Benson. “But I do want to emphasize that the original two films exist exactly as they are.”

He paused. “When I started writing this eight or nine years ago, I never expected to get it made, and I never expected it to play out as well as it has. This thing is crazy.”

»Benson with Chastain and James McAvoy at the film’s

premiere in Toronto, September 2013

the

COVER Story

ALB

ER

TO E

. RO

DR

IGU

EZ

/GE

TTY

IMA

GE

S

CANNES 2014 || THEWRAP | 27