In France Tahar Rahim has been a star for over a decade, ever since the 2009 Jacques Audiard prison drama ‘The Prophet’ in which he starred became an international hit. These past six months have seen Rahim’s profile rise considerably. First, through the Benedict Cumberbatch-produced ‘The Mauritanian,’ a biopic of an actual Guantanamo prisoner’s 14 years there without ever being charged.
And now with Netflix’s North American release of another true life saga ‘The Serpent’ based on the crimes – murder, robbery, impersonation – of Charles Sobhraj, a mixed-race sociopath whose 1970s Bangkok spree was exposed only because a mid-level Dutch diplomat in Thailand would not give up trying to find out what happened to 2 Dutch backpackers who mysteriously disappeared. Rahim, 39, married with 2 children, spoke from his Paris home. These are excerpts from that interview.
Q: So, when I watch ‘Serpent’ I can’t help but think how strange it is that you’re paired with Queen Victoria! Jenna Coleman was so vivid as the young Victoria. Did you tease her about that? How was the relationship with Jenna on the set?
TAHAR RAHIM: We became close friends. She’s a marvel, a great actress and a good partner. A beautiful presence. We had fun in Thailand and became very good friends. I like to call her a soldier because she’s ready to go forward all the time. Because this shooting was very intense. We were far from home and we went back and forth. We started shooting in August 2019, and we were meant to stop in December but we have been thrown some things and I had to shoot ‘The Mauritanian.’ So we came back in March in Thailand. And then we had the pandemic. We had to stop again. And we ended up shooting [the Paris scenes] the two last weeks in August 2020 in North London.
Q: I had no idea it was a pandemic production ultimately then. So, with the with the acting honors [BAFTA and Globe Best Actor nominations] and the attention you’ve got with ‘Mauritanian’ do you feel things have changed? Do you want something different from your career at this point?
TR: Yes, it’s cool. Because you get way more attention and it feels good because it gives you more self-confidence in what you’re doing as an actor. I’m like, OK, the choices I’ve made were right. It’s complicated to make choices when you’re an actor. You don’t want to ever repeat yourself. To say ‘No’ for years — and you’re afraid that people don’t want to work with you again. It brings more self-confidence and more projects as well. So it’s cool.
Q: I read that you defied your family, basically, in going off and deciding as a teenager you wanted to be an actor. It’s turned out very well for you. But have there been any surprises about being a success, about being famous that you did not expect?
TR: It was one thing when we did ‘A Prophet.’ When it came out it wasn’t expected that it would be such a hit. I knew one thing, I didn’t want to look like I’d turned into this stupid guy. You know, I’m a star and blah blah blah. So I got surprised by my own reactions. What I did is that I self-isolated a bit too much. I didn’t take advantage of what was happening at that time. So I took a lesson: Next time I’m gonna take it all. [a laugh] It’s just good things and we’re just making movies. So when it happens, just take it.
Q: I wonder if the ghost of the character stays with you when you finish? Like with ‘Mauritanian’ or ‘The Serpent’?
TR: With ‘The Serpent,’ it was quite easy to get rid of him. You don’t want to be this guy. So when I finished, it was bye-bye, which I did. For ‘The Mauritanian,’ for Mohamedou, it was a different story. I couldn’t get out of my character for three weeks. I don’t know what happened there. I can’t explain why I don’t have a good answer. But I was still in his body for three more weeks. I couldn’t really talk about what happened down there in South Africa to my friends and family. They were like, ‘Hey you’re so strange. What happened down there?’ I was like, You should have been there, I can’t explain it.
Q: When you finish a film do you like to keep souvenirs of something. Do you take something away that’s personal to you for the character to keep? Or do you have everybody sign your script?
TR: The script, yes. It has all my work with my notes and all of that. For ‘The Serpent,’ for example, I took the whole wardrobe with me. [big laugh] I took it all! Fancy clothes and glasses and sunglasses, boots. ‘Can I take them?’ ‘Yeah, take them!’
Q: That character Sobhraj meets, the guy who was on the sailboats in Australia and wanted to have different kind of adventures and doesn’t know what he’s getting into? The one in Thailand when you pick him up and you leap over the falls together holding hands. I wondered, are we supposed to think that Charles is bisexual? That this is a gay man?
TR: I thought about his sexuality of course. I thought that when he was killing it was not about sex. It was about money. And he has a strange, crazy philosophy. But I thought that he might have had sex with men or women. Whatever it takes to get his goal done, I felt it was not important to him. Actually, he was playing with this, with sex with Marie-Andree [Coleman as his partner in crime]. I think it would be whatever it takes to have what he wants, he would do it. That’s what I thought — it’s not an answer. No one told me that, that’s the way I wanted to build him.
Q: I wonder, do you know what you’re going to do next after this kind of a splash? I would think there’d be suddenly more offers.
TR: I just accepted two offers from America. But they don’t want me to talk about it. That’s the first thing. Now I’m back to France shooting in a few weeks, a musical. But not made in the old-fashioned Hollywood way. It’s more poetic, more subtle. There’s a little bit of dance, a little bit of singing. It’s a love story, ‘Don Juan.’ I’m playing an actor who’s playing Don Juan alI his life. He sees his wife in every woman – and it’s the same actress playing all the women.
Q: Can you sing Tahar?
TR: I’m learning. [laugh] If you’ve got enough time and a good teacher it could be OK. But I’m no Marvin Gaye, unfortunately.
Q: Obviously you’re up for any challenge.
TR: I like that. That’s what I’m looking for as an actor. Maybe, I can fail. I like it!
NEW DVDs:
MARVELOUSLY RESTORED Miraculously restored, the 1932 Technicolor ‘Doctor X’ (Blu-ray, WB, Not Rated) has never looked so good thanks to a meticulous overhaul. A landmark horror outing from versatile Hungarian helmer Michael Curtiz (‘Casablanca,’ ‘The Adventures of Robin Hood,’ ‘Mildred Pierce’), ‘Doctor X’ was followed 2 years later with another Curtiz, ‘The Mystery of the Wax Museum’ which reteamed the 2 stars: Fay Wray, screaming in ‘Doctor X’ just before she made ‘King Kong,’ and stage star Lionel Atwill as the doctor who needs to find the insane cannibal among his staff of doctors at a spectacular Art Deco clinic. 
This Technicolor, we learn from the Special Features, had been around since 1921 — it was double the cost of making a black-and-white movie. The Technicolor lights were notoriously dangerous – so hot that Atwill could not touch his white lab coat until he went into a dark corner of the soundstage and let it cool off. Actors would wear dark sunglasses between takes to protect their eyes. This was 2-strip Technicolor so there is a preponderance of blue and green. In 1935 ‘Becky Sharp’ became the first 3-strip Technicolor movie which immediately became the industry standard. ‘Doctor X’ has not 1 but 2 audio commentaries, a short doc on why Curtiz’ brief horror movie phase was so brief, and the rarely seen B&W version that was filmed simultaneously with the color production and was for theaters that couldn’t show color.
TRES CLASSIQUE A revered French auteur Olivier Assayas is, as shown on the many extras on the new digital restoration of his ‘Irma Vep’ (Blu-ray, Criterion Collection, Not Rated), brilliant. He is able to deliver a 46-minute speech on the state of current cinema – another Extra here – without pause. ‘Irma Vep’ in 1996 was an unexpected international breakthrough for the writer-director, a truly global hit for a film which is fairly odd and completely unique. 
Assayas made ‘Irma’ almost on a whim while he was waiting for a big budget historical epic to be ready. It qualifies as a first for him, a largely improvised effort with a key element that made all the difference: Hong Kong action star Maggie Cheung. ‘Irma Vep’ as a character refers to an influential French serial from WWI where the woman known as Irma Vep, sheathed in black from head to foot and nothing else, is a murderess, spy, lover. Assayas asks: What was it like when they were creating something that had never ever been done before? Can we capture that sense of discovery? He had Cheung, London educated, play ‘herself.’ Don’t act, he told her. She is here then playing herself, a Hong Kong action star arriving in Paris to star in a movie, a lone figure who doesn’t speak much French and has no familiar faces during filming. ‘Irma Vep’ is about the making of a movie, here a chaotic process with music from Sonic Youth. The Special Features include a 2020 interview with Assayas, a 2003 Assayas interview, Cheung discussing the film in 2003. There is also the 6th episode of the 1916 serial that introduced Irma Vep and a 2013 documentary ‘Musidora, The Tenth Muse’ on the multi-faceted actor who originated the role.
JAPANESE CLASSIC ANIMATION Three major stars – Aaron Paul, Lena Headey and Sean Bean – are the English voice cast for the 2016 Japanese computer-animated fantasy film, ‘Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV’ (4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital, Sony, PG-13). Bean’s King commands the elite fighting force Kingsglaive. With their King’s special powers, the men led by Paul’s Nyx fight to protect their magical kingdom. Things are complicated by betrayal, a forced wedding and mighty resistance to world domination. The Blu-ray Special Features: Creating the emotive score and the film’s spectacular design, the English-speaking stars on doing their voice work and a featurette on the motion capture for the physical performances.
SILENT ERA FORCEFIELD Silent screen auteur Lois Weber (1879-1939) has only recently been rediscovered and given her historical due as a commanding figure who for nearly 3 decades ruled as filmmaker, producer and writer. Her essential, considerable contributions were blithely written out of Hollywood history as a male-dominated industry created its particular creation stories.
The new Blu-ray ‘Two Films by Lois Weber’ (Blu-ray, Kino Classics, Not Rated) spotlights a pair of her silent Universal Pictures. The 1927 ‘Sensation Seeker,’ written and directed by Weber, stars legendary Billie Dove in a classic small-town girl’s odyssey highlighted by a masquerade ball and sensational ‘Sensation’ shipwreck. The 1923 ‘A Chapter in Her Life’ is another Weber ‘woman’s picture,’ this time profiling a young innocent’s effect on her hypocritical aristocratic family. Shelley Stamp, who wrote ‘Lois Weber in Early Hollywood,’ offers a ‘Sensation Seekers’ audio commentary.
BRAVO BORZAGE Hollywood Golden Era titan Frank Borzage (Bore-zag-E) is known as the very first Oscar-awarded Best Director (for the tearful 1927 silent ‘Seventh Heaven’), for box-office hits (‘A Farewell to Arms,’ Dietrich’s ‘Desire,’ Joan Crawford’s ‘Mannequin’) and his stature as the sole major studio director to attack the rising tide of nationalism, fascism and Nazism with ‘Three Comrades’ and ‘The Mortal Storm.’
Borzage’s 1937 ‘History Is Made at Night’ (Blu-ray, Criterion Collection, Not Rated) stands as one of his most sublime, most loved films, imbued with his trademark romanticism and the wonderful chemistry of his 2 stars Jean Arthur (‘Mr. Deeds Goes to Town,’ ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,’ ‘The More the Merrier’) and Charles Boyer (‘Gaslight,’ ‘Hold Back the Dawn’). This is one of those ‘miracle movies,’ where it was, literally, made up as they went along, discovering only in the final 2 weeks of filming how its 2 stars would end up on an ocean liner! The Blu-ray Special Edition Features are terrifically informative about Borzage (1894-1962) in this newly restored 4K digital transfer: There’s a 2019 overview of the filmmaker and his defining interests by critic Farran Smith Nehme, a conversation in Switzerland about Borzage with film historian Peter Cowie and Borzage historian Herve Dumont. Plus audio from a 1958 Borzage interview with the legendary George Eastman.
WOMEN DIRECT A pair of new filmmakers arrive with very different viewpoints. Co-writer and director Gillian Wallace Horvat’s ‘I Blame Society’ (DVD, Cranked Up, Not Rated) is a horror entry that springs from the familiar dilemma of a filmmaker – here Horvat stars as a version of herself – who can’t get financing.
In frustration she lands on ‘Let’s do a doc-style murder picture!’ and that’s when things slide off the rails. Shatara Michelle Ford’s ‘Test Pattern’ (Blu-ray, Kino Lorber, Not Rated) also has horror elements, but from a Black perspective that is set against discussions about race, #MeToo and inequitable health care. It springs from a rape as an interracial couple travel from hospital to hospital seeking one with a rape kit. The Bonus is a conversation with Ford and the celebrated filmmaker James Gray (‘The Lost City of Z,’ ‘Two Lovers,’ ‘We Own the Night’).
DANCE! DANCE! DANCE! Fred Astaire remains an iconic cinematic presence. Over 3 decades the debonair Astaire reigned as one the great dance stylists of movies. His co-star in ‘Broadway Melody of 1940’ (Blu-ray, WB, Not Rated) Eleanor Powell is largely forgotten but see how formidable a tap dancer she is – and with Astaire they are a fantastic team in this lavish MGM musical highlighted by several Cole Porter songs including ‘Begin the Beguine.’ This taps its way into history as the last B&W MGM musical. Special Features: an Our Gang short, ‘The Milky Way’ – an MGM cartoon – and Ann Miller hosts ‘Cole Porter in Hollywood.’
LOVELY, LANA One of Hollywood’s biggest movie stars of the ‘40s and ‘50s, Lana Turner (‘Imitation of Life,’ ‘Peyton Place’) followed her great success with the now-classic noir ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice’ with this 1947 MGM spectacle ‘Green Dolphin Street’ (Blu-ray, WB, Not Rated). 
Adapted from a bestselling novel, the film’s Green Dolphin is an ocean-going vessel that in the 1840s sails from Guernsey, England (those cows are famous), to the Empire’s new colony of New Zealand. It’s a nutty saga with 2 completely opposite sisters (smart ambitious Turner, sweet Donna Reed, ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ and a future Oscar winner for ‘From Here to Eternity’), drunken declarations of love and marriage to the wrong sister, a spectacular earthquake (which won ‘Dolphin Street’ its special effects Oscar) and warring Maoris. A huge hit, there was a Lux Radio Broadcast – here as an audio Special Feature – with Turner and future JFK brother-in-law Peter Lawford.
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