For years, Tom McCarthy wrote and directed independent, quirky, character-driven films, like “The Station Agent,” “The Visitor” and “Win Win.” Now, however, he’s an Oscar winner for “Spotlight”– he shared the Best Screenplay award and the film won Best Picture — and he’s directing Matt Damon in a movie, “Stillwater,” which is being marketed as a thriller with an American hero abroad at its heart.
That raises certain expectations, but for much of the movie “Stillwater” is a smaller and quieter character study. It’s broad in scope and ambitious thematically — mixing genres, exploring the dangers of American adventurism, asking how much of the truth you really want or need to know.
Largely set in Marseilles, the broader plot revolves around Bill Baker (Matt Damon) trying to help his daughter (Abigal Breslin) who has been imprisoned for a murder she says she did not commit, which has much of the press comparing it to the real-life Amanda Knox saga.
“I was riveted by that case and there was inspiration there, but if you put too much emphasis on that it’s not accurate,” McCarthy said over Zoom last week. “This is obviously a very different scenario.”
Indeed, beyond the basic plot points, the film really focuses on Baker and how leaving his Oklahoma oil rig behind forces him to open his eyes and potentially start life anew.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q. This is very different from your recent movies. Was that a conscious decision? If anything, it felt closest in theme and emotional sensibility to “The Visitor.”
Tonally, there is kinship with “The Visitor” although this film happens to be a lot more complex. You can find real links between all my films and I was drawing from my past, including “Spotlight.”
But you’re right, I don’t like to repeat myself and I like to challenge myself. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. I don’t think I was ready to make “Stillwater” until right now. I wanted to go for it.
Q. The connection to your early movies is that it’s again about perceptions and treatment of outsiders or those seen as “other,” whether it’s lesbians, Arabs, a working-class man among artists, an American in France.
Thematically, that’s something I’m into in all my movies, as well as the idea of people coming together to create their community or family. But I’m also constantly trying to subvert expectations without doing it in a way that feels sensational or manipulative.
Q. The film takes surprising turns in terms of plot and tone. Where did that come from?
We [McCarthy and his fellow screenwriters] were fascinated with the explosion of long-form podcasts, which have these stories that seemingly veer off but all tie together thematically in the end. That was exciting and we said, ‘Let’s use this as a template. We’ve got a great character so let’s allow the story to just unfold.’ It’s almost like we were chronicling it and not creating it.
Q. From your earliest movies, you’ve always trusted your audience to keep up and keep an open mind and that’s never been more true than in “Stillwater.” We start with very little backstory, get plunged into a strange city with its own customs and a language the audience and the protagonist can’t understand and then the ending is so nuanced. Were you nervous about that, especially for what many will see as “a Matt Damon movie”?
You only get so many swings of the bat and I really wanted to go for it, to challenge myself with this film. “Stillwater” is my most ambitious and complex film to date. It was a lot to think about and to balance and juggle in terms of storytelling, genre and tone. This reflects not just what I was trying to say but where we are as a society. I think the moral ambiguity and emotional complexity is what we’re all feeling. What has been happening in the last year makes the words that end the movie incredibly poignant and timely and relevant. It’s probably something we’ve all said. The world is now a different place and this movie reflects that.
Q. There is plenty of social commentary here, but it’s much more subtle and glancing than the issues in “Spotlight.” It’s consciously not an issue movie this time around.
“Spotlight” was an issue movie and a pure procedural but there was very little room to explore the human condition beyond the story the reporters are reporting on. “Stillwater” has much more humanity to it and emotional dimension. It’s not overtly a political movie but that’s in its DNA — we started writing together in 2016 when the world was turned upside down and we were trying to process that and understand the American condition a little bit more. There are certain big ideas in play here about moral authority, priorities as Americans and an American abroad but our focus was about how to distill this into story and character and leave the discussion behind.
Q. It is baked in though when Bill rides into the projects to play the hero he ends up undermining everything he set out to accomplish.
We were examining that cinematic trope, of the American hero abroad going on a mission.
Q. And it’s Matt Damon.
Part of the reason I wanted to cast him is that he’s not only a phenomenal actor, he carries that mantle of iconic American actor so audiences come to expect things from him. And we knew we were going to subvert that, which is what elevates this story beyond the thriller genre — thrillers don’t examine consequence and this movie does. We can really challenge the audience: Do I believe in what Matt Damon is doing or do I reject it?
Q. But when you see the trailer, it doesn’t look that way.
The initial trailer was cut more like a thriller. The studio has its reasons for how it markets a movie. Obviously, this movie is much different and hopefully much more than that. It’s genre-bending but it’s a thriller with an intimate family movie and it’s playing different elements. So when people saw the trailer started seeing the movie, we’d hear the comment “That trailer was not this movie.” That’s true. It’s probably more what my first script was like ten years ago but I said, ‘We can’t see another one of these movies.’ And when I returned to it in 2016 with my co-writers, I said this script isn’t representative of America or the world right now and I need to speak to that. That’s the discussion I want to have with the audience.
