The Trial Of Ian Bailey: Jim Sheridan on his new courtroom drama
Colm Meaney as Ian Bailey in Re-Creation: The Trial Of Ian Bailey.
Jim Sheridan returns to the case of a West Cork murder that has baffled the world with The fictional dramatisation follows what might have happened in a jury room should a trial have gone ahead in the shocking West Cork murder of French filmmaker Sophie Toscan Du Plantier.
Sheridan and his co-director David Merriman have assembled a cast including Aidan Gillen, John Connors and Vicky Krieps for this new take on a highly controversial case. The film invites audiences into a jury room where 12 fictional jurors are gathered to examine the real case files in the murder of Toscan Du Plantier in West Cork in 1996. Initially, just one juror believes that Bailey is not guilty in a film that examines evidence, bias, mistruths and human nature.
The film, which Sheridan says was inspired by Sidney Lumet's courtroom classic (1957), follows the Irish filmmaker's documentary series, Having initially planned a documentary, the filmmaker decided to approach it as a jury-room drama, with Colm Meaney playing Bailey, the late West Cork resident who was the main suspect in the case.
“It was more like I became obsessed with the difference between fact and fiction,” says Sheridan of the film. “Facts seem to be ignored now in the world, and documentaries seem to be more fictional than factual. So I decided we should make a fiction that was factual.”
It was a decision he admits was in part driven by budgetary constraints, but one that turned out to be fortuitous, Sheridan feels, as he shot the film with co-director David Merriman. The two had met at a Rock Against Homelessness concert and went on to strike up a collaborative relationship.
“We got to know each other, and met up and became friendly,” says Sheridan. “I told him I'd done a documentary and he knew it — he was interested in the case. I told him I wasn't finished with it.
“We started making a documentary. We still have that, but we ended up then doing the jury room homage to because we had problems with the sets, and we were going over budget, and we just decided to limit it to one room and write a script in six days. We got the actors together, and we worked in Luxembourg in a hotel room together for six days.”
which has been critically well-received following festival screenings — centres on the jury members who must decide whether Bailey is guilty of murder. The unusual film blends courtroom drama with true crime documentary to examine one of Ireland’s most prolific and tragic murders. One of those jury members is played by Sheridan himself — as the jury foreman, it is his character who guides the jury to find a conclusion through many emotional and fiery exchanges: “I've always enjoyed when I'm making a film, doing the off-screen responses whenever an actor wasn't available to do it, and I'd learned a lot from working with actors."
“I've worked with a few not bad actors — not in my league, but Daniel Day Lewis and people like that. I've done little bits before. I was an actor in the Abbey school, and I did my own TV show when I was a kid. I think I was always interested in the overview. I did a few plays in New York, and I never had any training to act, but I've learned a lot from just being on sets. I wasn’t a kid who was confident in being able to do accents — I thought acting was a fella who was able to do a Cavan accent.”
Still, says Sheridan, the collaborative process has always interested him — and co-directing with Merriman allowed him the time and freedom to appear on screen.
“I don't have any real demarcation lines. If I'm doing something creative, I just go on instinct. I always bounce off people, whether that was ( co-writer) Terry George or ( co-writer) Shane Connaughton. You bounce off the writer and the editor, it's almost like the back and forth awakens my ability.”
His teenage daughter, Clodagh, has expressed an interest in acting, and has asked her father for advice. His reply? Don’t talk, just think. “Whenever somebody's speaking in a film, 90% of the time you're on the person listening. Speaking is not that interesting, and information is not that interesting, and giving information is not that interesting, and confusion is very interesting. What matters, I think, is what you're thinking and being authentic.”
The six times Oscar-nominated director has coaxed Oscar-winning performances from actors including Brenda Fricker and Daniel-Day Lewis (both for ) over a long and celebrated career. But he says that getting films made remains a huge challenge.
“Somebody said to me, the arts are a momentum industry. If you get momentum and you have a few hits or a track record, the momentum makes it easier. And if you're stalled, like a stalled car, you have to push it and make it work. We push uphill. We get to the top of the hill, jump in, try and start.”
For Sheridan’s co-director Merriman collaboration has been a positive experience and the two men are already planning their next project. “I think we've a very easy way of working with each other. The last five years have been probably the best film school you could go to. I think we had a good synergy, and have a shared background in ways.
“At times I think we look at things the same way, and at times we look at things differently. It seems to just work. It was a hard sell to get this movie made, but we were determined that we were going to make it, and we stuck with it.
“I would say a large part of the movie is improvisation,” adds Merriman of working with their cast. “We both knew the case quite well. We could bounce off each other, and I dealt with a lot with the crew, and picked up some of that weight so Jim could focus working with the actors and obviously he was acting himself.”
The two filmmakers are currently developing a film about another case which shocked Ireland — the 1984 Kerry Babies case. Both men were shocked by the details of the case having revisited it when it emerged a DNA link to the parents had been found.
“We were thinking about a documentary at first, and then we ended up getting the transcripts to the tribunal, and it just completely blew our mind, what Joanne [Hayes] had been put through,” says Merriman.
"I like the spiritual approach to film, and I like the idea of it being about belief, something deeper than you know, makey-up even if you're doing fiction,” adds Sheridan. “So the idea of this poor woman who was being interrogated by 40 men in a room seems so profoundly close to Joan of Arc and so medieval that I thought it was very interesting.”
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opens exclusively at Omniplex Cinemas across Ireland from Friday, October 3
