When Joseph Fiennes goes into a church, he's "overwhelmed" by the potent and concentrated atmosphere of spirituality. He had a similar feeling, he said, when shooting scenes of Risen that involved Jesus.
"You feel like this material is powerful," he says of filming process, "and one enters with great respect towards it. Whether you're religious or not, when you see a man strung up, dripping with blood on a cross, if you have one aspect of humanity you can't help but be arrested by that. Our film centers around those sorts of images a huge deal, so it is emotional and arresting."
Fiennes, who has portrayed major characters like Martin Luther, William Shakespeare and Merlin, stars in Risen as Clavius, a Roman soldier present for the crucifixion of Jesus. When Christ's tomb is found empty three days later, Clavius is put in charge of the investigation to find the body -- and those responsible for stealing it.
Aside from the pedigree of the film's director, Kevin Reynolds, it was this twist on the well-known Jesus story that Fiennes found compelling. Everyone knows the details of the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension, he says, and dealing with that subject matter alone is a challenge. "But what I loved was the angle from which we come to that story which is dear to so many," he said. They approach the events through the eyes of a skeptic.
"Although [Clavius is] a fictional character, nevertheless we know that a high-ranking official must have been there [at the crucifixion]. What gave the film momentum, to me, was the detective story. As the events unfold, Clavius' conditioning begins to falter, and I love that aspect."
Fiennes took his research for the role seriously, spending time both in a gladiator school and with a detective in order to get the different aspects of Clavius right.
"The film is structured as a number of interrogations towards Jesus' followers," he says, "and I thought that honestly I wouldn't know how to interrogate anyone. I'm not very good even with my kids when they're naughty. So I thought, 'I'm going to ask a detective.' So I worked with this gentleman, and that gave me a great insight into Clavius."
He knows, though, that Christian films are often polarizing. They tend to be deemed either "too much like Sunday School" or not true enough to Biblical text. But Fiennes thinks Risen avoids those problems, and he hopes it means a wide variety of people will see the film.
"What I feel Kevin has done and what our producers have done is work diligently with ministers and pastors of the church," he says, "and what has transpired is an overwhelmingly positive response to [Risen] being true to Scripture and making this a cinematic feast as well. So I'm hopeful that the auditorium could be filled with a cross-pollination of beliefs and thoughts ... Very few, if any, have achieved that. So I'm excited that we might get close, and that was a big pull for me."
Fiennes himself says he is was baptized Catholic, but was hesitant to talk much on the record about his own beliefs, citing his desire to not use his fame or platform as a way to encourage anybody to think a certain way. He would only say that faith is "a personal dialogue that's an ongoing evolution for me."
But this is neither the first nor the last time Fiennes has delved into a character that's driven by faith (or lack thereof). He's played Martin Luther in the past, and he'll soon be seen as Eric Liddell (the missionary athlete made popular by the film Chariots of Fire) in The Last Race. He says he's inspired by the sorts of people who stand up for their beliefs, even in the face of isolation or even wrath.
"Martin Luther brought the Word to the people and stuck to his beliefs on pain of death," Fiennes says. "There are many characters I could draw great strength from who do that, and I'm attracted to that."
When he's not filming, though, he takes things much more slowly. "I like to garden," he says when asked how he spends his free time. "If you can't find me on a film set, I'm at home and I'm planting. The kids will join me. We spend half the year in Spain, in the wild and off the grid, and we love that."
