Helen Mirren’s ‘Winchester’ reveals a terrifying true story

On a bright Los Angeles morning a few days after the Golden Globes (held on January 7), Helen Mirren — dressed impeccably in black while discussing her latest film, the haunted-house tale Winchester — arrived at an unexpected concern: the fate of all those poor Stormtroopers in the Star Wars movies.

“I saw [The Force Awakens] and I thought they made a terrible mistake because they took the Stormtrooper’s hat off,” the Oscar-winning star of The Queen and British national treasure said, feigning shock.

“There was this lovely young actor [John Boyega] — which means one of the Stormtroopers is a human being. And if he’s a human, they’re all human. And you have been indiscriminately killing Stormtroopers for the last [six] Star Wars movies without any consideration to their humanity!”

Themes of violence, death and how those in the world of the living come to terms with their role in it all run throughout the otherwise titillating frights of Winchester, a supernatural horror film based on the real widowed heir to the Winchester rifle fortune.

Opening on February 8 in the UAE, the CBS Films/Lionsgate release is directed by Peter Spierig and Michael Spierig, whose cult-favourite genre work includes Daybreakers and Predestination.

A cult figure of her own among haunted-house enthusiasts, Sarah Winchester spent 38 years and millions of dollars building her famously bizarre Victorian mansion in San Jose at the turn of the 20th century. Urban legend says she was guided in her blueprints by spirits who spoke to her from the beyond.

 I want people to unpick [power], to expose the [abusive] behaviour... For me it’s about time, but it comes to the same thing — time’s up.”

As Winchester, who lost her husband and young child at an early age, Mirren spends the film in black widow’s lace. It’s an intriguing turn for a grand dame of stage and screen — and also perfectly fitting given the ways Mirren has sought to defy expectations over a five-decade career.

Few moviegoers would expect to see Mirren possessed by malevolent ghosts in a mainstream PG-13 horror movie. Costar Jason Clarke, who plays a (fictional) doctor hired by the Winchester board to declare Sarah Winchester unfit to hold her shares in the company, certainly didn’t.

“But,” he said, “I was happy to be there to see it. There’s this sense of exploration and play in how she plays a scene and a character and the choices that she makes. There’s nothing scared about Helen Mirren, and you see that in the way she goes about her life.”

STARK REALITY

That confidence wasn’t always so rock-solid, Mirren revealed.

In her 20s, she visited a psychic in the hopes of learning about her future. He instructed her to write down everything he said as he read her palm. Writing so fast the words barely registered, she walked away holding her own fortunes foretold in her hands.

“I looked at the sheaf of papers and realised that I didn’t want to know what’s in my future. I want it to be an adventure and a mystery. I went up to the first rubbish bin I could find,” she said, “and I threw my future away.”

Peter Spierig, Helen Mirren, Jason Clarke, Michael Spierig and James Van Praagh attend the premiere of ‘Winchester’ at Cinemark Playa Vista last week in LA.. AFP

The one prediction she remembered him sharing was that she wouldn’t find success until her later years. “Of course, when you’re 22 you so don’t want to hear that,” she said with a grin.

Mirren might not believe in the supernatural, but she did find herself communing with the late Winchester while gazing upon one of the estate’s most intriguing pieces.

“In the house are these two beautiful stained glass panels with quotes from Shakespeare on them,” she said of the twin windows inscribed with lines from Troilus and Cressida and Richard II. “‘Wide unclasp the tables of their thoughts’ and ‘These same thoughts people this little world.’”

Jason CLarke and Mirren.

She leaned back, marvelling. “Two quotes from two different plays that fit together, but the meaning is so mysterious. I looked at that endlessly trying to think, ‘What is she saying?’ And I think she’s talking about freedom of thought, that people should be able to think whatever they want.”

As for what attracted her to a film in the horror genre — at a time before the mega-success of Get Out and It repopularised the medium with audiences — Mirren pointed to the conscience behind Winchester’s tragic obsession.

“I think it is legitimate to say that there was a sensitivity to the deaths of the people who died by the Winchester gun,” mused Mirren. “The world is a terrifying place, and a lot of the terror in the world comes from arms in one sort or another, and the sale of arms. And that’s what I really like about the underlying story of the film — her guilt and her pain.”

Mirren cited a moment where Winchester slams the most “unconscionable” part of the gun trade. “She’s not talking about people who use them,” said Mirren. “She’s talking about the people who make and sell them. Every country is culpable in that.”

Mirren

The actress also considered her own culpability in the glamorisation of violence.

“It’s always worried me,” she admitted. “In Red I played a sniper. I fired every kind of gun on the planet including a Gatling. The thing that upsets me in movies is when the baddies all just get slaughtered. I always watch going, ‘He’s got children! Maybe he’s only there because he’s got a second mortgage and his wife’s got a terrible disease and he’s trying to pay her medical bills!’”

Which is what brought her to the aforementioned subject of Stormtroopers and moral interrogations in the Star Wars galaxy.

SPEAKING UP

Earlier in January, Mirren took part in a moment in Hollywood history when, as a presenter and nominee at the 75th Golden Globes, she joined a wave of celebrities in wearing black in support of the Time’s Up movement.

Sarah Snook in ‘Winchester’.

“It was a great year to be in that room,” said Mirren, who earned her 15th Golden Globes nod for an awards-qualifying run of the upcoming release The Leisure Seeker. “The best thing about it was that it was very positive. Often, people are criticised for using that situation as a platform for any political statement whatsoever, but that night it was like, ‘This is what we’re all here for.’ I was proud of women and I was proud of my industry to a certain extent.”

In 1975, as a rising star on the London stage and member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Mirren endured the sexist panderings of Brit interviewer Michael Parkinson on his talk show. When the interview resurfaced in the age of YouTube, footage of the young Mirren firing back went viral.

This year Mirren has been excited to see Hollywood’s #MeToo and Time’s Up movements force change in how the entertainment industry confronts sexual harassment and abuse — a cultural shift sparked by accusations against alleged serial abuser Harvey Weinstein, the former Miramax mogul who guided Mirren to an Oscar win for The Queen.

“The first time I worked with him and his brother was when they distributed a film I did called The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, which was an art movie and which normally would have never gotten distribution in America — but the Weinstein brothers distributed it, and a lot of filmmakers have a lot to be grateful to the Weinstein brothers for that very reason, especially in independent film,” said Mirren.

Helen Mirren in ‘Winchester.

She paused. “You have this other side. It’s so confusing, and so upsetting, and so annoying — especially annoying,” she said. “...It’s clearly nothing about sex — what could be less sexy than the stories one has been reading in the papers? — and obviously completely to do with power.

“[Weinstein’s alleged abuses were] something I would have bet $5,000 [Dh18,360] wasn’t happening. I thought we’d gone way beyond that. I would have believed it 30 years ago.’”

She says she hopes that Time’s Up becomes a global movement.

“I want people to unpick it, to expose the behaviour. I think it’s fantastic that it’s been exposed,” she said, firmly. “For me it’s about time, but it comes to the same thing — time’s up.”

Don’t miss it!

Winchester screens in the UAE from February 8.