The actor accused of violence by his ex-wife: long legal battle and Hollywood ostracism: the film of denunciation against environmental damage will not be seen in the USA
“I feel discriminated against. There is no doubt that the decision not to let out “Minamata” in America is linked to my personal events ». Word of Johnny Depp. «Minamata» is his last film and the actor, in the aftermath of the victory of the last battle in the legal war with his ex-wife Amber Heard, raises his voice and talks about discrimination against him and the repercussions on his career caused by events that have not become final.
“I was convicted by Hollywood even before the law”. In fact, there is still no definitive sentence on the case of domestic violence reported by the actor’s second wife. Depp lost the case against the British tabloid «The Sun»
who had called him a “wife-beater”, but Heard will be tried for defamation: the star had accused her of having “lied about the abuses”, she had appealed. Which a Virginia judge dismissed.
Despite this, the film industry turned the actor away from two major titles: it will not be in the next “Pirates of the Caribbean” and will not be part of the saga of “Fantastic Beasts »
. It remains «Minamata», a minor but very interesting project directed by Andrew Levitas which, despite the stop in the United States, will be released in Italy, on Sky Cinema 1 and streaming on NOW, from 17 September.
The film tells a true story. That of mercury pollution
, caused by the spills of the Chisso chemical industry, which for fifty years poisoned the waters of the Minamata Bay, a village on the southwestern coast of Japan, causing severe neurological damage to thousands of people, so much so that it gave its name to a new syndrome: Minamata’s disease. Depp plays the war photographer William Eugene Smith, who spent three years, between 1971 and ’73, in Minamata and did a service for the magazine «Life»Destined to make the history of environmental reports.
The actor is in a moment, of his life and career, very similar
to the one the character he plays was in. Both forced to fight with alcoholism, both in the descending phase of their artistic career, removed from the professional environment because they were considered unreliable and deleterious. And when asked if Smith’s life somehow reasons with his own, Depp reflects and then replies: “It’s interesting, but it wasn’t the approach I approached this job with.”
To help him, in the approach, was the wife of the photojournalist, Aileen, the woman who uncovered the case and who has now collaborated on the film project. “He put us in contact with the victims and patients, he offered us unpublished images and documents on the affair, but above all he told us who Gene really was (Smith’s nickname, ed). It has opened the doors to the intimacy of this man and their relationship ». The concern of the director and Depp was to respect the victims: “We looked these people in the eye and promised that we would not be intrusive. It struck me that the inhabitants were not worried about themselves, they wanted to get the message across that what happened to them would no longer happen to others ».
Perhaps just to overcome the personal tribulations Depp joined to a project that he felt his own also thanks to his own passion for photography: «Everything revolves around what you can capture in your lens. It’s a bit of the same approach I have with cinema. What I see and what I feel I try to convey to the public, acting or taking photographs. I try to capture the essence of what I want to tell ».
Because of his passion for photography, Depp knew W. Eugene Smith well before playing him. “I knew about his work and to a lesser extent the various traumas of his life. I think it’s almost a miracle that his wife managed to convince him to go to this fishing village to capture what was happening in pictures. Aileen told me things she may not have told anyone else and allowed me to put a light on Gene. ‘ The same light Depp has promised to shed on his life now: “The last five years have been surreal for me, but I’m moving to bring things to light.”
August 28, 2021 (change August 29, 2021 | 10:39)
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