Benedict Cumberbatch on Wrestling with a Crow, Kids, and Grief While Being British in ‘The Thing with Feathers’

In adapting Max Porter’s novel “Grief Is the Thing with Feathers,” noted documentary director Dylan Southern (“Shut Up, and Play the Hits”) knew he’d be taking on some significant challenges in his first scripted narrative feature film. In the story about a grieving husband (Benedict Cumberbatch) thrust into unexpected single fatherhood, the film relies on performances from two young actors, Richard and Henry Boxall, to play his equally grieving sons. Southern and Cumberbatch talked about how being fathers in real life was key to the film’s success when they stopped by the IndieWire Studio, presented by Dropbox, ahead of the Sundance premiere of “The Thing with Feathers.”

“Neither of them had acted before and they had limited attention spans, and it was just about creating the situations that we needed them to be in,” said Southern of working with the young Boxall brothers. “When I first saw the boys, one of them was so distracted by everything and one of them tends to go off in moods sometimes, and immediately I was like, ‘Well, let’s not fight that. We’ll harness that for the characters,’ and then it was that thing of making them feel safe in the space. Making it as little like a film set as we could for them and just letting them be themselves in a way.”

Added Cumberbatch, “Which was great and that was the part of being a father that really helped to know how to manage that in a creative environment, where we’re trying to make the day, make the shot, make the scene work, but adapt to them like you do with animals, or any kind of unruly element. That’s magic when it’s there.”

The children were not the only unruly thing they had to contend with on the low-budget indie set, as the Cumberbatch character’s sketches of a crow come to life in the form of a half-supernatural, half-chaotic therapist that forces the now single father to confront his grief. Southern didn’t want to use CGI, preferring the crow to be a physical presence for the family of three on set, and cast Eric Lampaert to walk on stilts and wear a large sculpted crow head. But for Cumberbatch, no stranger to fighting imaginary green-screen forces, it was another day at the office.

“All elements of films are smoke and mirror. Even the most sort of unbelievably inhabited, immersive experience as an actor, you’ve still got all of this [pointing to the IndieWire studio], you’ve got all the cameras, lights, you’ve got all the technicalities to capture that moment of truth in a bit of verisimilitude, it’s just different levers,” said Cumberbatch. “I think when you’re going to the kind of emotional depths of a father who’s lost a wife, tragically… You just have to sit in it very, very deeply, and not get too distracted by children and grown men [in costumes].”

While the theme of grief and the use of genre elements are universal, both of the British collaborators acknowledged the character’s repressed approach to grief was distinctly British, and the appeal of the crow character in helping shake them out of it.

“What it was about the book that appealed to me was it’s unapologetic Britishness. We’re not always the best at dealing with our emotions. And I think Max’s book gave me access to some things that I’ve kind of been carrying around with me for a long while,” said Southern. “The film isn’t sentimental, but it allows you to get to a place of deep emotion and cathartic release by the end of it.”

“The Thing with Feathers” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

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