A Most Violent Year: Oscar Isaac Describes a Trilogy

CraveOnline: He’s clearly no saint but there’s a line he doesn’t want to cross. 

Oscar Isaac: The way he justifies it is, “Hey, it’s standard industry practice. We all go 80mph. It’s the flow of traffic. We’re all going with the flow of traffic, but I won’t drive the wrong way. I’m not going to rob a bank.” Basically there’s things he won’t do, exactly, but I think that it comes more from a sense of practicality than morality, and the reason why I came to that was because I do think hyper-capitalist businessmen are generally sociopathic, or at least they have those traits. 

J.C. [Chandor] will disagree with me on this one, but I think it’s because you need – in order to succeed at that level – you do have to look at humans as commodities. You look at everything as a commodity. You look at everything as, “How can this object help me achieve my goals?” And if you can, I can treat you as a human. I’ll show you a face of sincerity, I can do all those things. But as soon as you are not helpful to me, you’re expendable.

It’s like Julian [played by Elyes Gabel]. You’re all smiles and friendship until he runs.

Until he runs, and then once he runs, that’s it. Once he is damaging my business there is actually no need, and if he offs himself it wouldn’t the worst thing in the world for my business.  

“I do think hyper-capitalist businessmen are generally sociopathic…”

Is that easier to wrap your head around, when you don’t have all those emotions cluttering your head?

Well no, actually I can get myself emotionally attached to that idea much easier, because it’s active. Morality is much more nebulous to play. Our morality is based on so many factors, of where we were born, who we were born to, what values were instilled in us, what values we chose, the way that our lives have shaped us. That dictates so much of what we assume is our morality, and also the culture, all of these things.

So yes, one way is to try to meticulously construct all of that and hope that that will give you a sense of morality, or at least help you believe that when they say “action.” Because once they say “action” that’s when you, for me I think, you let everything go and see what happens. It’s expressive. You can’t communicate ideas. If you start trying to communicate ideas, I think you don’t allow the audience to see themselves. You know, now I’m selling you something. Whether I’m selling you charm or anger or this or that, or an idea of something, I think that falls apart.

For me, the idea is you do all this work, you do all this stuff, to be able to set yourself in line to let your subconscious come out. And hopefully when your subconscious comes out it’s in line with some of these thoughts and ideas. So I created a backstory, that he came from Colombia, he came from Bogota, which at the time there was a Civil War in the late ‘50s, which we decided [was the time that] he had come to this country.

Hence that’s why his accent is there, but it’s almost a little more New Yorker now because through his sheer will he’s tried to get rid of his accent. And he came from a Civil War called La Violencia. Some of the most horrible acts of violence occurred at this time. Brutal things like cutting pregnant women open, horrible things.

That’s horrible.

Out in the streets and… oh yeah, really nasty. So this is his background. This is his intimate relationship with violence, right? So there’s a bit of a trauma from that, but he also is not afraid of it. It’s not like, you know, a liberal elitist, “I don’t understand guns and I hate them.” I have an intimate relationship with them and I know what happens to a society when you succumb to violence. [That’s] one. Two, a gun… it’s not because it’s morally reprehensible, it’s because it’s stupid. Because what do you think happens?

Let’s say I buy a gun legally, right? And I shoot somebody, because if somebody tries to break in and I have a gun, I will shoot them. Right? So what happens? Then they die. Do you think, even if it’s legal, even if there’s a way around it, do you think that… Because where my mind is, I just don’t want to be owning three heating oil stations in Brooklyn and Queens. I have Manhattan, I have politics, all the way to the top is my view of where I want to go.

Do you think any politician is going to come anywhere near me if I’ve murdered somebody? Even if I’ve killed someone in self-defense, do you think? They want me to be the gangster spic with a gun. So suddenly, emotionally, that I can attach to, and it’s different from the moral high ground which is so much more amorphous.