Heart Of Stone's Tom Harper & Matthias Schweighöfer Explore The Technology - Or Lack Of It - Exclusive Interview

This interview was conducted prior to the beginning of the SAG-AFTRA strike.

The movie "Heart of Stone" on Netflix is a thrill ride for fans of Gal Gadot and Jamie Dornan, who have rip-roaring scenes of intense action. Matthias Schweighöfer, on the other hand, has a less showy role, but he still holds a show stopping piece of the puzzle. Schweighöfer plays Jack of Hearts, the person responsible for the Heart, the massive artificial intelligence that ensures the peacekeeping spy organization called the Charter has access to all sorts of information. Directing it all is Tom Harper, who brings Schweighöfer's scenes with the Heart and Gadot along with Dornan's scenes of over-the-top action to life with equal aplomb.

Harper, a British film and TV director, has assembled quite a team for this picture and it's just the latest in his string of critically acclaimed films. He has directed the films "The Aeronauts" with Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne and "Wild Rose" with Jessie Buckley and Sophie Okonedo. Harper has also directed episodes of "Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams" and "Peaky Blinders." Meanwhile Schweighöfer, a German actor and director, has appeared in American films like "Army of the Dead" as Ludwig Dieter and "Oppenheimer" as Werner Heisenberg. He also reprised his role as Ludwig Dieter and directed the "Dead" prequel "Army of Thieves."

Schweighöfer and Harper spoke with Looper for an exclusive interview about how Harper managed all the action in "Heart of Stone," how Schweighöfer kept things realistic with the Heart, and how they tackled the quieter moments of the film.

Tom, I'm wondering, you've got a lot of action to manage with this movie. How did you go about it?

Tom Harper: Well, it was quite new to me, actually. I've done some action in the past. "The Aeronauts" was the last movie we did and there was some in there, but not nearly on the same scale as this. I had a great team of people that I was fortunate enough to work with — a brilliant stunt coordinator called Joe McLaren, a great second unit action director called Rob Alonzo. Together, we worked as a team and we plotted out and we planned the sequences. 

It was a real team effort, and it was a pleasure to do, because we got to go to some amazing places and shoot some crazy stuff. I hope that it's going to give the audience a real amazing thrill ride to sit down and to watch it.

Matthias, you're not in the field a lot in this movie, but you do have a massive computer program at your disposal. How do you keep the realistic element of that computer program, even if it's not really there?

Matthias Schweighöfer: It started in acting school, years ago, when I was doing this improv: "Imagine there would be a computer, AI technology, and then one day maybe you will play a part in the film of Tom Harper." Years later, I met Tom Harper and he came up with that great character and he said, "Matthias, this is a room totally empty. You have to do a crazy dance, make it realistic and explore this world." I was really happy, because Jack of Hearts is a great guy and we created this language, and we try to create this whole independent, weird universe. Right, Tom?

Harper: The way of bringing the technology to life — because at the core of the film is the themes about technology and other ways that humans interact with it, and how we retain our humanity — but if you're making a film about technology, it could be quite boring, potentially. People sitting in front computers or stuff that's going on online is not particularly exciting to watch. We had to devise [how] to show that in a way that was visually interesting. Matthias and I worked in a way in which Jack of Hearts, who controls this technology, could interact with this volumetric projection 3D hologram type thing. That was an evolving challenge. Hopefully, we've got great results.

Tom, how did you direct the film's quieter moments, and Matthias, how did you act in those when you didn't have the computer system to keep things moving?

Harper: We touched about the big scale of the action and how great it was to do that, but actually, the things that excite me most about filmmaking are those intimate moments, are the character beats, and working with a camera and with actors to tell the character journeys and the story. It was great working with Matthias. We were in this, they called Charter HQ, and there was a little family of actors within that of Gal Gadot, Sophie Okonedo, and Matthias Schweighöfer, all there and bouncing off each other.

Every day, it was a pleasure to have fun on set and interact, and that's where the magic comes from. You have the script, but the script is just a piece of paper, and that's the template you go from, but it comes to life in the hands of the actors. You get all these little things that weren't quite as you saw it, or little moments between the actors, or a look. Sometimes, it's those small intimate moments that make a movie, or the combination of them.

Schweighöfer: What we recognized as I speak to the other actors, Sophia and Gal, Tom was building us a stage. We're all coming from stage acting and theater, and that was great, because on a stage in a theater, you only have your partners, and the rhythm, and a great scene. That was fantastic to do every day.

Harper: It's funny you say that about theater. Actually, you have that quite a lot in theater. You were there in this space, imagining the world around you and the life of the computer around you, but that's actually not so different from, as you say, being on stage. You can be in a black box and you can create anything around you and if you believe it, the audience is going to come with you, or hopefully they will. That is even more reliant upon you when you are doing that, because you're selling it. If we don't buy you selling it, I'm certainly not going to buy any of the visual effects that are surrounding you.

"Heart of Stone" will stream on Netflix starting August 11.

This interview has been edited for clarity.