Masculinity 101
Welcome back to Filmmaking 101, an interview series in which Massive speaks to creatives about the topics and themes that fuel their process, the emotions that make them tick as people. A crash-course and a deep dive, we lift the curtain on the things that excite them as filmmakers and inspire them as humans. This week, Sam Moore speaks to master of fraught psychological dramas Philip Barantini for Masculinity 101.
Philip Barantini is interested in the person under the facade, how we live a constant duel between the self we project and the person we are behind closed doors. His debut feature was 2020’s Villain, a deconstruction of the British gangster flick starring the indomitable Craig Fairbrass as you’d never seen him before – vulnerable, soft, emotional. It was a film with violence and menace, but also defined by the desperate rage of a hardened masculinity melting away.
Barantini’s second film, Boiling Point, tells a semi-autobiographical story of the pressures of working in a restaurant kitchen. The film follows Andy (a never-better Stephen Graham), a talented head chef as he fights alcoholism, drug abuse and rage during a particularly chaotic service in an upmarket restaurant. To best understand the film, you need to understand Barantini and the merciless nature of this kind of lifestyle that often thrives on a hulking machismo that bullies, tortures and abuses everyone and everything around them.
DEFINITIONS
What does masculinity mean to you?
Masculinity these days for me is someone who's in touch with their emotions and someone who can talk about their emotions and speak out and is not ashamed of it.
The men in Boiling Point, from the staff to the customers, are often egotistical, prideful, rude, and full of rage.
They're all loosely based on people that I've worked with because I worked as a chef for 12 years. I worked my way up, and it was when I was at the bottom that I worked with people who were just arseholes and I thought that if I became a head chef or someone who's in a managerial position, I will never ever speak to people that way. It's not the case in every kitchen, Boiling Point is a light being shone on a slice of life from my perspective.
Do you think the bullying nature of chefs like Andy is often glamourised through people like Marco Pierre White or Gordon Ramsay who have notorious tempers?
Yeah. It's quite sad in a way but Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White are almost like caricatures now aren't they? They are feeding into that because that's what people want to see. I don't think it's as over the top as you see on telly.
How much does Boiling Point deconstruct traditional archetypes of masculinity?
I think it is a deconstruction of archetypal masculinity because you've got different types of masculinity in there. I'm a strong believer that everybody has two sides to them, right? You've got the forward-facing personality, where you're not really being your true self. And then when you’re behind closed doors or even when you close the toilet door, then you can really be yourself. Hopefully that comes across in several characters, certainly Stephen's character. Also not just masculinity, but also with the manager when she goes to the toilet and phones her dad.
PROGRESS AND VULNERABILITIES
Both of your films feature quite macho men under intense pressure. Why are you drawn to those types of characters?
Villain was already written, but it was written like a macho character with vulnerabilities I wanted to dig into. This is a story that's been told a million times, you've seen that character a million times but I wanted to put my spin on it in terms of having those quiet moments where he's reflecting on himself. And in Boiling Point, it's just a man under great stress and great pressure. Stephen Graham's character is loosely based on myself when I was working as a head chef and a sous chef. Because of the stress and the pressures, I sort of lost my mind a little bit and went off the rails. Thankfully I'm on track now and I'm six years sober.
Congratulations.
Thank you. It's been an amazing six years, it's been hard but looking back I'm attracted to flawed characters and delving into their mindsets. Not necessarily exclusively masculine and male characters. As a white man, I have to educate myself properly on writing women, and certainly women of colour. For example, in Boiling Point we've got Lauryn Ajufo who plays Andrea, a waitress, who's having passive racism handed to her.
I couldn't have written that without spending three or four hours with Lauryn just having a coffee talking about situations that she's been in or her family have been in. I'm educating myself by writing those things, trying to get the truth from another perspective. I think it's kind of unfair just to write these characters without really understanding them.
Boiling Point explores power structures, with the hygiene inspector talking to Andy in a way he wouldn't usually be able to get away with, Andy talking to his junior staff in a way most people would find unacceptable and the customers being rude and openly racist towards the staff. What do you make of the way people speak to other people who they have power over?
I think it all comes down to ego. It's about upbringing and how they've been educated. I think Andy is a nice guy underneath because we do see him apologise to his staff, it is like a family thing. When you're in that pressure-cooker environment, you are a family, you have to be a family. And families argue, families fight, but also there is an underlying respect. But some people take the piss, don't they?
I wanted to shine a light on these microaggressions and pockets of life that happen in the space of an hour and a half in a one-take film. I just wanted to be in and out. The night goes so quick and all of these things happen and you don't think about them until afterwards. You have these outbursts with your family and then later on you're like, “Ugh, yeah, I'm sorry.” You always take it out on the closest person to you.
KITCHENS AND VIOLENCE
How important was it to show the aggression customers show towards staff, particularly racist conduct?
It was really important, because people don't see that. When you go for a meal, you just sit at your table, enjoy your meal and go home. The staff get a lot of shit from customers. You just don't know who's going to walk in that door. Again, it all stems from my experience. When it's happened in places I've worked in, maybe it's not been spoken about because it's embarrassing to experience that as a person of colour. I can imagine the anger but at the same time, you're working in a top-end restaurant, you don't want to show the cracks. I imagine Lauryn’s character when she goes home that night is in bits. It's heartbreaking, but you've got to go back to what I said earlier, you've got to put on this front. Especially in restaurants like that.
Looking back, what do you make of the way kitchens treat staff?
Back then, it was horrific and there was always a hierarchy and a power trip. I have some great friends now who work in hospitality and are head chefs and restaurant owners themselves. The culture is changing, and it's changing for the better. For example, a great friend of mine, Ellis Barrie, was on Great British Menu and is a fantastic chef and a huge advocate of mental health and looking after the staff in the workplace. He has a therapist on standby for anyone who wants to talk to about their problems in and out of work. He gives his staff three or four days off, they only work certain amounts of hours. They're really looked after, it's a huge testament to him because if you talk to him, he's also been in that same situation that I was in with the older generation, the ones that have been brought up and taught in a certain way and it's not necessarily their fault.
It wasn't a pleasant place at times. Not always doom and gloom, it was a family and there's a camaraderie there. But it's a stressful environment and people take it out on other people. I've worked with some people where something was slightly wrong with a dish so they decided to kick the bin over or smash the blu-roll off the wall or throw a pan into the sink with burning fat in it and burn all the kitchen staff.
Have lessons from working in the kitchen impacted the way you act on a film set?
Yeah, absolutely. It's weird, because I didn't make that connection until Boiling Point. I worked with some absolute monsters who were horrific human beings to their staff. I always said I will never treat my staff like that if I became a head chef or even someone in a sort of hierarchy position. So when I became a head chef, I was very much in charge but more so in a sense of being approachable. You bring your input to it and it's exactly the same on a film set, certainly the films that I've worked on. And also I've worked on film sets as an actor where the director's been completely micromanaging everybody and had the vision of what they want and nobody can give their opinion.
With all of the heads of departments I've got around me, it's a collaboration and it’s got to be passed down too. On Boiling Point we've got some apprentices in from colleges and stuff like that, and I want to do that moving forward on every set.
ANDY AND STEPHEN
Stephen Graham's known for playing tightly wound characters with a lot of violence within. How did he come to play Andy?
Stephen and I are really good friends and we've been friends for 20 years since we did Band of Brothers together and stayed in touch. Both being from Liverpool we had an instant connection. So when I did my first short film, it was written by an amazing writer and actor called Robbie O'Neill and I said to Stephen I'd love him to be in it. I thought he'd be like, “Yeah man let's do it,” but hats off to him he just said, “Let's get your first one out the way and then maybe we'll talk after.”
He was always in my mind because of the characters he's played in the past but also I just knew that he could bring something really special. So when he said he loved the idea it was all guns blazing. We shot it in three days. Well, we shot it in one day but we rehearsed for two. When I asked him to do the feature, he said he had the best time on the short so said yes.
How did you get Andy to where he is at the beginning of the film, with his professional and personal life falling apart?
We wanted to start with the pressures of life and everything crumbling around him. He's lost his girlfriend, he's not speaking to his kid enough and his kid's started to realise what's going on. He's at the beginning of his boiling point. We just thought, let's just have him walking in. Just start with a bang and throw the audience straight in.
Andy's default response to adversity seems to be attack. Why do you think he so readily resorts to that?
That's just a natural instinct for a lot of people. Growing up, that was the way that I always responded even when my mum would tell me to do my homework. My mum passed away five years ago. I miss her dearly but looking back, I didn't like to be told what to do. I think that's the case for a lot of people, certainly the way that I've been brought up. Andy doesn’t want to show his weakness because he's the boss, he needs to try to hold it all together for everybody. But actually we can see clearly he's not and his staff can see clearly he's not. But he's probably so proud that he doesn't want that to come across. When you're intoxicated and your mind's not fully there, it all becomes a big blur.
How much can you sympathise with a man like Andy?
I've been through what Andy's gone through. So I understand the hole that you can get yourself into and it's very difficult to get yourself out of that when you're in it. Not many people do come out of it. So I can sympathise with him a lot but some people aren’t familiar with that situation. They may just look at him as an absolute wreck and I get that totally.
EMOTIONAL RECKONINGS
Your camera spends a lot of time focused on faces, you can feel every character’s emotions. Do you think that comes from your acting background?
Absolutely. When we wrote the script, we wrote it without any dialogue then we workshopped it with the actors. We had bullet points for what needed to be said and how we needed to drive the story forward. With the audition process, I just wanted the actors to film themselves telling me a story about the worst and the best time they've ever had in a restaurant whilst making a cup of tea or coffee.
You could tell which actors had rehearsed this story and they were making a cup of tea but there was nothing in the cup, no water or anything, just staring at this empty cup. That's not what I asked for. I wanted them to tell the truth. When I watch something I'm always interested in the person behind the one who's giving the speech, I just want to see what they're doing. It's what is not said that is really interesting to me.
Both of your films end in quite a similar way, with your central characters having a reckoning.
I didn't write Villain but I wanted the audience to have that shock factor. I hope you don't see it coming. In Boiling Point, it happened to somebody I worked with – they collapsed on the floor right in the middle of service and had a stroke. It's quite common for chefs to have heart attacks at a young age.
Boiling Point is out in UK cinemas on January 7.
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