Gyllenhaal DIGS DEEP

‘The Guilty,’ hitting cinemas Friday, let actor embrace complexity with an old friend behind the camera

There’s no doubt that Jake Gyllenhaal is a poster child for the Toronto International Film Festival. He’s been to TIFF for several of his films, including the Oscar-winning “Brokeback Mountain,” followed by the critically acclaimed “Nightcrawler,” “Prisoners,” “Enemy,” “The Sisters Brothers” and “Stronger.”

This year he brought Netflix’s “The Guilty” to the fest, marking the world premiere of the film that he not only stars in but also produced. While he couldn’t be in Toronto, he said in a video interview that he adores the city.

“I think from movies from all over the world, it’s so rife with so many beautiful cultures from all over the world and Toronto … there’s a real love of entertainment as well as films that probably mass audiences won’t see normally, I think, having been to all the festivals all over the world. I love Toronto so much. It’s always that sort of last stop where it’s like the final real check on what you’ve done.

“I think it’s also just an honour to have come back so many times and feel like you’re part of a community and a festival that respects you as an artist. That’s a really nice feeling.”

Helmed by Antoine Fuqua, “The Guilty” is set over the course of a single morning at a 911 dispatch centre.

Demoted police officer Joe Baylor (Gyllenhaal) reluctantly sits at his desk answering emergency calls, and when he receives a cryptic one from a woman who has been kidnapped, he jumps to put together the pieces of the puzzle to help her out.

The movie is a remake of a 2018 Danish thriller of the same name — Gyllenhaal acquired the rights to the film after he saw it at Sundance. His vision for the remake was simple: he just wanted to change the film to fit in the American context. “I think structurally, it holds, it’s so sound and it’s so strong. I think the twists and turns are just brilliant.

“I come from not only movies, but I also come from theatre and in the theatre, actors have great allowance to interpret different roles. So many actors have played the same roles and interpreted them differently. I

felt there were so many opportunities with this to say something about the world we’ve been experiencing in particular over the past two years, and to put a different emotional interpretation on a character going through the American system

in particular.”

Fuqua, whose film “Training Day” earned Denzel Washington an Oscar, revealed that this film is quite different from the Danish version.

“The character in (the 2018) film is a different guy than my guy, Joe. With Joe, I can relate to more and that’s why I wanted to make it because you take Jake in that role in America, with all the things happening in America, and it’s a different movie in different fields,” the director said during a video interview with Gyllenhaal.

Fuqua, who also directed “The Magnificent Seven” and “The Equalizer,” credits the distributor, Netflix, for the complete autonomy he and Gyllenhaal had working on the movie.

“Doing a film with Netflix was amazing because it’s just freedom. We talked about a few things in the script with the team there. And then they was like, “You and Jake go make the movie.’ When you do that to somebody like me and Jake, that’s like taking the gloves off,” said Fuqua.

The tension is palpable in this high-concept thriller — the camera never leaves Gyllenhaal and all the audience experiences of the callers is a range of voices on the other side of the headset. He gives a powerhouse performance, one that will remind viewers of “Nightcrawler.”

It is nuanced roles like this that the 40-year-old actor loves to feast on. “I think we’re all very, very complex beings and I think that’s why I gravitate towards characters that are sometimes very morally complex … I think it’s important to kind of mine the darker spaces in ourselves, so that we can really kind of clean them out in a lot of ways and find more light and more joy.

“If a story offers you the opportunity to explore feelings you might be afraid of, or subject matter, you might want to avoid, I sort of gravitate towards that because I know there’s a great lesson in it.”

Gyllenhaal and Fuqua, who previously worked together on “Southpaw,” seem comfortable in each other’s company, and say they work well together; in the interview, their camaraderie and shared energy are hard to miss.

“I like Jake as a person, as a human being. He’s a good person and we’re friends and that helps. But also, Jake challenges me, I challenge him. He’s bringing his age, and I’m going to bring mine,” says the director. “The idea is to help elevate each other, and enjoy the process, even when you completely disagree on something. That’s a hard thing to find normally and trust is huge.

“Jake will have a concept, he’ll text me in the middle of the night about something and nine times out of 10 we’re in sync. If we’re not in sync, he’ll probably win the argument anyway,” he added, laughing.

An amused Gyllenhaal responded: “I say the same thing the opposite way. Except that I think that Antoine wins the argument. And in the end, the director always does, which is why he gets to say that. He makes you think you’ve won the argument, but he does it his way (laughs).”

“That’s the beauty of working with Antoine. He’s a sensitive person — he would not love me saying that for his hardcore fans — and he’s so attuned to the emotional journey of me as a person when I’m playing a character and the character themselves and so respectful of the space for an actor. Then at the same time, I feel so secure because I know he’s going to shoot the movie beautifully. He’s going to have such incredible department heads around him because he’s such a respected filmmaker, and you are secure, you are held within his vision.”

Gyllenhaal added: “And like he said, we can get into it because we care about each other outside of making movies. To me, that’s always the barometer. Do you give a s--t about somebody outside of the movie you’re making? Because if you do, then the real stuff comes in and if the real stuff comes in, then that’s when you make great art. So that’s what we have. I think that’s why it’s not just even about a movie. It’s about a relationship as artists, and may it continue.”

“The Guilty” releases in select theatres on Friday and on Netflix Oct. 1.