An Evening with Jeremy Irons
Series: Special Events
Director: Jerzy Skolimowski, Country: UK, West Germany, Release: 1982, Runtime: 97, Rating: PG, Language: English, Polish, with subtitles
With a screening of MOONLIGHTING
Over an iconic 28-year film career, Jeremy Irons has cultivated a reputation for taking on challenging and intense roles ranging from a wealthy suspected murderer to a Jesuit priest to twin gynecologists to a power-hungry lion to Franz Kafka. But one of his most effective and surprising is this early performance as Nowak in the 1982 film Moonlighting, the only English-speaking member of a work crew sent from Warsaw to do an illegal construction job in London in 1981. While they’re away martial law is enacted in Poland (in opposition to Solidarity), effectively exiling the crew from its own country. Nowak chooses to keep them in the dark, pressing them to work harder. This sleeper hit passed under the radar at the time (though, it did win the screenplay award at Cannes) but has since seen its reputation grow, mainly due to Irons’ outstanding portrayal of a man increasingly estranged from his fellow workers even as he believes to be acting in their best interest.
Q&A: actor Jeremy Irons in conversation with New York Times critic Janet Maslin.
jeremyirons.net 
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