Helen Mirren: Why Eye in the Sky is the war film which needed to be made

Helen Mirren is musing on war and the people who wage it.

“Making Eye in the Sky made me consider the extraordinary way in which warfare has changed. Think of the 19th century way of people riding into battle on horses with a sabre. Then the First World War idea of trenches and guns. And the Second World War idea of aeroplanes and bombs.

“Now warfare is continuing [with drones]. And I suspect it will be a part of the future. How far will technology go in the next 20 years?”

Playing a career soldier in Eye in the Sky gave 70-year-old Mirren an inkling of the complexities of modern warfare and how an enemy can be targeted from a distance of many thousands of miles.

The story revolves around the search for a white Muslim convert, based on Samantha Lewthwaite aka the White Widow, the partner of 7/7 bomber Germaine Lindsay.

Now one of the western world’s most wanted terrorism suspects, 32-year-old Lewthwaite is alleged to have associations with Islamic militant group Al-Shabaab. She has been tracked from South Africa to Syria.

But the film’s main focus is on the shift from capture to kill, with Mirren calling for a drone strike to target suicide bombers who are planning an attack. The issue for the young officer controlling the drone is one of collateral damage: the inevitable death of a young girl selling bread outside the terrorists’ base.

But eradicating the terrorist cell will prevent the deaths of dozens of people. Given the obvious implications of the equation, what price the death of one innocent…? It is that conflict – morality versus military, philosophical versus political – that drives the film.

Born in London at the very end of the Second World War, Mirren missed the nightly ravages of the Blitz. But her parents experienced the Nazis’ nefarious V1 flying bomb, nicknamed the doodlebug. The comparisons, she says, are evident.

“My parents said the most terrifying thing about being bombed was not actually the German aeroplanes coming over, it was what the Germans had invented – this thing called the doodlebug, an unmanned vehicle that came over with this drone sound. It was a very early form of drone warfare.”

Mirren’s fascination with Eye in the Sky – the prescient script was written by Guy Hibbert and plays out in real time over 102 nail-biting minutes – was less about hardware than the hidden arguments over policy.

As the row ricochets between Colonel Katherine Powell (Mirren), her commander Lieutenant General Frank Benson (Alan Rickman in his final film performance) and drone controller Steve Watts (Aaron Paul), so it triggers a dispute between the allies.

For South African director Gavin Hood the appeal of the film lay in exploring the human dynamics of waging modern war. Part of that was manifested by casting Mirren in a role originally written for a man.

“Colonel Powell was written as a man but I kept thinking, ‘Helen Mirren. She’s steely, determined, intelligent, has the real presence…’ says Hood. “I also confess that I thought to myself, ‘This is a subject that should be talked about by as many people as possible.’ Women should not be excluded from this situation by having a male-dominated cast like a Boys’ Own war movie. It’s so much more than that.”

He put his suggestion to Hibbert who paused momentarily before asking: “Why didn’t I think of that? Yes! Do you think she’ll do it?”

Mirren laughs. “I really applaud you for that. I wish more directors had that point of view. It was an absolute page-turner. The subject matter was serious and threw up a conversation that I think we all need to be having: the reality of war in our present day and age.”

Both Hood and Mirren consider Eye in the Sky to be a great modern war film. Moreover Mirren turned down other roles to make it, even struggling through scenes in which she had to act with Hood and other crew members because the budget didn’t allow her co-stars to be on set at the same time that she was.

“I thought this was a great war film because so many are just ‘good guys and bad guys’,” says Mirren. “This is about the terrible moral decisions. I hope it will go into the canon of great war movies. There were a couple of other projects flying around at the time and I said to my agent ‘That’s the movie I want to do’. I really thought it was exciting.”

Naturally the conversation turns to Alan Rickman, who died in January aged 69 after a private battle with cancer. Mirren knew him from the theatre but says the sober, urbane, measured soldier he plays in Eye in the Sky was very close to the real man. “You see his intelligence, his wit and his authority. The other characters – in the Harry Potter series, the baddie in Die Hard – that he played so brilliantly… he was an incredible actor so he always gave a very good performance but I think the Alan that you see in this movie is the real Alan. I also feel that the inner song of the film is very much something that Alan would have identified with. I think that he would have been incredibly proud that this was his last movie.”

Hood agrees. “I can’t believe he’s not here to articulate how he feels about the ideas raised in the film [because] he did have strong feelings about the concepts and the themes and the ideas.

“I just feel very fortunate to have been able to work with Alan. I had no idea it would be his last film.”

Eye in the Sky (15) is out on general release today.