Jake’s Progress

It was a phrase first used to describe Arnold Schwarzenegger at the height, or perhaps depth, of his Conan the Barbarian fame; “Like,” offered a reviewer, “looking at a condom full of walnuts.” The absurdly perfect description might equally apply a couple of decades later to the freshly bulked up Jake Gyllenhaal, the one-time darling of the US indie movie scene who has now put considerable muscle into his new role in Prince of Persia. The latest Playstation-to-big-screen reworking, currently being filmed in the deserts of both Morocco and Arizona, has necessitated 300 levels of waist-up masculine nudity – not an instant recommendation to readers of a men’s lifestyle magazine, it has to be said – and his body has taken on a shape that more accurately could be described as swollen. “I guess I’ve gotten buff,” he laughs, immediately after shooting a fight scene in front of a prodigious blue screen. “I over-prepared myself because I never knew how much they were going to ask me to do, so I just made sure I’d be able to do anything.”

In fact, it’s an extra couple of kilogrammes of muscle that he has added to a frame that three years ago in Jarhead was hardly slovenly. It’s the result of months of training in the build-up to Jerry Bruckheimer’s typically hi-spec actioneer, which he continues to maintain – if not quite chisel – with at least an additional hour a day in and around the set. “There’s a lot of acrobatics in the movie – a lot of running up walls, and jumping on things and Parkour, so it requires muscularity, but also a lot of aerobic ability… But don’t worry. It’s going to turn into fat and I’m going to be happy.”

Happy is a word that ought to describe Jake Gyllenhaal right now, with or without his UFC physique. Turning just 28 and with a growing reputation as a thoughtful, engaged young actor, and a string of acclaimed performances to bolster it, he is firmly entrenched in A-list territory both on and off screen. He is currently dating Hollywood darling Reese Witherspoon, his sister Maggie is a startling talent in her own right, and he jumped onboard the Barack Obama bandwagon by trying to persuade the four remaining undecided Californians to tick the Illinois Senator’s blue-coloured box. What do you know, that worked for him too. He’s having that kind of run.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, to give it it’s full time, is Gyllenhaal’s third high-profile cinematic venture to the Middle East in three years. Not that there’s much in the way of a crushing Orientalist lurking beneath those distended pecs; you could hardly find more diverse roles than Gulf War Marine Anthony Swofford in Sam Mendes’ Jarhead, CIA analyst Douglas Freeman in Rendition, the tale of American’s export of torture to our part of the world, and Dastan, a 6th century Persian prince in the current project.

In each, though, even the cartoon royal sent to rescue the Sands of Time, you can detect a certain meditative rebelliousness, and an unease at the various machines of state in which they operate. Add in the brooding newspaper illustrator in serial-killer thriller Zodiac, the now notorious gay cowboy Jack Twist in Brokeback Mountain, and the title character in the breakthrough role of Donnie Darko, and you have a young actor who clearly takes pride in challenging the orthodox. After completing Rendition, he acknowledged as much when he said “it’s a sad time when actors are politicians and politicians are actors”, and he still thinks there is a political element in the films he chooses to make. “I’m political,” he asserts, “and I make choices in my movies that I think are political. I try and say things with what I do. I’ve been talking to journalists and reporters, and they say, ‘Wow, your movie has a message.’ I’m like, ‘What world am I living in?’ Aren’t movies made to have something to say?”

Rendition was, naturally enough, a deeply controversial film that centred on America’s current (and we must assume ongoing) use of outsourcing torture to those Arab states with less squeamish attitudes to physical coercion in the quest for information about impending threats to the US. Typically, the controversy came from both sides: those on the right thought it was typical liberal sermonising during a complex conflict; the left were similarly outraged that a clear moral message was muddied by the depiction of a grisly Arab suicide bombing that left the impression that torture might be our only salvation. Gyllenhaal’s point seemed to be that the moral was that those exact differences played out on a CIA agent trying to figure that balance out for himself.

“The character asks himself the question not if it’s the right thing or the wrong thing,” he qualifies, far more clearly, “but does this work or does it not work? So it’s nice to think that someone would be able to see through all of those complications and all that ego and make the decision. I think if he weren’t an analyst, I think the decision would be very different.”

Jake Gyllenhaal still refuses to discuss the death of his friend Heath Ledger, his co-star in Brokeback Mountain, and to whom he is the godfather to his daughter Matilda. He was in Mexico shooting Brothers when it occurred, and he buried himself in his work, mercifully away from the intense spotlight of celebrity grief watch. He waves away an enquiry with a comment about tabloid culture. “It’s funny to me that people find other people getting coffee really interesting, or walking their dog in the dog park. But as it’s the only time that you have to have any free time, it gets annoying.”

Prying over. He does talk about the process of shooting the movie, about the challenges of playing a gay man and making out with someone who became a close friend. “We just trusted each other… We kind of just joined up and said, ‘F**k ’em, let’s go for it.’ And we did. We knew we were going to have to commit to it, and there was a high five, and jump in.”

The emotional strength is more about being his own man in an industry forever trying to pull you into big box office success. Okay, he has the A-list girlfriend – he also dated Kirsten Dunst, remember – but for now his career would seem to be assuming more that of a George Clooney than a Nicholas Cage. Thank God.

“I’m going to continue doing what I want to do,” he confirms. “I don’t want to spend my life wasting my time. I don’t care how much I get paid for it. I don’t care what attention it brings, or what attention I have to bring to it – I’ll do it anyway.”

For the full version of this article, see NOX 29

Jake in the Middle East

Film: Jarhead
War: First Gulf War
Year: 2005
Character: Anthony Swofford, US marine
Trivia:
– Jake played against his usual “sensitive yet disturbed” type by displaying an aggressive masculinity as a violent US marine.
– Filmed in the Imperial Valley in Southern California.
– Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire originally vied for the lead role in the film.
– The word “f*ck” and its variants are used 278 times in this film.
– Jake's nosebleed during the prank branding scene was digitally added.
– All of the films sex scenes were shot the same day.
– In one scene, Jake is heard whispering, “You earned it, man,” but is actually mouthing “asshole”.

Film: Rendition
War: Second Gulf War
Year: 2007
Character: Douglas Freeman, CIA analyst
Trivia:
– The film is based on the true story of Khalid el-Masri who was mistaken for Khalid al-Masri.
– Jake is currently dating his Rendition co-star, Reese Witherspoon.
– Directed by Gavin Hood, who won an Oscar for his 2005 foreign language film Tsotsi.
– He's said that: “It’s important for me to be in movies that have a human level, have a heart in them. That's the reason why I did [Rendition]... It’s very political, it seems like there’s a message in it, but ultimately there's a real story about human beings dealing with actual human things.”

Film: Prince of Persia
War: To save the sands of time
Year: 2010
Character: Dastan, prince of Persia
Trivia:
– Filming is taking place in the United Kingdom and Morocco.
– Scheduled to be released on May 28, 2010.
– The character is nameless in the games. Jordan Mechner (one of the writers) said he chose the name because it is the Persian word for “trickster”.
– Jake estimated he gained five pounds of muscle for the role.