Ben Affleck may no longer be Batman, but he's still a hero in the eyes of director Gavin O'Connor. The pair worked together on 2019's "The Accountant," before teaming up a second time for their new film, "The Way Back." And according to O'Connor, it was Affleck's rawest role yet.
Affleck plays main character Jack Cunningham, a divorcee who lost a child to cancer and is now dangerously channeling his pain and anger into alcohol. His demons control his life, as evidenced by an early scene when he downs dozens of beers. But when a priest asks him to do him a favor and fill in as the local high school basketball coach, Jack begins to find sobriety - and himself - once again.
“I spent a lot of time hurting myself," Jack says in the film. "I made a lot of bad decisions. I’ve got a lot of regrets.”
Affleck shines in this dark, yet redeeming role. And as you watch the film, you start to think that maybe he's not acting at all.
"If it was a different actor it’d be a different movie," O'Connor told Townhall on Monday. "Ben was willing to take the stimuli from his own life and use that to explore the character’s life and that stimuli was a disease, was an addiction and so Ben’s willing to confront his own alcoholism and to bear his soul in a way and bear all this onscreen."
The fact that Affleck made the movie at all is astounding when you learn of the timeline. The actor had entered rehab just as soon as filming began. He's been very candid throughout "The Way Back" press tour about how his struggles with addiction and alcoholism impacted his 10-year marriage to Jennifer Garner. He recently admitted that his divorce was the "biggest regret" of his life. He had gotten sober, only to experience a relapse in 2018.
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"He went into rehab just as we started prepping the movie, so you can imagine how the brakes got hit on everything," O'Connor recalled. "We didn’t know if it was going to be over. And then I went and met with him, I guess he detoxed and he went to rehab he took a basketball with him, he was so passionate about making this movie, so once I met with him and we figured out how to make this work, while he’s in rehab. Met with the person who ran the program, to do furloughs with a sober companion every day for a couple of hours."
"I’d get him for a couple of hours every day in between while he was working on his recovery, which was obviously more important," O'Connor added. "And then, he was getting sober and on the road to recovery and doing all the spiritual work, and then he got out. And right when he got out we started shooting so I had a very raw, vulnerable actor."
Some of the first takes Affleck shot were heavy drinking scenes.
"It was scary because, you know you can get triggered," O'Connor said. "Obviously he’s not drinking real beers, but there’s a sensory thing and you can get triggered. That was scary."
The director could never have predicted what happened next.
"It became cathartic because he was now tapping into a side of himself that he never revealed onscreen," O'Connor said. "A side of himself that he hid from a lot of people. A secret. It’s a disease. The thing about acting is, when you go to these places, as difficult as it is, and as emotional as it is and haunting as it can be sometimes. When you go there and you deal with it in an honest way and it’s real and you achieve something onscreen that is powerful, even though it’s painful, it’s also euphoric. Because as an actor that’s your job. So he was doing things, he was exploring his disease in a way onscreen that became cathartic because he was doing it honestly."
There was another scene in which Affleck's vulnerability was almost too painful to watch. The moment in which he tearfully apologizes to his ex-wife.
“It was probably the second take, Ben just had a breakdown. I’m getting chills thinking about it," O'Connor told the Associated Press. "It was like the dam broke and everything came out."
And so, "The Way Back" became a redemption story on and off the basketball court.
"The Way Back" is in theaters Friday, March 6.
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