Colin Farrell can’t decide if Tim Burton’s new live-action version of Dumbo is a remake or not.
Yes, the new movie features a clumsy baby elephant who learns to fly but Farrell plays a character who was not in Disney’s 1941 cartoon – which rarely depicted good-hearted humans.
He plays one of the few sympathetic people, Holt Farrier, a single father of two who has returned to his life at the circus following years at war that have separated him from his family and left him an amputee.
“Yeah, it’s a completely new narrative,” says the 42-year-old Dubliner.
“But the central thing in both the original animation and this is the flying elephant and the story of believing in yourself and finding something inside you that allows you to become the best version of what you never thought you could be.
“Tim is really good at figuring out the balancing act of honouring the sweetness of the original story and the kind of allegorical element of what a baby flying elephant represents, with the real-world emotional concerns of families and friendships and the damage of war.
“I mean, you put a flying elephant in there and it can’t be anything but really fantastical, you know what I mean?
© Allstar/Walt Disney Pictures“And just like when I say fantastical it doesn’t have to be supernatural, it can just be the circus world that exists within.
“It’s such a world of dreams and magic and performance, and Holt represents the nomadic existence of what life would have been to be in a travelling circus.
“I come to work every day and I see all this stuff, it’s amazing, it really, really is.
“Twenty years of doing this job; it’s one of the greatest pleasures I’ve had to arrive on set every day and see the beauty of the craftsmanship.
“Sometimes you work on a film that’s a dramatic piece and it’s set very much in the real world, with very much real-world concerns that affect us all – sickness, love, loss, fear – whatever it may be.
“And then sometimes you go to work on things that are just so bewitching.
“You see the imagination of some very talented, very imaginative people made manifest in a physical sense and that’s what this is.
“You just see the imagination of the production designers, of the costume designer, you see the imagination of Tim at every turn and it’s extraordinary to be around.”
Unlike the original animation, Burton has made everything in his film as real as possible – with one obvious exception, of course.
“I mean they couldn’t get their hands on a flying elephant, they couldn’t seem to locate one of those!” Farrell says, laughing.
“I was talking to somebody and they said they were on the set of The Lion King and there are no human characters, there’s nothing on set. Nothing.
“And this set is all practically built. The stage is like nothing I’ve ever seen and I’ve been lucky enough in the last 20 years to have been on some extraordinary sets.
“But I’ve never seen anything like Dumbo’s. I feel like I’m existing in a practical world and it’s not asking me to imagine too many things that aren’t there – save that flying elephant.”
Dumbo (PG) is in cinemas from Friday March 29.
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