Brady Corbet’s The Childhood Of A Leader is a strange and powerful debut. It stars Robert Pattinson in a role that’s chunkier than a cameo and offers handy historical context to the events that unfold within it. Take a look at an exclusive new clip of the man once known as R-Pattz drunkenly talking shop opposite the man almost no-one calls C-Hams, Liam Cunningham.
The year is 1919, World War I is over and Cunningham’s diplomat is helping negotiating the fateful Treaty Of Versailles. As he explains to Pattinson’s cynical, xenophobic foreign correspondent, he’s been holed up in a creaky chateau in the middle of nowhere. His wife (Bérénice Bejo), a pious churchgoer, is left with time – and a young, under-occupied son – on her hands.
Corbet has a new film already taking shape. In the meantime, the actor-turned-director’s period drama offers a scarily topical parable about the source of evil, a tyrant’s origin story that focuses on the young boy (Tom Sweet) as he breaks bad and starts tormenting his family and the people around them. But, as this psychologically subtle film makes clears, there’s much more to it than that.
Childhood Of A Leader is out in the UK on August 19. Read Empire's review here.