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Gyllenhaal In Seat Of Power In Latest Role

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By ELLEN MCCARTHY The Washington Post

Published: October 21, 2007

The movie is set in the Middle East, but what happens to Jake Gyllenhaal's character in 'Rendition' is a classic Washington tale.

A smart, eager kid gets a crack at a semi-important job and suddenly - through some confluence of circumstance and ambition - finds himself in a position of extraordinary responsibility.

Twenty-something war correspondents. Political strategists barely out of college. Young CIA officers asked to lead an overseas investigation of an Egyptian-born man thought to be conspiring with a terror network. That one belongs to Gyllenhaal in 'Rendition.'

'I thought the character I was looking at was interesting in that he was put into a position where he had no real training and no real experience,' the actor says. 'And what I liked most was that he was kind of the guy holding the key, and everybody else was looking for the key and he had no idea he was holding it.'

'Rendition' is a Washington story in another sense, one that dramatizes headlines about the extreme, often secretive, means that national intelligence agencies are employing to gather information.

The question of whether those means are justified by the ends is one Gyllenhaal grappled with in understanding the position of his character. The terror suspect is subjected to day after day of torture. Gyllenhaal's job is to watch, to wait for the confession demanded by his superiors.

'He's very practical, very functional,' Gyllenhaal says of his character during a phone interview from Los Angeles. 'I think the choice for him is not whether what's happening is right or wrong. I think the choice is, 'Does it work or does it not work?' '

Thus, it is Gyllenhaal's quietest role to date. The actor, known for his expressiveness, appears in most scenes as an anesthetized man. That, he says, was the point.

'People have said to me, 'All the characters you play, you can really read everything going on your face.' I wanted to play a part where you didn't read anything, you know. Where he's almost invisible and functioned, like in apathy rather than emoting.'

He's so ubiquitous now that it sometimes feels as if Gyllenhaal has been around a long while. It's surprising to remember he's only 26. He was 11 when he began acting and barely a quarter-century old when he shot 2005's 'Brokeback Mountain,' which earned him an Oscar nomination and propelled him into a new stratum of fame.

It also put him, rather suddenly, in a position to nab top billing on multimillion-dollar film projects such as 'Rendition.' So he knows a little about preposterous responsibility.

'Lately it's felt like a great responsibility,' Gyllenhaal says of his career. 'It's an interesting thing, in our generation at least, to be thrust into a position of importance. There's the line from 'Spider-Man': 'With great power comes great responsibility.''

Throughout filming, Gyllenhaal focused on having the torture scenes 'affect me as little as possible.' The end result, though, was that 'it gave me perspective on the fact that it really happens.'

The actor says his hope is that 'Rendition' can 'aid in a discussion that's just beginning.'

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