The star and producer of Nora Fingscheidt’s new crime drama, Sandra Bullock plays a role unlike any others.
The ease with which Sandra Bullock radiates warmth and wit has, for years, helped power her singular career in Hollywood, yet there’s always been considerable depth lurking behind the A-lister’s disarming smile. It was present in her work in The Blind Side, the 2009 real-life story for which Bullock won the Best Actress Academy Award. It was there, too, in 2013’s thriller Gravity, for which she earned her second Oscar nomination as an astronaut marooned in the isolating reaches of outer space.
Still, in her searing new crime drama The Unforgivable, Bullock demonstrates the range of her gifts as never before. She disappears into the role of Ruth Slater, a woman sentenced to prison for murdering the local sheriff who attempted to evict her from her rural home. It’s a transformative performance, with only the briefest glimpses of Bullock’s trademark amiability and almost none of her effortless glamor. The star realizes it is likely to catch audiences off guard: “There’s nothing attractive or sexy about my character,” Bullock says. “I know people are going to say, ‘But this is not the Sandra Bullock that we know and love.’ But it is. There’s nothing about me that’s false in this. I’m just giving myself permission to show it.”
Ruth Slater (Sandra Bullock) and Vincent Cross (Rob Morgan)
Adapted from the award-winning 2009 British miniseries Unforgiven, the film sees Ruth attempt to rebuild her life after serving two decades behind bars. She moves into a Seattle halfway house and takes a job at a seafood processing plant where she forms a tenuous friendship with a kind co-worker (Jon Bernthal). But her past is never far behind; as Ruth’s parole office (Rob Morgan) is quick to remind her, her conviction is a shadow that will follow her, always. The two sons of the man Ruth was accused of killing are already plotting to exact retribution of their own.
Nevertheless, Ruth is determined to overcome any obstacle if it means reconnecting with her younger sister Katie (Aisling Franciosi), who was placed into foster care and adopted by a middle-class suburban family in the wake of Ruth’s arrest. The powerful bond between the sisters is dramatized in increasingly revealing flashbacks to the fateful event that led to their estrangement.
To help track down Katie’s whereabouts, she secures the aid of sympathetic attorney John (Vincent D’Onofrio) who believes that Ruth, having repaid her debt to society, deserves a second chance at happiness. It’s a perspective that his own wife and fellow attorney Liz (Viola Davis) does not share at first. “There is something in Liz’s character where she can really see the truth in people, and Viola got that,” Bullock says. “She has a line where she says, ‘You are not a victim.’ Nobody else would have come with the power and understanding and education and world experience and have what exited their mouth be as powerful as what exited Viola Davis’s mouth.”
Ruth Slater (Sandra Bullock)
“She is literally just the igniter to the fuel that exists in these families,” Bullock adds of Ruth. “And you, as a viewer, are going to identify very clearly with one side or the other.”
Fascinated not only by the opportunity to play against type but also to explore the larger themes of crime and punishment — and vengeance and absolution — woven into the fabric of the narrative, Bullock signed on to produce The Unforgivable alongside veteran Graham King (The Departed, Bohemian Rhapsody). Together, they recruited German director Nora Fingscheidt, who earned acclaim for her 2019 Berlin International Film Festival break-out System Crasher, to step behind the camera.
Before embarking on the shoot, Fingscheidt and Bullock visited women in prison and spoke with people who had recently been released to hear their stories. “They knew what the system was about and how it treats women who come from poverty,” Bullock says of her interviewees. “How you perceive that system is based on your life experience or your privilege or your upbringing. To some people the system is prevalent and always looming. To other people, the system will never touch them and that spectrum is represented in the film.”
Ruth Slater (Sandra Bullock) and a fellow carpenter
On set, Bullock threw herself into character, seeking to portray stoic Ruth’s inner life and what drives her to reunite with Katie. “It’s just a gift to work with an actress who can do so much with just her eyes because this is what this character needs,” Fingscheidt says. “Ruth isn’t a talker. There is a tension to her. It’s such an amazing contradiction to have such a likable actress playing such a tough part and then combining that into something so grounded and believable.”
“Sandra is so strong in this,” adds producer King. “She doesn’t feel like a movie star in this role, and that’s so critical. It really feels natural for her to play this part.”
While the film incisively probes the terrible toll a legacy of trauma can exact, Ruth’s search for redemption does conclude on a hopeful note, suggesting that in time she might regain some sense of equilibrium. Bullock herself is optimistic that The Unforgivable could help generate a greater awareness of the everyday struggles endured by so many. Although Ruth’s is a fictional story, she serves as an avatar for those too often overlooked in modern society.
“I want the viewer to have an understanding of how hard it is to just get through the day and do the right thing for millions of people who very few people are making films about,” Bullock says. “Sometimes love is a real-life story of an ordinary person trying to survive. Sometimes it looks like this.”