Waltzing With Tilda
Longtime arthouse darling and aristo scion Tilda Swinton turns out to be an old democratic socialist at heart, abeit one who laments the passing of cinematic melodrama.
Tara Brady, 14 Apr 2010
I Am Love director Luca Guadagnino bursts through the door of the hotel suite where I’m sitting with Tilda Swinton and the duo - old collaborators and even older friends; “a match made in arthouse heaven” as a recent headline in The Guardian has it - erupt into a swirl of ideas and giggles. Staring out the window of the Merrion Hotel only serves to seal the deal.
“That does it”, Tilda announces. “We have to make a film here.”
She speaks, as ever, with beautiful cut glass vowels and the sort of authority one expects to find at boot camp; an erect carriage exaggerated by a shock of cropped red hair and her imposing height completes the effect. It’s easy to see why she has so frequently described herself as a ‘soldier’ and she hails from a long line of same; her Scottish dad is Major-General Sir John Swinton of Kimmerghame, Berwickshire and the Anglo-Scots clan’s lineage can be traced to the 9th century. In the royal scheme of things, the Swintons are at least twice as grand as Tilda’s old West Heath school chum Diana Spenser, or the lately arrived Germans that make up the House of Windsor.
For Tilda Swinton, this aristocratic legacy seems to count for as much as it might with Eamonn McCann. At Cambridge University she quickly ditched her ambitions to be a poet in favour of political science and the Communist Party. She remains a dedicated democratic socialist.
“It’s commonsense,” she cries. “It seems to me that capitalism is an anti-human mechanism. That it does not and cannot work for the human spirit. It can only create an obstacle to happiness. It can only suppress, because it’s about denial and dishonesty. You can’t get rich without exploiting others. And that wealth has be to continued and protected and sustained and that can only happen through corruption on an even grander scale.”
Her political leanings are a logical extension of her irresistible rebelliousness. Her uncommon domestic arrangements with the artists John Byrne and Sandro Kopp are a constant source of bemusement to the tabloid press, though all parties are, as she puts it, “happy to get on with it” and remain dedicated to raising her twin son and daughter.
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