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Before directing Netflix’s The Perfect Couple, master of the crime/drama limited series, Susanne Bier, demonstrated her chops in the first season of The Night Manager, starring Tom Hiddleston. Also known for her popular HBO original series The Undoing, and for her dramatic film work, including Brothers (2005) and Bird Box (2018), Bier has a knack for telling stories involving greed, secrets, passion, and dirty work, and stories in which characters are living amid global conflict or disaster. Winner of two Primetime Emmys (one for Outstanding Directing) and three Golden Globes, The Night Manager is packed with suspense, which is in no small part a credit to Susanne Bier’s directing style.
What Is ‘The Night Manager’ About?
Set against the backdrop of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, The Night Manager follows a former British soldier named Jonathan Pine (portrayed by Hiddleston). Operating as the night manager of a luxury Cairo hotel, Pine is recruited by a Foreign Office task force helmed by hardworking (and expecting) Angela Burr (Olivia Colman) to secretly investigate an international arms deal. At the heart of the arms deal is skeezy billionaire philanthropist Richard Roper, played by Hugh Laurie. Although Richard Roper maintains a charming and gentlemanly facade, complete with charity work as a front, he’s a maniacal man who puts business far above humanity. Jonathan Pine, a kind-hearted ex-soldier, spends every second in Roper’s presence guarding his own security, feigning loyalty to the terrible operation. His integrity is gruesomely tested, but Pine, Angela Burr, and the task force are determined to bring Roper down and save countless lives. Juggling foreign affairs, toxic relationships, and crime schemes that run under the radar, the show possesses a Bond-esque nature that allows the intricacies of the story to remain captivating to the end.
Susanne Bier’s Directing Style is Eloquently Messy
Susanne Bier is an auteur director who takes personal approaches in her filmmaking style. That style comfortably translates over into the episodic format that she has evidently taken such a liking to. Bier is often praised for her casting choices, and she has a keen ability to set up her characters in unassuming ways. Her visual style is noted for using intimate camera and editing techniques to reach into the inner workings of her characters’ slipping mental defenses. Her stories often involve characters doing things that they need to keep hidden, and that shows up in the shots of her work, which are seldom unobstructed or clear. Focal points, like a character sitting alone in a room, or something as small as both of someone’s eyes, are often partially blocked by props, walls, and other characters.
Rather than depending on the action, Susanne Bier uses the camera to draw out conflict. Since the stakes of her stories are so sensitive, Bier first allows her actors to continuously make entirely subtle movements, putting an emphasis on the story at hand. Then, when things finally get physical, she pulls the camera back from the scene and releases what becomes a much-anticipated spectacle. In keeping with this style, The Night Manager isn’t an expressive series where actors perform loudly and outwardly act. As the show is an espionage drama, Jonathan Pine and other characters must remain stealthy, slick, and subdued to not draw attention to themselves. So, the majority of the show’s performance lies in minute facial expressions, extensive one-on-one glances, and delicate body movements. As a consequence, Bier’s camera techniques are what drives the tension in the series.
The Camera Catches Everyone’s Secrets in ‘The Night Manager’
Characters in The Night Manager are consistently withholding information from one another or otherwise silently communicating with each other. Everyone knows something they’re not supposed to. Richard is buying arms under the counter from Britain and the U.S. and paying people to aid and abet his trade. Jonathan Pine is trying to undermine Roper’s affairs from the inside without Roper finding out that he’s sent by British Intelligence. Jonathan and Jed (Elizabeth Debicki), Roper’s girlfriend, take an interest in each other and develop a bond behind Roper’s back. Outside the infiltration, Angela Burr and her team must keep their urgent investigation under wraps to protect Jonathan’s safety. With so much secrecy and talking around issues throughout the series, the most important visuals lie in whispering lips and micro-expressions in the eyes.
Major Lance “Corky” Corkoran (Tom Hollander), a considerably disruptive character from the start, takes his status with Richard Roper very seriously. When Jonathan wedges his way into the role of Richard Roper’s right-hand man, this causes Corky’s insecurity to spiral. As he becomes more privy to the fact that Jonathan is digging around somewhere he shouldn’t be, his behavior grows increasingly inappropriate. Even though Richard and his inner circle have learned to dismiss Corky’s indignation, his actions remain a threat to Jonathan’s mission. The distance between Corky and the audience gets bigger as his behavior takes up more space and things become less secretive, particularly when he has an incredibly disturbing outburst at a seafood restaurant.
Richard Roper leaves a heightened sense of unease with everyone by initiating inescapable staring contests and using his manners to make backhanded threats. Instead of directly going around breaking bones or shooting folks in the face all day, he uses intimate, personal tactics to persuade people to follow his orders. However, when his intellectual confrontations and intense eye contact with people are unsuccessful, keeping close to his facial expressions is no longer a viable visual technique. After filling the screen with the quiet intensity of Richard Roper’s gaze, pulling back the camera for his instances of physical violence and verbal abuse causes those moments to come off that much more shocking. Susanne Bier’s tension-and-release method effectively backs the audience out of the action as the plot reaches a tipping point, and it brings about an impressive catharsis, especially seen with Roper getting his just deserts in the series finale.
Though Bier herself remains averse to going beyond one season of production, a second series of The Night Manager‘s story is currently in the works, this time under the direction of Georgi Banks-Davies. The director stated that she is glad to have Banks-Davies, another female director, on the project to balance out the masculinity of the story.
The Night Manager is available to stream on Prime Video in the U.S.
WATCH ON PRIME VIDEO
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