“Buster’s Mal Heart” is about a man divided between wanting love and freedom at the same time, and star Rami Malek questions whether those two things can “coexist in equilibrium.”
“I’m drawn to these complicated characters,” the “Mr. Robot” actor told TheWrap during an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival.
“I’m in my mid-30s going through these existential questions about who I am and what I’m doing here and if I’m supposed to be fulfilling some type of destiny … I saw this guy who had a family and had this idea of what it was to love that family and give them everything but also wanted a sense of freedom. The question arose in the script — if those things could coexist in equilibrium, if you could have something as fierce as love and freedom at the same time.”
Writer and director Sarah Adina Smith fed off Malek’s thoughts during the interview, posing the question, “is it a paradox where one must always give way to the other?”
“Is freedom possible at all?” she added. “And do you want it once you get it? At what price?”
The film follows a mountain man on the run from law enforcement as he breaks into people’s vacation homes to survive. He keeps having this haunting dream of being a man lost at sea, but it turns out, it’s not a dream — he’s just a man split in two.
The film also stars DJ Qualls, Kate Lyn Sheil and Toby Huss.
Watch the video above.