Harrison Ford, ‘K-19: The Widowmaker’, and the story of a bizarre Russian accent
Throughout his brilliant career, Harrison Ford has appeared in so many high-profile movies that it can sometimes be easy to forget his lesser known films. Sure, we know well Ford’s performances in Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Blade Runner and Witness, but how about a film like K-19: The Widowmaker?
Directed and produced by Point Break and Near Dark filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow, K-19: The Widowmaker saw the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Canada come together to tell the story of the titular Soviet Hotel-class submarine, which was involved in a tragic disaster during its maiden voyage in July 1961.
The incident saw K-19 lose a coolant to one of its two reactors, and, seeing that a backup system was not installed as suggested in the original design, the captain of the sub ordered the engineering crew to try to avoid a nuclear meltdown. The crew then sacrificed their lives to jury-rig a secondary coolant, although several lives were lost over the following two years amid a series of other accidents.
In an interview with the BBC, Ford once spoke of his time making K-19: The Widowmaker and explained what it was like to visit the Russian survivors of the 1961 tragedy. “These guys hadn’t met since shortly after the event, they hadn’t really had the opportunity to talk with each other about it,” Ford noted. “These events were declared a matter of military secrecy and these guys were broken up and sent to different commands. So they didn’t have a chance to hear each other’s stories until 30-40 years later.”
According to Ford, the stories of those involved in the tragedy did not quite add up, so it was a challenge to “find the story” and tell it as accurately as possible. Accuracy was clearly something that was important to Bigelow and Ford, as the cast, also including Liam Neeson, Peter Sarsgaard and Donald Sumpter, all used Russian accents in the film to give it an air of authenticity, which Ford described as “a unique opportunity and a unique effort.”
Ford admitted that K-19: The Widowmaker was trying “to tell the story of another culture from that culture’s point of view,” noting, “Well, I don’t know of another American film that’s attempted to do that without an American character running through it or an American editorial point of view.”
The actor had admitted that he grew up watching World War II movies that threw him off about the way that Nazi Germans really spoke. “I grew up thinking all Nazis spoke with English accents because all the actors who played them in movies were British actors,” Ford humorously said.
He added of the Russian accents in K-19: The Widowmaker, “Look, Liam Neeson is Irish, we had other British actors, we had Russian actors. I wanted the audience to be aware that this was a Russian story and to keep them hooked into that during the movie.” Indeed, the story of K-19 was a Russian tale, and it was only right to treat it as such.
Middling reviews arrived for Bigelow’s film when it was released in 2002, with criticism being aimed at the screenplay, although the atmosphere and performances were praised. K-19: The Widowmaker was a box-office bomb, but Harrison Ford always had pride in the way he and his castmates approached their roles.
