Geoffrey Rush Takes on The Rule of Jenny Pen

Dictatorships don't happen just because of evil, ambitious people. They spring up because of the apathy or fear or blindness of those that could stop it. As James Ashcroft, writer/director of The Rule of Jenny Pen explains, “Tyranny is a weed that grows when it’s unattended and ignored, and before you know it, it’s overwhelming.”

After receiving its world premiere in Austin at Fantastic Fest 2024 (read our festival review here), The Rule of Jenny Pen has arrived in theatres and streaming on Shudder now. The story of two men embroiled in a battle of wills in an age care facility stars John Lithgow and Geoffrey Rush. Rush compared the tone of the film and their clash to both the tragicomedy of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and the sickening histrionics of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?. “John’s doing the Bette Davis,” he observed. “I think I’m doing Joan Crawford.”

In Jenny Pen, Lithgow plays Crealy, the longest-lasting resident of the facility who keeps the rest of the community under his thumb through the use of an eyeless puppet he calls Jenny Pen. Meanwhile Rush plays the newest resident: a former judge, the seeming embodiment of justice, he’s powerless to stop Crealy because he is semi-paralyzed. For Rush, he’s a tragic character whose body is betraying him. “His brain cells are diminishing every minute, and that’s the ticking time bomb.”

What’s most terrifying is that the situation is never allowed to descend into high camp, as Ashcroft had extra pressure to avoid having their conflict become unrealistically theatrical or satirical: his wife works in exactly this kind of facility. He explained that he only got one note from her: “I fully support you in your passion project. Just don’t torpedo our main source of income.”

Additionally, Ashcroft's wife worked with the cast to make the day-to-day mechanics of working in an assisted living facility as authentic as possible. The filmmaker said, “All the carers did a day’s worth of how to pick someone up with a harness, how to feed them, to just bring them into the realities of that world.”

But understanding the mechanics of a care home is different to really comprehending what it is to be old, or to be confined to these spaces where your body and mind have decayed to the point where you are no longer independent. There’s a pivotal scene with the residents dancing to Gene Pitney’s 1968 song, “If I Only Had Time.” Growing up, Rush said, “Gene Pitney was a vocal god, every song.” However, he realized how powerful that particular song would be when he saw how assistant costume designer Daisy Chiara Marcuzzi responded to the scene. “She was watching on the monitor, weeping, watching these octogenarians. They were in their playtime where they could dream.”

Cinematographer Matt Henley had even framed the shot to make them looking like little children. Rush said, “I saw that, and I went, my god, that’s how Kubrick would have done it. And then Lithgow walks in. He’s six foot five, and he knows how to claim the negative space.”

That sense of dominance forms connective tissue to Ashcroft's last film, 2021’s Coming Home in the Dark, in that both films are about powerlessness. In Jenny Pen, Rush as the judge is constrained by his body to be a powerless observer. Similarly, Ashcroft's earlier film featured a father and teacher finding himself incapable of protecting his wife and son from nightmarish violence. Rush said that watching Coming Home “shattered me. That film is bleak, and I said, ‘Why such dark material?’ and he said, ‘I’ve got three daughters, all under the age of 12. I’m just intrigued by the consequences of bullying.’”

Ashcroft added that this was part of his own fascination with the old saying about power corrupting, and absolute power corrupting absolutely – something to which he knows he would not be immune. “My wife says, if I was given whatever resource I needed, a billion dollars or whatever, in my heart of hearts is a horrible dictator who would come forth.”

“Don’t reveal your inner Cecil B. DeMille,” joked Rush. For him, that idea of bullying isn’t restricted to family members, but extends “within institutions, between countries. … I remember arriving at Dallas airport, and we have this in Australia, there are signs up in any shop you go into. ‘Any abusive behavior will not be tolerated.’ ‘Be nice to our staff.’ ‘Don’t step over the line.’ ‘Be cordial.’ In my childhood, no one needed to be told that. We just sort of went, we’ll be mannerly. But manners have gone.”

In Jenny Pen, the power dynamic is one of compliance through fear. Crealy is just one man, and if the entire community turned on him, he’d be gone faster than a tyrant in a revolution (“as used to happen quite regularly,” observed Rush, dryly). However, he keeps them all in line through fear. For Rush, that speaks to people’s fears of turning points, of change to a status quo that may seem terrible but is at least predictable. He said, “Beaumarchais writes The Marriage of Figaro as a very liberating and anarchic play, 10 years before the French Revolution happens, and then the revolution happens and within three years you’ve got the Terror.”

That’s what makes the tragedy of the judge even greater: that he’s the only one not afraid to stand up to Crealy, but standing up is literally something he can never do. Rush said, “He’s the guy who wants to rectify the situation, but he’s going, ‘This is not going to happen, not within my capabilities.’”

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The Rule of Jenny Pen is in theatres now. Find showtimes here and read our Fantastic Fest review here.