Simon McBurney can make a supporting character unpleasant with a giggle. We value his precision when it tells us something about the person; in Kafka, the comic coordination becomes a distraction.
Fi1m perspective
In Nosferatu (2024), Simon McBurney gives Herr Knock a giggling servility that makes even deference seem suspect. He is Thomas Hutter's employer, yet he hardly offers the comfort of a sensible man in charge. We found his eager obedience unpleasant, which is precisely why the performance works. Robert Eggers gives him a character who benefits from being disagreeable, and McBurney is willing to oblige.
His attention to rhythm and physical behaviour has roots in the theatre work he has continued alongside supporting screen roles. He co-founded Complicité in 1983, developing work through research and collaborative physical theatre. In Mnemonic (1999) and The Encounter (2015), he is both director and performer. Officials, diplomats and eccentric authority figures recur in his screen casting, parts in which a small oddity can make an otherwise functional character worth watching. The risk is that we notice the timing long after we have stopped believing in the character.
His screen career began with Kafka (1991), where the effort is too visible. McBurney and Keith Allen play the assistants assigned to Kafka as a music-hall double act, synchronising nods and completing one another's sentences. We laughed once, then tired of a routine that kept asking for attention. The coordination is skilful, but it leaves us watching two performers rather than worrying about the man they have been assigned to assist. Steven Soderbergh's finely lit, thinly plotted mystery hardly needs another reason for us to stop following the story.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), with McBurney as Oliver Lacon, offers the stronger evening, though Tomas Alfredson's compressed storytelling sometimes makes the chronology hard work. Our admiration there rests chiefly with Gary Oldman's stillness as Smiley and the film's melancholy tension. For a clearer sense of what McBurney himself can add, try Nosferatu, provided you can tolerate stretches in which Eggers takes solemnity too far.
Biography
Simon McBurney is an English actor, playwright and theatre director. He was born on 25 August 1957 in Cambridge and trained at the University of Cambridge, the Jacques Lecoq International School of Theatre and with Philippe Gaulier.
In 1983 he co-founded the theatre company Complicité, of which he is artistic director. His screen credits include Kafka (1991), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), The Theory of Everything (2014), Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015) and Nosferatu (2024), in which he played Herr Knock. He has received Olivier Awards and a Tony Award nomination.
