Amy Adams & Samantha Power On Art And Diplomacy | The Influencers | TIME

It's just a matter of getting to see it. Hi. Hi, how are you? I'm Samantha. I'm so sorry I'm late. It's so nice to meet you. That's all right. I imagine you have the important things. No, just the world. Just the world? I might take my jacket off, actually. When you're making a film, we're all fighting to tell a story, which is important in its own way, but it really, sort of in the global interest of things, is not as important. Like, I have a really good perspective on that. I'm going to challenge something you said. You sort of said there's this global thing with all these problems, and then what you do, and it's a smaller scale. So I have a very different perspective on that, which is the way to break through, it seems to me, really one of the only ways these days is through the arts. One of the most polarizing issues at the U.N. is LGBT rights, and breaking through and actually engaging people on the notion of equality just doesn't work. The minute they hear the issue, they snap into being on guard. So I decided to take 17 ambassadors to see Fun Home, this amazing Broadway musical about a woman coming out, and I brought a number of very progressive ambassadors, but also some from countries that criminalize, and they were very uncomfortable. You could feel them at the beginning just saying, oh, we've been kind of roped into this thing. But then you could just see them as humans watching this young woman try to repress her longings and her crush, and they were living it with her. The level of identification with that was so much greater than I ever could have mustered through traditional diplomacy or through a position paper or through lawyering it or appealing even to the better angels. Arts are one of the few ways you can transport people into someone else's life and kind of create that commonality. Yeah. So just saying. I do feel that. I hope that. I do. I'm reticent because I feel like celebrity has skewed the influence of celebrity. Do you know what I mean? That's true. I will take it. Yeah, exactly. So that's why I'm not sure what my influence actually is. Well, you believe in this movie, right? That you've made the identity of human. You've chosen a role that has a bigger meaning, particularly in polarized times. It is about the experience of communicating, but I think not only communicating with aliens, but really about communicating with each other. The object touched down 40 minutes ago. Dr. Banks, you're at the top of everyone's list when it comes to translations. Is that? More objects have landed around the world. It's their language. We've got 21 hours before they start global war. They're not our enemy. There's a geopolitical undertone in the film that when we made it, it was far less relevant than it is today. Oh, that's interesting. The world has changed in one year that much that it now feels like we were out to send a message. Denise said, I never intended to make a geopolitical film, but I think we're all very happy that we did, especially now when there's so much discourse. This question of how you break through when people are this divided. We've just gone through an election where the country is just split down the middle. We thought in the old science fiction movies, speaking of aliens, but when the Martians come down, that the one thing that would unite everyone on the planet is the fight against Martians. And part of me thinks that ISIL, terrorism, is like the Martians. It's the one thing that should... But it turns out even on an issue like that, a bunch of countries think that you just can shoot your way out of the problem of terrorism. And the rest of us who I think have studied it recognize that you try to shoot your way and you kill a bunch of civilians, then you're going to create more terrorists. So even on that, even something like terrorism, which should unite people of goodwill all around the world, has people thinking very differently about how you deal with the problem. But I do think the modest successes I've had at breaking through all involve bringing individuals in to kind of puncture the ideology or bridge the polarization. What's interesting is, you know, in speaking about how you view what is perceived as an enemy or what could be an enemy, how do you keep your emotions in check? How is that something we can do? That's not my strong suit. It's not your strong suit? I have other qualities. You have other qualities? I think as a woman, there's a real premium on keeping your emotion in check. It's extremely important. When a plane gets shot out of the sky, it's happened over Ukraine, and these kids are on board and they're minding their own business and they're just caught up in someone else's war, and I get choked up talking about it, and my thought bubble is, ugh, don't do that. You know, you're the only woman on the Security Council. The one thing you can't do is cry. But then part of me is like, why isn't everybody else crying? Yeah. You know, like, open up, people. Emotion somehow discredits intellect, which is interesting. I guess that's one of the things with deciding to be political or not be political. I, at this point, have chosen not to be political because I want my voice to speak as an artist. I do think there will only be a matter of time. Like, I can only stay quiet so long. You're going to blurt something out one of these days, sister. Oh, trust me, it's so close. But I try not to. Like, it takes a lot of restraint. I think restraint of communication is a great skill of knowing what not to say, and knowing when not to say it. These days, everybody's seen to be in one side of the ring, and the more threatened people feel or the more unsafe they feel, the more salient one slice of their identity becomes. I do think artists, yourself included, retain an ability, potentially, to affirm people's identity, to make them feel seen and visible, and to not only reach one segment of the country. There's a moment in the film where my character introduces herself. She doesn't introduce herself by Louise or by scientist or by woman. She introduces herself as human. Right. It's a very simple definition. I mean, I think we both are struggling with the same thing, which is, how do you cross boundaries that seem impenetrable, and how do you make people forget that they're a country and remember that they're a person? And I feel like that's a metaphor for...