Vera Farmiga Talks Ethics of Time Travel in "Source Code"

When Jake Gyllenhaal isn't on the train in Source Code, he's in a pod, communicating via monitor with an Air Force officer named Colleen Goodwin (played by Vera Farmiga). Goodwin explains that while his character Colter Stevens last remembers himself to be on an Army mission in Afghanistan, he is actually on a secret mission to find a bomb on a Chicago train before it blows up, and to identify the bomber, who has plans for even more explosions.

Through Goodwin, he finds out how this government experiment works -- via a new technology that allows him to be inserted into the mind of another person during the last eight minutes of that person's life. Farmiga talks about the ethical questions involved when you body snatch someone for the purposes of time travel, and what a sequel could be like. (Warning: spoilers ahead).

Q: Are you a big sci-fi fan? This is your first venture into that territory...

A: Oh, man -- I grew up watching The Jetsons, Battlestar Galactica, reading Choose Your Own Adventure novels, so it's no surprise that I would like this stuff, whether it's on the planet Mars in outer space, or whether it's about whether there are extra terrestrials or bizarre technologies. I love any genre except where the characters come second. I feel like if there are characters who are fully dimensional, I will watch anything that my brain can chew on and my heart can pound about. I just want to be engaged.

Q: Speaking of bizarre technologies -- the "source code." How do you pick whose brain you can use to go back in time? Is there a donor card for that?

A: I know! I kept asking [director] Duncan [Jones], "Did Coulter have a check box that offered up his body for science? Did Sean Fentress [whose mind/body Coulter borrows]?" I bet Coulter would have to have done something like that, to even be a part of this experiment.

Q: So then the question becomes, what happens to Sean Fentress? Does he die so Colter Stevens can live? Is Colter Stevens really even alive in that alternate timeline?

A: I've asked Duncan that, and every scenario you can come up with is correct. There is no one answer. It's all real. My character probably thinks it's both.

Q: When Coulter realizes his situation, he asks Goodwin to do something for him -- to let him die. But for her to do this, she has to disobey orders. How do you think she reaches her decision?

A: It's a dying request, so she can't take it lightly, that's for sure. What would I do in that situation? There's no real answer. You do what you think is right. Duncan directed it such a way to be ambiguous, so you'd project your own ideas. Does she not believe in the mission anymore? For her to do what she does, I mean, she's a soldier. She meets her opponent on the battlefield, and this is like getting to know the opponent's family members for tea. How much harder is it to end that person's life then? She has to think through it logically, and she can't let her emotions get involved, otherwise her job just becomes that much harder to do. For that moment, she's been very much a part of the development of that program, and she's been looking at it scientifically, and now she's seeing it in a very different light, when she opens up that capsule of sorts. Seeing him, that's the moment of decision.

Q: Maybe in the sequel we learn that really, she's just a sociopath who goes around killing all her subjects...

A: That's hilarious! That's really funny. The sweet contradiction there. That's a fun way to look at it, the irony of the task at hand. Her words have been her weapons. She could disconnect the wires and reconnect them, and make him go through it again! Source Code 2, and she's a sociopath. I would sign on to that. You got a script? I'll buy it right now! [Laughs]