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Issue 1783 December 12, 2014

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WENDY MITCHELL EDITOR

them on to other companies.” That can be kiddie toys related to their TV show, Puffin Rock, or limited-edition prints of The Secret Of Kells.

It is also a business that’s thriving thanks to a powerful combination of local support and global reach.

The company can benefit from Irish Film Board backing on specific projects (IFB has supported Cartoon Saloon ever since the time it was only making shorts), and also company backing from the government agency, Enterprise Ireland. Everyone in the animation and VFX communities I spoke to at the summit praised this double level of support, which Irish businesses combine with the entrepreneurship it takes to succeed.

Cartoon Saloon is just one of a number of exciting companies — also including Brown Bag, Monster and Kavaleer, which band together as Animation Ireland to have more global might as a collective force.

As Young explains: “All of us are international-focused. We’ve always had to rely on pre-sales for our films, so it taught us about making commercially sellable works for the international market.”

With Ireland’s Section 481 tax incentive set to become even more attractive, more international attention will follow.

And the VFX community in Ireland — banded together as VFX Association Ireland — is taking animation’s lead in starting to compete on the world stage.

Song Of The Sea would be a very welcome nominee in this year’s animated Oscar race; but regardless of that, Cartoon Saloon is the kind of company — you might compare it to Studio Ghibli — thriving locally and globally whose s work should be championed. ■

Hear my song It’s the time of year I compile an annual mix CD for friends, and this year more than ever songs from films have been stuck in my head. Perhaps it started in Göteborg last January with the boppy Icelandic electro track ‘Paris Of The North’ by Prins Polo, when the film of the same name was teased as a work-in-progress pitch. Then in Cannes, Xavier Dolan’s moving Mommy led me to (cue embarrassment) Google the song by Céline Dion (right) that has a starring role in a pivotal scene (it’s 1999’s ‘On Ne Change Pas’, and it’s damn catchy even if I flinch every time Céline’s name pops up on my iPod).

My latest earworm is Can’s ‘Vitamin C’ from the opening of Paul Thomas Anderson’s entertainingly shambolic Inherent Vice. So 1972 krautrock sets the scene in sunny California… somehow it works. We should expect no less from PTA, because 1999’s Magnolia is still one of the best soundtracks in recent memory.

I am less keen on the Big Emotional Song tacked on to the Important Oscar Film. Last year it was U2 and Long Walk To Freedom, this year it is Coldplay and Unbroken. The jury’s still out on Lana Del Rey’s two new songs for Big Eyes.

Alamy

Editorial Editor Wendy Mitchell +44 (0) 20 3033 2816 US editor Jeremy Kay +1 310 922 5908 jeremykay67@gmail.com News editor Michael Rosser +44 (0) 20 3033 2720 Chief critic and reviews editor Mark Adams +44 7841 527 505 Group head of production and art Mark Mowbray +44 (0) 20 3033 2817 Group art director, MBI Peter Gingell +44 (0) 20 3033 4203 peter.gingell@mb-insight.com Chief reporter Andreas Wiseman +44 (0) 20 3033 2848 Asia editor Liz Shackleton, lizshackleton@gmail.com Contributing editors Sarah Cooper, Fionnuala Halligan, John Hazelton, Louise Tutt Contributing reporter Ian Sandwell Sub editor Loveday Cuming

ne of the most inspiring talks at the VFX + Animation Summit Dublin was from Paul Young, one of the founders of Cartoon Saloon.

The Kilkenny-based animation company, founded in 1999 by Young and Tomm Moore, is best known for its 2010 Oscar nominee, The Secret Of Kells.

Cartoon Saloon is certainly a business that sets itself apart artistically — Kells and the company’s new feature, Song Of The Sea, which premiered in Toronto, feel like work that could only be made in Ireland. Song is about a brother and sister sent from their home by the sea to live with their granny in the City. They are drawn into a world of their mother’s Irish folktales, and the girl discovers she is the last of the selkies. The lead character’s name is Saoirse — and, no, they aren’t changing that for the international market. “Kids are like sponges, it’s the adults who might think it’s too much,” Young says. “It’s been sold to Israel and Japan, and a Chinese deal is hopefully on the way. Animation is very universal.”

The traditional animation style — so beautiful that each shot could hang on a gallery wall — also feels a world away from Hollywood. “Our film cost $5.5m,” Young explains. “The fact that we’re so different is good for us. We want to stand out and have our own shelf space. We don’t have that same cash, the same marketing budgets, so being different is a selling point.”

The art is something to behold, but there’s plenty of business acumen to admire behind the scenes at Cartoon Saloon. Rather than handing over the licensing to outside contractors, Young explains that the outfit has set up a sister licensing company: “We want to control much more of what we do than selling

December 12, 2014 Screen International 1

Contents

International correspondents Asia Liz Shackleton lizshackleton@gmail.com Australia Sandy George +61 2 9557 7425 sandy.george@me.com Balkan region Vladan Petkovic +381 64 1948 948 vladan.petkovic@gmail.com Brazil

26

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Elaine Guerini +55 11 97659915 elaineguerini@terra.com.br France Melanie Goodfellow +33 6 21 45 80 27 melanie.goodfellow@btinternet.com Germany Martin Blaney +49 30 318 063 91 screen.berlin@googlemail.com

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Greece Alexis Grivas +30 210 64 25 261 alexisgrivas@yahoo.com Israel Edna Fainaru +972 3 5286 591 dfainaru@netvision.net.il Korea/deputy Asia editor Jean Noh +82 10 4205 0318

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hjnoh2007@gmail.com Nordic territories Jorn Rossing Jensen +45 202 333 04 jornrossing@aol.com Scotland

December 12, 2014

Allan Hunter +44 (0) 7904 698 848

Feature focus

16 a modern family

Spain

04 in service of the story

Juan Sarda +34 646 440 357

At the VFX + Animation Summit Dublin, growing local companies and international experts discussed issues such as global competition, tighter schedules and training needs

Writer-director Richard Linklater was surprised by how emotional he found shooting Boyhood, his ballad of family life

allan@alhunter.myzen.co.uk

jsardafr@hotmail.com UK Geoffrey Macnab +44 (0) 20 7226 0516 geoffrey@macnab.demon.co.uk

06 lat-am spreads its wings

Subscriptions Screen International subscriptions

Buenos Aires market Ventana Sur has become an essential platform for making global connections with Latin America

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Awards special 08 Picture perfect Runners and riders for the best picture Oscar

Screen International ISSN 0307 4617

12 california scheming All currencies in this issue converted according to exchange rates that applied in December 2014

2 Screen International December 12, 2014

Inherent Vice director Paul Thomas Anderson opens up on ego, fear and the real Joaquin Phoenix

18 mommy’s strong bond Xavier Dolan, 25, has already made five features.

He explains why Mommy is illustrative of the kind of storytelling he’s most interested in

has a groundbreaking broadcast launch on International Holocaust Remembrance Day

26 the gripping true story of foxcatcher Director Bennett Miller and producer Jon Kilik reveal why Foxcatcher — their murderous story of class, power and brotherly love — was so many years in the making

20 the power of one

32 awards people

Writer-director Steven Knight talks about a unique on-screen and off-screen journey with Locke, starring Tom Hardy

The 17th British Independent Film Awards bestows the honours; Helen Mirren and director Tom Hooper host a special screening of Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory Of Everything; and Tim Burton and Christoph Waltz talk about their new drama, Big Eyes

22 photo synthesis Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado reveal how they had to overcome their own egos on documentary The Salt Of The Earth

Regulars

24 The darkest hour

30 reviews

André Singer shares insights on his powerful Holocaust documentary, Night Will Fall, which

A critical eye on the latest films including Comet, The Pyramid and Montana

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In focus vfx summit dublin

Song Of The Sea

In service of the story At the second VFX + Animation Summit Dublin, international experts and growing local companies gathered to talk about issues such as global competition, tight schedules and training needs. Wendy Mitchell reports

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s Ireland’s VFX and animation industries continue to grow steadily, international experts have reminded the sector that competing in a global marketplace is not just about skills and technical prowess.

“The role of the VFX industry is to help stories; it’s important we embed storytelling from the beginning,” said Darren O’Kelly, MD of London-based The Mill, in his keynote address that kicked off the VFX + Animation Summit Dublin (November 29-30). “We must not let VFX and animation become a substitute for great stories.”

He continued: “I feel for some of our comrades who worked on projects like John Carter; there were absolutely breathtaking effects but a film like that gets neglected after a poor opening weekend… Unless we’re connecting with audiences we’re irrelevant.”

Sometimes the effects have to take a back seat to the story. For The Mill’s work in the famed Christmas ad for supermarket Sainsbury’s, about a First World War truce between British and German soldiers, he said: “Our role was to make you believe it was Christmas Day in 1914.” The spot was shot in the summer on a sunny day and was transformed into a snowy landscape in post-production.

O’Kelly cited the need for the best educa-

4 Screen International December 12, 2014

tion to train a skilled workforce, warning that, in China, one university is producing 2,000 VFX-trained graduates per year, with access to the same tools and software as in the west.

He said The Mill receives 1,000 CVs per week, and the ones that rise to the top “show storytelling ability, not just technical proficiency”.

The global marketplace Eamonn Butler, who runs the animation side of the business for London-headquartered Cinesite, agreed that every company working across animation and VFX had to think globally. “We opened our studio in Montreal to be competitive,” he said of the tax breaks there.

“Our competitors are doing it and we’ve had to get into that game. It’s part of the industry and the changing way people bid, but it’s making it more complex. You are competing not against local companies, you’re competing on a world stage.”

Challenges ahead are not just global competition but more demanding schedules.

“Clients seem to say, ‘I want more stuff, can I have 1,000 robots? Can I have explosions?’

And they’re giving you less time.”

Butler continued: “Shorter schedules mean less time to play around and make it look good. None of us just presses a button.”

Echoing O’Kelly’s mantra of being story-

focused, Butler also spoke about how Cinesite had moved from being just a service business into content creation, with its short film Beans. It was created not for a client brief but “to let the world know what we can do”.

The short has attracted 11.4 million YouTube views and, more importantly, “it made everyone think of us differently”.

‘If we’d produced anything scientifically accurate that was uninteresting to look at or not cinematic, we wouldn’t use it’ Eugénie von Tunzelmann, Double Negative, on Interstellar

From black holes to bear fur Part of the two-day summit — now in its second year and backed by Enterprise Ireland, the Irish Film Board’s Screen Training Ireland and Animation Skillnet — showcased work from across the industry.

Perhaps the most remarkable case study was from Eugénie von Tunzelmann, part of the Double Negative team that worked on Interstellar, showing off the science behind the creative designs in the film’s black hole, worm hole and tesseract sequences.

She explained how throughout the process the team had worked with physicist Kip Thorne, one of the film’s executive producers, to be as scientifically accurate as possible.

In one scenario, that meant reversing the usual workflow. “With the tesseract at the end, we did the lighting test and rendering and textures, and then passed all that information to the art department,” von Tunzelmann said.

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Ireland’s growth pattern It is no coincidence the summit was held in Dublin, as both animation and VFX are showing steady growth in Ireland.

CEO Paul Young pointed out that part of the reason behind Cartoon Saloon’s success was the strong local support that allowed the company to connect globally.

“The Irish Film Board is just fantastic. It has always been a great supporter of us.

We’re lucky to have an organisation like that in Ireland; not every country has that support,” he said. “Shorts, scripts, production development — we’ve always been well supported.”

Teresa McGrane, deputy CEO of the Irish Film Board (IFB), praised the “resilience” of the animation and VFX companies in Ireland, which she said were fuelled by a spirit of “entrepreneurism”.

Paddington

“The art department then built a partial set.

We did it first and passed it back to them.

Normally they’d build it and then we’d do it in CGI.” The team did so much scientific work on the effects that two papers have been submitted to scientific journals. But von Tunzelmann also noted: “If we’d produced anything scientifically accurate that was uninteresting to look at or not cinematic, we wouldn’t use it.”

Her colleague, Andrew Lockley, added: “Chris [Nolan] was very aware it could get too sciencey; he was keen to keep the story a priority, not the science. There is some artistic licence.”

Back down to Earth, Paul Young, CEO of local leader Cartoon Saloon, spoke about its new animation production, Song Of The Sea, which showcases the same gorgeous, painterly animation style seen in the company’s 2009 Oscar-nominated The Secret Of Kells.

Song Of The Sea, which will start its theatrical run from March, went through five years of financing and two of production. Partners on the production include Superprod Animation (France), Norlum (Denmark), Melusine (Luxembourg) and The Big Farm (Belgium).

“I call it ‘Franken-finance’. You have all these little pieces that come together,” Young said. After the success of Kells, Cartoon Saloon was offered some studio deals but these were “taking a long time and you have a lot of circular conversations… So we said we’d just get the money ourselves and it helps keep us completely independent,” Young said.

Interstellar’s black hole

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‘Shorter schedules mean less time to play around and make it look good. None of us just presses a button’ Eamonn Butler, Cinesite

The film’s classic look sets it apart from slick CGI. “It cost $5.5m to make, so the fact we’re so different is good for us. We want to stand out and have our own shelf space,” he said. WestEnd Films is handling sales; GKids will release in the US and Canada, as it did with Kells. The film has screened at festivals including Toronto, London and AFI Fest.

Cartoon Saloon is also going international with its next film, The Breadwinner, about a girl in Afghanistan who pretends to be a boy to support her family. The $10m co-production with Canada’s Aircraft Pictures is confirming financing now to start production in April.

Laurie Brugger, head of rigging at Framestore, talked about working on Paddington for StudioCanal. She said the team with director Paul King considered Paddington’s form as Peggy Fortnum illustrations from the original books, as teddy bears and as a more realistic bear. “We had to figure out how to balance those things to make this character work in a live-action film,” she said. The final bear, which is more real bear than teddy bear, also had to be “cute and sweet”.

A big challenge was “unifying the fur-look development with the facial development”.

Another was when Colin Firth dropped out as the voice of Paddington after more than half of the film had been animated and Ben Whishaw joined. Whishaw’s ADR sessions clicked. “Ben did such a good job,” said Brugger. “It was making a huge difference to s making that character believable.” n

Sainsbury’s Christmas ad

‘We need to shout from the rooftops about the new tax credit… it will make a big difference for producers’ Gary Timpson, Kavaleer

In addition to IFB funding for specific productions, companies are supported at the corporate level by Enterprise Ireland.

Eileen Bell of the government agency says animation and VFX are each “growth sectors that are priorities for Enterprise Ireland.

These are not just creative industries, they are building business acumen.”

The collective bodies Animation Ireland and VFX Association Ireland (VFXAI) are also making a big difference in banding the communities together for more impact at home and abroad.

Forthcoming changes to Ireland’s tax incentive Section 481 from 2015 — expanding the tax break from 28% to 32% with much more flexible conditions — will help both sectors thrive even more. Kavaleer MD Gary Timpson said: “We need to shout from the rooftops about the new tax credit… it will make a big difference to producers.”

Dave Quinn, MD of VFX powerhouse Windmill Lane, added that the tax incentive will mean “a new era of opportunity… the tax break is vital, the type of work we’re doing is vital, and coming together as VFXAI is vital”.

Training schemes and education opportunities — such as those at IADT’s National Film School and Ballyfermot College of Further Education — are also important for growth. During the summit, Animation Skillnet and the Irish Film Board announced plans for a new apprenticeship scheme across animation and VFX for 2015.

December 12, 2014 Screen International 5

festival focus ventana sur

LatAm spreads its wings In the six years Ventana Sur has been running, the Buenos Aires market has become an essential platform for making global connections with Latin America. This year’s edition had plenty to offer, says Jeremy Kay

V

entana Sur’s sixth edition confirmed the event’s reputation as an essential hub of Latin American activity, where emerging talents can move onto the radar of sharp-eyed global executives.

As the only standalone major market on the continent, the five-day Buenos Aires event already inspires a devoted following among Latin American film and TV professionals.

What remains a relatively small yet growing enterprise — this year, 119 Latin American and 32 European films were in the market and there were 151 screenings — means there can be tangible rewards for those further afield willing to make the trip to Argentina.

Fox International Productions (FIP) will not have had an army of executives patrolling the single market room and handful of conference suites at Puerto Madero, yet its awareness of the region’s value ensured it was an element in two of the biggest deals to emerge at Ventana Sur 2014.

The studio is co-financing The Clan, the upcoming crime thriller from Argentina’s Pablo Trapero alongside Buenos Aires-based K&S Films and Matanza Cine, national broadcaster Telefe and Spain’s El Deseo, run

by Pedro and Agustin Almodovar.

Fox will handle Latin American distribution on The Clan and performs the same role on Daniel Calparsoro’s No Crook, No Crime. The Film Factory sales title sees FIP and K&S involvement alongside Madridbased Morena, A Coruna’s Vaca Films, Tele­ cinco Cinema and La Ferme Productions.

Experienced hands US sales company attendance mostly comprised those companies that have long traded in Latin cinema, such as Shoreline Entertainment and Visit Films.

Prior to the market, XYZ Films, the Los Angeles-based company that specialises in championing global film-makers, secured international rights to Adrian Garcia Bogliano’s kidnapping farce, Scherzo Diabolico, one of several selections in the Blood Window works-in-progress sidebar that showcases genre films.

Sales outfit Mundial — the joint venture of IM Global and Mexico’s Canana Films, which now handles sales alongside IM Global for Alex Garcia’s AG Studios and Itaca — was also in attendance.

There was plenty on offer to whet appetites, be it the works in progress in Primer Corte and Blood Window, or the robust presence of

6 Screen International December 12, 2014

Scherzo Diabolico

Blood Window Q&A session

‘We got very good feedback on the first-ever European Day at Ventana Sur’ Jérome Paillard, Ventana Sur

Stairway to production deals

delegations from the likes of Chile and Brazil.

That said, the prevailing opinion among the US-based sales agents was that Ventana Sur provides a useful platform for starting transactions that will most likely conclude in time for February’s EFM in Berlin.

Festival delegates were in plentiful supply in Buenos Aires and a number of genre luminaries including Alan Jones of London’s Film4 FrightFest and Lindsay Peters from Montreal’s Fantasia took part in one of several packed panel sessions.

The events — which included the inaugural transmedia platform, Interactuar — included a session on remakes moderated by Guido Rud, the busy head of Buenos Airesbased FilmSharks. Rud knows only too well the value of repurposing underlying properties, having recently licensed remake rights on Diego Kaplan’s hit Argentinian swingers comedy, 2+2, to Mediaset subsidiary TaoDue in Italy, among other territory deals.

The executive made waves at the market with a Disney deal in Latin America and Spain

on Francisco, the $6m Pope Francis biopic endorsed by the Vatican and boasting Argentina’s Dario Grandinetti, star of Damian Szifron’s local Oscar submission and smash hit Wild Tales, from K&S Films and El Deseo.

A Thierry Frémaux masterclass delivered timely commentary on Latin American talent as the Cannes chief professed his love for Argentinian cinema and his desire to see more out of Brazil. Frémaux also introduced screenings from the inaugural European Day. “We’re more than happy with the results of this sixth edition,” said Jérome Paillard, Ventana Sur co-director along with Bernardo Bergeret. “The participants’ comments were very positive on the quality of their meetings, more producers attended to present their projects, and we got very good feedback on the first-ever European Day at Ventana Sur.” Paillard said attendees swelled approximately 7% from 2,717 in 2013 to 2,902, of which roughly 1,550 were from Argentina, 800 from the rest of the continent and 600 s from further afield. n

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BEST PICTURE

PRODUCED BY Tim Bevan Eric Fellner Lisa Bruce Anthony McCarten BEST DIRECTOR James Marsh BEST ACTOR Eddie Redmayne • BEST ACTRESS Felicity Jones BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY Anthony McCarten BASED ON THE BOOK “TRAVELLING TO INFINITY: MY LIFE WITH STEPHEN” BY JANE HAWKING

“

★★★★.”

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★★★★★.”

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“EDDIE REDMAYNE AND FELICITY JONES REACH FOR THE STARS IN TWO OF THE YEAR’S BEST PERFORMANCES.”

“ONE OF THE YEAR’S VERY BEST MOVIES!

Eddie Redmayne is sensational!

Felicity Jones is fantastic! Oscar®, take note!”

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PETER TRAVERS, ROLLING STONE

For more on this extraordinary film, go to www.FocusGuilds2014.com

ARTWORK: ©2014 FOCUS FEATURES LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. FILM: ©2014 UNIVERSAL STUDIOS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

AWARDS SPECIAL ■ BEST PICTURE RACE ■ PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON ■ RICHARD LINKLATER ■ XAVIER DOLAN ■ STEVEN KNIGHT ■ WIM WENDERS ■ ANDRÉ SINGER ■ FOXCATCHER CASE STUDY

Picture perfect The best picture nominations race is on the final lap. Jeremy Kay analyses the contenders

A

s awards season hurtles towards the January 8 Oscar nominations voting deadline, several elements in one of the widest Best Picture races in years are coming into focus.

Boyhood and The Theory Of Everything remain the ones to beat, while Gone Girl, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Interstellar and Inher-

ent Vice are, despite pockets of support, by no means guaranteed to make the cut.

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voters can select anywhere from five to 10 nominations. They have opted for nine in the past three years; however, given the nature of the field, I would not be surprised if we see a return to the full 10.

The December 8 announcement of the AFI Awards offered a timely framework of contenders as the institution feted its 11 favourite films of 2014. IFC Films’ Boyhood was there, of course, alongside American Sniper, Birdman, Foxcatcher, The Imitation Game, Interstellar, Into The Woods, Nightcrawler, Selma, Unbroken and Whiplash. »

The Theory Of Everything

8 Screen International December 12, 2014

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BEST PICTURE P R O D U C E D

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BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY JOEL COEN & ETHAN COEN and RICHARD LaGRAVENESE and WILLIAM NICHOLSON based on the book by LAURA HILLENBRAND

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY ROGER DEAKINS asc, bsc

BEST FILM EDITING TIM SQUYRES ace WILLIAM GOLDENBERG ace

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN JON HUTMAN, Production designer LISA THOMPSON, set decorator

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ONE OF THE BEST FILMS OF THE YEAR

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AWARDS SPECIAL BEST PICTURE CONTENDERS

The Theory Of Everything was excluded from the AFI selection as it is a non-US production, although the Working Title drama will surely be a standout for Oscar voters. I would be stunned if this film and Boyhood do not make it on to the list when the Oscar nods are unveiled on January 15. Both deliver beautifully acted, profound cinema.

For my money, those are two of the four best English-language films this season, the others being Gone Girl and Whiplash.

Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash from Bold Films, released in the US through SPC, is worthy of anybody’s list. In addition to its intrinsic merits, the Academy likes to make magnanimous gestures of support towards emerging US talent (remember Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts Of The Southern Wild?). It should make the cut.

And Gone Girl? Hold on to that thought.

Of the other likely nomination contenders, Black Bear Pictures and The Weinstein Company’s The Imitation Game is a slamdunk given its innately Oscar feel, strong reception, Harvey Weinstein factor and presence of Benedict Cumberbatch in the lead.

American Sniper looks solid for Warner Bros. US festival heads and awards watchers rate it as Clint Eastwood’s best since Million Dollar Baby 10 years ago. Admiration for Bradley Cooper as ace Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle will help drive the train.

Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken, another true story about prisoner-of-war and Olympic athlete Louis Zamperini, starring UK hotshot Jack O’Connell, should also make it. There is enduring admiration for Jolie’s work on and off set, and the epic sweep of Universal’s drama bolsters its credentials, though voters have not gone overboard in their praise.

Pathé’s Selma, released via Paramount in the US, sees David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King Jr nestled at the top of an embarrassment of acting riches in Ava DuVernay’s worthy civil-rights drama. The involvement of Brad Pitt’s Plan B and Oprah Winfrey in a producer and on-screen role add to the firepower, and DuVernay is a newer directing talent that the film community is keen to champion.

Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel is an adored gem regarded by many as his finest work. Besides, who would bet against Fox Searchlight?

Disney’s Into The Woods is Golden Globes catnip (those nominations had not yet been announced at press time), and I see it sneaking into Oscar consideration too, thanks to a buzzy performance by Meryl Streep. Rob Marshall’s musical fantasy offers a refreshing alternative in a pool of largely undiluted sobriety and will push for a place in the 10.

Paramount/Warner Bros’ sci-fi blockbuster Interstellar has left Hollywood a little bewildered and underwhelmed, yet the film’s ambition and technical accomplishment, allied to a deep reverence for Christopher Nolan, give it a chance.

That is 10. If we accept that Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida, the film of the year in my

10 Screen International December 12, 2014

Whiplash

Selma

A Most Violent Year

Voters have opted for nine nominations in the past three years; however, given the nature of the field, I would not be surprised if we see a return to the full 10

Interstellar

Nightcrawler

book, will be seen by too few voters to break out of its foreign-language niche, that leaves seven outsiders.

David Fincher’s Gone Girl is a skilled, shape-shifting swipe at matrimonial convention but maybe not enough voters are saying “I do” to the New Regency/Fox picture. I hope I’m wrong.

Wild and Nightcrawler could slip in, possibly at the expense of Into The Woods and The Grand Budapest Hotel. For all their pedigree, A Most Violent Year and Inherent Vice lack traction and could slip up.

SPC’s Foxcatcher, superbly acted and engrossing though it may be, is perhaps too dark to win over voters. But New Regency/Fox Searchlight’s Birdman has been winning fans.

Michael Keaton’s superlative work has already garnered a Gotham Award and the magnetism of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s vision s and technical achievement merits inclusion. ■

Foxcatcher

The Imitation Game

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Gone Girl

Unbroken

Ida

Into The Woods

American Sniper

Boyhood

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Inherent Vice

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Birdman

Wild

December 12, 2014 Screen International 11

INTERVIEW PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON

California scheming Inherent Vice director Paul Thomas Anderson talks to Andreas Wiseman about ego, fear and the real Joaquin Phoenix

W

hen it came to adapting novelist Thomas Pynchon for the big screen, Paul Thomas Anderson would not be denied.

“I wanted to be the man to do it, for sure. I didn’t want anyone else to do it,” the writerdirector excitedly explains about taking on the famously abstruse Pynchon, whose work had until recently eluded adaptation for the big screen.

“In those moments of pride and ego and possession you can feel — whether you’re a film-maker or not — that you have a writer you love and obsess over and who you like to feel is yours. I felt that way about his work, so I wanted the job and I wanted the challenge.”

Anderson’s fourth, fifth and sixth films — Punch-Drunk Love, There Will Be Blood and The Master — were separated by five-year intervals, however, such was Anderson’s enthusiasm for Pynchon’s 2009 novel Inherent Vice that the director knew he wanted to make a film version back-to-back with his 2012 drama, The Master.

Anderson optioned the book soon after it was published and began writing the script while he was still working on The Master.

There had been other suitors for the film rights but Pynchon and his team were happiest for the project to be with Anderson.

The five-time Oscar nominee is faithful but

Katherine Waterston and Joaquin Phoenix in Inherent Vice

12 Screen International December 12, 2014

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Martin Short with Paul Thomas Anderson

free in his adaptation of Inherent Vice, the 1970-set novel in which drug-fuelled Los Angeles private detective Larry ‘Doc’ Sportello — portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix — investigates the disappearance of a former girlfriend.

Pynchon’s phantasmagorical narrative takes in a host of wonderfully eccentric supporting characters, brought to life in Anderson’s feature by a stellar ensemble cast including Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson, Benicio Del Toro, Katherine Waterston, Reese Witherspoon, Jena Malone and Martin Short.

‘Fear is addictive’ The task of adapting the tricky plot and manic energy of Pynchon’s sprawling noir worked on Anderson like a drug. “That question, ‘How do I do this? This is so fucking hard,’ that fear is probably an addictive thing. ‘Now I want to do it, now I have to do it,’ you think. That’s kind of ego and fuel.”

Anderson’s connection to Pynchon runs deeper than ego, however. While they have never spoken — contrary to reports, the reclusive writer did not visit the set — the respect between the two is as mutual as their seemingly shared world view; Anderson is the first director to receive Pynchon’s blessing to adapt one of his novels for the big screen. “Really, what it is, is feeling like you’re in connection with someone’s view of the world and view of people and their sense of humour,” says Anderson. “That’s the stuff that speaks to me so strongly — how silly he can be and then turn around and be so fucking sweet and hopeful and optimistic and then turn around and be so fucking cutting and observant. It’s great.”

The film is Anderson’s most overtly funny feature to date, full of dark humour, impeccable comic timing and slapstick. But it also gently plumbs the darker depths common to Pynchon’s work, including issues of surveillance, institutional abuses of power, postwar uncertainty and escapism.

To what extent did those themes inspire »

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December 12, 2014 Screen International 13

INTERVIEW PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON

Anderson? “It’s funny because I never ask myself the question, ‘Why am I making this,’ and, ‘Why is it relevant today?’ because I daresay you can open the newspaper and it’s the same fucking story every time,” he says.

“Not a week goes by without [reports of ] LAPD abuses of power,” he adds. “Somehow I’m still shocked. With this movie, all these moments where Doc is meant to be paranoid or suspicious and all these far-fetched conspiracy theories that Pynchon is so famous for, they aren’t conspiracy theories any more.

“The NSA spies on everything we do.

What the fuck are you going to do about it?

These abuses of power are flagrant and flaunted in front of us as if we’re powerless to do anything against it. I guess I’m an optimist because I’m still surprised by them even though I shouldn’t be. I always think fascism has gone out of style and there’s no way it can still exist but it’s still around.”

The characters of Inherent Vice are often as sympathetic as they are beguiling. Doc is the arch dreamer and drifter; Anderson has often revelled in eccentric, lost souls. But are these characters searching or escaping? At one point Anderson quotes Pynchon’s novel directly when he notes that American life is “something to be escaped from”.

“They are doing both,” explains Anderson.

“Both wrapped up into one. That’s a nice thing that’s in the book and maybe a little better expressed than in the movie, but it’s that idea that when you’re smoking weed everything is OK, but as soon as heroin comes in everything is changed and everything is fucked, and that’s sad. Looking back at research, it was an epidemic of overdoses of all this Southeast Asian heroin that was coming in near Manhattan Beach.”

The director takes a breath and further reflects on the line. “It’s a big line. He kind of goes for it, doesn’t he? I thought, ‘Really? Are we going to go for that or should I change it?’

I think it’s worth preserving how he meant to do it. It’s strong and it’s good. I like that line.”

Freedom of movement While Anderson’s impeccable technical craft soars with each new film, his methodology also continues to evolve. Or devolve. A number of his actors affectionately describe the director’s style as “chaotic”.

His producer JoAnne Sellar prefers the adjective “spontaneous”. “When I think back to Boogie Nights and Magnolia, there was more design in the scripts,” Sellar says.

“Many of the shots were set. Over the years Paul has become more spontaneous and fluid. We stick with the script; there isn’t a mass of improvisation but he allows himself to find things on the day.”

Anderson says of the shoot: “There was always this looseness to discover things. I had so many different drafts. There were so many potential characters to choose from so I would have different versions of scenes and I’d bring actors in a couple days before and

14 Screen International December 12, 2014

Owen Wilson

Josh Brolin

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we’d have a little rehearsal and lay out all these versions I’d written and then cut and paste a version together.

“The distance between those rehearsals and when we got there to do it would be kind of large. So everything was much more… liquid-y. It lent itself to that because there was no big, expensive thing looming over our head [the film’s $20m budget was among Anderson’s leanest]. So it lends itself to working more freely.”

Partner in crime Anderson — perhaps more than many other directors — has a genuine affinity with his actors. And he has seemingly found another kindred spirit to add to his brotherhood of controlled anarchy in the shape of lead actor Phoenix, who brings bucketloads of wiriness and pathos to the freewheeling Doc. The three-time Oscar nominee immersed himself as deeply in the role — Doc’s onscreen look is partly inspired by a youthful Neil Young — as he did for Freddie Quell in The Master.

“Joaquin’s method of working is to be completely committed,” says Anderson. “He walked around barefoot for six months. His feet were disgusting. I know it’s a small thing, but I never see him in his street clothes. He gets to set every day and he’s dressed like the character. It’s small and not complicated, but it’s the kind of thing that helps make it feel good over three months [the shoot lasted around 55 days]. I’d get so nervous if I saw an actor talking on their phone, making a deal with their agent, fucking around and then you say, ‘Action’. That would scare the shit out of me.”

“I don’t think there’s anyone who has worked with Joaquin who wouldn’t want to do so again,” Anderson expanded in a recent Q&A. “I know there’s an impression he’s weird but that’s far from the truth. He’s a little weird but not that fucking weird. He’s very compassionate, very soulful. He’s inventive and creative. It’s a lot of fun. He can drive you a little crazy but he’s sweet and daring, above all.”

Daring is a quality inherent to Anderson and Phoenix alike. And as the finished film s amply shows: who dares, wins. ■

‘Joaquin Phoenix’s method of working is to be completely committed. He walked around barefoot for six months. His feet were disgusting’ Benicio Del Toro

Paul Thomas Anderson

Reese Witherspoon and Phoenix

December 12, 2014 Screen International 15

INTERVIEW RICHARD LINKLATER

Richard Linklater (right) in conversation with Ethan Hawke

A modern family Writer-director Richard Linklater was surprised by how emotional he found shooting Boyhood, his ballad of family life. Jeremy Kay reports

‘‘I

’ve never made a movie over two hours.

It was kind of wonderful and very odd to do,” says Richard Linklater, the Austinbased writer-director of Boyhood, which has a running time of 165 minutes.

“I bet the whole farm on the idea that this collection of intimate moments would add up to something, just because they’re people living their lives the way we all do.

“To feel that kick in with an audience is how it felt to make it. After every day it was, ‘Is there enough going on? Are there enough plot points?’ It wasn’t my inclination [to complicate things] — I played it low-key.”

Ethan Hawke, Linklater’s long-time collaborator, attests to the lack of bombast in Boyhood and by extension the film-maker himself, who recently picked up the LA Film

16 Screen International December 12, 2014

‘Casting Mason was like figuring out who would be the next Dalai Lama’ Richard Linklater, film-maker

Critics Association’s best director award to add to his Berlinale Silver Bear.

“We have jobs, but underneath our lives there’s this river of our families,” says the actor. “I got an opportunity to make a movie about the nuance of family life and tell the truth.”

A life project The notion of Boyhood had been percolating for years. “It was always there,” says Linklater. “Every film is a life project. You have to pick your subject matter carefully and I knew I would never tire of it.”

Linklater says Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette were already wedded to the idea of playing the on-screen mother and father when IFC Films committed to financing the

project in 2001. Linklater’s daughter, Lorelei, would play the family’s daughter, Samantha.

The last major role to fill was that of the son, Mason.

The director had to find a child lead who would be able to keep audiences glued to the screen as he progressed from first through to 12th grade.

“It was a huge thing and Rick downplays everything,” says IFC Films president Jonathan Sehring. The search lasted months, but eventually they found Ellar Coltrane.

“It was like figuring out who would be the next Dalai Lama,” says Linklater. “Ellar was a really cool guy who loved art, stories, movies and music. I’d seen his dad’s band, [but] I didn’t really know them. I met lots and lots of kids over several months. There were a »

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WINNER

WINNER

BEST DIRECTOR

ONE OF THE YEAR’S BEST FILMS

NATIONAL BOARD OF REVIEW

NATIONAL BOARD OF REVIEW

“E A ST WOOD F USES T HE E X PLOSI V E A ND T HE SOR ROW F UL

AS ONLY HE CAN. BRADLEY COOPER GIVES EVERY THING AND THEN SOME IN AN ASTONISHING, ALL- OUT PERFORMANCE. THIS FILM TAKES A PIECE OUT OF YOU.” PETER TRAVERS,

“ W H E N E V E R C O O P E R I S ON T H E S C R E E N W E A R E I N T H E P R E S E N C E O F S O M E T H I N G A B S O L U T E LY A S T O N I S H I N G ,

NOT SIMPLY ONE OF THE BEST PERFORMANCES OF THE YEAR BUT A PERFORMANCE FOR THE AGES, THE KIND THAT CREEPS INTO YOUR SOUL AT ALL HOURS OF THE NIGHT.” BUZZ BISSINGER,

F O R

Y O U R I N

BEST DIRECTOR CLINT EASTWOOD B E S T A D A P T E D S C R E E N P L AY JASON HALL

A L L

B A F T A® C O N S I D E R A T I O N C A T E G O R I E S,

I N C L U D I N G :

BEST FILM PRODUCED BY

CLINT EASTWOOD ROBERT LORENZ ANDREW LAZAR BRADLEY COOPER PETER MORGAN

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BEST LEADING ACTOR BRADLEY COOPER BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS SIENNA MILLER

W W W . WA R N E R B R O S 2 0 1 4 . C O M

F O R

Y O U R I N

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®

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C A T E G O R I E S ,

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BEST ANIMATED FILM

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

O RIGINAL MUSIC

PHIL LORD & CHRISTOPHER MILLER

PHIL LORD & CHRISTOPHER MILLER

MARK MOTHERSBAUGH

WINNER

WINNER

BEST FEATURE FILM BAFTA CHILDREN’S AWARD ®

THE

B E S T- R E V I E W E D

BEST ANIMATED FILM NEW YORK FILM CRITICS ONLINE NEW YORK FILM CRITICS CIRCLE

6

ANNIE AWARD NOMINATIONS INCLUDING

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

ANIMATED

FILM

WINNER

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY NATIONAL BOARD OF REVIEW

WINNER

ONE OF THE TOP 10 FILMS OF 2014 NATIONAL BOARD OF REVIEW THE GUARDIAN • TIME

OF

THE

YEAR

HHHH “THIS IS A DELIRIOUSLY INVENTIVE TREAT. LORD AND MILLER TAKE AN INTERLOCKING BRICK SYSTEM AND USE IT TO SAY SOMETHING ALMOST PROFOUND ABOUT PLAY AND IMAGINATION.” WENDY IDE,

HHHH “‘THE LEGO MOVIE’ IS SHEER JOY: THE SCRIPT IS WITTY, THE SATIRE SURPRISINGLY POINTED AND THE ANIMATION TACTILE AND IMAGINATIVE.” TOM HUDDLESTON,

HHHH “FOR A SHOT OF PURE FORWARD-LEAPING, BACKWARD-DREAMING ANIMATED PLEASURE, PICK BRICK.” ROBBIE COLLIN,

W W W . WA R N E R B R O S 2 0 1 4 . C O M

F O R

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®

C O N S I D E R A T I O N

HHHH GEOFFREY MACNAB,

“ROBERT DUVALL AND ROBERT DOWNEY JR.’S PERFORMANCES ARE ABSOLUTELY MESMERIZING.” BILL ZWECKER,

“‘THE JUDGE’ IS THE BACKDROP FOR AN EMOTIONALLY ENGAGING STORY ABOUT FATHERS AND SONS PLAYED, LIKE A DUET, BY TWO VIRTUOSO ACTORS WHO GIVE THE FILM ALL THEY HAVE.” CHRIS NASHAWATY,

“DUVALL RELISHES BEING A FORCE TO CONTEND WITH.” KENNETH TURAN,

BEST LEADING ACTOR ROBERT DOWNEY JR.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR ROBERT DUVALL

WWW.WAR N E R BR O S 2 014.CO M

INTERVIEW RICHARD LINKLATER

Richard Linklater on set with Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke

lot of different ways to go. I cast a different kind of kid.”

Devout Texan that he is, Linklater resolved to keep the 12-year production instate. With minimal fuss, he and casting director Beth Sepko unearthed a new batch of supporting actors each year before the next round of filming. “Ultimately it’s 12 years, 12 scripts, 12 productions,” Linklater explains. “Within that, it had quite a structure. I knew the last shot. Patricia had a plan for her character. The design and structure is very important; the dialogue almost less so.”

Production kicked off in July 2002. For the next 11 years they would assemble, go over new lines and shoot for a few days.

“It was so quick as to not even be an issue, we never even talked about it,” says Linklater. “It’s a little bit like running into an old friend you haven’t seen in a while.”

The film-maker is a master of understatement: “I really can say things worked the way it was planned.”

Staying in touch For everyone to keep to the schedule, Linklater and producer Cathleen Sutherland dedicated plenty of time each year to navigating their way through the collective cast’s schedules.

Arquette and Hawke, like Linklater himself, tended to be the busiest, while Coltrane remained relatively easy to get hold of as he progressed through school.

This was a good thing, because the director knew how important it would be to maintain a close bond with his young star and quietly watch his evolution into a young man as time went on.

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‘This is the guy who made Slacker. For me, Slacker and Dazed And Confused were the most instrumental movies of our generation’ Ethan Hawke

“Years were different,” says Linklater. “We live in the same town. We’d see each other. I would invite him to events, we would go to lunch. It’s kind of an ongoing thing, but I was also taking his temperature about what was going on in his life. I was thinking about where he was at, developmentally.”

The unassuming Linklater inspires a deep reverence in his cast and crew. Everyone is fully aware of the supreme skill it takes to pull off a film like Boyhood.

“It would be one thing if it was a guy out of the blue, but this is the guy who made Slacker,” says Hawke. “For me, Slacker and Dazed And Confused were the most instrumental movies of our generation. I worked with him on Before Sunrise and it was one of the greatest experiences of my career.”

Linklater himself says he was surprised by how emo-

(Above) Ellar Coltrane with his screen sister — and the director’s real-life daughter — Lorelei Linklater; (below) Coltrane and Linklater

tional the project was. “The building intensity was something I didn’t anticipate,” he says of the marathon filming process. “Starting out, I thought it would maybe feel like an obligation.”

The production built and built to the final sunset shot on the last day of the shoot in Big Bend Ranch State Park close to the Mexico border. “I have never experienced anything like it,” Linklater says of that final take.

He may have developed a taste for this kind of thing. Now that Boyhood is establishing itself in the rearview mirror would Linklater, who just wrapped shooting the college comedy, That’s What I’m Talking About, consider another multi-year project?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” he replies. “It’s the way my mind looks at cinema and narras tive.” ■

December 12, 2014 Screen International 17

INTERVIEW XAVIER DOLAN

Xavier Dolan

18 Screen International December 12, 2014

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Mommy’s strong bond At the age of 25, Xavier Dolan has already made five features. He tells John Hazelton why Mommy is illustrative of the kind of storytelling he’s most interested in and why he finds the female psyche so compelling

A

fter writing and directing five features over the past five years, 25-year-old French-Canadian filmmaker Xavier Dolan feels, he says, “like I’m on my mark”.

Many critics and industry observers who caught Dolan’s Mommy on this year’s festival circuit — where it began by winning the Jury Prize at Cannes — have agreed, seeing the intensely emotional yet finely balanced drama as a significant step forward for the film-maker, whose enfant terrible reputation was built on the likes of his 2009 directing debut, I Killed My Mother (J’ai Tué Ma Mere) and 2012 Cannes Queer Palm winner Laurence Anyways.

Dolan himself confirms that Mommy — Canada’s submission for this year’s foreignlanguage film Oscar race — “is really the cinema I want to be making, the storytelling I’m interested in. Because it seems like the entire movie is character and story-driven.

The film-making has to naturally and fluently find its way, without having all of us from the crew putting ourselves upfront as artists who have ideas and concepts about film-making.

“I enjoy cinema that’s very cinematic, but I reckon I’m from a school of thought that’s a little more mainstream,” Dolan continues. “I was brought up with family dramas from the ’90s like Matilda and Mrs Doubtfire.”

Rejecting the idea that his latest work — about a widowed single mother, her unpredictable ADHD son and their peculiar new neighbour — represents a return to the subject matter of his debut, Dolan explains that, for him, mothers and motherhood are a perennial theme.

“I love to write for women,” he says. “They are the figures that inspire me most, psychologically and narratively. And then mothers have this sort of additional substance of women who’ve made sacrifices in order to become good mothers.”

There was also continuity in the way Dolan, who began as a child actor and still takes the lead in some of his own films, worked with Mommy stars Anne Dorval (who appeared in I Killed My Mother and Dolan’s 2010 love-triangle story, Heartbeats) and Suzanne Clément (who won the Un Certain Regard best actress award for Laurence Anyways).

“Anne has taught me basically everything I know about dialogue,” Dolan says. “I see a film as a music sheet and every note, every silence, every word falls in a certain place at a certain time and must feel right. And

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Anne’s like that; she’s very attentive to the musicality of words.

“It’s the same thing with Suzanne, but Suzanne is a little less cerebral in preparation; she’s more of an on-the-day actor.”

Intimate format Dolan’s experimental side is represented in Mommy by the fact the film — except for during a couple of brief, but key scenes — is in 1:1 aspect ratio, setting the drama in a perfectly square frame.

Dolan and Mommy director of photography André Turpin had tried the unusual framing device on College Boy, a music video they shot in 2013 with Mommy’s male lead, Antoine Olivier Pilon.

When Dolan saw the video dailies for Mommy, he recalls, “all the close-ups were much more strikingly and privately intimate

‘I love to write for women. They are the figures that inspire me most, psychologically and narratively’ Xavier Dolan, film-maker

Suzanne Clément as neighbour Kyla

than the 1.85:1 or 2.39:1 [ratios] we’re used to.

For me, 2.39:1 would have been artistic suicide for [Mommy]. This is not a story for this format, which seems so strict and severe. I felt we needed something a little more intimate.”

Dolan’s next project may be something a little different. The Death And Life Of John F Donovan will be the writer-director’s first English-language film and will be, he promises, “a very commercial movie. It doesn’t read as such, but I know it has to be and I know I want it to be.”

Set in New York and the UK, the story centres on an iconic movie star and a British child actor who conduct a secret correspondence. The idea, says Dolan, who confirms that Jessica Chastain is attached for one role, is to present “a take on Hollywood’s effect on people’s private lives”.

It is a subject that Dolan says he can understand in spite of what, so far, has been his limited direct experience of Hollywood.

“For the past six years, I’ve been filming movies back to back,” says the fast-rising Québécois. “There’s been no respite from this industry. I can see how my family, my friends, people around me are reacting to my career.

“You don’t have to be a huge star or a huge celebrity to feel the little transformations of your everyday life when it is confronted with s even the most banal notion of fame.” ■

Anne Dorval and Antoine Olivier Pilon as mother and son in Mommy

December 12, 2014 Screen International 19

INTERVIEW STEVEN KNIGHT

The power of one Writer-director Steven Knight tells Adam Woodard about a unique on-screen and off-screen journey with Locke, the Tom Hardy drama shot over just eight nights

L

ocke, writer-director Steven Knight’s latest drama, tells the story of Ivan Locke (played by Tom Hardy), a dedicated family man and successful construction manager faced with a career and life-changing dilemma that threatens his carefully cultivated existence. The catch: the story follows Locke, and only Locke, on his one-man journey.

“I’d just finished making a more conventional film [Hummingbird], which was great but it made me wonder if there was a different way of doing a basic task [making a movie],” Knight says. “It gave me the thought you could shoot a journey with just one person in it, and have that journey engage an audience.”

Locke seems like a normal, everyday man at the beginning of the film. As his journey progresses so do his issues, revealing Knight’s plans of telling an ordinary man’s story.

“It’s about a man who makes a decision in 20 seconds and the whole film is the consequences of that decision in the way men deal with emotions,” says Knight, who as a director wants to “attempt to open up new ways to shoot film”.

“I wanted to be sure it was an ordinary man and an ordinary tragedy, and it wasn’t something that would make the local news. I wanted it to be something that would happen to someone like us and see if it was

‘When I’m going to direct, I’m going to direct something that’s shot in a different way… and that’s something I’ll always try to do’ Steven Knight, film-maker

enough for the audience to see one man’s journey and engage with him. It was sort of an experiment and people have responded well to it.”

The film had its premiere at Venice 2013 and Knight won the 2013 British Independent Film Award for best screenplay, while Locke’s editor, Justine Wright, won the European Film Award 2013 for best editor. The film could be a strong contender at this season’s Baftas, and continues to pick up steam, as Tom Hardy was the surprise winner of the LA Film Critics Association’s best actor prize on December 7.

Critics and audiences have also warmed to the film. “People had forgotten they hadn’t seen the other cast members. People create a picture for themselves, and they enjoy that.

That’s what cinema can do,” Knight says.

The film was shot in a very “particular way”, says Knight, who filmed the entire movie in one take, 16 different times over six nights with Hardy, plus two nights of pick-ups.

Like Hummingbird, Locke — with a production budget of less than $2m — was backed by production company Shoebox Films, headed by Paul Webster, and sales outfit IM Global.

“This was an inkling in Steve Knight’s brain in November 2012, and we were shooting the movie by February 26,” says veteran

producer Webster. “It’s the fastest turnaround I’ve ever been involved in.

“It was pretty full-on, but Tom was so prepared and Steve is the calmest director you could imagine,” Webster adds.

The other actors — Olivia Colman, Ruth Wilson, Andrew Scott, Ben Daniels and Tom Holland — talk to Locke on the phone while he is driving. They called in live from a hotel room on the night shoots while Hardy was driving. “For the actors it’s great, because they get to experience the whole film so that when they’re emotional at the end, they’re emotional because they’ve been a part of it,” says Knight, who was well known as the screenwriter of Dirty Pretty Things and Eastern Promises before he tried his hand at directing with Hummingbird (also known as Redemption) in 2012. He is still much in demand as a screenwriter, having recently written The Hundred-Foot Journey, Pawn Sacrifice, episodes of TV’s Peaky Blinders, and John Wells’ untitled chef project starring Bradley Cooper. He is currently working on the script for the World War Z sequel.

The film-maker has not announced his next directorial project, but suffice to say it could be unexpected. “When I’m going to direct something, I’m going to direct something that’s shot in a different way… and s that’s something I’ll always try to do.” ■

Tom Hardy in Locke

20 Screen International December 12, 2014

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Hardy and Steven Knight (right) on set

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December 12, 2014 Screen International 21

INTERVIEW WIM WENDERS & JULIANO RIBEIRO SALGADO

Photo synthesis Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado tell Elbert Wyche how they had to beat their own egos on documentary The Salt Of The Earth

T

he Salt Of The Earth examines the life and work of the renowned Brazilian photographer and environmentalist Sebastiao Salgado through interviews with the man himself and narration provided by the film’s co-directors, Wim Wenders and Salgado’s son, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado.

The two took differing approaches to their subject: Wenders was keen to showcase Salgado’s work through interviews, while the younger Salgado, a Paris-based writer-director, chose to follow his father on his epic journey around the world on his acclaimed Genesis project, photographing remote people and places untouched by modern life.

They initially shot separately. “Juliano and I could have each made beautiful films,” says Wenders. “But we realised if we forgot who shot what and treated it all as one, we could make a film that would be better than the films we would have done separately.”

While the concept of co-directing seemed the right approach, its execution proved more problematic. “We fought for quite a while and edited separately,” Wen ders explains. “Juliano was doing his journeys and I was doing my interviews.”

The two men had to get to a place where they were able to edit each other’s footage.

“That is a difficult process because as a director to let somebody cut your stuff is the pits,” admits Wenders. “You have to overcome a lot of pride and some ego trips in order to accept it.”

Salgado adds: “Collaborating with someone else, even if it’s one of the great filmmakers, is very difficult. Luckily for me, it was a learning process. It has been an amazing collaboration.”

The two considered structuring the film with no narration, but ultimately decided their subject was too rich and the material too deep to go without it. “We felt nobody was going to be able to feel what only a voice could deliver,” says Wenders. “Or in this case, that only two voices could deliver.

Then we had to figure out how to do a film with two voices.”

22 Screen International December 12, 2014

‘To let somebody cut your stuff is the pits. You have to overcome a lot of pride’ Wim Wenders (below)

Wenders would provide the first round of narration with the younger Salgado providing the next. But the experienced Wenders knew he had to find a way to work his codirector into the narration mix. “There’s this dirty trick that I played on Juliano. I started editing in his baby pictures in order to get him in as narrator,” Wenders laughs.

Life’s tapestry It made sense to Juliano that his story be interwoven with that of his father and mother, Lélia. “One day I came into the editing room and I saw a new sequence Wim and our editor had done,” he recalls. “I said, ‘Wow, it’s a baby. It’s me. What?’ But it was in a very sweet way.”

The film allowed Juliano to view his father in a new light. He had what he describes as a “conflicting relationship” with his father. Growing up, the younger Salgado heard stories of his father’s adventures but seeing his father through the lens of Wenders’ interviews gave him a completely new perspective.

“All of these experiences he had lived, what effects they had, how much pain he

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‘Collaborating with someone else, even if it’s one of the great film-makers, is very difficult’ Juliano Ribeiro Salgado (above)

(Top right and middle) The Salt Of The Earth; (right) Sebastiao Salgado

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had to overcome — how beautiful,” he reflects. “I understood him better and when we met again, we had become friends. We had overcome our barrier.”

Wenders has admired and followed Salgado’s work documenting people and communities devastated by war, poverty and industrialisation for nearly 30 years. Making The Salt Of The Earth gave him the opportunity to really get to know the photographer.

“I discovered just how dedicated he was,” says Wenders of Salgado, who had chosen to put down his camera for several years after becoming so stricken by what he was photographing.

“He invested so much of his life into these photographs in order to have the right to walk away with the pictures that he took. He spent weeks and months where other photographers come in and the next day they leave again. This man stayed.

“Going into it, I thought — we thought — we were going to make a movie about a photographer and it dawned on me as we were shooting that it was a much bigger story.

This was not just about photographs, it was s about humanity and about nature.” ■

December 12, 2014 Screen International 23

INTERVIEW ANDRE SINGER

The darkest hour André Singer talks to Melanie Goodfellow about his powerful Holocaust documentary, Night Will Fall, which has a groundbreaking broadcast launch on January 27

L

ondon-based film-maker André Singer spent the best part of two years studying gruesome images shot by allied troops as they liberated German concentration camps in 1945 for his documentary, Night Will Fall.

“It was the most appalling footage I’ve ever had to deal with in a pretty long career in film. You start off believing that you’ll get anaesthetised to it, but you don’t,” he says.

Night Will Fall revolves around the making of Sidney Bernstein and Alfred Hitchcock’s propaganda film, German Concentration Camps, commissioned in 1945 to show German audiences the atrocities committed in the name of Nazism, but never screened at the time.

“It was meant to show the German people the error of their ways, but events moved on and the project was shelved,” explains

24 Screen International December 12, 2014

‘If you put graphic imagery in context, then it has an impact; if you show it out of context, then it’s pornography’ André Singer, film-maker

Singer. “In the period from the liberation of the camps in April 1945 through to the Nuremberg trials, the world was in chaos. It was an extraordinary time.”

Bernstein, who would go on to found UK TV station Granada, had experienced the camps first-hand, having visited them within days of their liberation as part of Britain’s propaganda unit.

The film he made with Hitchcock spared viewers none of the gruesome sights. Gruelling footage shows piles of decaying corpses, limbs bent and broken, empty eyes starring glassily into space; emaciated survivors and a chilling visit to a camp warehouse, piled high with children’s toys, spectacle frames, chopped hair and suitcases.

Singer’s film takes its title from the final words of a script by writer and future politician Richard Crossman, “Unless the

world learns the lessons these pictures teach, night will fall”.

Some 70 years on, Singer says he grappled with how many of these “pictures” to include in his film. “It’s about how the film was made, why it was made and why it was never shown.

You can’t explore this without showing the original imagery, but it was a permanent concern to me throughout the production process just how much we should include,” he says. “If you put graphic imagery like that in context, then it has an impact; if you show it out of context, then it’s pornography.”

Sally Angel, who produced the film alongside US producer Brett Ratner’s RatPac Documentary Films, first told Singer about the existence of the forgotten work in the archive of the UK’s Imperial War Museum.

“She was researching something else and came across [some curators] digitising the

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film,” says Singer. “It didn’t take a genius to see its potential and by coincidence, I came out of Granada, where Sidney Bernstein was my first boss.”

In documentary circles, Singer is better known as a prolific producer with a slew of credits on works by the likes of Werner Herzog, Joshua Oppenheimer and Malcolm Clarke.

The decision to direct Night Will Fall was borne out of his desire to make the documentary relatively quickly.

“One of the essences of the film was to have the people who participated in the liberation of the camps be the ones who told the story, from the cameramen to the

‘The joint broadcast was part of the film’s strategy from the beginning’ Philippa Kowarsky, Cinephil

Festival of Tolerance

Night Will Fall

victims. These people were in their nineties.

It was the last major chance for people to tell their stories,” he explains.

Singer was also keen for the work to be ready in time for the 70th anniversary in 2015 of the liberation of Auschwitz on January 27, which is commemorated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. He recounts how he approached fellow Granada alumni Michael Apted and Paul Greengrass as well as Stephen Frears, all of whom were interested but unable to commit in the timeframe. “Stephen was very interested but he was doing Philomena,” reveals Singer. “I asked him to stay on board as a sort of mentor and executive producer, which he did and he was hugely helpful.”

Singer’s foresight regarding the timing paid off. More than 15 broadcasters — including Channel 4 in the UK, Arte in Germany and France, DR in Denmark, NRK in Norway and HBO in the US — are set to broadcast the film on January 27.

“The joint broadcast was part of the film’s strategy from the beginning,” says co-producer and sales agent Philippa Kowarsky of Tel Aviv-based Cinephil. “Co-ordinating more than a dozen broadcasters all over the world is not simple, but the will was there from day one. Seventy years later, we feel this joint venture is a special achievement for the film, the film-makers and its partners s around the globe; it is timely and potent.” ■

André Singer

www.screendaily.com

December 12, 2014 Screen International 25

AWARDS COUNTDOWN FOXCATCHER

The gripping true story of

Foxcatcher Director Bennett Miller and producer Jon Kilik reveal why Foxcatcher — their murderous story of class, power and brotherly love — was so many years in the making. Jeremy Kay reports

26 Screen International December 12, 2014

www.screendaily.com

W ‘The wrestling community is a small and insular group, and this is a dark chapter in the history of the sport’ Bennett Miller, director

(Left) Bennett Miller, Mark Ruffalo and Channing Tatum on the Foxcatcher set; (top) the team review a shot; (right) Steve Carell as John du Pont

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hen Foxcatcher dropped out of its much-anticipated world premiere at AFI Fest in November 2013, many feared Bennett Miller’s new film might be the turkey that was ducking out of Thanksgiving.

The bombshell had come the day after Sony Pictures Classics (SPC) announced it was yanking the drama from the 2013 awards season and was shifting the US release from the end of that year to some time in 2014.

The film had already endured a lengthy post-production schedule and now there was this — the delayed release and cancelled premiere scenario that can so often indicate stormy weather on a film’s horizon.

To the inner circle of Miller, fellow producers Jon Kilik, Anthony Bregman and Megan Ellison as well as SPC, however, the story was quite different.

“This is a movie that’s a meticulous work,” says Kilik.

“Megan and I wanted to support Bennett fully and all three of us felt it wasn’t exactly perfect and knew we had some things to uncover and needed a couple more months.”

Foxcatcher had already endured a tortuous development cycle and a taxing search for funding, so the film-makers were not going to let an extended period of post-production stand between them and a great final version.

Ellison, whose Annapurna Pictures co-

financed the film with Sony, agreed to bankroll extra time in the editing suite. It was worth the wait. One year after Foxcatcher was pulled from AFI Fest, it returned to close the 2014 edition.

By now it was an acclaimed commodity following Miller’s best-director prize in Cannes, where Foxcatcher had received its world premiere, and subsequent sellout shows at Telluride and Toronto. The Los Angeles homecoming tied a neat, karmic bow around the whole episode. Weeks later, Foxcatcher would score a spectacular limited opening weekend in the US. Miller’s latest feature, which opens internationally in early 2015, was firmly on the map.

Oddball appeal Rewind eight years and Foxcatcher was a mere speck of an idea in the film-maker’s mind. It had been several months since Miller’s directorial debut Capote had garnered five Oscar nominations, including one for best director and a famous best actor win for Philip Seymour Hoffman.

The new prince of Hollywood was wondering what to do next and, by the time he sat down for an introductory meeting with Kilik that autumn, he had begun mulling over the unsettling real-life events that would inform Foxcatcher.

It was a stranger who had alerted Miller to the story of John du Pont. Always fascinated by driven, »

December 12, 2014 Screen International 27

AWARDS COUNTDOWN FOXCATCHER

eccentric outsiders, the film-maker became obsessed with the case of the heir to a chemicals fortune. Miller researched how the wealthy misfit set up a training camp for the US wrestling team on his Foxcatcher estate in Pennsylvania, bringing into the fold Olympic world champion brothers Mark and Dave Schultz. An intense relationship would develop between the three men, resulting in du Pont eventually shooting Dave dead.

“I had an image of this guy [du Pont] in a wrestling room, watching wrestlers practise,” says Miller. “In my head it was an image of this guy watching these guys and knowing that he doesn’t belong there and they’re aware of him watching them and they don’t quite belong there, either.”

He added: “If you want to know the beginning, it was that — bang — and the fact that it ended tragically.”

Miller had already acquired Mark Schultz’s life rights when he met Kilik, the Oscar-nominated Babel producer whose collaborator on that film, Media Rights Capital (MRC), had orchestrated the meeting. MRC agreed to fund development of Foxcatcher and the film-makers got going. E Max Frye came on board to write a first draft before Miller’s Capote collaborator, Dan Futterman, became involved.

Tall order “It was a long road and a tough movie to figure out the storytelling of it,” says Kilik. “It was tough to finance. Any time you’re trying to force into existence your own material, especially as the independent market has been shrinking over the last decade or so, it’s harder and harder.

“The producer or first partner is the one that confirms you’re not crazy, it’s worthy, it’s going to be great. I was that person for him — to keep his hopes alive.”

Miller remembers that by 2008 he was ready to move ahead but, for one reason or another, MRC was not and the process hit a roadblock.

“Reality set in and eventually I had to concede that it wasn’t going to happen,” says Miller. “I put it down and made some changes in my life, my representation, and stuck a pin in it.”

A temporary pin, as it transpired. Neither Miller nor Kilik had any intention of letting Foxcatcher die — although it has to be said their ‘stop-gap’ projects take some beating.

Miller made Moneyball, which would earn six Oscar nominations and more than $110m at the worldwide box office. And Kilik? “I went off and did The Hunger Games.”

The director resumes the film’s story.

“When Moneyball was winding down, John du Pont died in prison in December 2010. I always intended to return to [Foxcatcher], and that was the catalyst.” It turns out interim activities had only served to fuel Miller’s view of the project’s potential.

28 Screen International December 12, 2014

“The more I looked at it, the more it revealed itself and the more I reflected… the challenge and intrigue of it was captivating.

Once I start something, it’s very, very hard to let go.”

The film-makers struck gold when Miller met Ellison in spring 2011 and pitched Foxcatcher. “She just said, ‘I would love to make this film with you.’ Then we embarked on this long process,” Miller recalls.

“Megan is single-handedly changing the face of independent production with her great taste and commitment to the exact type of situation where you have an auteur director with a strong taste for something,” says Kilik.

“She helps to not just provide the money but is there until you find distribution, so she’s able to make the commitment and not have it be conditional, in the way it often is with other investors.”

Miller says of Ellison’s involvement: “I can say that was a big measure of confidence, because I had spent so much time trying to find the money and a partner who could feel similarly about it.”

Both Miller and Kilik cite Ellison as a driving force in arguing to pull out of AFI Fest 2013 at a time when the filmmakers agreed showing it would have been a disservice to the film. “ To m e , that’s the mark of a producer,” says Miller. “In the moment when the filmmaker could be

(Top) Steve Carell as John du Pont; (above) Sienna Miller as Nancy Schultz; (below) Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo as the Schultz brothers

expected to be making that case and lobbying against the push-back of a producer, it was she who led that.”

Ellison’s relationship with Sony meant that Miller was once again circling in the studio’s orbit. At first, Columbia Pictures was set to distribute, as it had done on Moneyball. Eventually the film landed at Miller’s Capote collaborator, SPC. Foxcatcher began production in West Pennsylvania in October 2012 and wrapped in spring 2013, teeing up a prolonged period of post.

The results vindicated the process, with critics and festival programmers showering praise, in particular on the broadly leftfield casting of the three leads. Mark Ruffalo is terrific as the doomed Dave Schultz and is perhaps a more obvious selection given the actor’s own credentials as a former state wrestling champion.

As casting goes, the

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Ruffalo brought his own wrestling experience, although as a right-hander he went for authenticity, working to grapple in the exact manner of his ‘lefty’ character, renowned as one of the all-time greats.

Crucially, the production had early support from Nancy Schultz, Dave’s widow, played in the film by Sienna Miller.

“That relationship began maybe five or six years before we began shooting, so by the time we started shooting I knew her quite well,” says the director. “In the beginning she was amazingly generous and non-judgmental. She wanted to know what we were doing, but not disrespectfully. She felt she had the right to know.”

Mark Ruffalo on set with Bennett Miller and producer Megan Ellison

decision to go with Channing Tatum as Mark Schultz and Steve Carell as du Pont was out-of-the-box genius.

The former shows hitherto unseen depths while Carell, almost unrecognisable with a prosthetic nose and dead eyes, taps into a dark side few knew he possessed. Miller had wanted Tatum from the start after he watched the young actor in 2006 drama A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints.

“It was about eight years ago and I met him to discuss Foxcatcher and this role before I even had a script,” the film-maker recalls. “The fact that he existed was some incentive to make this film, because I knew there was an actor who could do it.”

Tatum’s career has soared since 2006 and taken a distinctly populist turn, yet Miller was undeterred. “The lighter stuff he had done was sort of beside the point; I was sold at Saints.”

“If you know Mark Schultz as I do,” says Kilik, “Channing got every nuance. Same with Ruffalo.”

Miller had tried to cast Ruffalo as Perry Smith in Capote but, try as he might, the actor turned him down three times.

“I was befuddled by this strange twist of fate whereby I was making another film where I didn’t see an alternative to Mark in this role and I was putting myself in a position to be rejected by him again.”

This time Ruffalo was in. He had wrestled to a very high level — like his father — and had lost a brother. The pull was too strong.

Carell’s name featured on a list from an

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agency but did not rise to the top straight away. “It was really only over time that the notion began to sink in that it made a bizarre counter-intuitive sense,” says the director.

“Carell said to me he had only ever played characters with a mushy centre. Du Pont seems to have a mushy centre but he doesn’t.

It revealed an understanding of a character who can possess a public persona and conceal a private truth about their danger.

“I often feel this way about comic actors — they do have a guarded side to them, a darker side, a sharper side that’s a contradiction to their public persona. I’ve always thought Carell was a very good actor, perhaps underappreciated because of the benign banality of these characters that he likes to play. As it often is with comedic actors, he was very specific and very refined, and he listens as a comedic actor really has to listen.”

“It just made Bennett think,” says Kilik of the early inclusion of Carell on that agency list. “The element of surprise was important and what Steve did on every level is amazing. All three of them were equally brilliant.”

Tatum and Ruffalo trained for seven months under the tutelage of Dave Schultz’s good friend, John Giura. Tatum is a natural athlete but still had to work hard to grasp the moves and form of wrestling.

“They were using weights and learning the moves,” says Kilik. “Mark Schultz was known for his lats [back muscles] and Channing spent a long time in the weight room expanding that size. These are details nobody would know about, watching the movie.”

‘The producer or first partner is the one that confirms you’re not crazy. I was that person for Bennett Miller, to keep his hopes alive’ Jon Kilik, producer

Inner circle It was Nancy Schultz who introduced the film-makers to people in the world of Foxcatcher and the wider sport beyond that.

“The wrestling community is a pretty small and insular group, and this is a dark chapter in the history of the sport and many of Dave’s close friends are big figures in the world,” says Miller. “It was the credibility that Nancy gave to the project that enabled these relationships to take root. Before the shoot began, she gave Ruffalo a pair of Dave’s glasses to wear in the film. A small gesture like that brings it home — he’s wearing glasses that Dave’s widow gave to him.”

The death of Dave Schultz devastated the world of wrestling and all who knew him.

Yet the trajectory of Mark, who cuts a sombre, downtrodden figure throughout most of the film and ends up cage-fighting, is heartbreaking.

“It is the whole concept of the broken American promise,” says Kilik. “You work hard and put in what it takes to represent your country and go home with a gold medal, and you’re an assistant part-time gym coach who can barely make ends meet. You’re almost like a soldier who comes home after risking his life and you’re an outcast.”

Kilik points to Foxcatcher’s broader themes, too. “It’s America, it’s class, it’s power, societal issues. You wonder how could these two guys [Mark Schultz and John du Pont] inhabit the same country. It’s pretty amazing.”

Another theme of Foxcatcher is the continued march of Bennett Miller as a major US auteur of consistently captivating work.

Audiences quite rightly are fixating on the performances of the three leads, but Kilik is keen that the creative guiding light not be overlooked.

“What’s so brilliant about the way Bennett works is that it’s invisible,” he says. “His hand is so sure and yet at the same time it’s invisible.

“You’re observing these characters in such an immediate way that you don’t feel the presence of everybody else and yet you know there’s a very strong hand guiding it. To be s able to pull that off is unbelievable.” ■

December 12, 2014 Screen International 29

REVIEWS Highlights of the week’s new films in Review. For full reviews coverage, see Screendaily.com

Ajyal youth film fest in brief Speed Sisters Dir Amber Fares. Pal-US-Qat. 2014. 80mins

An engaging, high-octane documentary that delves into both the problems facing Palestinians and the struggle for women to be accepted in a male-dominated profession, Fares’s debut feature Speed Sisters is a savvy and nicely spikey film about the first all-women rally team in the Middle East.

The film is an accessible account of how five young women (four drivers and their forthright manager, Maysoon Jayyusi) take on the Palestinian motor sports world on their own terms. Competitive car racing started in Palestine in 2005, and the Palestine Racing Federation owns no land and holds its events in empty lots. While male competitors can practise driving anywhere they find space, the women — Marah Zahalka, Noor Daoud, Betty Saadeh and Mona Ennab — hone their skills on a patch of land close to an Israeli detention centre.

Set against the backdrop of a country facing restrictions on movement, with military occupation presenting issues a-plenty, Speed Sisters tackles the political and practical issues but never makes these the focus of the story; instead it is about the women, their lives and their need for speed.

Mark Adams CONTACT SOCDOC STUDIOS

film@speedsisters.tv

Comet Dir Sam Esmail. US. 2014. 91mins

Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet Dirs Roger Allers, Gaetan Brizzi, Paul Brizzi, Joan Gratz, Mohammed Saeed Harib, Tomm Moore, Nina Paley, Bill Plympton, Joann Sfar, Michal Socha.

Can-Fr-Leb-Qat-US. 2014. 84mins

The sheer weight of its intentions and illustrious source material sometimes weighs heavily on Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, but in the end this enjoyable and tender film — made up from the work of a series of wonderful animators — is gently watchable, punctuated by memorable moments and impressive voice performances. It is worth celebrating for its compassion despite the simple story stuttering rather than flowing. Based on The Prophet by Lebanese author Kahlil Gibran — the popular volume of poetry has been read in more than 40 languages since its publication in 1923 — the story is set within a simple linear structure, allowing the various animators to provide their individual take on different verses. The formal plot takes certain liberties with the book, using the story of Mustapha (voiced by Liam Neeson), a writer and artist who has been held for years for supposedly writing provocative and subversive texts. On the day he is to be released he befriends young Almitra (Quvenzhané Wallis). As he is taken by police to be sent away on a ship, she follows him and observes his interactions with locals and officials.

Mark Adams CONTACT WILD BUNCH

www.wildbunch.biz

30 Screen International December 12, 2014

Enjoyability trumps intellectually rigorous believability in Comet, a fizzy yet pleasantly barbed romantic dramedy in which a pair of hyper-literate but difficult twentysomethings give their relationship a workout. Jumping back and forth between vignettes spanning six years and different points in their connection, this twohander is an engaging cinematic disquisition about the white-hot passion and toxic exasperation of young love, as well as a rather wonderful showcase for Justin Long and Emmy Rossum.

Dell (Long) is a self-slandering postdoctoral scientist working on cancer drugs when he meets sarcastic Kimberly (Rossum) at a Hollywood Forever Cemetery event during an evening meteor shower. After she saves him from a passing car, he saves her from an awkward first date. Dell and Kimberly, each unhappy in their own way, strike up an immediate chemistry, and are seemingly bonded by the manner in which they challenge each other. The rest of the movie chronicles their first night together, a roundabout argument years later in a Paris hotel room, a train encounter that leads to a rekindling of their relationship, a long-distance phone fight and a final rapprochement.

In addition to tracking ground with (500) Days Of Summer and Like Crazy, Comet has a pinch of the heightened emotionalism of that former film, wherein the aggrieved central character spends considerable time and energy trying to reconcile the reality of his lover’s behaviour with an overly idealised version of her.

From a technical perspective, director Sam Esmail

and his below-the-line collaborators deliver a well-conceived package that makes good use of the movie’s limited budget. Cinematographer Eric Koretz composes shots in the style of a music video, with faces frequently flush to the side and/or in corners of the frame, communicating the levels of slipping-knot detachment of its subjects. Similarly, Esmail and editor Franklin Peterson often break up their chronological jumps back and forth in time with a stylised cutting technique that recalls an overused VCR tape, with newer, dominant memories impinging on and erasing older ones.

What most keeps Comet interesting, and from tipping into indie-convention preciousness, is the quality of the writing and the fierce commitment of its performers.

Dell is nominally the protagonist, and given that he selfidentifies as potentially suffering from narcissistic personality disorder, there is no shortage to his entertaining dialogue (“You have terrible taste in men because you’re so superficial,” is his idea of a pick-up line).

Over the course of his career, in movies such as Accepted, Dodgeball and For A Good Time, Call…, Long has shown crackerjack comic timing. His characteristic verbal dexterity gets a good workout in Comet, but neither does he shortchange Dell’s neediness and vulnerability. Rossum, meanwhile, is no mere sparring partner; she showcases a much wider range than her previous film work has allowed.

Brent Simon CONTACT IFC FILMS

www.ifcfilms.com

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Reviews in brief Montana Dir Mo Ali. UK. 2014. 98mins

Slickly made UK urban revenge thriller Montana looks to combine the style of local crime drama Kidulthood with the themes of Luc Besson’s Léon (aka The Professional). It may seem by-the-numbers in terms of plotting and structure but it aims to come up with a fresh style of local genre fare that blends gang violence with the broader story of a young man being mentored in murder. The gritty London locations and casting of Ashley Walters and Adam Deacon mean the film harks back to local gang films such as Top Boy and urban comedy Anuvahood, while the addition of a grim-faced Lars Mikkelsen (The Killing, Headhunter) gives it a more sophisticated edge and could help it work in markets outside the UK. Screen Star of Tomorrow McKell David plays Montana, a 14-year-old who Dimitrije (Mikkelsen) teaches the dark arts of the assassin, while also advising him on honour and respect. Initially the film finds it difficult to string together a London street-gang drama with the tale of a limping Serbian assassin and his bid for revenge. But things settle down once the story plays on the master-pupil aspect.

The Pyramid

Mark Adams CONTACT THE SALT COMPANY

Dir Gregory Levasseur. US. 2014. 89mins

Egyptology-themed horror movies, initially inspired by tabloid tales of the curse of King Tut, kicked off with The Mummy in 1932 and have remained an occasional sub-genre ever since — most recently revived to commercial success with Universal’s fantasy-adventure The Mummy romps.

The Pyramid opened day-and date on December 5 with North America in 16 markets for $3.8m, earning $1.4m in both the US and Russia — where it made second place — $638,000 in Malaysia to grab the number one spot and $366,000 in the UK. The directorial debut of Grégory Levasseur, Alexandre Aja’s favoured screenwriter (Haute Tension, The Hills Have Eyes, Maniac), The Pyramid kicks off as if it will be an up-to-the-minute essay in the form, with the discovery of a unique three-sided pyramid in the Egyptian desert just as civil unrest sweeps the country.

With only hours before they have to quit the site, father-and-daughter Egyptologists Holden (Denis O’Hare) and Nora (Ashley Hinshaw) send a robot probe into the pyramid only for it to get lost, prompting a hurried expedition — chronicled by Emmy-chasing TV journo Sunni (Christa-Marie Nicola) and her British cameraman Fitzie (James Buckley from The Inbetweeners) — to retrieve the valuable gadget.

However, in a mash-up of the recent catacomb-set As Above, So Below and Howard Hawks’ camp classic Land Of The Pharaohs, the team find themselves trapped underground by ancient devices, harried by hairless mutant cats who resemble Dr Evil’s pet, lost in

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a puzzling labyrinth and ultimately coming face to face with a very physical incarnation of half-man/halfjackal god Anubis.

Like so many contemporary horror films, this sets out to be an essay in the found-footage genre — with characters humping cameras through narrow underground tunnels and greenlit footage showing the horrors going on the dark — but cannot quite stick within the confines of the format.

Screenwriters Daniel Meersand and Nick Simon (Removal) try to work up intergroup tension with the father and daughter arguing over approaches to archaeology, and the cameraman constantly nagging the reckless journalist. This all serves mostly to make unsympathetic characters even more irritating, and involves a lot of tin-ear dialogue (“Why can’t you stop being an archaeologist and start being a human being?”; “Out of the shitty room into the kitty tomb, which also smells like shit”) does not help make the doomed souls onscreen any more engaging.

The few scares are rote jumps copied from a dozen other films, with one moment that echoes both Alien and Deep Blue Sea. Suggestions that the Gods of Ancient Egypt might have been aliens, that the Freemasons are somehow mixed up in all this and that cutting edge archaeology — involving satellite imaging — is opening up new areas of mystery are just token.

Kim Newman CONTACT 20th CENTURY FOX

www.salt-co.com

Magician: The Astonishing Life And Work Of Orson Welles Dir Chuck Workman. US. 2014. 93mins

Can the life and work of an often thwarted yet amazingly prolific prodigy of stage and screen be condensed into 93 minutes? Why, yes, if splicemeister Workman is at the controls. Assembled with flair, Magician: The Astonishing Life And Work Of Orson Welles is a lively and entertaining documentary that swings with informative forward momentum. The recent announcement that Welles’ uncompleted opus The Other Side Of The Wind is finally on track for a best-guess version as early as May 2015 could give an additional boost to release in the US, and Workman’s film should go on to attract viewers worldwide. The film-maker divides the story into broad chapters (The Boy Wonder; The Outsider; The Gypsy, etc) covering Welles’ entire life from 1915-85. These he fills with vintage snippets of the late director holding forth in various interview settings over the years, augmented by previously filmed comments from admirers and collaborators and a pleasing ratio of original material shot for this project. The result could almost fool a novice into assuming Welles is still alive and looking back on his antics with lucid good humour.

Lisa Nesselson CONTACT COHEN MEDIA GROUP www.cohenmedia.net

December 12, 2014 Screen International 31

AWARDS PEOPLE Compiled by Andreas Wiseman

andreas.wiseman@screendaily.com

BIFA’S ROLL OF HONOUR

The cream of the UK film industry was out in force at the 17th British Independent Film Awards, held at London’s Old Billingsgate on October 7. Clockwise from left: man of the moment Benedict Cumberbatch was in attendance with fiancée, Sophie Hunter; Pride scooped the award for best film; Brendan Gleeson won the best actor prize for Calvary ; Belle’s Gugu Mbatha-Raw was named best actress; and Yann Demange won best director for his debut feature, ’71.

BRIEF HISTORY Helen Mirren and director Tom Hooper hosted a special screening of Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory Of Everything at Working Title on December 1. Attendees included Eddie Redmayne and writer-producer Anthony McCarten. Pictured, right, at the event are (from left) Hooper, Redmayne and McCarten; pictured far right are Gillian Anderson, Redmayne and Mirren.

FRESH EYES

Tim Burton and Christoph Waltz

32 Screen International December 12, 2014

Director Tim Burton and star Christoph Waltz talked about their new drama, Big Eyes, after a screening by The Weinstein Company at The May Fair Hotel on December 7.

The film tells the true story of how plagiarist Walter Keane (Waltz) took credit for his wife Margaret’s (Amy Adams) popular paintings for decades.

Burton remembered growing up in Burbank, California, where “we didn’t know the difference between a painting and a print”, but he remembered seeing Keane or Keanestyle paintings everywhere, from his grandmother’s house to the dentist’s office. “I found them disturbing, even as a child,” he remembered. Yet he later met Margaret Keane and even commissioned a piece.

Meanwhile, his Ed Wood writers, Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, brought him a script about the Keanes they had quietly been working on for years.

Waltz said he, too, remembered the style of painting from growing up in Vienna, but admits as an adult he “considered it kitsch”. But after talking to Burton

about the role, he realised “my snobbism is worthless in storytelling”.

Margaret Keane worked with Alexander and Karaszewski while they were writing early drafts, and she came to the set one day. But Burton says she is “one of the shiest, most private people I’ve ever met. It’s a challenge to portray someone so internal and private.”

However, Burton was proud that Keane was moved to tears after watching the film for the first time. “She trusted us to tell her story… we have her blessing.”

And Waltz has also come round to Keane’s work, saying it “represents a very specific segment of a very specific culture from a very specific time in San Francisco”. He even owns a Keane original, after the artist generously let him choose any painting in her gallery. He said: “I picked a really scary painting, it’s an atypical Margaret Keane; it’s one face with 50 eyes. I said, ‘Can I have this one?’ and she smiled at me and said, ‘I knew you would pick this.’”

Wendy Mitchell

www.screendaily.com

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