January 07, 2009
Some more of my esteemed fellow Phoenix critics have offered their lists...
BETSY SHERMAN
Ten Best
1. The Wrestler
The Wild Samoans meet the Dardenne Brothers in Darren
Aronofsky’s penetrating character study, starring an awesome Mickey Rourke.
2. Tropic Thunder
In a great year for comedy, Ben Stiller’s Hollywood
satire was the funniest and most audacious.
3. Appaloosa
Ed Harris directed and played the sheriff in this
beautifully woven buddy Western, co-starring Viggo Mortensen as his protective,
introspective ally.
4. The Visitor
Tom McCarthy, a sensational screenwriter and director of
actors, gave the great Richard Jenkins a well-deserved lead role.
5. Waltz with Bashir
The creative
unfolding of this animated memoir turned one young Israeli soldier’s story into
a symbol of the world’s silent complicity in a pivotal 1982 massacre.
6. Trouble the Water
An outspoken New
Orleans resident’s home movies of Katrina and its
aftermath were shaped into the year’s most powerful American documentary.
7. Iron Man
I used to consider Robert Downey Jr. the most annoying actor
out there—until last summer, when he gave weight to this movie’s anti-hero
turned superhero, and then fully committed to the fully committed white actor
playing a black GI in “Tropic Thunder.”
8. Happy-Go-Lucky
Mike Leigh’s experiment in cheerfulness, with Sally Hawkins
as standard-bearer, was an infectious success.
9. Milk
Martyrdom became just one aspect of the life of Harvey Milk
in Gus Van Sant’s vivid biopic not only of a man, but also of a time and a
place.
10. Stop-Loss
Kimberly Peirce made one of the few good fiction films about
the Iraq War, starring a surprisingly convincing Ryan Phillippe.
These movies made me laugh a lot: Pineapple Express, Step
Brothers, OSS
117: Cairo Nest of Spies, You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, The Grand, Ghost Town,
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Five Worst
1. The Love Guru
Mike Myers, come back to us, please!
2. The Tracey Fragments
This interminable split-screened navel-gaze directed by the
usually sane Bruce McDonald received a belated release after Ellen Page got
hot.
3. Valkyrie
Tinker-toy Nazi
history (take one American box-office star and attach British character
actors), it did no justice to its fascinating subject.
4. Hamlet 2
This farce’s attempts
to shock reeked of desperation.
5. The Romance of Astrea and Celadon
Erich Rohmer’s
medieval cross-dressing love story was just too damn nutty.
CHRIS WANGLER TEN BEST
Happy Go Lucky
The Edge of Heaven
My Winnipeg
The Class
4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
Wendy and Lucy
Frozen River
Milk
The Wrestler
Cadillac Rec |
PEG ALOI
Top Ten Films of 2008:
(in no particular order)
1. Happy-Go-Lucky
This film's chaotic color palette is an odd choice for Leigh,
and appropriate for this light-hearted but dark-souled character study.
2. Khadak
a quietly devastating film set in Mongolia, which blends portraits of
two unstable cultures: the pastoral nomads and the decrepit manufacturing
towns, both beset by Chinese military thugs.)
3. Doubt
Intimate, intense, Shanley's film debut is all sere colors
and Dutch angles; it doesn't feel like watching a movie somehow, but for Streep
and Hoffman's star quality performances.)
4. Milk
Riveting, inspiring, and about time, too. Sean Penn has
never been better, which is saying a lot.)
5. Iron Man
Downey
Jr. nails it, and for once, orgiastic special effects have been used for good
instead of evil.)
6. Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
I know the conceit was offensive to some; but I think not
many critics gave this a chance. The performances are flawless and the tone
surprisingly balanced.)
7. Tropic Thunder
can't decide if the timing was extraordinarily god or bad,
but this was sheer comic genius.)
8. Under the Same Moon
Sentimental but suspenseful story of a Mexican=2 0boy who
travels alone to visit his mother in California--the
young lead has charisma dripping out of every orifice.)
9. The Dark Knight
Heath Ledger's creepy, over-the-top Joker is the stuff
post-screening nightmares are made from, and Christian Bale is the most (or
perhaps only) interesting Batman casting choice since Michael Keaton.)
10. Frost/Nixon
I want to eat this with a spoon every night for dessert.
Frank Langella is enjoying a fine late-career renascence.)
Top Five Worst (and by that I mean Most Disappointing)
Films:
1. Nobel Son
2. The X-Files: I Want to Believe
3. Brideshead Revisited
4. Alien vs. Predator: Requiem
5. The Happening
December 30, 2008
Many critics noted Ann Savage’s performance as the daunting
mother in Guy Maddin’s “My Winnipeg,” her first screen role since playing “Sister
Harriet” in “Fire With Fire” in 1986 (one
wonders how she might have tackled the Meryl Streep part in “Doubt”). It was
enough for her to garner the 13th spot in the Best Supporting category in the “indieWIRE”
2008 Critics Poll (she
got my vote .)
The incomporable noir actress who starred in the Edgar Ulmer classic “Detour”
(1945) proved that she could still evoke terror and hilarity as the consummate,
castrating imperatrix. She went out on a high note, indeed. She died on Christmas Day at the age of 87.
December 29, 2008
I invited some of my highly respected colleagues at “The
Phoenix” to send me their ten best lists (and worsts, if so inclined). Here are
a few responses.
MICHAEL ATKINSON
1. My Winnipeg
Meta-oneiro maestro Guy Maddin’s most personal launch into the
timeless void, and probably his simplest, and perhaps his most moving. A single
city hasn’t received an ambivalent valentine this lovely and inventive since,
well, maybe ever.
2. Ballast
Lance Hammer’s Missisippi Delta debut brings the neo-neo-realist
syntax of the Dardennes brothers home to roost, and makes you hold your breath.
Couldn’t be any finer.
3. Wendy & Lucy
Kelly Reichardt’s crowning feature (a homeless girl, a dog, a
small town in Oregon)
is much lean-indie ado about nothing and, of course, nearly everything. Sneaks
up on you like seizure.
4. Silent Light
Mexican troublemaker Carlos Reygadas dares to reinvent Dreyer,
and Ordet, among Mexican Mennonites. Physically gorgeous, pensively quiet, and,
after a week at MoMA in New York,
coming to an arthouse near you.
5. Still Life
Jia Zhangke found the ultimate monolithic, life-changing metaphor
for modern Chinese life in the Three Gorges Dam, and the vast millennia of
history it’s obliterating inch by rising-water inch.
6. Waltz with Bashir
The best Israeli film ever made? And a doc that’s also an
animated dream-film? And a direct address of the Sabra and Shatila massacres of
1982? And a cartoon that’s unlike any you’ve ever seen? Incredibly.
7. Flight of the Red Balloon
Hou Hsaio-hsien goes to Paris,
and brings essential Hou-ness with him. Who could complain?
8. The Wrestler
Both Darren Aronofsky and Mickey Rourke redeem themselves and
save their souls with this bone-chilling slice of life; what they’ll do next is
less clear.
9. Synecdoche, New York
Maddening, unenjoyable, doggedly pure-hearted nihilism, tricked
out with Kaufmanic structuralism but so nakedly lonesome it hurts. I swore I’d
never sit through it again, but now, a few months later, I’m thinking I might.
10. My Blueberry Nights
Wong Kar-wai comes to America, too, and brings his
essential Wongness with him. Where would we be without it? Again, the naysayers
will be silenced and shamed in short order.
Runners-up, in order: Times and Winds, The Duchess of Langeais,
WALL-E, Appaloosa, Che, Alexandra, Pineapple Express, Jellyfish, Milk, The Edge
of Heaven, Boy A, My Father My Lord, Encounters at the End of the World, Snow
Angels, Chop Shop, Stuff and Dough, In Bruges
Haven't seen yet: A Christmas Story
TOM MEEK
Best
1.Encounters at the End of the World
Werner Herzog makes another existential documentary like "Grizzly
Man" about man and nature, this time in the frozen depths of the Antarctic Ocean.
2. Slumdog Millionaire
Danny Boyle tackles India’s
caste system, world wide capitalism, American pop and Bollywood in one seamless
flow.
3. Waltz with Bashir
The animated account of an Israeli incursion into Beirut as a cathartic
remembrance by the filmmaker is haunting.
4. The Visitor
Tom McCarthy (“The Station Agent”) weaves together another
affecting yarn about disparate lives tossed together.
5. Wall-E
Andrew Stanton (“Finding Nemo”) gives us robot love and the best family
entertainment of the year.
6. Milk
Great performances in
this portrait of gay political mobilization. Important now more than ever
because of Prop 8.
7. Let the Right One In
Forget “Twilight,”
this is the bloodsucking teen drama with teeth.
8. Man on Wire
A documentary about
the man who tihghtrop walked between the Twin Towers.
It’s a veritable “How'd he do that?” reel.
9. The Pool
A subtle, haunting coming of age saga in India, that
rewards as it builds.
10.The Bank Job
The year's best thriller.
Worst
1. In the Name of the King
Pointless Medieval drivel
2. One Missed Call
Just hang up.
3. The Ruins
Killer vines, creepy.
4.Prom Night
There will never be
another Carrie.
5. The Spirit
A sinful rehash of “Sin City.”
GERALD PEARY
1. The Pool
This tremendously accomplished first feature by American
documentarian, Chris (“American Movie”) Smith, got one week this Fall at the Kendall. Well, grab a DVD of this disarming tale of two
street kids in India
who become obsessed by the empty swimming pool of a rich family. Subtle and
thoughtful, “The Pool” is the anti-“Slumdog
Millionaire,” more “The White Balloon” or Satyajit Ray, steeped in
Indian culture, than hyperkinetic, slumming Danny Boyle.
2. Milk
It hardly ever happens,
that a film this joyous, communal, beautifully realized is also (yawn!)
politically correct. Thanks to filmmaker Gus Van Sant, star Sean Penn, and
2008’s most committed ensemble — Emile Hirsch, James Franco, et. al. — for a
heartfelt celebration of the late Harvey Milk, a true-life superhero.
3. Chris & Don: a Love Story
Another fabulous
gay-themed film, 2008’s finest documentary is Guido Santi and Tina Mascara’s emotional tale of the three-decade
relationship of Cabaret scribe, Christopher Isherwood, and artist Don Bachardy,
thirty years younger. The couple lived about LA, and their story is also the
cultural history of gay Hollywood. Look quickly for the most
unexpected home-movie clip: mystery writer Raymond Chandler paddling about in
Isherwood’s swimming pool.
4. Let the Right One In
2008’s best foreign film
is this Swedish horror movie about the deep, doomed relationship of a lonely young boy and an equally
melancholy, desperate female vampire. Properly frightening, “Let the Right
Thing” is also tender and genuinely poetic, the most adult horror film in
years. What next from filmmaker, Tomas Alfredson, a discovery?
5. Waltz with Bashir
If only “Wall-E,” superb in its first half hour, hadn’t
turned cute and sentimental! “Waltz with
Bashir” never falters, and this graphic memoir-in-motion is 2008’s most
successful animated work. It’s also a
courageous political film, in which the filmmaker-narrator, Ari Folman, an
ex-soldier, gradually implicates himself in the most horrible deeds, when, in
1982, the Israel military occupied Lebanon.
6. My Father My Lord
Two films from Israel in my top ten! Set in a
Hasidic community in Jerusalem,
David Volach’s miniaturist parable of religious Jewish life has Old Testament resonance. A
prideful rabbi and his wife take their beloved only son for a holiday trip to
the Dead Sea, with deadly results. An
intensely spiritual movie, whether you are devoutly secular, or a Moses freak.
7. W
Oliver Stone’s best-realized film in twenty years, with Josh
Brolin a revelatory George W., delivering 2008’s finest acting performance. Not a ditsy caricature!
Are you one those who believe the real Bush, Jr., should be condemned to a
lifetime of chowing dogfood in a Guantanamo
cage? I am. So it’s some kind of miracle of Stone storytelling that I was
enraptured by the life story of our loathsome prick President.
8. Trouble the Water
Hurricane Katrina has precipitated an inspired sub-genre of
documentaries: “Camp
Katrina,” “Axe in the
Attic,” “When the Levees Broke.” Swimming to the top is Tia Lessin and Carl
Deal’s “Trouble the Water,” with its vivid, amazing maelstrom-in-your-face home
movies of the dire floodings, and the heaven-made rap songs of Kimberly Rivers
Roberts, the movie’s never-say-die, African-American protagonist.
9. In Bruges
An old-fashioned
gangland neo-noir, with an unusual Belgian locale, and a zesty script by
Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, who also, a first-time helmer, provided the
deft direction. The hit-man cast is likewise great, especially big-bodied,
gunsel-with-a-heart-of-gold, Brendan Gleeson, 2008’s Best Supporting Actor.
10. Our Disappeared
2008 was another banner year for excellent Boston documentaries. I can name a half-dozen of them, all intelligent, high-minded
works. Juan Mandelbaum’s “Our
Disappeared” is at the top of the list for its unflinching reopening of Argentina’s dirty war on the left
during the 1970s, when thousands of people were murdered, “disappeared,”
including a charming ex-girlfriend of the filmmaker. The most chilling moment
in a 2008 film: Henry Kissinger, there on the spot in Buenos Aires, blithely endorsing the
killing-fields military government.
December 24, 2008
These might not seem the worst films of the year, nor even
the worst that I might have seen (I have a privileged position that allows me
to assign the very worst to other critics). Those are too easily dismissed and
mean nothing in the big scheme of things. These films are the worst in that
they represent some of the most pernicious trends in movies.
1. “The Spirit”
I could not equal the hilarious description of the sheer
awfulness of Frank Miller’s epic travesty of the Will Eisner comic written by
STV on “The Defamer” website. But it also poses an intriguing question. Could
Miller be the 21st century equivalent of Ed Wood’s innocent ineptitude? Or is Miller’s
sensibility too mean, sophomoric and banal? We could wait until “Sin City 2” to
decide, but I’d rather just say the movie sucks and get it over with.
2. “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”
Woody Allen’s pseudo-sophisticated piffle is to art films what
“The Spirit” is to honest pulp: a fraud. And both star Scarlett Johanssen.
3. “I’ve Loved You So Long”
This is what happens when French film directors take their cue
from faux foreign films by Woody Allen. Kristin Scott Thomas puts in an
Award-worthy performance apparently because she wears no make-up, has no
expression, speaks seldom (and in French), and smokes cigarettes. The
first-time director Philippe Claudel delays his
bluntly obvious and pointless “plot
twist” with a cinema illiterate soap opera narrative and tosses in that odious
Euro-pudding cliché, the chipper multi-cultural extended family.
4. “Choke”
Having gone a long way to debasing avant garde literature, Chuck Pahlaniuk
has been making ventures into moviemaking. Clark Gregg’s’ adaptation of Pahlaniuk’s
novel is to independent filmmaking what “The Spirit” is to pulp and “Vicky
Cristina Barcelona” is to art. In short: contrived, puerile and thuddingly
unfunny. But no Scarlett Johanssen.
5. “The Life Before Her Eyes”
I was thinking of reserving this last spot for the hysterically
overrated and painfully twee “Rachel Getting Married,” but Jonathan Demme is
often a great filmmaker and a nice guy. Besides, how could I resist including a
film that plagiarizes from Ambrose Bierce’s “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,”
exploits the Columbine tragedy, diminishes the career of Uma Thurman, all to the purpose of making a
vile anti-abortion argument? Have that baby or die.
December 22, 2008
In which Aronofsky deconstructs rumors that he was inspired
by Roland Barthes’s essays on wrestling and striptease, and explains why Marisa
Tomei’s character is not a dental hygienist.
PK: Marisa Tomei, was she who you had in mind first for the
role?
DA: It was a very hard role to cast, because of the nudity,
so I kind of cast a big net, and I didn't have any ideas about who I wanted
because I figured I'd be more of a beggar than a chooser. Just because I think
a lot of women were wary of working with Mickey, and because it's a stripper
role. You know, as soon as they met Mickey, and had a sense that he was an
amazing actor, and if they were brave enough to look at the stripping stuff as
just part of the role, then maybe they would come and do the film. I think any
actress who looks at it knows those images are going to end up on the Internet,
pirated by people looking at them for whatever reason they want to look at
them.
PK: Strictly professional reasons.
DA: Yeah, so it's tough. But it was really important to get
the reality of this film across, so I just had a very straightforward
conversation with Marisa at the beginning and she seemed game.
PK: Well she had sort of broken through that barrier with “Before
the Devil Knows You're Dead.” And was it a difficult process?
DA: I think it’s always hard when an actor is out there
revealing themselves physically or emotionally, you know, you got to feel for
them. You can't help but feel for them, because it’s tough. But you know, inch
by inch you get through it. Dance by dance, step by step we got through it.
PK: Well you had a similar thing at the end of “Requiem for
a Dream.” It’s
a motif now.
DA: What?
PK: The stripper. Two movies out of four.
DA: Was she really a stripper at the end? [of “Requiem for a
Dream”] I think she was a little bit past stripping.
PK: Yeah, I guess so. Why couldn’t the Marisa Tomei character have been a dental hygienist
or something, why did she need to be a stripper?
DA: Believe me, you know, when you've got an independent film
and you put a stripper in it a lot of red flags go up. Not only because it’s
difficult to cast, but because it could easily be a cliche. The more we looked
at it, the connections between a stripper and wrestler were just so
fascinating. The fact that they both have fake names, the fact that they’re
both up on stage, the fact that they both create a fantasy for the audience,
they both wear spandex. And more importantly, that time and age are their great
enemies. Eventually, they’re going to have to stop doing it, because their
bodies can't do it anymore. There’s this whole line between the real and the
fake. Mickey doing something fake in the ring, but that's become his real
world. Marisa is really strict about keeping her real world from the fantasy
world at the club. And the way that Mickey's character mixes it up and Marisa's
character is fighting to keep it straight, was just an interesting
counterpoint, or whatever you call it.
PK: One's alienated from his child, one isn't.
DA: Right. So there was a lot of that, and it just made a
lot of sense and kind of worked and so even though we looked for something else
to do with it, and there was just nothing that worked. And in reality, most
wrestlers, when they’re done with a gig, is they go to the strip club and spend
their money, in real life. So it just made sense to make it work.
PK: On the other hand, strippers don’t go to
wrestling matches when they're done.
DA: No, they don't.
PK: Why is that?
DA: Unless they’re performing in it; there are actually a lot
of strippers that work the wrestling circuit.
PK: They’re both objectifications of the body for commerical,
spectacle purposes. One’s an objectification of suffering and other one's
of pleasure. There’re essays on wrestling and
striptease
by Roland Barthes; I'm sure you’ve read them and that’s what inspired you.
DA: [Picks up copy of “The Barthes Reader.” Puts
it down] No, I never read them.
PK: Want to talk about “RoboCop?”
[Aronofsky is said to be involved in a remake].
DA: Uh-uh.
PK: How about “The Fighter?”
[Another project]
DA: Uh-uh.
PK: No?
DA: I don't know what’s next. I'm working hard trying to get
a film together. We'll see what happens.
PK: No “Noah?” [likewise]
DA: No, I got no comment.
PK: How come you didn't write the screenplay for this?
DA: I was working on the post of “The Fountain” and I kind
of like the idea of bringing in a new writer, and ultimately it was great because
you're kind of collaborating with a whole other brain and so that creative
person can bring so much to the table. Rob [screenwriter Robert D.
Siegel] brought a lot to the table. Being the editor of “The Onion” for seven years means he's a
pretty funny guy and he brought a lot of humor to the film.
PK: Yeah. I thought there was a lot of humor in “Pi,” but
mostly in the next two movies it was kind of like, humor-free. That something
you’re working on?
DA: Yeah, all my student films were comedy so it's just
kind of weird that those were kind of solemn.
PK: He came up with the 80s line? The Kurt Cobain line? [referring
to 80s heyday of Heavy Metal, the Ram says “Then that Cobain pussy had to come
and ruin it all.”]
DA: Yeah, there were actually more lines there, but it
didn't work.
PK: You believe that?
DA: I thought it was very funny.
PK: You were into hip hop though?
DA: I was into hip hop. I would say the 80s kind of sucked
too.
PK: Not as bad as the 90s.
DA: I like the 90s. I would say I’m pro-90s. The 90s were
like the roaring 20s. people were having a good time, there’s a lot of
positivity, you know things were pretty positive.
PK: How about the new millennium? Looking up?
DA: Everything’s just changed a couple weeks ago, it’s been
really interesting.
PK: So after “The Fountain,” fhow
devastating was that for you after putting so much work into it twice to have
it not be embraced...
DA: I think it has been embraced by a lot of people that get
it, deeply. And that’s kind of the great reward. I mean, ultimately, I made an
expensive art film, that was for a specific audience. But that audience that’s
gotten it has just been great. I made the film I wanted to make and for me it
was a great success.
PK: Even though it’s not the original version you had
planned.
DA: No, ultimately, that was in many ways a completely
different film, the first version. The second version became a new film in many
ways and it became one that I loved and I got to make the film I wanted to
make.
PK: There seems to be kind of a religious sense in these
films........some sort of attempt to achieve an absolute. Would you say that’s
true?
DA: That’s for you to say my friend. But there are definitely
some Christ references going on in this one. There’s a little bit there.
PK: You’re being a little cagey.
DA: It’s hard to talk about those metaphors and stuff.
PK: Did I ask you about “Robocop” already?
DA: Uh, yeah, you did and I gave you like a 20 minute
answer.
December 17, 2008
After spending years trying to put together his epic about
eternity, “The Fountain,” only to have the critics excoriate it, Darren
Aronofsky decided he was ready to face the ultimate challenge: Mickey Rourke.
So far the gamble has paid off in a big way for both director and actor. “The
Wrestler” won the Golden Lion for Best Picture at the Venice Film Festival and
the film and the director and actor, not to mention co-star Marisa Tomei, have
come up repeatedly as winners and nominees in the ongoing flurry of critics awards, Golden Globes and ten best
lists. So Aronofsky was in an upbeat mood when I interviewed him last month
while he was promoting the film in Boston.
PK: It seems like for the first ten minutes of the movie all
you see is the back of Mickey Rourke’s head. It’s like there’s going to be some
sort of Phantom of the Opera thing when he turns around. What was the reason
for that?
DA: Well I think a lot of people are going to come to the
film wanting to see Mickey, and since we’re going to spend 100 minutes with him
I think it's good to give him a long intro. And so, I also think Mickey’s
one of those actors who can really act with his back, with his body, and gives
a lot of the character away, and I just thought it would be an interesting way
to slowly introduce him.
PK: You get to see his hair. Is that his hair?
DA: Some of it. He had expensive extensions.
PK: But his hair is on the long sort of scruffy side.
DA: His hair? Yeah, he has long hair.
PK: Was he your first choice?
DA: Absolutely, yeah. I’ve been...we were trying to make it
with him for a very long time, about 2 years. It was very hard to get the money
for him because basically every financier in the world said no to him.
PK: Why is that?
DA: I think no one thought that he could be sympathetic. But
when I sat down with him, beneath all that armor, it was completely clear that
he had this big jelly heart filled with love and spirit and soul, and no one
had given him an opportunity in years to play someone sympathetic.
PK: Has he ever played a sympathetic role?
DA: I think yeah, absolutely. I don't know if you'd directly
call it sympathetic, but the stuff in “Angel Heart,” or “Barfly” even.
PK: What was it like working with him?
DA: He was great. You know, tough and a challenge, filled
with ideas, but between action and cut, no one more natural, no one better have
I ever seen.
PK: He showed up on time, and knew his lines..
DA: Yeah, showed up on time, knew his lines well enough. You
know, the whole spirit of it was very free-natured and flowing and so
improv became a big part of it.
PK: So there were some spontaneous moments.
DA: Oh, most of it.
PK: So you didn’t really stick to the script religiously?
DA: Some of the jokes we stuck to, and then definitely how
the scripts structured the scene, but within that, Mickey was allowed to do
whatever he wanted.
PK: Some examples?
DA: Well, like the deli scene, when he’s serving people, you
know we didn’t have enough money to close the supermarket or the meat counter,
so there were real people walking up and so I just had Mickey start serving
them. And a lot of those people in those scenes are not actors, they’re real
people. All the wrestlers, those are real wrestlers and that was all
unscripted.
PK: But they knew it was a movie, those people in the deli
scene and that this was Mickey Rourke and not...
DA: They didn’t actually know it was necessarily Mickey
Rourke. I’m not sure how recognizable he is, especially with his hair up in a
net. But you know, I was like, “hey, we’re making a movie, do you mind if we shoot
you?” and they’d be like, “no, go ahead,” and then afterwards we had them sign
a release and that was that.
PK: So they know they’re in the movie. How about the old lady
with the...
DA: “...a little more, a little less? “
PK: Yeah.
DA: She was an actress.
PK: Too good to be true. But going for a long pass...
DA: No, that was a real guy. The woman he gets the fried
chicken for is a real person and all the people working behind the deli and the
meat counter were real people.
PK: Real supermarket.
DA: Real supermarket, really happening, really open to the
public.
PK: Where was this?
DA: In New Jersey.
PK: I guess, didn’t you injure yourself....the “Ram Jam”
or something?
DA: Yeah, the “Ram Jam.” Basically the last day of
shooting, Mickey was like, “you gotta leap over the top ropes,” and after 35
days of shooting, I was all stiff and cold and out of shape, but I just did it.
Ran back, hit the ropes, came running, leaped, I made it, except for about that
much of my boot, hit the rope and went straight down to the ground. Two months
later I got an MRI but I’m fine now. It was some type of neck thing.
PK: Everyone had to do that?
DA: Lot of people did it. Lot of the crew..
PK: Marisa?
DA: Marisa wasn’t around.
PK: She would’ve done it though.
DA: I’m sure.
PK: So this movie came up--you had the idea awhile ago, but
it sort of came up after “The Fountain.”
DA: Yeah.
PK: Or in between the two “Fountains.” Can you talk about
the evolution of the idea?
DA: Well, it was an old idea. I had the idea in the early
90s, and it just came from the observation that no one had ever made a picture
about wrestling.
PK: Not even Barton Fink.
DA: Yeah, well Barton Fink was writing about it. But it’s
funny, that irony never left us. When we got to the Venice Film Festival, they
asked for a director’s statement, and I took a quote from Barton Fink and
handed it in as my director’s statement. No one got the joke, but it was funny.
But um, you know, no one had ever done it, and there’s been so many boxing
movies it’s like its own genre...
PK: You’re making one, aren’t you?
DA: Hopefully. And um, so eventually I started to research,
and the more research I did, the more fascinating the world was.
PK: I had no idea there was this underworld of washed-up
wrestlers, I thought they were all like on TV, making a lot of money.
DA: Yeah, that’s what happens to these guys when they’re no
longer wanted for the big leagues.
PK: Is that guy with the staples an actual...
DA: Yeah, that’s the Necro Butcher. I highly recommend
everyone YouTube it. He's kind of
this underground American cult hero. He's a top billing marquee name in this
world, and he’s just known for doing crazy stuff. Most of which we never even
showed.
PK: Yeah. Real staples going into Mickey Rourke?
DA: Can't give away movie tricks.
PK: Is it safe to say the Ram died for our sins? There’s all
these sort of Christological references...
DA: If not now, when?
PK: You have the reference to “The Passion of the Christ,”
and he's got that Christ on his back.
DA: Well the Christ tattoo is just a tattoo that Mickey
actually has. All the tattoos you see in there are his. We removed some, there
were a few we took out.
PK: How do you remove them?
DA: Well it was actually a real pain. First you put a lot of
makeup on them, but we didn't really calculate that there would be a couple of
sweaty men wrestling, rubbing against the mat and stuff, and we looked down at
the mat and it was covered in pink colored makeup and stuff. We had to do a
bunch of digital fixes, and digitally take some out.
PK: So why do you think there are so many boxing movies? This
reminded me a little bit of “Fat City.”
DA: That movie was a big influence.
PK: And “Requiem for a Heavyweight"
which has wrestling in it...
DA: It was interesting to have such a modern take on
wrestling back then, but I leave it to Rod Serling to get things right.
What about boxing movies?
PK: What is it about them? Why have there been so many
movies about boxing and so few about wrestling?
DA: Well I think boxing is an easier translation because it’s
such an obvious athletic competition, it’s man against man. I think wrestling
is harder to put into a sports movie because there’s so much that’s theatrical
about it. So how to make that final match dramatic is a big question. That to
me was the great challenge and the great victory that Rob [Robert D. Siegel,
the screenwriter] had when he delivered the script was to make that final scene
mean, you know, even though it’s not a real competition, because it’s not
like it doesn’t matter who wins, yet to make it dramatic was a tough thing to
do, andI was always impressed with that. I think wrestling, most people hear it’s
fake and they think it’s a joke, but the reality is if you're a 6' tall, 260
pound man jumping off the top rope, even if you’re trying to protect yourself
and your opponent, you’re gonna wake up the next day feeling it. So.
PK: Is there going to be a “Wrestler 2?”
DA: We'll see how this one does.
PK: It's been doing pretty well, I guess, if you look at the
all the Oscar buzz sites, though I don’t know how seriously you take those.
DA: Best song? Bruce Springsteen.
PK: Oh yeah, that'll definitely win. But did you foresee
this success when you came up with the movie?
DA: We finished filming 2 days before the Venice Film Festival.
So, you know, then we won the Golden Lion, and it was the third American film
to win it in 65 years, and it was never even a pipe dream, to win the Golden Lion.
So it’s been way beyond our expectations, and I think at this point it’s all
gravy.
PK: What were the other two that won?
DA: Cassavettes won for “Gloria,” and Robert Altman won for “Shortcuts.”
PK: Good company.
DA: Not bad, not bad. I’m humbled.
.
Next: Namedropping Roland Barthes.
December 14, 2008
I have just finished tossing away the discarded ballots and
finished eating the leftover donuts and can report the results of the Boston
Society of Film Critics voting for 2008.
Let’s just say it’s a bit eclectic, a bit of a smorgasbord, with
only three films getting more than one award (“Wall-E,” and “Slumdog
Millionaire” getting two, or maybe one and a half,given the tie for Best
Picture, and “Milk” getting three, or
maybe just two and a half, given the tie for Best Actor, and many of the top
runners (“Benjamin Button,” Frost/Nixon,” “Revolutionary Road,” “The Reader,” “Rachel Getting Married”) getting
zilch.
Here are the winners:
Best Animated Film:
“Wall-E”
Best Editing:
“Slumdog Millionaire” (Chris Dickens)
Best Cinematography:
“Paranoid
Park” (Chris Doyle)
Best Documentary:
“Man on Wire”
Best Screenplay:
“Milk”
Best Supporting Actress:
Penelope Cruise (“Vicky Cristina Barcelona”)
Best Supporting Actor:
Heath Ledger (“The Dark Knight”)
Best Actress:
Sally Hawkins (“Happy-Go-Lucky”)
Best Actor:
Tie between Sean Penn (“Milk”) and Mickey Rourke (“The
Wrestler”)
Best Ensemble Cast:
“Tropic Thunder”
Best Director:
Gus Van Sant (“Paranoid
Park” and “Milk”)
Best Picture:
“Wall-E” and “Slumdog Millionaire”
Best Foreign Film:
“Let the Right One In”.
Okay, I guess you could say “Paranoid Park”
won one and a half, too, since Van Sant won for both it and “Milk.”
December 10, 2008
Speaking of Oscar nominations, the canine half of “Wendy and Lucy”
has already reeled in a prize from Cannes,
the diamond studded collar given to the winner of the Palm Dog.
Which makes me wonder why the Academy doesn’t consider similar
awards for outstanding dog performances. Maybe call it the “Old Yeller” after
the inimitable scene stealer in the 1957 Disney classic. Not only are there are
plenty of nominees to choose from this year, but they also make a surprisingly subversive
statement about the nature of class differences in our society.
Lucy is an obvious nominee, but she’s just one of the mutts
standing up for the down and out as she remains faithfully loyal to Michele
Williams’s indigent Wendy even after the car breaks down and the kibble runs
out.
She’s joined by the long-suffering German Shepherd in Lance
Hammer’s “Ballast.” He
silently shares the hardships of his owner Lawrence, a hardscrabble property
owner in the Mississippi Delta whose personal and family woes match the bleak
winter landscape.
Moving from fiction to fact are the two pit bulls owned by
Kimberly and Scott Roberts, whose home video footage of Hurricane Katrina is
included in Tia Lessin and Carl Deal’s documentary “Trouble the Water.” Will
these two happy-go-lucky pooches survive? It’s enough to curdle Old Yeller’s
blood.
The grim streets of a Detroit
neighborhood are the stomping grounds of Daisy, whose grizzled visage is
matched by those of her owner — nasty, intolerant, beer-chugging and gun-toting
Walt Kowalski in Clint Eastwood’s “Gran Torino.” Eastwood himself plays Walt, a
Korean War Vet and ex- autoworker who sees the Asian immigrant family next door
as the bad guys, not fellow victims. But you know that someone with a dog like Daisy
can’t be all bad.
Moving up the class ladder, we have Jesus Christ, the dog in Josh Levine’s
“The Wackness.” He
belongs to Dr. Squires, the pot-smoking,
pill-popping Manhattan
shrink played by Ben Kingsley. Along with Squires’s teenaged pusher/patient
Luke, played by Josh Peck, Jesus Christ might be the only friend Dr. Squires
has.
The middle class family has its best friend in Marley, the golden
lab in David Frankel’s adaptation of the John Grogan memoir “Marley & Me.” Could
Marley embody the goofy spirit of
rebellion struggling against bourgeois comformity? I remember when that
part used to be played by Owen Wilson.
Things get dicier for dogs when we move deeper into the upper
classes, as in Michael Haneke’s “Funny Games.” http://thephoenix.com/Boston/Movies/57827-most-dangerous-Games/?rel=inf
You have to feel for Lucky, you have to feel for this dopey golden retriever,
even though he’s spoiled rotten, yappy and almost as annoying as the little
kid.
He’s got nothing on Chloe, though, the title bitch voiced by Drew
Barrymore in Raja Gosnell’s “Beverly Hills Chihuahua.” Like Lucy,
she’s got a diamond collar, too; the difference is that Lucy’s was earned.
December 08, 2008
The tradition of No Make-up = Best Actress goes back at
least to Kathy Bates in "Misery" (1990). If a movie star doesn’t have
her face all dolled up for the camera that’s got to mean she’s really digging
deep and giving a raw performance. This year offers a powerful slate of
un-made-up actresses and no doubt we’ll be seeing their names come Oscar time
on February 22.
Such as Kristin Scott Thomas in Philippe Claudel’s “I've Loved
You So Long.”
Here’s the formula for Oscar success: just out of prison, chain-smoking, no
affect, and not only no make-up but speaking in French!
Anne Hathaway has a similar set-up in Jonathan Demme’s
"Rachel Getting Married" :
just released from re-hab, smoking and the kind of garden shears hair cut that helped Angelina
Jolie get her Oscar in "Girl, Interrupted" (1999). But did she screw her chances by
getting a makeover later in the movie?
Sometimes an actress needs a little help from the make-up
department in order to achieve that no-makeup effect. Like Kate Winslet in Stephen Baldry's “The
Reader”who takes on “Monster” (Best Actress for Charlize Theron in 2003) proportions
after spending most of the movie as an ex-SS hottie parading around in the
nude, and no make-up.
Less extreme both in the look and the fascism is Meryl
Streep who embodies every Catholic boy’s mother superior fantasy in John Patrick Shanley's “Doubt.”
And then sometimes the no makeup look actually does go along
with an Oscar-worthy performance, as with Michelle Williams in Kelly
Reichardt’s “Wendy and Lucy.”
December 05, 2008
Forget about Springtime -- these days it’s Yuletide for
Hitler and Germany.
The people at “Ad Age” aren’t alone in trying to figure out why the Third Reich is
such a popular Holiday theme this year (and in previous years, as with “Black
Book” and “The Good German,” but not to this extent) on
the big screen.
On Christmas Day two Nazi-related movies will be
opening: Bryan Singer’s “Valkyrie,” with
Tom Cruise as a Nazi officer involved in the real-life plot to assassinate the
Fuehrer, and Stephen Daldry’s adaptation of the Bernhard Schlink bestseller
“The Reader,” in which Kate Winslet plays a former SS camp guard who after the
war has a fling with a 15-year-old. Already in the theaters is “The Boy in the
Striped Pajamas,” about the friendship between the son of a concentration camp
commandant and a Jewish inmate. And movies upcoming for the New Year include “Defiance,” a
true story in which Daniel Craig portrays one of two three Jewish brothers who lead a
partisan group harrying the German Army in Poland, and “Good,” in which Viggo
Mortensen plays a professor who, “Conformist”-like, is seduced into the Nazi
Party.
Bring the kids!
After so many Iraq War movies have bitten the dust you have
to wonder why the studios think movies about a far more horrible historical
catastrophe will mix well with the joys of gift-giving, wassailing and Auld
Lang Syne. Then again, perhaps a lot of people these days don’t associate World War II and Nazi genocide with
real life, but with other movies on the subject. "New York Times" film critic A.O. Scott, for one, suggests that Holocaust movies have just become another
genre, like zombie movies or rom coms, formulaic exercises designed to
entertain and placate common anxieties.
And the means of doing so appear to be a kind of homeopathic therapy. If you look at the
movies released last year at this time, they were no walk in the park, either.
Like “The Savages,” about caring for a parent with dementia, or “The Diving
Bell and the Butterfly” about living with total paralysis. On the lighter side
you could check out “Sweeney Todd” (serial killing) or “Charlie Wilson’s War”
(the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan)
and that popular comedy about unwed teenaged pregnancy, “Juno.”
I guess the dynamic involved is countering real life dreads
(these days being the economy, the environment, terrorism, the political future
of Sarah Palin, etc) with big screen bugaboos that reflect fears either safely
buried in the distant past or which have been so thoroughly incorporated by
movie conventions and clichés that they are rendered painless.
Indeed, this season’s Nazis and World War II horrors seem
not so bad after all. I mean, how bad could the SS be if it could turn out a
hot babe like Winslet, who is nude almost throughout the picture? How evil
could the Third Reich have been if they could count among their number a hero
like eye-patched Tom Cruise putting his life on the line to do in Hitler?
As
for genocide, there’s payback as we get a chance to kick Nazi ass in the form of
007 Daniel Craig’s avenging Jewish partisan in “Defiance.” It might mollify outrage at the enormity
of the Holocaust — which anyway in “Boy
in the Striped Pajamas” comes off as a kind of a really sad family melodrama.
So as you stare economic disaster in the face this holiday
season, buck up. Things have been worse before, and look at what entertaining
movies they make today!
November 23, 2008
Explosions in space, fatalism and injustice, screwy flashbacks, sequels to "28 Days Later" and "Trainspotting," among other controversies. Man, this turned out to be a long interview.
PK: I'm struck by two images. At the beginning of “28 Days Later" you have London
completely abandoned. And at the beginning of this film you have series of
shots of Dharavi, which I guess is one of the most densely populated parts of
the world.
DB: Well Dharavi might be the biggest slum in the world, as
many as 2 million people live in Dharavi and it’s a very small area. So it has
that intensity of occupancy, and you're not allowed to film from the sky. It
was very difficult to get permission to film because they're paranoid about
national security there. But when you fly in, on the international flights, you
can see the extent - you can see these images, so we tried to recreate
that. We did manage to get up in a helicopter and get some shots that we
shouldn't have taken.
PK: Was it easier to make that shot than the shot of London with nobody in it?
DB: It was more fun - well - the London
shot was more fun because emptying London
is obviously a great challenge
PK: And a good idea.
DB: It’s a good idea and a great challenge and we sort of
got away with it. We did it just before 9/11, you'd never be able to do it now.
Then we had the bombings, the 7/7 things. You'd never get away with it now,
they wouldn't allow you to do half the stuff we did. but we tipped over a bus
in White Hall, which is like the main governmental street, where the prime
minister lives - tipped this bus over on its side and it’s just spilling oil
onto the side of the street
PK: Were you considering making the sequel of that? Do you
think you might do the thirda sequel?
DB: Well no, I couldn't do the sequel because I was doing “Sunshine.”
And since I took like 3 years to make that
I didn't have a whole lot to do with it, but I did do some second unit for them
and I did a bit of work on the script, threw them a few ideas, bit’s and pieces
like that.
PK: There is a sequel alluded to, at the end of the -
DB: Yeah, there is an idea for it, but it doesn't come out
at that - it’s a big jump forward really, it’s a leap.
PK: “28 Years Later”?
DB: Not quite that, but it’s a leap, a leap.
PK: “28 Minutes Later”?
DB: If we can do it, it'll be good.
PK: You'd like to direct it?
DB: Yeah, definitely. I'd love to. I watched the second one
because I hadn't had a lot to do with it. I was able to watch it like an
audience on its premiere. I couldn't believe how enjoyable it was for the
audience - you felt genuine enjoyment for the kind of ride you were on. It
makes you appreciate it more than when you make it. You feel anxious about them
when you make them, but you don't appreciate them in an easy way - in a simple
way, in an easy way. You always appreciate them in a complex way.
PK: Will there be a sequel to “Sunshine?”
DB: No I don't think there will be a sequel to
“Sunshine.” I'm certainly not going back
into space, it’s a pretty hard work in space, certainly harder than Mumbai.
PK: Makes you appreciate Stanley Kubrick’s work.
DB: It just makes you realize why it took him so long to
make it. Because it’s impossible to do and the problem is his fault
partly, because the audience is watching - you can feel them watching in
a way super critical, if you put the slightest thing wrong about what can
happen in space, they're like noooo. It’s really rigid.
PK: It always bugs me in films set in outer space, where you
can hear an explosion or other noise. That’s
why in “2001” that airlock scene is so impressive.
DB: Yes, that’s certainly one of the things that people have
mentioned to me.
PK: I’ve also heard you're doing a sequel to
“Trainspotting.”
DB: Yeah, there is a sequel to it which is this book, “Porno,”
which Irvine [Welsh] wrote as kind of a sequel to it, but our idea
for it, is like when old actors, the same actors are playing the same
characters, are noticeably older, but they look different and without
prosthetics and makeup and stuff like that. They look like 20 years has passed
- because then you get that feeling of - because really they're in they're
early twenties in the early part of the film and they're sort of in a place
when you can do anything with your body and get away with it and then it'd be
really interesting to see them in their forties, when the bodies begin to creak
and they just begin to unwind and they have those issues as well about what
they're going to do with their lives, kids and all of that kind of stuff.
Could be an incredibly boring film, unlike the first one. The problem right now
is that they just don't look old enough.
PK: You won an audience award in Toronto and people are saying this is going to
be the next “Juno” or “Little Miss Sunshine” in terms of indie success. Are
you surprised by how well it has been doing?
DB: I did think it might work in Britain,
in part because we have a good sense of India, in part because of the
colonial past, large Indian population, highly visible. Dev Patel - who plays
the older Jamal - he is from a TV show in the UK,
which is a cult show, and he definitely has a presence, so we thought it could
work in Britain.
But to be honest - here - I couldn't quite see how it could work knowing how
difficult it is to release films here. But then of course what you forget is
the underdog story and how much a part of the psyche that is here. The idea
that someone has a dream and they don't have a lot going for them but they have
this dream and it fuels everything and they chase it. The values that
people have here - it has to be allowed to come through sometimes, it’s
really important, I think thats why the film works. I do these Q&As,
people talk about it and people say - I nearly walked out when the kid was
blinded, people say that, and yet they clearly forgive it by the end of the
story, they're caught up in it and forgive it by the end.The redemption really,
it goes back to that at the end, it shows you that [blinded] kid smelling the banknotes
[years after the incident], it’s not like it avoids letting you know what it’s
like there, what things go on there, it kind of reminds you of them at the end,
but still people forgive, and that I think that is like India because you do
forgive it, some of it is unforgivable and yet you do forgive it, you do think,
wow, what a place. That was my take on it at least, you do think, what a place.
PK: Some people say
if you forgive it you’re going to allow the injustice to continue, if you
accept injustice as your destiny your destiny falls into the hands of the
people with the power.
DB: Yeah, I felt that and that would have been my take before
I had gone, definitely, that kind of fatalism is a passive - it’s a mechanism
by which the rich control the poor. But
I think that’s too simplistic definition of it, I really do, having been there.
Not everywhere; I was only in Mumbai, and I do believe it is an accurate-ish
picture of the city, of bits of the city. There’s a great book about it called “Maximum City” by
Suketu Mehta, which is about Bombay.
PK: You took a lot of
liberties wirth the book this was based on, “Q&A” by
Vikas Swarup.
DB: The novel is very
rigid; it’s like a series of short stories, it’s question - answer - question -
answer, and that would have never worked in a film. You’d bore of that. That was one of the skillful things that
Simon [Beaufoy, the screenwriter] did, he made time fluid really, back and
forward, so you could leak stuff early that would get answered later or deny
people access to things that he is apparently able to answer. I remember when I
read the script I felt intelligent and it’s not often that scripts make you
feel intelligent; it’s quite a rare quality to impose intelligence on you,
PK: You never let a screenwriter know that though?
DB: No he’s a good guy actually, he’s had a tough time
actually since “Full Monty,” he’s had
quite a rough ride since then
PK: He couldn’t make
money on the Broadway show or anything?
DB: He got - he gave
away supposedly all his points in it, before it came out. It’s one of those
kind of like oh my god stories that is typical in the films in Britain. He was
after some extra money or something for a mortgage or house extension or
something like that and they said okay we’ll give you this, but we’ll take your
points.
PK: You gave him a good deal?
DB: On this one, yeah.
PK: You mentioned the
fluidity of the time; one thing that really bugs me in movies, other than
having noise in space, is flashbacks when they are used in a clumsy way, when
they begin with one person’s point of view and end up with nobody’s point of
view. Did you have a particular scheme when you worked yours out?
DB: Well I certainly
knew on this one, I certainly wasn’t going to do huge backwards and forwards,
you know - the way they do them these days and I wanted it to try and get it so
that by the end you could literally go back in time in one line and then go
forward in time and there’s a line where she picks up the phone on the show and
he says “Whats your name!” and you just cock to her going as a kid “my name is
Latika” and I love that fact that you could - because Simon had set up this
time free time thing, if you got it right you could go anywhere really and it
makes things like the slum chase and things like that, it makes it feel like it’s
happening now even though it happened ten years ago, but it makes you feel like
you’re expereincing it all now, that’s what we were after, the immediacy of it.
PK: Music helps a lot too.
DB: The music guy is
mega famous there, A.R. Rahman, he
is a god, he is one of their gods, they worship him ,the people, he is one of
the largest signed artists in the world, nobody’s heard of him and yet he’s
sold more records than the Beatles or something. Every CD he put out sold a hundred million
copies. Of course they don’t pay very much per CD, but it does register as a
sale. He was wonderful, a lovely man, again, he’s got that thing, sooo
powerful, and yet his obligation is to give it back if he can, so he started up
this school, a music academy observatory kind of thing, incredibly modest man,
genuinely so, not superficially modest, genuinely modest man.
PK: I think you came
up with a perfect way of keeping people seated through the entire end credits,
which is to have a Bollywood musical production number
DB: It’s nice to make
em wait for the credits. 'Cause you can feel them all about to go and they - oh!
PK: Did Bollywood
have an impact on how you made the movie?
DB: I’d seen a bit of
Bollywood before I went and I saw quite a bit of it when I was there, but it
wasn’t so much that except that song and dance, especially dance, is part of
the fabric of life, it’s like, for me, if you came to Britain and made a film
and didn’t include anything about football - well soccer - I would feel it was
fake. Or it’d be like coming to America
and there’d be no motor cars in your film, it’d be fake? You got to have, if you spend eight months there, you got
to dance at some point, so it was just where to put it because it was not
related to the questions and answers. There was a music question but it had to
do with the singing of traditional Indian songs. I couldn’t put it in the film so
I put it at the end of the film.
November 21, 2008
Meanwhile, the conversation with Danny Boyle, whose “Slumdog
Millionaire” now seems to be on every pundit’s Best Picture short list. But there also are
some, such as the ever reliable Armond White, who think the film is an
exploitative sop to liberal guilt. Here Boyle continues to sing the praises of
Mumbai, despite the poverty, corruption, crime, injustice and mutilated
children his film depicts.
PK: . ..another horrific thing is the guy who enlists the
orphans into begging and then puts their eyes out and the gangsters and all
that; as shown in the film it just seems to be kind of dicey environment
altogether.
DB: I'm sorry if it comes across like that, although those thing
are true, they do happen, it’s actually an amazingly wonderful place to visit I
think. And it kind of builds something into your life that will be absent
otherwise. It gives you the respect, values that we've kind of lost a
bit, I think really.
PK: Such as?
DB: Communal value – there are these extremes there, terrible
extremes obviously and it’s one of the reasons that good storytelling can go on
there, because you've got these extremes, but they are connected, not separate,
like we tend to separate our extremes I think.
And I think it is true
that if they build a tower block, at the bottom of it is a slum, where the
people live who built it, and the people who live in the tower block don't try
to chase them away, they sort of feel connected to those people who live
underneath. And like the star of our show, Anil Kapoor, very rich man, very big
success story, the responsibility he feels towards the poor, he is very
interconnected, it’s not a pr thing or individual moral thing, it's a social
thing that they all feel. You know, they all feel interconnected. And I've lost
sight of that, but you can feel it, they're very close. It’s an extraordinary
thing really. I think it influences this idea they have, destiny, you
know - this thing it is written - which can to our eyes can look really passive
and very accepting, but it doesn't actually work like that because although you
might accept that your hands have been chopped of when you're a kid to make you
a better beggar and you see people like that, people come up and knock on the
car windows and you can see! Their hands have been cut off! It's not an accident
and it’s not a disease, it’s been done deliberately, you can see it. But
in that acceptance, you must also understand that, Anil Kapoor [the famed Indian actor who plays the gameshow host in "Slumdog"] has accepted his
destiny as well. Which in our eyes is much more glamorous blah blah, but
he still feels a responsibility towards that person, he is still connected
towards that person, it’s quite difficult to explain, you sense it when you're
there, really.
PK: Did he come from a lower level of society?
DB: Anil?
PK: Yes.
DB: Not so much, although he did portray, he is known like that,
because he portrayed that in his early films, he was, there is an extra
resonance to casting him in this film which we can't appreciate, but they'll
get in India, which is that he was, as he says in the film "I'm a slum kid
myself, I'm the only one who knows what it’s like to come from nothing and to
get everything." He portrayed a couple of people like that in his
early films. Although he himself comes from a film-making family. He
would never be described as being from a poor family.
PK: Many people have described the film as being Dickensian, I
think you have described the film in the same way. But aside from the story
telling there is a kind of call out to reform in Dickens, and pointing a finger out
injustice and so forth, do you see the film also doing such a sort of
thing?
DB: I don't think you can, I was very conscious in going there
that I didn't want to bang a drum really, I didn't first of all, want to make a
film about white people in India and I also then, as a western director I
didn't want to make a film that kind of was objective or judgmental really, to
try and make the film from the inside out really, from the view of the people
themselves and tell the story that way. So in that sense it isn't. There
are obviously some extraordinary things going on there, the police are corrupt,
like I say, there is no – the infrastructure is inadequate, there's lot of
things for them to tackle.
PK: Poor people are exploited?
DB: Poor people are exploited… Well I have to be very careful in
how I answer that because I went to this one place, Dharavi, which is a big
slum there, there was this guy and he recycled huge vegetable cans of oil, I
mean they've been recycling in a way that we've only begun to recycle, they've
always recycled, it’s part of the pattern of life, you see people throw things
away, and you think – don't throw that on the street – but they do it because
there is a whole other level of people who pick it up and recycle it and
they're sort of like, bound together. He recycles these things – the area this
was in was just in a shack - when you went in it was like a cathedral, all of
these drums everywhere, like, thousands of them being recycled, in different
stages of being recycled. And I said please can I come and film here and
he said, no you can't because I've let “National Geographic” in here twice
before and they've taken photographs — and in fact subsequently I found some of
the photographs of “National Geographic on this place, I found them on their website, amazing place.
But he
said, “I've asked them twice not to say that we're poor and, he said, every
time, they depict us as being poor. So I've decided to stop any filming or
people taking photographs anymore. You can have a look around. I don't regard
us as being poor and I’ve provided work
here for about 25 – 30 people for twenty years.” And he said, "we're very
proud of what we do, this is an industry, it’s self sufficient, it provides
work, it’s profitable, and it’s doing a good thing. Why should you call
me poor?” I was affected by that and that
really affected the film, the spirit of the film. It's like I said – you can't take your value judgments there. You
can’t just say, they're poor, there's so
much poverty here, because they don't see it like that. And they have to solve
it themselves. There are over a billion people there, which is enough
people to start a planet, never mind a country, it’s like – they will, they
have to! And that's what is happening at the moment, the focus is shifting to
them sorting their problems out and it’s rather than us coming in, IMF style,
and saying: DO THIS DO THIS DO THIS, you won't be poor! You will be fucking
poor because we still have poor of our own, in a different way, although maybe
they'll be less of you who are absolutely poor. But you have to let them sort
the problems out. So I won't argue that I could go in there and be judgmental.
I would defend my right not to be judgmental.
PK: The film is not to get people stirred up about how unjust
things are in India,
but to be entertained by their stories or to be exhilarated by the universal
human values?
DB: Yeah, yeah, if you like. I mean the values of the story are
universal. His romanticism, his like underdog status, that dream he has
that he will fulfill, whatever is put in his way he will go through
together.
PK: It’s kind of like “A Life Less Ordinary,” same sort of romanticism.
DB: I guess so, I guess so, I mean it’s made by the same filmmaker,
so I suppose there would be.
PK: I thought that was a very underrated movie.
DB: I liked that, not many people liked that. Girls like it quite
a lot. I think it’s more irrational than people normally see things as, but in
a lighthearted way, not a particularly heavy way.
PK: Then there’s “Millions.” There
you have saints appearing. You wanted to be a priest when you were younger?
DB: Yeah, I wanted as a kid. My mum wanted me to be a priest,
which is not absolutely the same thing, but -
PK: You didn't have a vocation -
DB: Don't think so, certainly not the way it turned out,
certainly not that way inclined anymore. But my mom was a very devoted Roman Catholic
and part of the aspiration of being a roman cat