Jane Campion, Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst & More on The Power of the Dog | NYFF59

[Music] thank you all and congratulations thanks dennis thank you um i will leave plenty of time for your questions but um i'm just going to start by asking jane to tell us about how you discovered um this 1967 novel that isn't that well known maybe well my dad's um second wife judith is a great book reader as a lot of new zealanders are actually and she sent me the novel just by way of like um you know here's a great book uh might like to read and um was just finishing the top of the lake series and just i just read it as you do a novel and um unlike many novels i read and nowadays i actually sort of got more excited the further i got into it and sort of found that the whole experience of reading this book was um thrilling um felt like it was written by someone that really knew the world and um at the back of the book there's a actually an afterward by annie prue which uh is really helpful in understanding the context in which uh savage wrote the book and um yeah it's just i didn't think about making a movie or anything like that but the point was that i just kept thinking of the themes in the story like over the next few weeks i i really um i i found it kind of haunting in a really good way and so um i just started taking more and more steps to find out um more about it like were the rights available you know for example and you know like that yeah what were some of the themes that haunted you well i think it's clearly um a really complex way of approaching masculinity you know because of its setting on a ranch where it's normally um a place where the values of masculinity are really highly valued and um i think as you've seen the film um there's some surprises about what people are keeping secret and um you know i think the pain of of um well those expectations around masculinity and i mean try not to use the word toxic masculinity but um i i i think it gave such a great sort of container in a way for studying and and thinking and rethinking of about the you know the men in this world because of course the um phil burbank is uh such a interesting study and masculinity and yet also the character that cody plays peter is is another you know he's um he's very feminine in the sort of his feminine-ness he's comfortable with it in a way that um your character finds it really uncomfortable yeah yeah did you all read the book um the actors yeah yeah it's an amazing amazing read um [Music] you know i i always hope uh in adapting a book that one of the offshoots might be that people will pick it off the shelves and rediscover it or discover it for the first time it's got this amazing terseness in it this poetry this sort of um [Music] kind of savage violent beauty to it yeah and yet it tackles incredibly complex themes in an era in which it was written in a very deft way that brings very loudly to a modern sensibility he can surmise a character in a line a story in a page in a world in a chapter it's very beautiful writing yes the book actually begins with the description of castration which puts you right at the center yeah of you know the first paragraph themes of masculinity son of ranch of course they don't allow the masculinity of the animals to exist just like one or two bulls the risks get castrated i'm just remembering so i i carry around the book with me quite a lot i haven't actually bought it but i it's covered in dirt because i was really i was the annoying actor bringing it to set all the time um uh i was always the annoying well i was in character so of course um and um it's it's a masterful blueprint so sort of as far as approaching the role for me anyway i i found it opened up a hell of a lot of understanding of film the complex building blocks that make him kristen and cody do you want to weigh in on the book or i feel like jane added more to rose than yeah more richness than what was on the page for me so you know a little bit book a lot of jane and then me myself and i'm um i don't have too much more to add but of course there's there's so many more layers and um a lot more that you can explore i guess as a book um in the book but yeah again like as you said there was a lot more depth and a lot more things that we could explore in our own little secrets that we could create as motivations and intentions for the characters in bringing it to life yeah cody and i had the secret that he killed his father and that was but that was our own secret did you know this halfway through i was told that was our secret creepy mother and son connection yeah yeah um they didn't really do that right we did you've adapted um you know you've you've adapted books for uh cinema before um and i think even the films that you have in this there's always been i think it's quite a strong literary influence so can you talk about the process of turning this into a screenplay um it i think i think kirsten is right that you do more with the character of rose than is in in the book but there are other aspects that are quite faithful in terms of the certain you know family dynamics and psychology and yeah i mean i i loved the book so that was really a great help and a challenge as well and i also um worked with my dear friend and colleague tanya sagechian who was incredibly helpful in discussing the structure and how what we might leave out and what we're going to keep in we we decided we didn't want to have flashbacks to another time and try and tell it all in one time and make that a kind of a rule but the the story is haunted by as you know bronco henry and he's a character that's very very big for the story but who we never see and it was like trying to come up creatively with ways um to have that understood or felt or discovered um which is sort of easy in a book but really difficult or things had to change and had to be created um in order for us to be able to keep remembering how important um this ghost lover was for a story and for phil burbank and you know and i think in the end of course there's those themes of the ghost like for cody's character peter that you know phil i think is going to be his bronco henry so it's that um when you have to suppress your true feelings in your love um it's safer to love a ghost you know that's one interesting choice i was going to ask you about this voiceover that we only hear at the beginning and then it sort of drops out like why have that only in the beginning well i wanted to steer the um people's attention towards peter because we see him only very briefly um at the beginning of the film and um then he's off at school before he comes back but i want them to know right that so you know in the back of their brain somewhere if it works i think i think most people can't remember what was said but i tried to keep it i had one more complicated version of it which i think had a lot of um great texture but you couldn't remember it at all but i think he's basically just saying you know you got to help your mother yeah and um that that might just trigger a memory later and just to know this isn't you know this isn't just going to be a story about um two brothers that are not getting on anymore you know right some flower making other activities happening the other thing about the book is that it is it's often described as somewhat autobiographical um so i don't know if you did much research into savage's life and into montana and you know that period andy prue really um opens that up in the afterward that she wrote in the book and um savage and then we also met relatives of thomas savage when we went and did some research and you know actually saw his ranch that he grew up in um near dylan uh in south west bieberhead montana and um yeah um so he came to the the ranch in a very similar way to peter like his mother married the brother um and of uh at that time ed brenner who um is actually the inspiration for phil burbank and um so there's quite a lot of similarities and we did actually ask is there someone who might have been bronco henry and they did show us a picture of the person that they thought could have been that inspiration as well uh so savage was a gay a gay man and he at that time um wasn't obviously openly gay and he actually married and um i i i imagine that you know when i see the book the photo of his and the jacket cover he's like wearing the tennis shoes that is so important in the uh profile for me for peter so i just sort of went like he i imagine he thought of himself as peter in a way but he also was a great horseman and i broke horses and actually his first thing he wrote was about the breaking of a you know a bronco um yeah but i you know he certainly did have a very uh you know much more complex relationship to the romance about the west um then then most people did since we have you know um the actress here i was wondering if you can talk about just assembling this incredible cast for the film maybe we can start with um benedict in a role of phil i mean this is uh a quite a quite different part i think for from anything you've played i think it's i think it's just a very complex role um and what made you think of of benedict for this part was there a particular role i mean i i was thinking of course of um you know like who could it be and benedict is somebody whose work i've always really loved um since i saw the four medics ford um yeah and then your recent television series as well which is amazing and um i i just think he's a really good actor and um that's means a lot to me and you know looking for somebody that can take on this part without worrying about what everyone's going to think of them as they play you know of course you do worry but a really cruel man um um but you i mean you need someone who really wants that challenge and benedict you'd read the script i think and you said or you're whatever then you were interested and um that meant a lot to me so we we met didn't we yeah and and also i think that benedict has got this fantastic quality for showing our actual ability to show vulnerability which um i think is so important for people connecting to a character like this it could have been so kind of like you've been so put off and just went like oh i don't know about this person at all i don't want know anything more but somehow benedict managed to bring you into the inner world of the character and some sort of compassionate relationship with his um pain you know and then can you talk a bit about preparing talk about you like this but very nice at the same time thank you very much can you say a bit about preparing for the role i mean obviously there's quite a few um you know technical skills you had to pick up yeah i won't bore you with a list of those a lot of them didn't even make the film some iron mongeri and taxidermy that didn't make it but um [Laughter] uh whistling whittling horse riding yeah it was it was a lot and roping and ranching in itself um all of that banjo playing um acting a bit of smack thing in there yeah no i mean for me it was about trying to time capsule i suppose to try and imagine myself back into that world um which required a lot of sort of subconscious work um as well as conscious work just sort of drip feeding the imagination over a long time jane gave me quite a lot of runway with this which is a rarity in my life which is a blessing for this role because it was quite a sharp term from a lot of things i've done before um and yeah to how i started i well i went to montana um i did a sort of dude camp thing which was great to try and get the dirt and the blood and the kind of sensation of what it must be like to be a body in that world doing that work um with animals and people and that culture um a lot has changed since then obviously um but then it was about leaning in near a production to costume and um and grant's work our production designer and norikos and hair and makeup and with jane collaborating to sort of piece together a kind of thing that felt good to move around it and to see my environment and understand it but yeah all the time i felt like i was um [Music] reaching um and then those lovely moments where you just stopped reaching you just let go and jane's brilliant encouraging you to do that to stop worrying about the homework and just be and let vulnerability come and something unspoken which you can't really talk into a microphone about kind of happen um and there was a lot of space and time to do that which is again a rarity and that's you know all credit to change jane's um female gaze but also her sensitivity as a human being and where she was directing the story and ari's lens work and everything else going on around it and these amazing actors one of whom is not here on the stage jesse blem as well many of you might not hear but jesse in particular as my brother to form a relationship with however odd and competitive it was with kirsten we hardly talked because we were in character all the time so once we once i'd done that work i was kind of trying to be him all the time so we're good trends now but yeah we were friends we were friends at the weekend it was very weird i didn't yeah i didn't i didn't take my homework home with me um that is homework i didn't have my work home with me i'm very jet-lagged after only a four-hour time difference from la but i've just realized it's worse it's weird right because it's like oh you got to wake up at eight yeah and it's sort of four in the morning or whatever yeah so forgive me i'm dribbling but um in my mind and in my body but air conditioning is kind of like quiet it's so respectful it's such a new york audience i love it um but it is yeah i'm i think i'm living up to my gold standard of sending people to sleep so i should apparently i do audio books that send people to sleep so if any of you suffer from insomnia in the city they never sleep just do click out i'll do maybe i'll do a read of the of the savage novel maybe that would be a way to lull yourselves to sleep after this thank you [Laughter] jane why don't you talk about the other actors yeah i just wanted to also mention jesse yeah clemens because he's not here but um that was an absolute joy to work with him and then you were really excited too ben to work with jesse i think he was there i mean i i didn't cast this film i tried to um and i i did i really pushed for jesse um he was the only person i imagined in the role from the beginning for some reason he was just there but jesse wanted you all wrong [Laughter] everybody wanted my room but i i think it's it's uh beautiful to work with an actor like jesse and i of course had noticed his work already but when you're really there with him you know he he's such a unique human anyway and such a unique actor that he just takes you like two degrees more grounded into a character than i think you really ever see anywhere else and i mean jesse also like had to try and get my hyperactivity into a zone where you could actually get to talk to me [Laughter] and he just sort of worked me and then you'd get me into the caravan and say oh you know when you did this or that you know it wasn't so pleasant and i was just so grateful that he would talk to you you know and um work on the the friendship and the relationship so i ended up like just loving him to pieces and feeling really connected to him it is a job you know like you don't you don't just like you know we're all doing quite complicated difficult things and everyone feels quite vulnerable so it is a job to make these relationships work don't you think and i mean my i'm just completely willing because i know how much you guys put okay sorry i'm just talk away from the microphone again the years of doing the um audiobooks for people who can't sleep um has taught me this anyway we're sorry jessie's not here i'm the most sorry believe me we'd be away from our kids in a nice hotel room yeah and um shall we talk about working together me and you jane yes yeah well jane jane wrote me a letter in my early 20s about working together and i saved it and obviously she's one of my favorite filmmakers and someone who her films were always as an actress something you know to look forward to you're or not to look forward to to um kind of inspire myself as an actress with the type of work i'd like to do um in my own career so jane has always been someone you know one of the the people at the forefront of those kind of performances for women i thought i really um was in love with the work that you did with sophia right back to virgin suicide it was just so mesmerizing and beautiful and then see you in melancholia oh my god that was a brilliant performance and then to find out that you've got the same birthday as me as does last one [Laughter] this is how women work together you have the same birthday [Laughter] um no and then we sometimes talk about the role right yeah yeah we did the person says to me don't worry jane i've got this i've got it you know i think it um yeah we there was a lot of difficulty actually playing a drunk person or a person that was drinking a lot yeah i think you told me to have jessie she's like any time you drink just have jesse record you right i mean we did it believe me yeah that was helpful [Laughter] and uh cody i think it was um i think a discovery for most people in this film i originally auditioned for phil actually everyone wanted that role um didn't get it so that's okay um no uh what's my name again peter peter peter extremely layered character um originally reading it i wouldn't have suspected that because he's somewhat on a secret mission until like the last kind of ten pages you you really see that he pulls something else off which is really what attracted me to the role and had me reading the script immediately again after the first time that i that i read it just to kind of go through and make sure that that's what i just experienced with this character so i saw that there was a lot to to play with and pull from and it would be an extremely challenging role but a lot of fun as well and um after meeting jane i absolutely fell in love and i feel that she saw a certain potential in me that um she could kind of push me out of my comfort zone and the boundaries that i originally kind of had in terms of just character development and all that kind of stuff and and that's what she did and really tell me how i realized absolutely i mean it's been something i've spoke about a lot and it's unfortunately been sound bitten sometimes in some of these interviews and it just sounds like i said she made me extremely uncomfortable so i didn't mean that at all but um no just in terms of creativity like we all i guess have our approach uh when it comes to developing a character and creating a world for the character and understanding um but i feel like if i went on this endeavor with just my own tools and my own approach then it wouldn't have been anything near what i saw on the screen and and the performance that i'm i'm so proud of um thanks to jane i feel like you yeah you just took me through uh a lot of different techniques and and and nitpicked and and pushed me um yeah out of my comfort zone in a good way this is a very modest young man because when he arrived um we just jumped straight into an improvisation i was like i came in the dorm and oh my god looks like peter um and so i started to pretend like i was interviewing you or something as yeah yeah yeah i mean neither of us quite knew what was going on but we went along with it yeah we did i believe there was supposed to be sighs or something and i thought it was a general meeting and we got there and we tended peter and was asking him about his mother and questions and immediately i could just see how brilliant cody could be as this character and i was like so excited so i mean he was already fantastic i don't know these little bits i might have added like oh no absolutely but i mean i i was thinking like oh my god we've got a peter that's better than the peter in the book you know that's so sweet no i i am in love with his kind of more grounded less murderous side [Music] i relate to that he's an intellectual he's uh he's a hermit he's very alone and he studies life and he's passionate about life and he's extremely curious and he's one thing i really love about him is he's extremely courageous and confident in himself being someone who's extremely kind of a feminine myself i feel like there was a lot i could take on and and learn about him and just things that i had to experience in my own life you know my dad's like six foot six bikey covered in tattoos and that was something that i i knew i was never really going to grow into or or be so i had to kind of really embrace who i was in that same way that he did so i really enjoyed playing that i wanted to bring ari in and then we can take your questions this is your first time working together ari and jane yeah we'd actually done uh we met kind of briefly on it we did a commercial okay it was a very a very short shoot but this is it's definitely a yeah a journey we'd not been on before in case people don't know i think arya has shot i think some of the most striking films of the last few years like lady macbeth and in fabric so jane um can you talk about deciding to work with aria on this one and maybe just figuring out the visual visual language for the film uh i'd also seen some shorts that i already shot that i thought were really incredibly beautiful the camera language and it was like stunning and having worked with her on the short it was just like a little icebreaker really wasn't it yeah and um i felt like you know okay so this is a very masculine story in a way that i'm telling her and i don't want to abandon all the ladies so i thought oh i'll have a female dop and some wouldn't be brilliant if it could be ari um and that we could go on this adventure together um and ari was really open to the idea of a really really long production um pre-production which i think is absolutely vital and giving any project as uh full legs and we we both knew it was a big stretch for both of us i think yeah but it was i mean incredibly enjoyable almost we started about a year before we shot knowing we had to knowing kind of more or less the location where we might shoot we wanted to see at the time of year we were shooting so that was a whole year before the cameras were rolling we were walking up hills and down um valleys trying to find the burbank ranch find the mountain range that could be so iconic and uh yeah just also like you were saying about the relationship just getting to know each other because a film shoot is quite an intense experience um and it's just such a can be so lovely when you've got a kind of friend and ally versus someone you've really just met six weeks ago um yeah yeah i think we made really good friends i love ahri she's just amazing and um we we also spent a long time discussing the language of the film that we wanted to use photographically and you know trying to describe it and trying to think about it and sort of i think we got there you know we never quite put words to it did we really but no we also talked a lot about the characters and i mean ari's a dop that works for a deep interest in character and in story which is you know lovely and to me that's when the visuals are really embedded inside the mechanics and the the themes of the story everything then they're so much more meaningful than just looking beautiful yeah i think the only the most definition we kind of got to was to um for every frame know what the information was and to have absolute kind of clarity clarity of information which seems quite simple but to know what that information is is quite a um a lot of attention to detail and work to know what what is the information at what point um which seems yeah it seems seems simplistic but it's um yeah to do that you need to know everything there is to know in the script to make the other side too which is like not intellectual at all like um the work that you did with benedict um in the sacred place with the um scarf where it was just me and you and benedict and we really know what he was going to do next and just had to be highly intuitive and sit in a situation where you could you know try things yeah i mean ari there was a yeah there was a huge amount of freedom with that to just ignore the trappings of [Music] a camera following your movement it just felt it felt yeah i felt unobserved i felt free to do what i needed to do in the space and yeah see what happens yeah i think that's one of the amazing things about you jane that you allow everyone to be vulnerable and i think we all the three of us were in that kind of willowy glade at that point we're all kind of vulnerable to and open to not knowing what was going to happen but to be know that there's kind of no such thing as a mistake that there's just uh take a risk and i really love that sequence it's one of my favorites in the film i think i think that you know you just got to take risks that you just got to trust you know and that's uh there's no really other way around it okay let's take some questions from the audience um yeah we can start here okay talk about the question for jane about working with johnny greenwood on the score johnny greenwood is a genius it's just like uh another word for it and it's an absolute uh pleasure to go through the process with him and he really led it i mean after i heard a piece that he did called water um with the australian chamber orchestra richard tinetti etc and i didn't even know it was his and i am a fan of this anyway and i went like [ __ ] what's this i think this could be for us and it turned out to be johnny greenwood again so um we got an exemption from uh financing in order to work with johnny because i really felt we needed someone with his depth as a as a composer and um and you know i just think he's extraordinarily talented and what he basically did was he um built up um a lot of suggestions i mean i was really just sharing what he was going to do because actually um you know he'd say i like horns or what about mechanical piano and what about violas and and i'd just go yes yes you know try whatever you like so he sort of created a palette of what he was feeling from the script and um my experience is it's much better for composers to work off their own instincts and intuitions and not actually have the film trying to fit themselves into that and so he created a suite of pieces that he felt you know like a complete freedom to create and we maybe had in the end about 30 or 35 of these pieces and so that when we started editing we started fitting them to pieces and parts of the film and then we'd share that back to him but really mostly these you know you know we might be struggling with one or two cues that we had really high hopes for um and then some surprising things happen like we'd use half of one and half of another and they just sort of worked and he could bridge them um but it was a very interactive process and after that he any of the like digital sketches that he made or he replaced with actual instruments as much as possible and his he's so modest and so easy going it was like um i was sort of like scared to ask for things like not sure he quite got this moment he'd say oh great you know like give it to me like oh great i want to do some more violins or i want to try this i want to try that i want to do some more strings it was just like um he really enjoyed any sort of challenge we threw his way and um he was just beautifully modest and we've been putting a book together about the making of this project and we decided to include the um emails between him and me during the process and tanya was also involved in it too she actually plays piano and i don't read music or do anything so i feel quite vulnerable talking to composers at times but he was never like that it never made me feel less or anything of that kind but it's it's really interesting because we haven't met in fact we're going to meet in london for the first time because of working through the pandemic it's just a very very very different situation and i you know probably suited him really well because he's quite shy but so we just had this massive zoom relationship um and email relationship uh where i've become very very fond of them and and i love what he gave us for this film and how it how it sits in there with it thank you okay uh yes over there i'll try to paraphrase i think earlier you were you said you didn't you were trying not to use the phrase toxic masculinity um and i think the question is about hmm yeah okay sorry yeah yeah i think it was i think it was to you and it was about you i think you said you were trying trying you hear that you hear that phrase talk to masculinity so much that you begin to wonder if it means anything okay i mean you know i think we do know i mean something but you just tried to find another way to describe it yeah i mean i am really interested interested in um bro both concepts of femininity and masculinity and how they play out in our lives you know because i believe it's in everybody and we all have both and also when we deal with alpha males it's um it's it's painful um they're so dominating and i am interested in that because i have to put up with it [Laughter] just i suppose maybe to follow up on that a lot of people have have pointed out that this is your first film that focuses on men um but i do think that masculinity is a theme that you have explored in your film so i don't know how much you see this as a departure from the other films i do see this is a um a departure in fact almost like a bookend you know like if you look at the piano clearly looking at um much more from a much more feminine perspective i see this as a kind of bookend of another large um big landscape piece film exploring another kind of uh you know masculine myth yeah and you know savage has helped help me um find a piece really that i could feel really um happy and i mean it took me a little bit uh to find my feet in it but um and and also you know i did a lot of psyche and dream work just to help me really uh explore that um because i didn't want to stand back from i wanted to really go in there and you know from my point if you imagine what um phil was feeling and they've been so suppressed you know um so i you know it was a challenge and i really and once i got my got in there and got dirty with it i really enjoyed it and also i think you know the the male actors that i'm working with like they're just my friends and um it's really you know yeah i don't know it's just friendship can kind of just trump everything in a way i think um that there's it's a way where we just sort of accept each other as individuals and personalities do you i mean i don't know what do you think does it make a big difference being directed by a woman um it's uh i i i wasn't you're not i wasn't gender aware you know but you know what i mean i'm just working with a really talented director and someone who i trust yeah and of course you bring a sensibility which is about your life experience to your work but um i have worked with with female directors before um not as many as male but i didn't i'm very glad it was you directing this film that's all i can say about it but you entire your entirety not just your gender thank you thanks jane you mentioned dreamwork can you elaborate on that um yeah i just was sort of trying to figure out a way to um i you know i actually felt quite a lot of fear before getting into the business of directing it um and understanding these characters as well as you could because it's a real thing for me like i'm going to do something i want to do it as well as i possibly can i can't stand the idea of um not um giving this project what it needs and i had the strong feeling that i i needed to do some psyche work like to to get inside it and to to really feel what especially phil burbank was feeling and thinking and so i worked with this woman called kim gillingham who's um yeah he encouraged me to have these dreams and so anyway it was the most amazing work i've ever done and she's the person the only person i think that's really helped me as a director to go very deep she sort of facilitates this dialogue between yourself and the character and so like all the things that you say are the only things you say yeah it's kind of like therapy between you for me it's like therapy i do the same work but with someone named greta c cat who jesse and i work with we also do well actually that's sandra cat's daughter right what it's it's greta sandra c cat's daughter exactly yeah so she learned from her mother but it's it's it kind of feels like therapy between you and the person you're playing so at the end of the day you know who you're playing better than anyone else which gives you a sense of groundedness in your work and also a sense of security to try anything again that's actually really true like having done the work i did feel so much more ground and confident yeah confident that i that i understood that your choices then are completely like right on like you never will question yourself when you're filming yeah because it comes from such a sacred deep place in yourself you know um the images and and you can't make them up can you just a gift yeah from somewhere else your unconscious mind yeah yeah okay okay i think we can take a couple more yeah all the way the back yes i'll just some i'll just repeat it in case people in here uh a question from uh somebody who's from montana uh and and east montana a question for um jane and ari of conceiving of the landscape as a character and we should add that you found these montana landscapes in new zealand um and [Music] [Laughter] jane and uh and then the questions for the actress about working i guess against this this landscape yeah it's a big uh big big question but yes spoiler alert um we did shoot in new zealand um which sounds like is a good stand-in um yeah we spend a long time thinking in depth about finding the right places but i don't know i'm sure everyone has their own personal connection with the landscape in this film but for me um that sense of scale and isolation was was mainly important um i guess obviously the sense of place and phil's relationship to the the mountains and the dog but i don't the way i kind of looked at it as well was that the how important it was to set up the scale in isolation i think also for rose when we meet her and she comes to this place that by the time she arrives you as a viewer know that what kind of place this is and just how remote it is and how you know in how much trouble she is that she's not going to get out of there in a hurry so the way i the way i that was my kind of way in to set up the yeah the epicness the scale the brutality the remoteness for that kind of very particular reason i don't know what um jane did you oh well i'm come from it to from a bit more of a sensualist point of view um i think the hills are really sexy i just do all those folds and crevices hiding secret little streams and things [Laughter] i yeah i'm in love with landscape in a in a very um powerful way like it can get me trembling like i just love it um yeah and i you know i also agree with ahri that you know i did feel like these people were in the middle of an ocean really you know like they were so isolated in the landscape and um of course i did go and see the landscape that savage's landscape and beaverhead montana and that's amazing as well but actually not so amazing as the um you know on his actual ranches the i think the um the hills that we were filming with in the ida valley uh just new zealand new zealand is kind of this is a really weird place that sort of like uh can stand in for almost anywhere like middle earth and um a switzerland now montana yes yeah i think also when you sorry it's a chameleon you know like it really is like a landscape actor it is another character it's completely i i will fulfill phil is the landscape i mean it's in him he's the outdoors he brings the outdoors indoors so for me i had to sort of literally kind of lay in the earth for a while just feel it hear the grass see the clouds move feel the different temperatures so i went to set a few times before we started filming and and that's a lot i did a lot of that in montana as well when i was out there hugely important you know it's something that he's managed it's one of the only aspects in his life that he has total control over this outward show of masculinity where he knows how to work the land and the people of the land and the animals in any condition in any landscape so to be able to get that familiar i'm outdoorsy that's definitely a box ticked as far as something i have in common with my character i love nature and that immersion i think was key for me to find him so it was it was my ally i i felt it was something for nothing to have that as a backdrop and i was panicked about stepping out into a car park in auckland doing you know set work um i was really worried about it because it just it felt so natural being on that plane under the shadow of those hills and um [Music] yeah we got there yeah i think too that when you um when i see the film now i really see how um phil relaxes in nature like you only you really see him um calm like without all the you know masculine front that he puts on i think for the other cow hands and the you know the the um alpha performance the secret space is sacred places he's had his most um loose relaxed beautiful yeah natural yeah all right we're going to take one final question uh yes right there i think everybody heard that but just the uh the question is the um lady woman was saying asking um about how i can or how we conceived of the panning shot um that um book ended the film at the beginning and the end um i think these these sorts of visual rhymes are things that we're you know always aware of and looking for without over um like setting them up in some sort of fake way um and for i think aryan we were very aware of it and we were discussing it how it would work like to open the story with that and then to end with him like quite a broken man looking for the boy with the rope on the way to the hospital and yeah i mean i think that's you're always looking as i say before to try and find a language that will hold the film in in a way that you can um take it with you you know that you will remember it that will help you um review it in your mind later even and you know for me that was um just one of those rhythms that i thought would you know well we both thought would work well although it was quite hard to get it i almost gave up because it was very tricky your team were brilliant i was going oh for god's sake is going to work [Laughter] yeah one of those ideas that you have when you're sitting at your kitchen table with a nice cup of tea that drawing thinking this will be a great idea yeah they get to a tight chat to achieve you know you've got to have the track and then the panning and everything and then they've got to be walking at the same pace yeah but i think one of i remember one of the things us talking about was to make sure that we obviously have kind of emotive images but but non not emotionally manipulative camera moves so no we had a rule about no no camera moves that were emotionally manipulative and that that we wanted a kind of hands-off kind of photography that would the other you can watch um watch someone feeling something but the film's not telling you as an audience how to feel about that um and that that it doesn't guide you or tell you or prescribe to you how you should feel about it it we just show you um that's that was very important to both of us and you know for me as a director um i really love um being given that space i don't want to be told how to feel emotionally i always react against whatever i'm told to do it's been like that since i've been a kid it's it's really it's really beautiful when you see a film and i'm happy if this one gave you that feeling too that that you can um have your own feelings freely without you know sense of being manipulated yeah kristina were you going to say something oh no she just commented on something really nice that you guys answered which was that jane invites you into a film rather than tells you you know what to feel which you answered i think that way too you can go back to the film and see it again and notice different things you know that it there's still a space that you can explore because there's more than one way in and one way through you know yeah and maybe hopefully i remember you jane and us saying that we wanted the film to be a strongly retrospective experience that you experienced the film in real time as you're watching it and then hopefully afterwards your experience somehow continues um with your thoughts and i think that also comes from a film that's not telling you at every beat this is how you should be feeling it's it's up to you to take what you see and and put your own experiences and thoughts onto it um and yeah i think that really helps i know for me the first time i saw it i couldn't i mean very biased but i there's days of images coming back to you and thoughts and yeah i don't think you're that biased i think as an actor though i think i speak for all of us well we watched it we were like ah that's the film we're in and that's again even as someone who knows what we're trying to do in our in our way to be invited in as an audience to to have a spectator's experience when you're watching your own work is very very rare um [Music] testament to the masters on this stage you're welcome anytime all right i think we're going to have to wrap it up but i want to congratulate and thank all of you for you being here this is really lovely thank you for having us thank you all for coming [Music] you

Channel: Film at Lincoln Center

Views: 64,608

Keywords: Film at Lincoln Center

Id: 6CgPUPEe15E

Length: 50min 5sec (3005 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 02 2021