Natalie Portman On "A Tale Of Love And Darkness" | BUILD Series

amid the national mcphobe emasculated bashar yellow minute attention charlie mister him even under shadow poem th e PO Plaza Cavalli Cavaliers damn beer hey um Tatia Cavalia she Felicia TV FMJ me I did not sell horny - you're not to remove the sod not to leave your husband Natalie thank you so much for being here thank you so much for having me congratulations on your directorial debut thank you this is amazing it's it's such a beautiful film congratulations I really appreciate that thank you I want to go back to the beginning of of this movie it was like 2006 2007 right when you approached the author Amos oz like probably one of the most celebrated authors that we have you approached him what was going through your mind what was it about this story that you're like okay this I want to go on a 10 12 year journey with well at the beginning I didn't realize it was gonna be a 10 12 year journey no one realizes that when they set out to make an independent film right exactly but I read the book when it first came out in Translation it's written in Hebrew originally and and I just immediately saw the film as I was reading it I think that speaks a lot to the writing of almost Oz the the writer of the book but I think the combination of this story between the mother and the son that really moved me and also the setting which is sort of the beginning of the State of Israel which I had imagined a lot in in my life because of hearing stories about that period of time and how strange and crazy it was you know to have all these European refugees coming to the desert and dreaming about having a new country and of course being oblivious to people other other people living there that created a conflict that we still live with today the fact that that country look nothing like where they came from a lot of them came from like the cities and the streets of European of Europe and like you said the desert right and having expectations of like the land of milk and honey and then getting there and having this desert violent environment that was not what they were looking out for but but I think that's kind of the the popularity of the book - is that universality of the immigrants Ariane's were like you idealize where you're going to and then when you get there it's not what you thought it was going to be and how you deal with that sort of difference what do you think attracted you to wanting to tell a personal story within a political world in the sense that this very much could be an extremely political movie and I think to a degree it is because it's just about this period of time but it's very very much mostly a personal story about this boy and his relationship with his mother well I think it's very much a family story more than anything and I think anything set in Israel is political because I mean we all know that like you say Israel and everyone has a strong feeling about it so just by being there it's going to be political but of course the movie is not in essence a political film at all it's very much a family story and maybe the most political thing about it is I always feel that that's the power of film that if you go and sit in a theater with other people and care about someone else from another place that you would never have access to knowing about their story and care about them for a couple hours then that changes you and the way you see the world and so that I mean every film in that way is a political act so now you set out you you meet with him you get his blessing essentially to make the movie and you haven't made a movie yet you've made it short I think but he hasn't seen it what was your process like to adapt the book into a screenplay and what was your experience at that point in writing screenplays I mean obviously you've read a fair amount of them since the age of like nine or ten but yeah there is a bit of osmosis of you know making movies and reading scripts like you were saying for you know 20 years at that point now more like 20 25 years uh-huh but but I was really definitely a beginner um with writing a screenplay adapting a screenplay particularly if you like pull out a Sid Caesar book or like a Robert Makeba no no I really I have to admit I'm I went with my gut on it and was very moved by Olmos direction to me which was he was like the book exists don't try and film the book make your own peace which was really moving and he also asked me he said don't try to explain why my mother was the way she was he's like where other screenwriters have failed who tried to make the adaptation and I didn't agree was that they tried to give like a satisfying explanation for what was going on inside her head and he's like it's a mystery to me and it's a mystery still you know 60 years later and that's a almost defiant rebellion on your part in terms of being a storyteller I think most movies not just any kind of adaptation of this book or attempt at a deputy most movies try to apply some sort of easy psychology to someone that's suffering from mental illness or depression because filmmakers and storytellers are in many ways limited in the hour-and-a-half two-hour sort of medium that it's kind of like well will my audience be left unfulfilled if I don't answer this question for them in an easy way and I don't think anyone leaves unfulfilled with your movie but it is an extreme bravery on your part as a storyteller and a first-time filmmaker to sort of set out and back know that answer is not going to be easy for you did you ever waver on that while you were making it um thank you for saying that but um no because I think that's sort of how how life is that you don't like you might have an answer for something one day but then the next day that answer doesn't apply anymore like that's not how life is like things change many things affect us we don't always understand the things that we do not to mention what other people do and part of life is the mystery of like we don't know we don't know and I think that yeah I mean those there's there's many things you like you I think you leave the movie and you could hopefully have an understanding of like the complexity of her psychological world and all of the things that that that's not gonna be one thing but it's not like she had a boyfriend who treated her badly like when she was 15 and so it's not happy look exactly um you going into making your first film obviously you had the sort of great opportunity to have worked with some of the best directors that we have beforehand and I'm sure many people ask you what did you learn from them and I'm gonna sort of phrase this question a little differently because I imagine that the one thing that you would learn that would help you the most is that oftentimes people making movies that you admire the most didn't know what they were doing and we're okay saying that so going into this is a first-time screenwriter first-time director when you had moments were you wavered or questioned yourself you were able to be like oh yeah Darren Aronofsky questions himself every day every day as well um yeah that that definitely was um with something that was helpful I feel like it was very lucky to have been on a lot of movie sets before making my first movie but also you realize I've also worked with a lot of first-time directors and who had never been on a set before and you realize for them like they just showed up and did their own thing and Mike Nichols always used to say a thing which maybe is not true anymore but he always used to say that like that directing is like sex that you never know how anyone else does it and which maybe is not true because there's a lot of sex on line now um I feel like the difference between the two mainly is that we want to know how the other one doesn't but we usually don't really want to want to know how the other one does the other thing exactly um you know what don't tell me about that yeah it's funny because directors always it's like when I work with the director as an actor the first thing they ask me is like how do other directors do it you know they're like they always want to know other people's process and they'll be like what does Malik do or you know how does one Yelland is everything scripted you know and they're always like grilling you because you don't usually get an opportunity to be on someone else's set or if you do it's like for a day not for the entire length of a shoot so that's unique for an actor I feel like as much as I admire and love Terrence Malick's movies if I was ever making a movie I would never ask what Terrence Malick does because like what he does is so specific to him as like a as someone who's like running a set like a regular set there's there's very hard it's you can really pull from that you wouldn't necessarily pull from it but I think the thing that's really inspiring about him is that he does it differently than everyone and there's there's a lot of rituals that we have on film sets that you realize like you think that they're necessary and you realize they're not when you work with someone like Malick like on a regular film set you always get touch-ups right before you do uh you know scene and he's like nope we're not taking time for that you know you get your hair and makeup in the morning that's it for the rest of the day but that's so interesting sorry I want to drop but do you think that like your film for instance did you shoot your film before or after having worked right after right after so did you sort of take that to your film because your film is composed much differently than some like hisses yes it's definitely composed only but there's there's a freedom and like knowing knowing that you can do things your own way that you don't have to follow the rules that everyone else does that was really freeing and also an acceptance of accident like Terry like if a stranger walks into shot you like start a conversation with them and like include them in the scene and then later they try and get like the legal permission to use them or whatever but anything that happens if it starts raining you film in the rain and an acceptance of like chance and finding the beauty and that is really really a great thing for film because I've been on many sets where like it'll start raining and you shut down for the day you know that must be so hard to be a director who's a do that with the actors of the caliber that he works with because I think there is a protectiveness in the industry as there should be for the actor who has an image to sort of represent and hold on to to walk onto a set and have a director be like no we're you're just gonna be on camera you you know as an actor you'd be like well where is this gonna go what are we gonna do but he has this history where you kind of totally trust that because doesn't he just not even like if you ask him who your character is he'll be like it's you know he he gives a lot of guidance with character um but it is different and again it's good to be like freed up from the stuff you get used to you know like it's good to just try new things and do things that might be a little scary and that you're maybe uncomfortable with and you fit you learn new things you figure out new things but yeah they're moments when it's uncomfortable I think this movie is uh in many ways a great showcase for how you are kind of like that as well and in terms of wanting to challenge yourself and doing things that maybe make you uncomfortable I mean the movies in Hebrew it's a it's a challenging topic to go after especially as a first-time filmmaker and you attack it thank you were you terrified while making it were you were you scared um I wasn't I mean I feel like a lot of times the obliviousness to like how crazy something you're doing is is like the most helpful thing in retrospect I can look back and go wow that was really wild but at the time I think I was just really passionate about making this story and and really excited about it and just wanting to make it do everything to make it what it was and then looking back I was like I took a lot of challenges on for my first thing when you set out to make this film I'm wondering where were you like in your career and what was it like because everyone always imagines an actor and actress of a certain caliber what's going on a trajectory and whether that person knows that that trajectory is there are not audiences assume that they have some sort of awareness of the path of their whole career where did this fit into that did you feel like you had that at that time or do you well I never I never I'm really like aware of any bigger picture I think it's much more like what I'm passionate about in the moment and if I'm lucky enough to get to express that passion at that moment because sometimes you're like I'm ready to do a part that demands this of me and you don't have that chance but you know every once in a while it aligns where you know you say I'm ready to direct this film and you can pull it together it aligns eight years yeah yeah it took it took a viola but um I also feel like that was me becoming mature enough to take I mean still not mature but yeah but getting more mature to the point where I could handle um what what all of these demands required of me now what was it like directing yourself well um it's it's harder in some ways and it's easier in other ways I mean I had to get over my leg cringing at myself because usually I can't look at myself on screen at all and it took me like being a little bit more forgiving with myself and looking in a constructively critical way instead of just a critical like I hate myself way did you like initially go into the edit room when I cut cut yeah me get rid of me yeah but to the kid I don't want to see me totally it's it's definitely it's definitely hard I mean so many people are like I hate hearing my voice on the answering machine I'm like welcome to my life like this is like I have 40 feature-length yeah it's it's it's really torturous but um it was good for me to have to do it um to you know be kinder to myself where you kind of have to lean in and trust your editor or your DP or whoever's looking at the monitor myself like I feel like I got my own cuz you know you go back and forth watching the video monitor after it takes I'll go do a take and then run back and watch it and I would trust my leg DP and assistant director and producer to help me with like you know if there was like a camera shake or focus issue or there's an extra in the background looking directly into camera to notice those kinds of things and then I could kind of focus on performance you could focus on on your own performance yeah and and so the easier part of directing yourself is that one of the hardest things as a director is to figure out the language that you can use to express what you want changed in a way that's helpful to the actor cuz every actor is different individual and each super it's a super delicate process yeah and some people need like a lot of positive reinforcement some people need to have like a more kind of critical you know heart you know they respond more to criticism some people you need to ask a question some people you need to just like leave alone and they'll do their thing and you really need to figure that out and with yourself you just like watch it and go do it so that was in a way easier how do you huh how do you work with directors as an actor what do you usually need I really like becoming I kind of need a close relationship with the director where I get to know them and they get to know me well to the point where they know how to trigger me you know they know how to say things about me personally that they can not navigate not that they use things from your personal life but for example I just worked with a friend of mine Rebecca's letovsky on this movie planetarium that's going to be in Toronto and Venice and we it's the first time I've worked with someone that I was friends with before filming and she like there was a scene that I needed to cry but it wasn't it wasn't as an emotional scene it was just like it's like in the movie it's a screen test and they need me to cry and a screen test so she literally had was like cry you know and I was like okay help more and she made me say something really mean to her and she was like you say this line to me and she gave me this thing and she's my really good friend and I said it and I'm just like good and it started his stare right and it was like that's why you need someone who like knows you so well that's so smart cuz I thought where you were going with that she was just gonna say something mean to you about you no no and I that wouldn't make me cry about it I was like yeah wouldn't talk to me like that it was like such like a generous thing as a friend to not do that cuz that's the obvious thing but also she knew me well enough that no you know she knew that me saying that to her wouldn't make me like lose it you're almost gonna cry no I ain't even think about I see I didn't tell you what she made me say never so I feel so bad now I have to ask you know before interviews obviously because it's my job I do look a little bit of research and look at what the chatter is about the person that I'm about to interview that day and you've just directed your first feature film that you wrote that's based on a celebrated novel or memoir that is all in Hebrew and all of the headlines that I were seeing were that you weren't going to be in the next Thor movie oh really which which I have to say is insane and representative of this like weird it's not movie news unless it's a superhero movie anymore like the news is that you've been acting this long and you directed a movie in Hebrew for your first me and wrote it and it runs like thank you he's like no no no guys good news is she's not in Thor 3 it's like also it's like uh it's like news of omission it's not even like and she will be doing this it's like no she won't be doing this is but do you also see that as a two-degree it's like a sort of emblematic or some sort of symbol of kind of a state the way movies are right now where it's kind of like it's mainly about the news of these big blockbusters that it seems like most audiences are kind of attracted to well I think it's like a really interesting time for film and for I guess like entertainment in general because it's shifting so much because on one hand like you're saying it's really very much these kind of superhero movies that were getting a lot of but also that obviously people really love so you know if it wasn't if it wasn't what people wanted it also wouldn't be coming out but at the same time because of all of these online distribution forms people have more access than ever to independent films foreign films older films that you know you used to be like out of print that you can now find on you know criterion collection is mostly film yeah and also of course the like golden age of television which is really popular and really quality things are really popular so it's I feel like it's actually a really interesting moment it's on it's not all bad it's just changing it's just different are you interested in television or you think are you going to be producing TV or thinking about a project for yourself I am interested in it of course because the quality is just at such a high level and I feel like that's what people really are watching now and and really actually affects culture I'm sort of there's some a project that's in development that's been announced but I don't know when it will be when it will happen but it's an adaptation of this book called we are all completely beside ourselves and that's in development right now that's great I have one more question for you before I turn it over to the audience because you mentioned in the green room when we were talking that your DP who's your director of photography also worked with Christophe Kozlowski and you reference a couple movies and as soon as you said that like I walked away and I was like of course that's who she worked with this movie is show clearly at the very least aesthetically inspired by Christophe Kozlowski can you talk about that inspiration yeah absolutely um so the DP I worked with slub married is really a legend he's he's really one of the greatest ever in my opinion and in many people's opinions I think he made blue and double life of Veronique in a short film about killing with with Kieslowski he also made like Black Hawk Down and one of the Harry Potter's I mean he's done some I kind of big Hollywood movies as well but he has a very very specific and I really adore his aesthetic and also was really involved dramaturgical II like before when we were in pre-production he had a lot of ideas about you know thing ways we could even change the scenes sometimes to add interesting perspective like he was the one who suggested putting having the boy play under the table the boy was always playing but he was like what if we put him under the table and then we have all of these interesting points of view from like underneath and then that gave me the idea of like there's a scene where all of these women are having a conversation about motherhood and how it's not that easy that obviously a kid shouldn't necessarily hear his mother talking about she's not that into being a mom and and so originally I had him kind of like coming in through a door towards the end and overhearing the end and then I was like what if he's just under the table the whole time and it completely changed the scene it like added all this tension but in terms of doublelift véronique and blue the color his color palette is like very specific and he did a very similar thing where we made Jerusalem very green which helped make it Bleecker like it makes everyone's skin look really kind of sick and also the city itself jerusalem's all this Jerusalem stone which looks very kind of romantic on film like Rome or something like pinky almost went with a green filter it really washes it out and makes the city look a little more sad which is what the reality is and then the sort of European stuff was very blue which was kind of in the palette of blue the film and which is if you guys haven't seen it like both of those films in any Kozlowski films they're the best yeah I think also many of them are on Hulu and The Criterion Collection that's my advertisement for Christoph Kozlowski let's open it up to the audience for questions first question hi Natalie I'm really excited to see this film and I'm actually taking my first trip to Israel in the winter so um so I just want to know what it was it like to film in Israel it was really incredible to get to shoot there I'm I was born there but only live there until I was three so I have this weird thing where i'm like and israeli but not like no one really thinks of me wasn't israeli there but you know i'm obviously connected to the culture but working there was incredible the people were very very warm very professional really amazing at their jobs and and i felt like it was a really special place to be a female director not that i've experienced being a female director and a future here but because everyone goes to the military they're both men and women they're all used to having a female commander or boss at some point and so I never felt like there was a moment of weirdness of me like telling if I ask someone to do something I never had a moment of like feeling like I'm not listening to you you're like a small woman next question hey Natalie um I was wondering how is the perception of women directors in Europe different than the United States and that's actually a really really big point actually good good question because we've obviously been talking a lot Heather's not enough female directors here and I was living in France for the past couple years because of my husband's work and almost the entire young generation of directors is female which was really kind of mystifying to me to see how cultural it was and I'm sure a big part of it is that you know France has like a great socialized daycare and childcare and women work there much much more and have more children also than in the United States because it's obviously cheaper and easier to have good care if you're working but on top of it there's a thing there's a thing Jill Soloway said that really moved me in a in a like speech she gave about how directing is very much about desire you have your you're saying I want like a thousand times a day you're like I want that wall gray and I want that skirt shorter and I want you to be more emotional I want you this I want this I want that and that in the United States there's sort of a cultural dislike unease with female desire for food for sex for anything and in France that is definitely different like it's a pleasure Society like it's very much celebrated for a woman to be sexually desiring desiring good food wine etc so I feel like that was I'm paraphrasing poorly of solloway I'm stealing from her but that seemed very convincing to me about why there could be this French American difference you think about some like classic French cinema like Godard they're like vaguely misogynistic and toned but at the same time the women still are consistently proclaiming what they want vivre Sofia is all about this woman's existential wants and desires while the same times through the lens of God or toward women and even today in France like they are like more openly sexist in our terms than I feel like you will hear men commenting on women's legs like regularly in public in a way that I feel like would not be acceptable here she has the right to work great alright ok um but but yet they're like also comfortable with female desire so it's I don't think it's like less less sexist but there is something about female desire which is related to directing that is making I notice your difference seems seems like it influences why there's this amazing young generation of female directors there and yeah we are really trickling our directors out we're trying trying but it's yeah it's going so uh last question right here hi Natalie I'm just wondering what aspect of filming was most challenging for you um well I think both pre-production and post-production were most challenging because it was the part they were the parts that I had never done before filming was the part of it like knew what it was supposed to go like and what I was generally supposed to be doing but pre-production is just so many decisions all the time and post-production is it just seems endless like what you can do when you're editing you just you don't want to stop you just want to keep making changes and tweaks and it's fascinating but it's also kind of like those were the two parts that I definitely felt like a beginner did you ever have a moment where you made a decision sort of uh flippantly in pre-production and then you paid for it during production like you got there and you were like oh I didn't I didn't think hard enough about this decision beforehand that's interesting or not I mean it's like oh I can't think I can't think of anything like off off the cuff that fits into that but I'm sure I'm sure it's such a domino effect though like starting from there all the way through you know and that's why people are always also rewriting on says Wow wine or something like very stupid that I did it was so in the Mallik mode there was a huge storm during pre-production like the biggest storm ever in Israel that like never happens here in the desert never like massive rainstorm and snow and it was wild and I was like we're gonna go shoot and so the DP hadn't even like arrived in Israel yet so I take the camera crew in like so dangerous so not something you should do in like all our rain gear and we go out and we shoot and then I like go look at the footage after you can't see it because you can't see rain unless you light it rain like needs to be lit from behind and so we literally like I like risked all these people's lives for like we did end up using like a shot because you did see the the river overflowed which actually happens in the book and so was amazing to have on film so I got footage of the river overflowing do you think the crew like after he looked at the footage and wasn't there you like left the room they're like she just got off a Terrence Malick movie yeah I'm fine it's she'll get over this probably probably they're like amateur um oh not at all to be fair our DP wasn't there so obviously he would have he would have lit it if if he had been there well the film is in no way in no way comes off as amateur it's absolutely beautiful how can people see it it's this weekend right this weekend is opening in New York in LA and then it's gonna spread to other cities and more theaters in the coming weeks a tale of love and darkness now the apartment thank you so much for being here it's big

Channel: BUILD Series

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Keywords: AOL Advertising, AOL Inc, AOL, AOLBUILD, #Aolbuild, build speaker series, build, aol build, content, aolbuildlive, Natalie Portman, A Tale Of Love And Darkness, Thor, Marvel, Black Swan, Star Wars, V for Vendetta

Id: UyHu0hzeq2s

Length: 33min 54sec (2034 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 22 2016