Review: 'Holy Rollers'
Originally premiering in 2010 at the Sundance Film Festival where it also received a Grand Jury Prize nomination (the fest's highest honor), the Jesse Eisenberg-starring Holy Rollers, based off of true events where, in 1998, one million ecstasy pills were smuggled into the US, makes its free VOD debut today exclusively on SnagFilms (the award-winning social video-viewing platform and 2014 Webby® nominee) and all supported devices, including their multi award-winning app.
Flashback to five years ago and Jesse Eisenberg would soon make his star-making turn in the Academy-Award Best Picture nominee, The Social Network. However, before he would receive his Best Actor nomination for playing Mark Zuckerberg, a mild-mannered man whose drive and obsession for success leads to turbulent consequences, Eisenberg would showcase another performance as a mild-mannered man whose drive and obsession for success leads to turbulent consequences.
The main tension in the movie comes from Sam's commitment to his religion, community, family, and ultra-orthodox lifestyle that stands in stark contrast to the late-night, drug dealing and partying scene.
Here, Eisenberg plays Sam Gold, a young Rabbinical student from an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Borough Park, Brooklyn. Sam is a caring young man, who is seen doing right by his family and church. His good intentions are shown by him working with his father in a family-owned fabric shop, where Sam's impulse to bargain with customers for his best deal is dismissed by his father, showing initial hints of big money ambitions as well as frustrations that stop him from receiving that. So when the opportunity comes up to turn a quick buck, Sam and his best friend Leon (Jason Fuchs) accept a job from Leon's brother Yoseph (Justin Bartha) to retrieve a suitcase in Amsterdam and walk it through customs in New York. The fact that the suitcase is revealed to carry pure MDMA (ecstasy) only deters Leon, while Sam continues to smuggle the pills, much to the imminent danger that soon spirals out of control.
Holy Rollers is a well-made movie that tells this incredible true story in a very personal way. The main tension in the movie comes from Sam's commitment to his religion, community, family, and ultra-orthodox lifestyle that stands in stark contrast to the late-night, drug dealing and partying scene. To see Sam, in his traditional suit, fedora, and payot (hair ringlets), tagging along on drug deals, in night clubs, and other party scenes, is a large part of what makes this movie work. Director Kevin Asch successfully shows the arc of Sam's transformation, from a well-intentioned family man who abides to not shaking hands with a woman out of respect to an unapologetic drug-dealer that falls for his new boss' girl and more.
Holy Rollers takes the classic story of a guy getting in over his head with a fast and rough situation and gives it a unique treatment. Although the film sags at times and could afford to explore the bigger threats of the drug-dealing/rave-centric world, the movie is a great watch with a great performance by Eisenberg.
Holy Rollers is available to stream now at SnagFilms.com.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OrjeUDYIc4
Review: 'Two Days, One Night' ('Deux jours, une nuit')
Imagine yourself in this situation: you've recently been let go from your full-time job, but there is a way to save it–you have to convince the majority of your fellow co-workers to forego their newly received bonuses to bring your back. Do you think two days and one night is long enough to make that happen?
This is the premise for the new film, aptly titled, Two Days, One Night (Deux jours, une nuit), directed by socially-conscious filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, known also as the sibling directing team the Dardenne Brothers.In it, a worker, Sandra (Marion Cotillard), returns to work after an illness, only to learn that the company has realized that they can operate with one less employee–and that she is to be let go; unless, that is, a Monday-morning vote from the workers sees that they have changed heir minds and decided to bring her back and deny their new bonuses. While entirely simplistic in plot (it is assembled in numerous one-take sequences), its feel and reach extends deeply and intimately into humanistic storytelling which makes for an arresting experience.
While entirely simplistic in plot, its feel and reach extends deeply and intimately into humanistic storytelling which makes for an arresting experience.
With their earliest shared roots in documentary film-making, the Belgian-born Dardenne brothers have unarguably perfected their inspired style of Cinéma vérité (truthful cinema). The Dardennes, with a socially conscious and politically-aware portrayal of lower-middle class people in their movies, ranging from 2002's The Son, 2005's L'enfant, and 2011's The Kid With a Bike, masterfully show how a working class people is subjected to larger cultural economies and institutions that suppress them. The result is watching a movie that feels entirely made up of stolen moments, of captured truths, and here, about humans existing in a flawed society that reveals how the human spirit that can be so suffocated and stifled.
Helming this demanding endeavor is Academy Award-winner Marion Cotillard as Sandra, whose uphill emotional battle throughout the entirety of the movie reveals the actress's most stripped down and undeniable talents. Beyond her struggle to meet individually with her dozen-plus co-workers over one weekend's time, Sandra also suffers from depression, and cripplingly so. Meeting with each new character, and with that, each new emotional realization and encounter, Sandra's bouts of lapsing into weeping, hysterical, and exhausting sadness, resonate painfully with the audience by Cotillard's commitments. The mother of two and spouse of supportive Manu (Fabrizio Rangione), she truly shines here and captures an honesty that keeps the simple storyline mesmerizing. In fact, Two Days, One Night marks the first major film from the Dardenne's to feature an "A-list" actor–and it is to the credit of the filmmakers and actors alike that the result is one that showcases why no other players could have made as affecting a film.
Two Days, One Night is similar and reminiscent of, yet might not fall in line with the Dardenne's other, more urgent and repeatedly "watchable" films, but this one has a spark all its own, for which it should be no doubt be celebrated. They are true masters of their craft, delivering small yet masterfully told stories about the human spirit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tb3zBq6gVRk
Review: 'Big Eyes'
People are strange- you're either strange for acknowledging your intrinsic weirdness, which runs directly opposite to that of the social norm's flow, or by failing to acknowledge it; and it always falls between those two parameters. And although pop-goth movie director Tim Burton is revered by this modern culture for making Halloween-hip horror flicks for outsider-teens, his latest movie, Big Eyes, is weird- and for reasons beyond the director's intentions or control.
Following his most recent live-action Johnny Depp-starrer Dark Shadows (2012), Burton side steps the re-make game but keeps the swinging-sixties cool in bringing this real-life story of American painters Walter and Margaret Keane to the big screen. Their shared story, of how together they duped the art world at large into believing that Margaret's non-anachronistic paintings of portraits with hauntingly bulging eyes were envisioned and made by her fraud of a husband, is already so wild and out there that it feels like prime fodder for Burton to dismantle and reconfigure as a delicious piece of absurdist art. The weird thing is, he doesn't here, and it's ultimately just no fun at all.
Again- people are weird for either being weird, or failing to acknowledge, or rather, suppressing, their weirdness (much like Margaret Keane herself). Unfortunately, Burton and his much too reined-in drippingly spooky vision are guilty of the second crime. While it might be understandable for one to reason that the director perhaps felt an urge to re-connect to his filmmaker roots, as a storyteller telling a more human story instead of being a pop-culture synthesizer playing dress-up, the film feels controlled to the point of smothering, like a fearful parent weary of letting a child have too much fun. It's obvious there is so much more that can, and should, be squeezed from this story and, yet, the crushing formality and control of it all crushes that story and Margaret's fragile spirit under its helpless weight.
As much as can be expected from any of the modern-day auteur's filmography, the entire art department is fully realized and makes for the film's most watchable element. The quick flight through 1950's suburban-ism into the San Francisco art-cool scene, where our story is largely anchored, and through the final third act set in hula-hip Honolulu (its clunkier finale) makes for visually fun watching, but only as far as its constraint of being a biography-drama is allowed to go.
Big Eyes makes for visually fun-watching, but only as far as its constraint of being a biography-drama as is allowed to go.
Giving their most reliably great performances that they can (in the highest of praises) are the film's stars, Amy Adams as the soft-spoken but true cartoon-eyes painting artist and Christoph Waltz, as her even more cartoonish husband (in wonderfully wild-dog Waltz fashion). Adams portrays Margaret as the naive and recently separated single mother (in a time that was not "of the times" to be) whose meekness fails to get her paintings recognized with such solemn and inner-poise, that it's a shame it wasn't figured out how to show her bumbling awkwardness with any higher entertainment value. It's Waltz who has the most fun here, allowed to broad stroke his mischievous no-goodery across the entire canvas, and it's also what gives the movie any life at all.
The film has been compared to and reminiscent of Burton's earlier starting places, including 1994's Ed Wood, for how it made its real-life subject and story a fun ride-along, where the audience felt apart of the world and the hi-jinks. The camera here feels uninspired, framing Margaret and Walter with the same non-commitment and treatment. Where we should've been riding shotgun in this art-caper romp, we are resigned to watching a story that feels like it moves on auto-pilot throughout.
There is a telling theme that runs dangerously just-below the surface and feels immediately real by the end of the film's second act. At this point, Margaret, more quietly devastated with her agreement to sign away her entire work's authorship than ever before, is seen pained standing in the art galleries watching the Cheshire cat grinning Walter soak up the fame, having found success with his idea of selling run-off screen prints of the paintings, posters of the big-eyed wonders for the masses to enjoy. A tiny thread runs through this idea, and is only barely bolstered by cameo art gallery owner Ruben (Jason Schwartzman) and critic John Canaday (Terrence Stamp) who, seeing the commercialization and accessibility of the work (where pop-artist Andy Warhol would completely take this over), scoff at pointing out that Keane's work is nothing more than "kitsch," for which art-critics must exist- to warn and protect the public from misinterpreting art from product. In Walter Keane's fuming offense-taking, there seems to be a quiet acknowledgment that Burton's own brand of work, in this cultural landscape, falls slightly in this commercialized kitsch for the masses. And the fact that his latest film feels directed out of fear of falling into those pitfalls and trappings, is, weirdly enough, not so weird.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xD9uTlh5hI
Review: 'Mr. Turner'
What a monumental undertaking to tell the story of a master painter of historical significance, art and otherwise- an even bigger challenge to bring to life the story of British painter J.M.W. Turner, whose last quarter century of living was filled with quick-to-rapid deterioration amidst the modern evolving social swerve. In director Mike Leigh's film, Mr. Turner, Leigh mirrors the genius painter's health and mental digressions along with the sweeping and evolving Aristocratic-bourgeois society, as Turner the surrogate stands as the post-modern death of art and of a time gone by itself.
Not many, apart from University art-school majors and the intelligentsia abroad, will likely be familiar with the portly, snot-snarling artist, played impeccably by Timothy Spall, who fully embodies whatever version of the man anyone would expect. Clocking in at a near three hour run-time, Spall is all gusto and intrigue throughout, throwing his weight around in scenes of personal loss (the early death of his father) and artistic flourish (when painting and waxing philosophic in high-society conversation about art itself, when he isn't grumbling the other majority of the movie).
Although the film, subject matter, and effort might sound daunting to watch at best, it's a story of death and societal change that comments on the trappings and loss that can even be seen today.
Rather than a traditional birth-to-burial biography, Leigh finds his movie's theme wrapped up in Turner's final stretch of life, taking place from 1775-1851. The gorgeous camera work in the English countryside introduces us to a Turner as organic and pure as the rolling hills themselves. Returning from a trip abroad, Turner's otherwise fidgety and nervous mannerisms convey a sense of distracted brilliance, in the mundane trappings of life around him. We see his most personal vices-exercised, the death of his father William (Paul Jesson), the sexual use of his housemaid (Dorothy Atkinson), and the further sexualization of an innkeeper (Marion Bailey) who Turner commits in marriage to, all slow-burning and early on. This is a film that captures loss in measurement and exactness, slowly thrusting Turner into the fated and uncertain life changes to come.
Fine moments of Turner's spiraling loss are captured, such as Turner's first sitting for a new technology and form of art- the camera obscura- in terrible and awkward fashion- making for very heartfelt watching. It's a film of study, of history and the human moments that fictionally fill it, which can read as so inauthentic in the context of what biographies attempt to do. But Leigh, like Turner, is a master himself, using fine actors, writing, and camera work, to mold a story as stable and permanent as a time that, ironically, begins to break down in the face of new modernity and wonderment in that early 1800's turning point in Europe. Here again is where Leigh shines- the allusion to technology and economy that is only ever referred to in subtlety (steam trains that arrive suddenly), or seen in the changing background around the ever-dwindling figure, is a credit to how Leigh makes his statement about the death of a certain kind of man and mythology.
Although the film, subject matter, and effort might sound daunting to watch at best, it's a story of death and societal change that comments on the trappings and loss that can even be seen today with incredible significance and timeliness. Mr. Turner is the kind of film that, the more committed and willing to take it on that you are, the more you will understand its fullest scope and artistry that is poured into it. The discipline and brilliance of the thing shows the point immaculately of how such a self-congratulating progressive-society often leaves behind people of yesterday's brilliance in unfortunate forgetfulness.
Mr. Turner is in limited release now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn4zSR_5ioI
Director Liv Ullmann on 'Miss Julie'
Admittedly, this self-proclaimed film buff does not have as worldly a knowledge of cinema as one should have when using the signifier, "self-proclaimed film buff." Though this lack of in-depth knowledge pertains more to foreign and world cinema, I'll ask that cinephiles hold their breath when reading the following omission, that I cannot recall ever having seen a film by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. This is relevant, because, the 1888-penned naturalistic play by August Strindberg, Miss Julie (or in its native Swedish tongue, Fröken Julie), is now seeing a big-screen adaptation, written and directed by Bergman's former muse of eleven films, Liv Ullman. The fact that I knew only this about the writer/director before seeing the film (starring Colin Farrell and Jessica Chastain as the titular character) extends to show further proof of my ignorance- a more proper introduction of Ms. Ullmann should shy away from focusing on her being "Bergman's long-time on-again, off-again lover and artistic companion," and rather on her accomplishments as an actress (nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award for 1978's The Emigrants) and director (nominated for Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or for 2011's Faithless). Uncovering this knowledge, I prepare myself for an even more rich conversation that I am to have over the phone on one rainy weekday morning. I informally begin by asking her where at she is currently talking to me from, geographically (for context reasons, rather than obtrusive geo-locating reasons). She casually responds, in her warm Norwegian accent, that she won't be telling me. While I make light of the first communication I have with her, it simultaneously frames the rest of our conversation: she seems wholly disinterested in modernity and its new-found technological offerings (as much as a phone interview is 'technological'), and that some things should remain a mystery, such as her appreciation for the time gone-by of the experience of watching a film at the cinema, which she intends to restore in her latest period piece drama. Oh, yeah- and as mysteries go, she also happens to compare her newest film to what this country can learn about dealing with the Ebola crisis.
DO YOU IMAGINE WHAT THE EXPERIENCE OF WATCHING A FILM WILL BE LIKE AS YOU ARE MAKING THE FILM?
Well I'm, you know, I'm so old fashioned, and from where I come, in this mysterious place where I am, I look at it as something to be shown in a theater, you know, where the lights slowly go down, and then it becomes dark, and then the curtain goes up, and there you are. And that's why this movie was made as a film, it's not digital, and there was a lot of fighting, but I had it in my contract so they couldn't take it away, and they tried but, no way, so it is filmed. And so, what you see, the visions and so are so much more beautiful the way I see it because it's made of film and not digital.
So I believe it is for people to sit there and maybe like you with a friend, or maybe other people not knowing each other in the dark, and then they are experiencing, people up there experiencing so much of the same as they may go through, and recognize, and see maybe it's not only from (the year) 1890, but it could be today also. And these are thoughts I have, and these are feelings that I have, that's how I feel I would like my movies to be seen.
And when you talk about the experiences, to be able to get three such actors, and they all combine the best of theater and film, because they all know theater very well, where you can really show them in big rooms, and the big woods, and then you can go very, very close to them and to their face, and really show what they're thinking. And so, you can only do that with great actors. And I really feel what they're doing is something incredible, the three of them, incredible.
I wish this was a big block...what is the...
BLOCKBUSTER.
Blockbuster! So that people would see these performances because I think what they are doing is Oscar-nomination worthy. I've seen Jessica in a couple of movies this year, and this one would push her, be Oscar-worthy for me. So I agree, I think you said that you loved the performances, and I do too. I'm in awe of what they did.
BEING THAT THE FILM IS ADAPTED FROM THE STAGE PLAY (OF THE SAME NAME), HOW DID YOU APPROACH THIS- AS A STAGE PLAY OR A FILM, OR BOTH?
Well you see for me, cause sometimes movies can be like stage plays- you can have the best of the stage that, like you also described, you know, the big woods, the big house and everything, you can show everything which are around them and where they are smaller, but they are there, they are living, and then you film, and you go close, close, close, with the camera, and you see their face, and their mouth, and everything they are thinking which you cannot show on stage.
I really like the combination of that. I love to show Miss Julie, she's sitting in a chair...but you see it's in this big kitchen, and there's a door behind her, and the way she's sitting erect in this strange chair, and she's head of the whole house, and then you see her commanding a servant and his territory, and his kitchen, and he has to walk back and forth and follow his commands, inside being so angry, but knowing he cannot protest, knowing he can do nothing, but his whole body is stiff and awkward and angry, but he cannot be like...actually many people play that part, they are big macho men, but the way Colin does it, stiff and erect and angry, like a little boy that is not allowed to play, and has to do like mama says, I love the combination of theater and movies.
And since it is a film, and you are using real film, you can do this.
DID ANY OF THE ACTORS HAVE EXPERIENCE WITH THEATER BEFORE THIS FILM?
Well, a lot of film actors wouldn't be able to be on the stage, because it's a different media, and these actors, they would all be really good on stage because they know what stage is, but they are not acting as if they are on stage, but they would know more than all film actors how to be able to move around a big room. You can see film actors that you know, are good, and even same as some, and they have costumes, you know, from another time? And they are supposed to walk through big rooms, and you can see, they don't know how to walk in big costumes and do things like that. Stage actors know that. With these actors, yes, they can walk distances and they can sit in a close-up, because they know both the things.
And I actually didn't know that about Colin, because I didn't know if he had done theater before. One rehearsal time with him, and he can go on whatever stage he wants and do what he wants to do.
THIS PLAY HAS BEEN ADAPTED MANY TIMES, WHAT WERE YOU DRAWN TO ADAPTING TO BRING TO THE STAGE WITH YOUR OWN VISION?
I want, it's always difficult to be man and woman, and for us to understand each other, and on a deeper level. And I wanted to show between these two where it's not only that they are man and woman, but they are also from different classes, and all of us also want to be seen and understood, and listened to. And for all these three reasons, I wanted to show a life of a woman, and the life of a man, meeting each other, failing completely to connect and exist for each other, although they are saying so many things that would be great and wonderful for the other person to hear, because she cannot hear because she is tormented by her own conflicting impulses- she cannot accommodate herself to another man, and he's stopped by his class. He wants, I think he really was in love with her when he was a child and I don't think it was a lie, although he tells her after it was a lie. The class is in the way all the time, that she's from an upper class, that he doesn't hear what she's saying, he's just hearing what he thinks belongs to his class when confronted by a woman from the other class. It's difficult for a man and a woman, and it's more difficult when they are from different classes.
And I think that goes today too, it maybe goes even more today, because we are scared, from where we feel we do not belong. Look at the Ebola, what happened with that, people suddenly say, "we don't want any of them to come to our country," we don't look for love, we don't look for compassion, we just don't want them on our doorstep, and if somebody wants to go over there and heal them, please don't come back, because we are scared to what doesn't belong to us, and that is also what this play is about.
WHERE DO YOU SEE A FILM LIKE MISS JULIE STANDING AMONGST ALL OF THE MORE MODERN FILMS OF TODAY?
Well, I think that it is sad that we are coming to a time where these movies will be more and more seldom, but they still are made, wonderful movies, I've seen some also from this year, where we start to think about other things that may seem so far away from this, just as I talked about Ebola, where your thoughts start to wonder, and it is part of the movie, but it's so far from the movie. It's sad that movies are only to entertain and get thrills and violence and horror. That's sad. We are losing what it means to be human beings in movies.
Miss Julie is in theaters now.
Review: 'Reality (Réalité)'
It's an interesting thing to judge something about a film so early on, such as when a filmmaker's new movie holds such a gigantically-ambitious sounding title that it in some ways suggests it to be a film of universally-commentating scope and total expanse, such as say, a title like Reality. Though in the case of writer/director Quentin Dupieux (who also did the cinematography, editing, and music, as usual), his audience should know that, no matter the title, they won't be getting a life-defining opus–or even something of grand ambition in their full course helping of his off-brand cinema. Or for that matter, a movie made with any seriousness to it at all. Which is all for the very best. No, Reality (And in its native tongue, as the French-born, recent L.A. transplant filmmaker titled originally, Réalité) once again falls in line with Dupieux's other reality-bending comic send-ups, which also makes for his most realized and best film yet.
With this third feature film, Dupieux (AKA electronic music heavyweight Mr. Oizo) has settled into a story that he finally seems ready to tell, even if he did conceive and start writing it before making his first film. Gone is his freshman debut with the easy-play killer car tire gag in Rubber, gone is the sophomoric clean-up hitting in the further midnight-movie shenanigans-laden Wrong Cops–here, is the piece-mealed story about a film director, who discovers that his alternate-reality self has already made the movie he intends to make, and...ya know–other things.
The movie opens in a wordless sequence where a back-woods rifleman sets in his sights, and takes down, a majestic deer, which is taken back home and gutted. Much to young Reality's (Kyla Kenedy) amazement, the young girl sees a blue VHS tape fall out of the insides, but when she presses the issue, her father dismisses the notion that a tape could get into the belly of such a woods-creature- because that would be crazy. Meanwhile, the filmmaker/documentarian Zog (John Glover), wide-eyed, waiting, and hands folded in anticipation from a remote screening room, watches Reality's real-life drama unfold in real-time, as she stares back into the camera, all the while his waiting for a climax of sorts to reveal itself.
Where Dupieux's wheelhouse is in all-out absurdity, Reality finds itself operating on a much more operatically-meta stage, and somewhat more narrative-driven then previous works (somewhat).
Beyond following that rabbit-hole, the movie mainly centers around a public-access channel camera operator by day/budding filmmaker by later-that-day, Jason (Alain Chabat), whose meeting with the eccentrically-odd movie producer Bob (Jonathan Lambert) results in having his killer-microwave B-movie (a sly wink to a former Dupieux movie) greenlighted–on the caveat that he find the correct human shriek and death sound effect. With appearances by Reality's cross-dressing principal Henri (Eric Warheim) and public-access show host in-an-itchy-rat-costume, Denis (Jon Heder) (it's also obvious to see Dupieux aligning his comedy with the Adult Swim oddness of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! here), the film circles around to these seemingly non-connected stories, but finds a common (if long-shot) thread to pull the entire story together.
So, where does a film like this, one built on the honest intention of being purely meaningless and non-logical, stand with his other films, and movies moreover? Where Dupieux's wheelhouse is in all-out absurdity, Reality finds itself operating in a much more operatically-meta stage, and somewhat more narrative-driven. Jason the director, trying to take his mind off of the stress of finding that perfect excruciating scream, goes to the movies- and sees his movie about a killer microwave playing, and, panicking, tries to block the projection and tell the audience that they aren't supposed to be watching a movie that hasn't come out yet.
No doubt, as much as Dupieux wishes to claim that he is all detached dead-pan shenanigans, he is at his best when he allows himself to dip his toes into the pool of substance, but only just-so. New audiences might find themselves unprepared for this off-beat brand of subversively alt-anarchic movie mayhem, but those with patience to try out a new midnight-movie with flair, and definitely for his fans already familiar with his devilish brand, should find themselves pleasantly entertained. Because, as he's proven in his third time out, even when this director seems to be spinning his wheels, the wheel ends up finding the ability to growing telekinetic powers and kills an entire town, usually. Or something.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr6D6Z7IAAg
Marion Cotillard on 'Two Days, One Night'
It's no surprise when Marion Cotillard's personal publicist tells a roomful of reporters that photos of the actress are not allowed today (it's mildly heart-breaking, but not surprising). Cotillard, the Academy-Award winning actress is known for her successful crossover into American and Hollywood cinema, which is also no surprise, having such a multitude of audience appeals. An incredible performer in artfully-minded film (The Immigrant, Rust and Bone), as well as roles in Big Event Studio movies (Inception, The Dark Knight Rises), and of course- her unparalleled beauty, which is the source of today's publicist's friendly reminder. Intriguingly, the French film actress seems to always showcase her visual beauty (which of course, isn't hard), but studied further, this physiological appeal can perhaps better be linked to a different factor that drives her rich and absorbing work - her expressiveness, and total commitment to her characters, which always shines through and lifts any project she is involved in. This was, in part, what she talked about, at a recent press conference at the Beverly Hills Four Seasons, in support of her next indie-film, Two Days, One Night (Deux Jours, Une Nuit). Cotillard steps into the room, and taking her place in front of the French-styled double doors, with a gorgeous L.A. backdrop and afternoon golden light bathing over her, she opens up about her preparation for such emotionally demanding films, working with the Dardenne brothers, and still keeping the door open for a future of comedies.
BONJOUR.
Bonjour.
WAS THE BELGIAN ACCENT DIFFICULT TO DO FOR YOU?
Um…yes or no? Kind of. Because I didn’t want to have like a Belgian accent, I wanted to have a flavor. And I needed it because all the other actors, and especially the actor who plays my husband (Fabrizio Rongione), and the two young actors who play my kids, they have an accent. And it is actually one of the first things, if not the first thing, the Dardenne brothers asked me. It was to lose my Parisian accent. When you’re asked such a thing, usually, I mean, Jim (Jean-Pierre)’s great, wanted me to have a Polish accent, or (he) wanted me to have an Italian accent, so you have a dialect coach, and you work, for hours, days, weeks, months, when you’re lucky enough to have months…
But then here, it was losing my French Parisian accent, so I thought, “I need to replace it by something, another accent.” I mean we all have accents, or we’re robots. So I thought, "OK, I need to have a Belgian accent." But it was not what they asked me. And they are very precise in their, demands. So I knew they were not asking me to have a Belgian accent…
And then the month of rehearsal that we had was very helpful because I listened to all those people around me who had a different kind of Belgian accent. And yeah, I was kind of nervous that it would be too much, or not enough, because I was working by myself, no dialect coach this time, sometimes I got a little nervous about it. And sometimes they would say, “Oh no no, this is too much of a (Parisian) accent, and I was very happy about it. But then I knew that I needed to reduce so it would not be disturbing because some people in the audience know my face already, which was kind of new for the Dardenne brothers, to work with a well-known actress, and I knew that I really needed to fit in their world, but that the accent shouldn’t be disturbing, for the audience. That was a long answer...
THIS MOVIE IS KIND OF LIKE A ROAD MOVIE, BUT IT'S ALSO A REAWAKENING OF A ROMANCE WITH SANDRA'S HUSBAND. SO FOR YOU, WHAT DID YOU THINK OF THIS FILM WHEN YOU FIRST READ THE SCRIPT, AND HOW DID YOU PICTURE IT, GENRE-WISE?
When I first read the script, it resonated with some deep questions and reflections that I had a year and a half before, when I read a letter of someone who decided to end his life, because he was working in a company, and at that time, a lot of people in that company took the same decision as this guy. So it was a big thing in France. And one of them left a letter, explaining that he was putting an end to his life because he felt useless. And some other, another person had kids too, and I started to really question, I mean I’ve always questioned our society, and the decisions, and how it functions, or how it dis-functions…
But I was reading, at the same time, I was reading things about some Indian tribes and African tribes, and I read somewhere that an individual in those tribes question his or her places in the society. So of course I came to the conclusion that we, our society, the society we all live in here, creates isolation, and this question that should sound crazy in a perfect world, where everybody on Earth has a place. Otherwise, this person wouldn’t be here, if this person didn't have a place or a purpose. So when I read the script the first time, it really like brought back all the questions and refections that I had, and it made sense for me to experience from the inside someone who feels useless, and worthless.
YOUR PERFORMANCE IS FILLED WITH SUCH RAW VULNERABILITY- DID THE REHEARSAL PROCESS HELP YOU IN EXPLORING AND FINDING THOSE EMOTIONS?
Rehearsals always help, because...I remember when I started being an actress, I read this biography from (a French film actress) Romy Schneider, I don’t know if you’re familiar with this ingenious actress, and at the beginning of her biography she says, she always worked a lot, preparing for a role. And she was kind of a model for me, she is still. And she says, “I’m gonna work on a character, and I’m gonna explore fifty ways. Most of the time, the first way is the right way, but, it’s enriched by exploring the forty-nine other ways. And when you have the time to rehearse, you try things, and you can go wrong, because you’re not shooting. And then the next day you’re gonna try something different, and it’s gonna be richer, because you’ve experienced what was not exactly what you were looking for, but then you experienced it.
And especially when…well I always need a preparation time, because, I love it, first of all.I love this process of exploring, because when you find something, it’s like a gold, searcher? You don’t say that…a gold…when you search for gold and you have the gold! And then suddenly, Wah! That’s it! And you have time to digest, to make it better.
And I need that time because I...one of my favorite parts, there is one, because I love the whole process, and it’s when you start feeling the character in your body. And I cannot work only on what’s in her mind, what was her life before, which was something that I loved to do, but when I start feeling the way I walk, the way I talk, the way I breathe, becomes her...and then I see myself disappearing. And rehearsals…it was the first time for me I did this process of rehearsing with the directors, and we rehearsed all the scenes on set, with the actors, and even in costumes. This process of rehearsing was not focused on acting, it was finding the dynamic of the camera because it was all sequenced shots. Sometimes you have a scene that lasts ten minutes, and we really had to create the choreography, and the Dardenne’s cinema is…the rhythm, is really, really important in their movies, and they’re very demanding, I mean in terms of rhythm. Sometimes I would have this scene, I get off the bed, put my shoes on, and I put the left shoes, and when I put the right shoes [snaps finger], I burst in tears- we did it like eighty times. And sometimes it would happen on the left shoes, or when I would put my foot back on the floor and they would say, “That was great, but if you could really burst in tears exactly when you put your shoes on…”
[Laughter]
That level of precision. Which I really, really loved.
But then the rehearsal time was really like focused on finding the dynamic, and of course, finding the dynamic is also about acting, because what you give gives a rhythm. And then you try to do beautiful cake with al those elements. But then, when you’re on set, it’s all about acting. They focus on acting, which is heaven, for an actor.
WHAT KEEPS YOU FOCUSED?
A good director, that’s the key. If I don’t want to give, because I don’t trust the director, it’s really, really hard for me to give anything, and to find the authenticity, to find everything I need to give everything I have to give to do a scene. So that’s the first thing. And then…[pause] if I feel, free, and if there’s a strong connection with the people I work with, it’s not hard for me to stay in character. But sometimes I know that I need a process, I need time by myself, before the day. When I did La Vie en Rose, for example, an hour before the call, because I needed this hour to, do stuff, to get in…but yeah, when I feel free, and trusted, and I trust the people I work with, it’s simpler.
YOU GO DEEP INTO YOUR ROLES...
Well, I try.
HOW WAS THAT FOR SANDRA? HOW DID YOU GO INTO HER, AND OUT?
The thing is, as much as I find the process of ‘getting in’ very interesting, I find the process of ‘getting out’ very interesting too.
[Laughter]
I didn’t know before La Vie en Rose that I would have to ‘find a way out,”…I thought it was a job, and that after the last cut, I would go back to my life, and go back to normal…what is normal anyways?
But that was a very, very interesting process, that took me a long time. And then I realized that I needed to do it for almost all the movies. And I never know how it’s going to happen. So I’m always looking for this experience. It can take the form of someone who will tell me something, and we’re going to enter a discussion, and then suddenly, yeah, I will feel that it’s going away…it’s really hard to explain, but I learn a lot out of it. It’s kind of hard to explain, and I never know how it’s going to happen.
This is one of the greatest experiences, if not the greatest experience I had on set with directors, and the relationship I had with them was total osmosis.
YOU WORK WITH SO MANY GREAT AND DIFFERENT TYPES OF DIRECTORS, FROM WOODY ALLEN, TO CHRISTOPHER NOLAN, TO TIM BURTON- WORKING WITH THE DARDENNE'S, WHAT WAS THAT EXPERIENCE LIKE FOR YOU?
I need to work with directors who need more than anything, to tell a story. I work with directors and I found that working with them, that if they were there, or anywhere else, it would make no difference. And it was painful, because I need it to be almost a matter of life or death. Because first of all, when you do a movie, it involves a lot of people, who trust you. And you will ask people to come to see what you want to say, and if it’s not something that you really need to say, I’m not interested. Because it’s too painful for me. And it happened, and I was totally lost, because I was with someone who was not in the deep need to tell a story. So that’s one thing.
The Dardenne brothers...something that I loved about, I loved everything, this is one of the greatest experiences, if not the greatest experience I had on set with directors, and the relationship I had with them was total osmosis. They always talk about the audience. When sometimes on set, “audience” is like, a bad word. They always talk about the audience, and that’s what I love about their movies, because they take you somewhere, and they’re gonna surprise you, and they’re gonna move you, they’re gonna…I mean, I’ve seen all of their movies, I love them all. For me, The Son (L’enfant) is a masterpiece, I don’t know if you’ve seen this movie, but this is, I mean, for an audience, taking a road and then suddenly somebody is going like [mimes footsteps], and then you turn and the story is totally different from what you thought entering the theater. And for thirty minutes, you think that, I mean, I won’t ruin anything if some people haven’t seen this movie, but obviously, you think something! You think this guy is this kind of person, and then suddenly it unravels something totally different. I mean, as part of an audience, it’s like…it’s what cinema is for.
And on the second day of rehearsals, they were talking about the audience, and that was funny because it was really new for me and it was really like, a little more freedom. They had already given me a freedom that was beyond freedom. But this was, I loved it so much. And they turned to me and they said, “Oh, you know, we talk about the audience all the time.” And the first scene is, “No, we don’t want the audience to see your face," as in almost all their movies..."and then the audience will think this, and they’ll be surprised by this,” and, I found it relieving.
WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON NEXT?
I did a movie at the beginning of the year. A British movie based on Macbeth. So I think that’s gonna be released next year…
YOU’RE LADY MACBETH…
I am…I hope.
[Laughter]
IS IT TRADITIONAL?
Super traditional. And we went to the purest Shakespeare you could find. Because sometimes they kind of adapt a little bit, for people to understand. If you don’t, it’s normal. It took me a long time to understand everything, but I’m French [laugher].
SO YOU’VE CHOSEN TO FOLLOW UP THIS MOVIE WITH A COMEDIC MOVIE…
[Pause]. I’m not talking to you anymore.
[Laughter]
I would love to! Honestly, when I accepted my next movie, first of all my boyfriend was like, “Ohh, it’s gonna be a fun year.” And then, well already, I was not supposed to do a movie after the Dardenne brothers’ movie because I was kind of exhausted, and then (director) Justin (Kurzel) came with this offer, and I always knew I would play Macbeth, but I always thought it would be on stage, and in French, and I thought, "Well this is an opportunity that I cannot miss." And same boyfriend said, “Are you kidding me?” Because he knows I want to do comedies...he’s like, “Are you kidding me? Lady Macbeth! I mean this must be a joke!”
[Laughter]
And my next movie is, not funny…drama, drama, drama, drama. It’s a French movie, from a French actor-director, Nicole Garcia, and uh, no, it’s not gonna be a fun movie. But I mean, I’m looking forward to it…
DID YOU HAVE FUN DOING THE BIT IN ANCHORMAN 2?
I was so stressed out! Because I’m not used to doing comedies, and when you’re not used to doing that you never know if the level of what you do is too high, or too low. Plus, you’re on screen with genius Jim Carrey, and all those people, who are just my heroes. And I was just, yeah. I felt…I had fun, and at the same time, I was so stressed out, that it kind of ruined a little bit of the fun. Especially that I…can I say that…I was supposed to shoot the next day, and they pushed the day before, and I was totally hungover-
[Laughter]
because the Met Ball was the night before! But no, I mean, I had so much fun, I really want to do a comedy. I don’t know if I would. I mean I would have a lot of work maybe, maybe more work than for a drama, because I’m more familiar with drama now. But that would be, yeah, that would be a risk – that I would love to take.
*Update: This interview was edited on 11/20/2014 to identify the name of the French film actress, Romy Schneider.
Review: 'Foxcatcher'
In the none-too-distant past of late nineteen-eighties America and its settling, fading Reaganism, a former and forgotten Olympic Gold Medal-winning wrestler, Mark Schultz, was approached by a private investor and old-money heir, John du Pont, of the du Pont family fortune, who offered to sponsor Mark's training efforts so that together, they could become victors of the 1998 Olympic Games in Seoul. Mark was taken in to train, and live, on the sprawling du Pont Pennsylvania countryside estate. The name of the compound, was Foxcatcher Farms.
While you might already know the devastating aftermath of what this real-life relationship would bring in its wake, you won't have imagined its story told quite like this; quite so acutely distressing–if not just on this side of overly-restrained, in director Bennett Miller's latest film, Foxcatcher.
In telling this real-life story, Foxcatcher employs a wide variety of expectations-deviating elements, including bucking the traditional sports-biopic-murder story–its interests lie in broader, more thematically engulfing and idea-presenting territory. Miller enlists here the acting talents of a careful selection of some of Hollywood's most currently coveted film starrers–who also all seemed to be wanting to scratch the same acting-itch at the same time in their careers, for stepping into these characters required a good amount of evaluation and preparation as to the exhaustive, destructive journey that would lie ahead, and were collectively unsure if they would be better in the end for doing so (Read Ryan's interview with the cast, director, and screenwriters, who talked at length about the emotionally turbulent film-making process.) In a seismically charged one-two punch, Channing Tatum gives his most intense and best on-screen performance to date yet as Mark Schultz, and Steve Carell loses himself (attempting to, in the most acknowledged version possible) as the upper-class outsider John du Pont, with Mark Ruffalo as the film's more personable life-force, older brother to Mark and former wrestling champ himself, Dave Schultz.
Mr. Miller seems to revel in taking his inspiration in the form of channeling Foxcatcher Farm's dead-moving and thickly-engulfing morning fog that wraps each character and prop and film frame into an impressionistic version of itself.
To understand a film like this–a real-life tale spun deftly off-kilter as an American tragedy of history's greatest and modern and faulted men–is to know the films of director Bennett Miller. While his name, or films, might not revel in the same excited movie conversation amongst typical movie-goers, it is to his strength that his focus is on circumventing conventional narrative-telling, in the sense that 'scenes' find their importance and meaning more-so in their conclusions, in the next scene's beginnings and first shots, so that things can align for meaning only when looked back upon, and definitely appreciated as the sum of its parts (at least it's that way here, excessively so). Stubborn wouldn't be the correct word, for how he chooses to so joyfully deny the audience their expected place in steering the cart while chipping away at his films' meanings–but it comes close.
What's interesting about this film is that it's set up for any educated viewer to understand that there's just so much gold to mine here that isn't being seen or known. This is a film of silences, whether when framing Mark and his early kinetic anger, who is seen early on getting by talking to apathetic middle-school assemblies for hamburger food, and what those moments speak larger of. Seeing du Pont's almost-humorous actions of ordering a tank from the indebted U.S. government, yet not accepting it without it's mounted machine gun, are mere instances of being given the close-up of the trees, where audiences will have to forcibly step back and acknowledge the larger forest that encloses them. This choosing to leave open the ideas that populate these odd-ball situations gives way for interesting realism and freedom, but it still never puts its finger on any one idea, which is this film's problem. And what small and very real miracles the film does employ in each scene, consistent in relief and management (to its praise), Mr. Miller seems to revel in taking his inspiration in the form of channeling Foxcatcher Farm's dead-moving and thickly-engulfing morning fog that wraps each character and prop and film frame into impressionistic versions of themselves. Fear and bubbling animal instinct is dulled, as a result, as if the concern that connecting these historical dots would convey a sense of easiness, which this director seems himself terrified of doing.
It is for this same point, however, that the film stands as something unique and singular, among modern-day films whose studio heads and financiers would find themselves clearing their desks Monday morning over. This is filmmaker-champion Megan Ellison's (Annapurna Pictures) big-scale home movie–and to be honest–we as a movie-going audience are all the better for it. This is last year's Inside Llewyn Davis, a film that was undoubtedly made with real artistic awareness yet similarly quietly hushed for its universal inaccessibility (a film that I believed was worthy of last year's Best Picture Oscar). It's a filmmaker's movie, a "movie person's" movie, which means to say, it should be praised for what it sets out to achieve, rather than what it actually does.
Gorgeous camera work further works in this artist's favor for his choice of storytelling. What starts out as a more documentary-like photographing (Miller's first film being a documentary, 1998's The Cruise), becomes something ever so subtly grown into a more tunnel-visioned disorientation (look for how the growing mental instabilities of Mark and du Pont are referenced in its evolving and more lofty camerawork, including an enormous wide shot of Mark zig-zagging wrestling moves on the estate's frame-filling lawn, similar to Kubrick's penchant of creating trapping and fated set pieces such as in Barry Lyndon and The Shining). Sound designs grows uglier and more confrontational as the film wears on, including the raw knuckle-punching and mirror-smashing of a Tatum untamed in a one-take show-stopper. In fact, there are so many things that the filmmakers did behind the scenes that the audience might never know. Like how the actors were directed to improvise in most scenes ("Ornithologist, Philatelist, Philanthropist..."), as much as twenty to thirty percent, according to Ruffalo. As well as Miller's direction for having his actors write down their most private secrets, of which weren't known even to their spouses, and kept in their pockets during shooting- so that they wouldn't ever feel too comfortable on set. The million-dollar question is- do these incredible techniques come together to make for a great picture, or are they misaligned in fulfilling a different satisfaction? (At the moment, I myself am not even sure, but I raise the point).
I'm sorry–did you want out of this more specifics? Would you rather have had more tangible forms of evidence provided to you to weigh out this film from? Has this rolling commentary, more concerned with world-framing then with world-explaining, denied your expected takeaway of what this review would be? Then I'd argue that this is the head-space you should prepare yourself for before seeing (and it's no doubt that this is a film to be seen) and taking in this masterfully performed, gorgeously shot, expertly-directed, if only too tragically and inwardly-trapped, modern day master-work attempt.
Foxcatcher is in theaters Friday, November 14th.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8361stZ8n0w