In film writing these days, superlatives like “visionary” and “genius” are thrown around all too often to describe directors, though few truly deserve them; Nuri Bilge Ceylan, however, is one of those few. The Turkish writer-director was born in 1959 in Istanbul, and started taking photographs in his mid-teens. He earned a degree in Engineering at Boğaziçi University, but after graduating he moved on to study film, a newly discovered passion, at Mirnar Sinan University. After a ten-year period spent living in London (during which he studied filmmaking by reading books), Ceylan returned to Turkey and embarked on his film career with a 20-minute black and white short, owing much to his photographic background, called Koza (Cocoon) which was selected for the 1995 Cannes Film Festival. Ceylan made his feature debut with Kasaba in 1997 and followed it up with Clouds of May (1999); both pictures had their international premieres at the Berlin Film Festival. Ceylan's breakthrough came in 2002 with his third feature, Distant, a moody tale of urban and artistic alienation which won the Grand Prix at Cannes and made Ceylan an important figure in global film. In 2006, he returned with Climates, an understated study of a couple's disintegrating relationship in which Ceylan and his wife, actress and fellow photographer Ebru Ceylan, played the leads.

His latest film, Three Monkeys, co-written with his wife (along with Ercan Kesal, who appeared in Distant), is a brooding tale of a family torn apart. The action begins with a local politician Servet (Kesal) killing a pedestrian in a hit-and-run accident. To salvage his career, he pays his loyal driver Eyüp (Yavuz Bingöl) to take the fall for him, however the situation is greatly complicated when Eyüp's wife, Hacer (Hatice Eslan), begins an affair with Servet while her husband is doing time, and their son, Ismail (Ahmet Rifat Sungar), discovers her treachery. As the title implies, Three Monkeys examines the impact of actively ignoring the misdeeds of those around us, and around this premise Ceylan creates a film which is deeply emotional yet highly restrained, an intense human drama which always feels utterly authentic. The skill Ceylan has in conveying the complex inner lives of his characters is perfectly complemented by his peerless visual style, making Three Monkeys a rich, complete cinematic experience. Each textured shot is beautifully lit and composed, with the subdued, muddied interiors and the expansive brooding skies all adding to Ceylan's masterful vision of a world in perpetual shadow.

Filmmaker interviewed Ceylan by email and discussed the motivation behind this new movie, collaborating with his wife, and the “death of film.”



Filmmaker: What was your motivation behind making Three Monkeys?

Ceylan: I don't know. Many things... To be able to understand the astonishing nature of human existence by creating a story which is capable of showing such situations. This is a specific story created specially to be able to show certain aspects of human soul.I don’t remember [where the idea came from]. It is a kind of mystery for me. I think starting a script is like the birth of a river. Many little drops of water from different sources come together to form a stream first and many streams come together to form a river. It is a bit like that.

Filmmaker: Can you explain the significance of the title?

Ceylan: Today "Three Monkeys" is commonly used to describe someone who doesn't want to be involved in a situation, or someone willfully turning a blind eye to the immorality of an act in which they are involved.

Filmmaker: You collaborated on the writing of Three Monkeys with two actors, your wife Ebru and Ercan Kesal. What was the reason for this decision?

Ceylan: They are not actors actually. They only acted in my films. They are two of my best friends. I thought with them the script could be easier and richer. In fact, I realized Ebru was very good at writing during Climates. And Ercan was a good friend with whom I used to speak [about these] sort of things in real life often.

Filmmaker: You have said that you wanted to challenge yourself with this film and tell a different kind of story with this film. Can you explain the reason for that more fully?

Ceylan: This type of story has always been charming for me but it is now that I felt enough courage to deal with it. [But] I never felt ready or more confident. I always start a new project with fears, anxieties and uncertainties. But fortunately after a certain point you can not give up. And the uncertainties go on till the end, until you complete the movie.

Filmmaker: Do you have a clear idea of what a film will look like visually when you start writing it?

Ceylan: Not really. Perhaps more than that I have a certain mood of the film in my mind.

Filmmaker: You have worked with your wife and your parents on many projects. How important is the personal aspect of your films to you?

Ceylan: Not that important. The important thing is that what you made with them and the universal dimension in it.

Filmmaker: Is the use of non-actors as significant in your filmmaking process? Do you see yourself as a naturalist?

Ceylan: No. I am not a naturalist. I am trying to reach the truth or reality but it could be in many different ways.

Filmmaker: Your films are visually very beautiful, with great cinematography and carefully composed shots, but also are humanistic and insightful in their writing. How easy is it for you to balance the visual aspects with the emotional?

Ceylan: Very easy. Because I don't do anything special for it... Visual aspects are more effortless or instinctive.

Filmmaker: You’ve said that Tarkovsky’s movies made you want to become a filmmaker. Do you feel part of a larger cinematic tradition? Who are your biggest influences, both in cinema and other art forms?

Ceylan: He was just one of them together with Ozu and Bresson, and Bergman. In other art forms, mostly the Russian literature, baroque music and many painters.

Filmmaker: How much overlap is there between your perspective on photography and the way that you view cinema as an art form?

Ceylan: Not much. Actually cinema contains photography for me and also many many more.

Filmmaker: You shoot on HD digital video and said recently that “film is dead.” Were you being totally serious, and if so do you see the death of film as a good thing?

Ceylan: Yes. Film is dead for me. It is unnecessarily bulky and less capable to capture the reality I want. I don't need it. I don’t mind much that the “pelicule” is dying.

Filmmaker: How different will cinema be in the future as a result of this?

Ceylan: I don’t know. Perhaps special effects movies will increase. But realistic movies will be more valuable. Because realistic attitudes will not be out of obligation but because of the choice of creators "free will"...

Filmmaker: You’ve taken the role of cinematographer on some of your films, and been the editor on some also, but you stopped doing both jobs together after doing Clouds of May, ten years ago. Is there a conflict between doing both jobs at the same time?

Ceylan: Until Uzak, I did both. Then I quit using the camera. Because it is unnecessary. You can control everything better if you don't use it. But I was always the editor of all my films and I will continue to be. It is the heart of the job.

Filmmaker: How do you feel being self-taught affects the way that you view filmmaking?

Ceylan: Mistakes are the greatest teachers.

Filmmaker: Do you feel at all like an outsider because you took a less conventional route to becoming a director?

Ceylan: Not anymore. Maybe it is a pity.

Filmmaker: How significant was your extended time living in London on your perspective on film and also on life in Turkey?

Ceylan: Very important. Because for the first time in my life I became so sure that I want to live in Turkey.

Filmmaker: What was the first film you ever saw?

Ceylan: A black and white adventure movie in the sea. [I remember having] strong feelings at that time.

Filmmaker: What's your best piece of advice for aspiring filmmakers?

Ceylan: Walk alone on the road you think it is right.

Filmmaker: Which phrase best describes your philosophy on life?

Ceylan: “All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.” (Friedrich Nietzsche)

Filmmaker: Finally, when was the last time you wished you had a different job?

Ceylan: Never.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 3/27/2009 11:31:00 PM Comments (0)

Having demonstrated significant talent as a print journalist, Matt Tyrnauer has shifted his focus and brought his great observational skills to bear on the big screen. Born in the late 1960s in Los Angeles, Tyrnauer grew up with entertainment all around him. His father was a TV writer on shows like The Virginian, Columbo and Murder, She Wrote (which he also produced), Tyrnauer was a regular visitor to LA's favorite rep houses such as the Nuart and the New Beverley, and he was even taught film while still at the progressive Crossroads high school. At Wesleyan University, Tyrnauer studied film but on graduation opted to become a journalist rather than return to his hometown to pursue Hollywood dreams. Moving to New York, Tyrnauer wrote for Spy magazine and the New York Observer, both under editor Graydon Carter, and Carter brought him to work as a special correspondent at Vanity Fair when he took over the reigns at the magazine in 1992. Over his 17 year tenure at the publication, Tyrnauer has become well known for his profile features on figures as diverse as Martha Stewart, Bret Easton Ellis and Siegfried and Roy.

In 2004, Tyrnauer profiled another larger-than-life character for Vanity Fair, the Italian fashion designer Valentino, and developed a strong rapport with him and his partner of nearly 50 years, Giancarlo Giammetti. Having long harbored ideas of returning to film, Tyrnauer got Valentino's permission to make a documentary about him, and the result of two years of shooting and another in post production is Valentino: The Last Emperor. With the world of fashion as its backdrop rather than its subject, Tyrnauer's film focuses on the remarkable relationship between Valentino, the flamboyant fashion titan, and his partner in life and in business, the enigmatic, long-suffering Giammetti, the man who made Valentino a legendary figure but has remained always in the shadows. The film also spans a pivotal point in Valentino's career when his company has been bought out and faces an uncertain future, and rumors of Valentino's own retirement begin circulating. Shot with restraint and simple style, Valentino: The Last Emperor uses a cinema vérité approach to capture a portrait of two remarkable figures and gives insight into their extravagant, extraordinary lives without ever being tacky or sensational. Though Tyrnauer continues to work as a journalist, he will hopefully also put his cinematic talents to further use.

Filmmaker spoke to Tyrnauer about the transition from print to celluloid, the surreal world of Valentino, and his battles for editorial control.



Filmmaker: How did you originally conceive this film?

Tyrnauer: It came out of a feature on Valentino I did for Vanity Fair. Valentino's so visual, the world is so colorful, the money spent on living is so extreme, and I wanted to make a movie for a long time because I have a degree in film but I've been doing journalism for my whole career. Also I really liked him a lot, and we survived the print experience. He didn't want a “divorce” after that. The minute [the article] came out and it was clear that the relationship of interviewer and subject was going to survive, I asked him to do it. They thought about it a little bit, but he said yes quite readily and then we began immediately because I know if you wait people can change their minds. So even before we had all the funding in place, we started with a small Sony Z1.

Filmmaker: And did the film begin as something like the cinematic equivalent of one of your Vanity Fair profiles?

Tyrnauer: In the end, it turned out to be finding a way to tell the story with a different medium, that's for sure. Interestingly, I always look to the Maysles brothers as an influence for writing because I like direct cinema and I like the subject to tell their story in their own words, so for me Grey Gardens is the urtext for that. Valentino's everyday is something unreal: he lives in a castle some days of the week, he lives in a villa outside of Rome on some others, there's the six pugs that go on the private plane, there's the room in London that has five Picassos, and you just don't see that in everyday life. He is such an incredible character, and that doesn't come across so well in print because Valentino's told his story for years and he's come up with a narrative that is the Valentino story – but it's not necessarily the real story. That's excusable when you're a public figure – it's a survival technique – but the real story and the real Valentino is much, much more interesting, and it only really comes across in cinema vérité. What needed to happen was that we shoot vérité and he and Giancarlo Giammetti, who's the other principal character in the movie and partner of 50 years, needed to forget that the camera was there, ala Grey Gardens, and kind of befriend the camera.

Filmmaker: How small was your crew? Presumably you didn't want to be too obvious so that people would be as unaffected as possible.

Tyrnauer: We tried different sizes. For the first shoot, we had sort of a five or six person crew with the sound man with the boom and a P.A. and a producer on the set. I knew we'd had to shoot with a tight posse eventually, but I wanted to show up with a real crew and make an impression and show that this was a real movie. First we had a full complement, and then the tight posse was [producer and sometime D.P.] Frederic Tcheng and me, and we would try to wire them for sound. The boom is so intrusive, and the Italians have a great word for the boom – it's called the giraffe – so, the giraffe became the enemy. [Sound recordist] Peter Miller has a technique where he threads a very small microphone up through the shirt and into the knot of the tie, so it doesn't clip on and it's totally invisible. They would frequently forget that they were wearing a microphone, which was the key to everything.

Filmmaker: You filmed over the course of two years, but I presume that was in short bursts. Were those filming periods at your suggestion or Valentino's invitation?

Tyrnauer: It was very give and take. I think one of the really important things to know is when to disappear, and never outstay your welcome, so we were really careful about that. But, on the other hand, we were commuting from New York to Rome frequently, and Paris, sometimes London and sometimes Gstaad, and sometimes a boat in the Mediterranean, so you really just can't drop in. Frequently, I would set it up with Giancarlo, and we would arrive in Rome having budgeted a shoot. We would be shown into his enormous office and he would greet us with a very formal, “So, what brings you to Rome?” Meanwhile, I had established that we were coming and that we would shoot certain days, but they would affect that very Italian nonchalance. I would always allow one or two days of padding at the beginning because we would have to almost start all over again with the relationship. It was like, “Why don't we have lunch and discuss what's going on?” Sometimes it got more dire and it was like, “Let's discuss if we're going to do the movie or not.”

Filmmaker: Valentino says on camera at one point that he's not going to do the film anymore.

Tyrnauer: He quits the movie on camera in the first act, but that's just them. Nothing's ever permanent, no plan is ever written in stone, minds are changed frequently, so this was part of the enormous frustration of doing the film, because we did this kabuki theater every time. And I got used to it, I would just realize that, with the 72-hour grace period I'd given myself, that by the 73rd hour we would be back to where we were a few weeks before. So we shot it in for a 10-day period once a month for two years.

Filmmaker: When you started, were you conscious how much this was going to be a portrait not just of Valentino but also of Giancarlo?

Tyrnauer: The reason I wanted to make the movie was because it was about them. When I went to meet Valentino originally, I didn't really know that I would be meeting two people. That's what's interesting is the dynamic between these two people, the relationship that's frequently called “like a marriage.” It's more than a marriage, it's bond that defies belief. It's 50 years, it's clearly for eternity, and I've never seen two people so close and interconnected. That relationship was for me everything, so the goal was to capture the relationship and allow and the life to be a backdrop. You never know whether you're going to be able to do that. When we started to get dailies, we saw that there were these moments, like the sand dune fight, which for me is the core of the film. That's the relationship to a T, that's what they're like, and you can't even believe it. You couldn't script it, it's too incredible.

Filmmaker: Giancarlo has a very controlling influence over Valentino's affairs, so what was your relationship like with Giancarlo during filming?

Tyrnauer: Valentino lives in a state if isolation and he's protected by Giancarlo, and there was a sort of Pirandello effect here because Giancarlo was trying to direct the movie always over my shoulder. Because that's what he does – his job is to direct the story around Valentino. That was his profession for half a century, so this sort of became a new challenge for him, and I had a contract specifying final cut. It took a year to negotiate, we did it while we were shooting so there were always threats of quitting during the film to gain leverage, but eventually we signed. But that didn't stop Giancarlo from trying to direct and produce, so there's this crossing in and out of the storyteller and subject dimensions. And I didn't discourage him from doing that, because that's him.

Filmmaker: You said that you unambiguously had final cut on the film. but I presume that still meant that Valentino and Giancarlo tried everything they could to affect the movie. How difficult was it to negotiate the final stages of post production?

Tyrnauer: It was a waltz, a continuous waltz. To say they used every means of influence and badgering and protests would be an understatement. By turns it was a charm offensive and then it would be walking off the set, which you see on film. After nine months of editing, I had a director's cut and I brought it to London to show them and, quite frankly, they “freaked up.” That's their way of saying “freak out.” [laughs]. It's not the movie they would have made themselves, it's not the movie they were expecting – I'm not sure what they were expecting really. To see yourself 20 feet high for 90 minutes is traumatizing no matter who you are, and if you're world class control freaks like they are, I was fully expecting it to be a real trauma for them. And it was. They really were very knocked sideways by the film. Giancarlo and I had a meeting in London with the editor, Bob Eisenhardt, and Frederic Tcheng, and it was a classic contest of wills. He had literally made a note about virtually every scene containing something that was objectionable. We dug in our heels and we didn't change it, and they had no right to change it. It was an unusual, unprecedented situation for them, certainly, because their lives are all about being able to exert control and final edit. In the end, we maintained a kind of tense détente as we went into the Venice Film Festival. Even on the red carpet at Venice, there was a certain chill in the air, but then it played at the Salle Grande to a full house and at the end Valentino, seated in the balcony, rose to accept a standing ovation – and burst into tears. From that point on, when they saw that the portrait was something that the public could embrace with enormous amounts of awe and affection and a certain measure of shock, they were very embracing. And they've embraced it ever since.

Filmmaker: You studied film at university, but then went into journalism. Was there a particular reason for that?

Tyrnauer: I think I'm probably happiest watching movies, and I'm one of those kids that went to the New Beverly and the NuArt in Los Angeles, and I would been there with my friends every night of the week if we could have been. I had a high school teacher that taught film as a program and he forced ninth graders to watch Godard and Alain Resnais and Antonioni. It was very Dead Poets Society. It was our lives, so I was very film obsessed. I grew up in a TV household: my father was a TV writer of very enduring success, so he did Columbo and Murder, She Wrote and the great TV mysteries of that era. But I was equally interested in journalism, so when it came time to decide, coming from L.A., I think I thought it would be more interesting to live in New York. Most of my friends either returned to Los Angeles or moved there to write screenplays, and there was something about that that didn't appeal to me, maybe just because I grew up in a house where there was the clacking of the typewriter all the time, and there's the sense that you don't want to do what your father does. Then I got a job writing at Vanity Fair when I was 23. It's hard to picture a better place to write than at that magazine. But always in the back of my head, there was always a movie. I loved the documentaries of the Maylses and Frederick Wiseman and all the great masters of that genre, and then my dayjob was non-fiction storytelling, so it seemed to be a logical step. Timing is everything: I met Valentino and we hit it off, and I felt like it was time to do something. And then what I sensed but didn't fully appreciate was that the experience of telling a story in a different medium is one of the most gratifying things you can possibly do. You learn so much from doing that, it's so mind-expanding to figure out ways to get the point across with different tools, and it's just the most gratifying thing I've ever done.

Filmmaker: What's the smartest decision you've ever made?

Tyrnauer: To go to Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences in Los Angeles. When I started to go there, it was the hippie alternative school for maybe didn't quite have the grades to go to Harvard School, but it was the smartest decision I ever made.

Filmmaker: If you could travel back in time and be able to make movies in a time and place of your choice, where and when would it be?

Tyrnauer: I would say it would be the 18th Century in Italy, and I would do a project on the Vatican.

Filmmaker: Finally, what matters more to you, that a film is successful, or that you're happy with the finished product?

Tyrnauer: The latter, to be happy. I guess this contradicts my answer in a certain way, but I wasn't totally happy until we started playing it for audiences, and then I wasn't fully happy until we played at Venice to a huge audience and it got a standing ovation and then we did two days of press and we were deluged with interviews. It was so beyond any dream or expectation of a response, but it wasn't the press that mattered, it was the audience response. That, for me, was success, and I could have stopped there, to be honest with you.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 3/18/2009 03:07:00 PM Comments (0)

Over the past decade or so, Kiyoshi Kurosawa has established himself as one of the most interesting genre directors in world cinema. The Japanese writer-director was born in Kobe in 1955, and first made 8mm shorts while studying Sociology at Rikko University. He began directing features in the early 1980s, working on direct-to-video titles, including yakuza movies, and studied under the tutelage of directors Shinji Somai and Kazuhiko Hasegawa. He then had minor successes with films like the college-set drama The Excitement of the Do-Re-Mi-Fa Girl (1985) and the blackly comic thriller Guard from the Underground (1992). In 1992, he was invited to bring his script for Charisma to the Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab. Kurosawa first made an impression internationally in 1997 with his breakout festival hit Cure, a sinister serial killer thriller, and during a subsequent prolific period followed it up with a number of other successful thrillers and J-horror films, such as Charisma (1999), Séance (2000), and Pulse (2001). These movies consolidated Kurosawa's reputation as a significant talent, and though the director's pace has slowed somewhat since – he has made four features in the last five years – he has continued to make films in his trademark style, dealing with his recurrent themes, such as isolation and identity.

Kurosawa's latest film, Tokyo Sonata, however, sees him completely change gears as he switches from thrillers and horror films to an intimate family drama set in contemporary Japan. The film's familial patriarch, Ryuhei Sasaki (Teruyuki Kagawa), loses his job early on in the movie, and we then see the consequences of his inability to tell this to his wife Megumi (Kyoko Koizumi), grown-up son Takashi (Yu Koyanagi) and younger son Kenji (Kai Inowaki). The film follows each character's search for personal and collective identity in the midst of this communication breakdown, and Kurosawa's portrait of the family in decline begins as an understated drama and then slowly unravels. In Tokyo Sonata, Kurosawa elicits a number of great performances (from Kagawa, Koizumi and Kurosawa regular Koji Yakushi, in a choice smaller role), and manages to balance surprising humor with its more poignant moments, while also making its late shift into wild, heady allegory both resonant and highly effective. Though Kurosawa proved himself as a genre director, this fine film suggest that his talents are much greater and more diverse.

Filmmaker spoke to Kurosawa about his new cinematic direction, his ongoing collaboration with Koji Yakusho, and the monster movies of his childhood.



Filmmaker: What was your original idea for the film?

Kurosawa: I'd made several films that dealt with families before, but they had always been about broken families and I'd always been interested in doing some film about an ordinary nuclear before it's about to start breaking up, so that was one of the impetuses for me taking on this film.

Filmmaker: There's been a lot of talk about how different this is to your previous films. Why did you take this different direction, and how long had you been thinking about doing that?

Kurosawa: I'd made various styles of films in my career, but I think I've had a string of films in recent years that labeled me as a horror filmmaker. I don't mind the horror genre at all – in fact, I like it – but I didn't want to be pigeonholed as a horror filmmaker, so I'd been itching to do something very different and that's part of the reason why I chose to do a family drama. In so doing, I wanted to squeeze in lots of different thoughts and details from my observations of living in Japan everyday and try to invest the film with a lot of the different ordinary things that I'm not able to do in some of the genre films I've done before.

Filmmaker: Were you daunted by this change in direction, not only because of the challenge of doing something different but because of anticipating the fans' reaction to this new kind of film?

Kurosawa: I wasn't that daunted, and I think the reason why is because even though the story was new, many of the cast and crew that I was working with were familiar to me, even though there were some new people too. The mode of filmmaking, the budget, and the days of shooting were comparable to what I'd done in the past, so I wasn't that concerned. But because I seem to have a certain segment of fans that are very much appreciative of my horror films, I was concerned that some of them probably wouldn't like this film.

Filmmaker: What kind of overlap do you see between this film and your work beforehand? And how different was the experience of writing and directing in compared with previous films?

Kurosawa: I think in the horror genre you're always thinking about how you're going to incite fear in the audience, but with something like Tokyo Sonata, I didn't have to worry about a certain emotional reaction that I had to draw out of the audience. I could shoot something that felt right and them worry about the emotional aspect later. In terms of the similarities between the earlier films and this one, they're all dramas that are set in modern Tokyo in which several characters suffer from isolation and pressure from society and the concern about how they will be able to find liberation from that.

Filmmaker: I find it interesting that this film, which is so particularly Japanese, has suddenly acquired a universal resonance in the wake of the global financial crisis.

Kurosawa: I wasn't sure when I first made Tokyo Sonata how relevant it would be to the rest of the world. When I was making it, I wasn't aware how unstable the economy was going to be; I certainly didn't predict it. We shot the film over a year ago. Even though the story is about a father who is laid off, I wasn't concerned about taking up the social problem of unemployment, rather I was interested in the psychology of this man who couldn't tell his family about the fact that he lost his job and the fact that he had to keep it a secret. I'm not sure how distinctively Japanese that is or how universal that is, but judging from how much it seems to resonating with audiences around the world, perhaps there is something to the idea that the inability for the father to do so is something that is universal around the the world too.

Filmmaker: I wanted to ask you about your influences on this film, and particularly Laurent Cantet's Time Out, which is also about a man who can bring himself to reveal he's been laid off.

Kurosawa: First of all, I haven't seen Time Out, but when I was in France I was told about the film by several people and asked if I had seen it. I understand that it was probably the one that is based on the true story [of Jean-Claude Romand], a father [who] had lied about losing his job and kept that secret for several years and ended up killing his family. In terms of influences, this is a film that doesn't belong to any genre so there were no films that I watched in advance to model it after, receive any influence or get any ideas. However, one genre that I was aware of is the “home drama,” which is a very distinctive Japanese genre that's found primarily on TV in which you'll have a family sitting around a dinner and they'll often fight, laugh, make up – all kinds of different dramas taking place right at the dinner table – and that's a certain format that I was conscious of when I was making the film.

Filmmaker: There's a very rich and sometimes surprising sense of humor in the film. Laughs are usually out of place in horror or sci-fi films, so what it was it like having that greater freedom to be funny?

Kurosawa: I wasn't intending for the film to be a comedy really, but it seems that certain scenes have drawn some laughs from the audience and I think it's because many of the characters are very, very preoccupied with something before them and have extreme tunnel vision. When you look at it from the outside, objectively, there's something comical about it and I think that's where much of the comedy comes from.

Filmmaker: As this is not a genre film, music plays a somewhat different role in Tokyo Sonata. How involved were you in working with the composer and drawing out the more emotional aspects of the film with the score?

Kurosawa: The composer was a man by the name of [Kazumasa] Hashimoto, and I hadn't worked with him before and he hadn't done any composing for film before. That was actually an intention of mine, to work with somebody who hadn't done any films yet. I wanted to use music in a very different way than I typically do with horror films. With horror films, we first edit the film and then the composer will take a look at it and we will talk about adding scary music here, quiet music there, whatever's appropriate to each scene. With this film, I showed the composer the film and then I asked him to come up with music of any length, without regard for where it might fit in the actual film. The only condition was that he let me pick and choose the ones I wanted to use wherever I wanted in the film. So that was a very different mode of working with a composer this time.

Filmmaker: I believe in the first version of the script, there was more focus on the male members of the family, but that you made the mother a much more significant and well-rounded character.

Kurosawa: What I found very difficult is the process of expanding the wife into one of the primary characters in the film and [discovering] how she will confront her own dramas and conflicts in the film. In Japan, there are many housewives and also many people who work outside and as I struggled to work out how to expand that character, I was able to get helpful contributions from our other co-screenwriter, Sachiko Tanaka. I'm not sure how reflective the character is of today's Japanese woman, but I can safely say that once the burglar appears, and in all the ensuing scenes, it kind of moves into fantasy. Up until then, we're conscious of her role as a mother and a wife, but after that sequence, I think she moves past that point and into a more universal question of her own identity – “Who am I?” – as she ends up in a more philosophical place. I think she ends up representing the root of the question of where people see themselves in a family, and how they see themselves as an individual too.

Filmmaker: The part of the film which is fantastical also has heavily allegorical aspects. How important is allegory, which you've used in your genre films quite a bit, in your cinematic vocabulary?

Kurosawa: After the burglar shows up, as you mentioned, the film moves from reality to more a fantasy realm, and that was intentional on my part. For me, allegory and fantasy are devices for me to be able to give a certain amount of hope to the audience. I believe that depicting reality alone doesn't always take us to that place, and so while I believe that film is an art form that captures reality, I believe that sometimes you have to use these devices to be able to depict and capture that small inkling of hope that we need to see in the film.

Filmmaker: Koji Yakusho makes a great appearance in the latter stages of the film. Can you tell me about your continuing professional relationship with him and his importance to your work?

Kurosawa: First of all, we've obviously worked on many films together, and he happens to be the exact same age as me so there's a certain trust that we have, we're a good fit, and we have a lot of fun making films together too. Koji Yakusho was initially too busy to work on the film so we weren't expecting to cast him at all. But as we were getting close to the shooting date and we were finishing up the casting, he sent me an email saying, "I have three days to spare. Is there a role for me?" The only role really available at the moment was the burglar. I said, "Is this character OK for you?" He said, "My pleasure," and that's how he got into the film.

Filmmaker: After the success of this film, do you plan to make more adventurous films like this or primarily return to genre filmmaking?

Kurosawa: I have no idea what I'll be able to do in the future, but I certainly want the freedom to be able to make different types of films, tackle new themes and different genres, and I would say that the success if Tokyo Sonata definitely motivates me to go in that direction too.

Filmmaker: What's your best piece of advice for aspiring filmmakers?

Kurosawa: My advice is just to make films. With the quality that's possible with video technology today, you can go out with a camera and use your friends and make a film tomorrow if you want, and at that point you can call yourself a filmmaker.

Filmmaker: Will the current interest in documentaries last, or is it just a fad?

Kurosawa: I think that the curiosity that people have today about what is happening in the world is not going to wane. Documentaries that are able to accurately show what is happening in the world are going to be powerful and effective ways to do that, so I think they will continue to develop in their popularity. At the same time, documentary is an easy medium in which to lie, and so I think that we are going to have to have keen eyes to discern the truth in the face of wrong information, manipulation and various kinds of political motives that go into filmmaking.

Filmmaker: What was the first film you ever saw?

Kurosawa: It's one of two different monster films that I watched a lot in my childhood. I can't remember which one was the first. One of them is Mothra, a Japanese monster film, and the other is a British monster film that was inspired by Japanese monster films from the time like Godzilla. I think the title is Gorgo.

Filmmaker: What's the strangest thing you've seen, or had to do yourself, during your time in the film industry?

Kurosawa: That's a hard question... You know, everything was strange when I first entered the industry, and now nothing seems strange at all. But one thing that continues to baffle me is the way we shoot films out of sequence, the way we shoot night scenes in the morning and shooting morning scenes later in the evening. And then all these different shots are pieced together and when we see them there's a very coherent, linear arc to it. That's something that always feel so odd to me, and yet very amazing.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 3/13/2009 04:59:00 PM Comments (0)

French directors Leos Carax and Michel Gondry – both born in the early 1960s, during the first blush of the Nouvelle Vague – so far have had markedly different career paths. Carax, a boy from the Parisian suburbs, became a film critic and short film director before announcing himself as a major talent with his first two features, Boy Meets Girl (1984) and Bad Blood (1986). Carax's distinctive visual style, outsider sensibility and preoccupation with modern romance was also on show in his third film, Lovers on the Bridge (1991), however the film took three years to shoot and was an infamous financial disaster. The failure of his eventual follow-up, the incest-themed Pola X, almost totally derailed Carax's career, though he has remained a much-loved cult figure. While Carax has made four features since 1984, Gondry has made the same number of fiction films (plus a documentary, Dave Chappelle's Block Party) since 2001. After building a reputation for himself as a highly inventive maker of pop promos, the Versailles-born Gondry came to Hollywood where he collaborated with screenwriter Charlie Kaufman on his first two films, Human Nature (2001) and the highly acclaimed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Gondry, along with Kaufman and Pierre Bismuth, won a Best Original Screenplay for the latter, then wrote and directed the surreal, bittersweet romance The Science of Sleep (2006) and the offbeat, cinephilic comedy Be Kind Rewind (2008).

Now, these two visionary directors have come together, along with The Host's Bong Joon-Ho, to make Tokyo!, an anthology film conceptualized around the Japanese capital. While the recent trend in group films has been to have numerous directors each contributing tiny segments, fortunately here the directors are given the room for their stories to breathe and develop. In Gondry's Interior Design, a young film director and his girlfriend move to Tokyo to allow him to pursue his career, while she is left to question the path her life should take. Carax's Merde (which translates as “shit”) features a wild man-monster (Denis Levant) who emerges from the city's sewers, and goes on the rampage with increasing violence. The concluding story, Bong's Shaking Tokyo, is about a “hikikomori” (or social recluse) who finally leaves his house after 12 years following an encounter with an unusual pizza delivery girl. Like New York Stories, Tokyo!'s great strength is that the city showcases the stories rather than vice versa, and each is a distinctive, standalone film. While both Gondry and Bong's segments have a quiet melancholy mixed with fantastical elements, Carax's contribution combines a primal energy with an unexpected emotional depth, unambiguously demonstrating that the former enfant terrible is far from a spent force.

Filmmaker talked to Carax and Gondry about the challenges of shooting in Tokyo, why Kurosawa makes Gondry suicidal, and Carax's childhood love of Diana Rigg.



Filmmaker: What attracted you to this project? In your case, Leos, this is the first major film you've made in almost 10 years.

Carax: That's it. I couldn't make my films, so I said “Yes,” when it was proposed to make this film. It meant I had the chance to shoot something pretty soon, and that's mostly why I said yes.

Gondry: I'll try to find an original answer to this question... I liked Gabrielle's comic book and I thought I'd like to make a [film about a] very horrible, creepy transformation into a chair. I'm not sure I went really far [enough]. It's not so horrible. So that was the first thing. Then, the two other directors were people I respected. I'm not crazy about the project that the producers put together, the artificial excuse of “It's a movie about this city,” but it was still a good opportunity that I took.

Filmmaker: Was there a grand unifying idea for the film beyond it being three stories set in Tokyo?

Gondry: I think if there is any connection, it came by coincidence.

Filmmaker: So were you in communication with each other about your projects at all?

Carax: No, none of us were.

Filmmaker: How many portmanteau or anthology films of this kind – from RoGoPag to New York Stories – had either of you seen? And what do you think of the format of that kind of film?

Carax: Um, I don't see them. No, I didn't think I saw those.

Gondry: I think you're always thinking that you're going to be better than the [previous anthology films]. At first it seems like, “Yeah, I will be different!”

Filmmaker: Both of you have made music videos and shorts on the one hand, and features on the other hand, but 30-40 minute films occupy an awkward, in between territory. What were the particular challenges of this format?

Carax: To me, none especially. I mean, writing something. When I write, I never know how long it's going to be. People read it, they say it's three hours long, some others say it's an hour and a half, and I have no idea. So then this time, I knew it had to be very precise because I had to share the time. But apart from that... it's a film.

Gondry: It was more like an opportunity for me because I really wanted to do Gabrielle's comic and turn the story into a movie. I didn't think it would work as a full movie, so half an hour was very convenient for that.

Filmmaker: Was the adaptation of Gabrielle's comic a project you'd anyway been trying to find a way to make?

Gondry: Yup. We tried to write it as a play, and then I tried to hire some film writer to make it as a movie, but they took it too much apart and I didn't want to ruin it.

Filmmaker: Was Merde something that you wrote especially for this project, or did you already have the idea?

Carax: The idea came to me when it was proposed to make the film. It was not about Japan. I'd had this image of somebody coming out of the sewers and killing everyone before, but when the proposal came I decided, “Not only is he going to be a total monster, he's going to be a foreigner in a city on an island in Japan,” so that made it stronger. Then I adapted it, and I started to write it for Tokyo and Japan.

Filmmaker: How much time had either of you spent in Japan prior to your involvement with this film?

Carax: I've been there for the promotion of my films, but I can't say I know it. I've been to restaurants and hotels, but I don't know the city.

Gondry: We had a good amount of time for preparation and I'd been there many times before. I have a different feeling about Tokyo in the way that I am now liking the place and the people. Initially, I had a problem. I remember my first encounter there when I tried to shoot a commercial and it was impossible. And then promoting films there seemed so scheduled and rigid and people would freak out if I would do something different for one minute. I thought, “That's not a way of living.” But then, after I went there many times, I got took over by the courtesy and the respect, and even the protocol and tradition seduced me at the end. When I went there to shoot with Gabrielle, I was liking the place, though it's a bit scary with the tremors.

Filmmaker: It seems like your two segments of the film are really about an alien perspective of Tokyo, with both stories being about people who try to engage with the city in unusual ways. Did you look at this as an outsider's interpretation of Tokyo?

Carax: I would not say it was so much about being in Tokyo as being a foreigner in any place in the world. It's talking about being a foreigner. In an absurd way, the most foreign person possible. I think as we were three foreigners making this film, of course in each film, there's a theme of being a foreigner: even if the main actor or the character is Japanese, they're a foreigner in their own country.

Gondry: Honestly, I tried to shoot it as if I [were Japanese]. It was part of the challenge – I had to make a Japanese movie. So I guess it's from a different perspective. The story was coming from Gabrielle was set in New York, but when we decided to [transpose it to] Japan, we said, “OK, let's pretend we're making a Japanese film.” So it's not like in a formal way where I put the camera very low. I just tried to get real feelings from people in the city when I started to shoot in it. I was very aware that we were the only non-Japanese people on the shoot, and that we had no choice but to embrace the whole experience.

Filmmaker: What were the problems or particularities of shooting in Tokyo that as you experienced them?

Carax: Well, apart from the fact that you're not even allowed to shoot in Tokyo, it's was mostly the relationship with the people, with the crew. For me, it was difficult because, like, two thirds of the crew I just couldn't understand what they were about, while the other third was wonderful. But, that was bad luck or something. It's still a mystery to me [why it was like that]. I don't know. It would be too long a story [to try and explain].

Gondry: It was pretty scary at some points because I realized that all information had to go through one person: our translator. If she mistranslated or changed things, everything could be wrong. But she did mistranslate sometimes when I was insulting some people – she was speaking in very courteous language. More dangerous was that we found out that the translation of the screenplay had eroded all the little “mountains” of our story. We'd lost the subtleties, but also all the stuff that was out of the box a little bit if it was considered inappropriate to Japanese culture: a little kiss or an expression or jokes that they don't use in Japan. So I had to do very detailed work with Gabrielle to bring that back. We wanted to be specific to the story.

Filmmaker: In Merde, the main character engages very physically with the city and its residents, and there's violent manifestations of that. Did that have an impact on how you viewed Tokyo when you were filming there?

Carax: I don't think that much comes from Tokyo... Of course, on a project, everything starts to feed the project, but the idea that this character would be at all foreign was there before I went to to Tokyo. But I had a very strong reaction against a lot of things, like probably the crew or producers or people in the streets would call the police all the time when we were shooting. At the same time, I liked being there. The fact that the first time you experience shooting with a foreign crew – be sure that what you're saying and what they're saying is being translated well. Everything was shot so fast and we worked such long hours that it was like between a dream and a nightmare, but it gave the whole thing a [particular energy]. I mean, I didn't see any dailies, I just shot. I knew if I started watching dailies, I'd stop and redo everything.

Filmmaker: How did you shoot the street scenes? The ones at the start are all about people's confused reactions, so did you use extras?

Carax: There were a few extras among the real people.

Filmmaker: And there being so many non-extras was presumably why people were calling the police when Denis Lavant was on the rampage.

Gondry: It's true, it's pretty disgusting. I sort of erased that from my head that they would just constantly call the police. What's it called – délation? It's not something bad in American culture, because they always write “If you see something, say something.”

Carax: It's denouncing.

Gondry: It's denouncing, but it's worse than denouncing. Basically, you defer to a power that you accept without any personal judgment, so the power tells you, “You're a good person if you report on your neighbor.” So you just put your ethics above that, but I think you should put your ethics before the power. They should consider the power more suspicious.

Filmmaker: You've called the lead character in Merde “a sort of Godzilla who attacks the inhabitants of great cities, but a racist, fundamentalist Godzilla.” Are you a fan of the Godzilla movies? And what influence did they, and Japanese cinema in general, have on your film?

Carax: I actually knew nothing about Godzilla, but, of course, I knew what he looked like. When I had the idea, I watched the first Godzilla, which was quite bad, but I took the music. The idea was not to make a Godzilla film, just a monster film. The monster film is a genre, but my monster is still a man – a little man. He's closer to Charlie Chaplin's tramp than to Godzilla.

Gondry: I was not trying to make [my film] Japanese in terms of Japanese culture or cinema, but just Japanese in terms of now in Japan. Because I was shooting Japanese actors and they were speaking Japanese and we were in a Japanese location, we tried to make the story work for Japan. Of course, I love Ozu or Kurosawa, but I'm not fascinated by Japanese filmmaking. I like Kurosawa because you have this guy who made films when he was 80 years old. When I saw Ran, I just wanted to kill myself. It was so impressive. I don't know how in the world you can direct 200 horses and guys when you are 76 years old. I think I would have a heart attack.

Filmmaker: When was the last time you wished you had a different job?

Carax: Well, I have no job. I regret that I'm not a filmmaker, I regret that I'm not making films. I regret that I'm not a composer or a singer or a musician, but that's not a job really.

Gondry: With me, the way I see things is that I could do a more boring job, but it would get me less money. I just feel a lot of privilege to be able to play and get paid for it.

Filmmaker: Is Hollywood going in the right direction?

Carax: Absolutely. But I have no idea what direction Hollywood is going in.

Gondry: I don't feel in a position to judge the industry. I'm trying to fit in Hollywood, working in the system and having my freedom. To me, it's not really going in the right direction because they get very successful with movies that don't have much substance most of the time. So financially they're going in a very good direction for themselves, but in terms of what they bring to the audiences, I'm not so sure.

Filmmaker: Finally, what was the first film you ever saw?

Gondry: Le Voyage en Ballon by Albert Lamorisse, the guy who did The Red Balloon. This guy did movies, he was a helicopter pilot and he invented a system to shoot from his helicopter. He actually died in a helicopter crash. It was the first film I saw because it was screened at school. They put a tent in the schoolyard and they screened it there. I was fascinated. It wasn't very well directed, it was just about a granddad and his grandson journey as they travel across France in a big balloon. It's amazing.

Carax: No, I don't remember. I remember the first actress I was in love with, from The Avengers. What's her name?

Gondry: Not Diana Ross. Katherine Ross?

Filmmaker: Diana Rigg.

Gondry: Diana Rigg! Katherine Ross, she was very pretty too. Diana Ross, Katherine Ross, Diana Rigg.

Carax: I watched The Avengers whenever it was on TV. I cried when they announced that they would change the actress playing Emma Peel, and then it was another girl.

Gondry: For me, the first actress I fell in love with was Shirley MacLaine in The Apartment. And I think I had a crush on Mary Poppins, but that's more childish.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 3/06/2009 11:40:00 PM Comments (1)