Interviews
Interviews
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The Music Guides the Way: Oliver Laxe and Gaspar Noé Discuss “Sirāt”
When Oliver Laxe’s Sirāt premiered at Cannes this year, it caught both those familiar with his work as well as new viewers off guard; that the film takes an unexpected turn in its second half is only part of its disorienting effect. Where his first three, score-free features defaulted to the quiet and contemplative, Sirāt is nearly an action movie and accordingly nerve-wracking, increasingly suspenseful and—thanks in large part to Kangding Ray’s excellent electronic score—sometimes so deafeningly loud that it’s been known to literally make projection booths shake. With a larger budget and longer schedule than Laxe has had before, […]
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Small Talk is Optional: Jim Jarmusch and Amalia Ulman Discuss “Father Mother Sister Brother”
Across his 45-year career, independent auteur Jim Jarmusch has continually returned to a particular type of film in which feature-length narrative is broken into a series of short, discrete episodes united by place (Mystery Train), time (Night on Earth) or activity (Coffee and Cigarettes). Through their internal correspondences and connections, and perhaps because of their fractured nature, these films, liberated from traditional three-act structure, produce sly epiphanies and unexpected pleasures. Jarmusch’s attraction to filmic miniatures continues with Father Mother Sister Brother, in which the connective tissue is, yes, the family. (In a clever bit of calendaring by MUBI, the film […]
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Before and After Sunlight: DP Autumn Durald Arkapaw on “Sinners”
Set in the Jim Crow South of the 1930s, Sinners finds twin brothers Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan), flush with bootlegger cash, returning to their Mississippi hometown to open a juke joint. The venture proves short-lived as an Irish vampire (Jack O’Connell) and his minions crash the party on opening night. Once the fangs come out, Sinners cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw, a horror neophyte, found herself in unfamiliar territory, especially compared to the film’s genre aficionado director Ryan Coogler. “I’m actually not that well-versed in horror,” said Durald Arkapaw. “It was a new genre for me […]
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Horrifying Looks: Costume Designer Kate Hawley on Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein”
Guillermo del Toro’s films are instantly recognizable for their fantastical Gothic imagery, and the director’s adaptation of Frankenstein is one of his most decadent stylized works yet. The film—which stars Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein, Jacob Elordi as the Creature and Mia Goth as Lady Elizabeth Harlander and Baroness Claire Frankenstein—boasts stunning costumes befitting its epic scale. Frankenstein’s costume designer, Kate Hawley, is no stranger to the writer-director’s distinctive visions, having previously worked with him on Pacific Rim and Crimson Peak. She likens this film, with its two-and-a-half runtime and intricate worldbuilding, to “a massive opera.” Earlier in her career, […]
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Paris, Remembered: Production Designer Katia Wyszkop on “Nouvelle Vague”
In setting out to make Nouvelle Vague, his effervescent ode to the birth of French New Wave cinema, Richard Linklater knew from the start that realizing his artistic ambition—to dramatize Jean-Luc Godard’s making of Breathless—would involve revisiting both the film’s experimental, guerilla-style production and the larger time and place that gave rise to it. To bring audiences back through history to Paris circa 1959—not only to the same bustling streets and lively corner cafés where Breathless filmed but also the intimate apartments, hotel rooms and offices where Godard and his collaborators convened—Linklater turned to French production designer Katia Wyszkop (The […]
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The Purity of Song: Mona Fastvold on “The Testament of Ann Lee”
What if Jesus already made his way back to us in the 18th century, and we just missed it? The titular British-born spiritual leader played by Amanda Seyfried in Mona Fastvold’s The Testament of Ann Lee believed herself to be the female embodiment of Jesus Christ and brought her scripture to Colonial America, enticed by its supposed promise of spiritual freedom. Co-written by Fastvold, who directed, and her partner Brady Corbet, and arriving only a year after their architectural epic The Brutalist, Ann Lee continues the pair’s interest in eccentric individuals who dedicate their lives to the pursuit of what […]
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Revolutionary Sounds: Sound Editor Christopher Scarabosio on “One Battle After Another”
Christopher Scarabosio only needed 15 minutes to start dreaming. The supervising sound editor and re-recording mixer was jet-lagged, drifting between trips to London, when writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson asked him to watch the first hour of One Battle After Another. The dialogue was rough, the score spare, but even in that stripped-down state, Scarabosio was astonished at what his longtime collaborator had put on the screen. There were imposing semi-trucks darting across a bypass; fireworks lighting up the night sky; car chases and shootouts across Southern California. When the projector shut off, Scarabosio only had one question for the filmmaker: […]
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Tension and Releases: Editor Ronald Bronstein on “Marty Supreme”
Ronald Bronstein premiered his feature Frownland at South by Southwest the same year as Josh Safdie’s short We’re Going to the Zoo played, and he felt a pang of insecurity when he saw it. “I was like, ‘Oh, my God, there’s somebody also vying for the same kind of immediacy,” said the veteran writer-editor. “It was like my feet were made of lead; this guy was like a helium balloon.” Back in New York City, Josh introduced himself to Bronstein and convinced him to play a character based on his own father. Bronstein helped write and edit the project, which […]
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An Improved Revision: Gregg Araki and the Restoration Team Behind “Mysterious Skin”
Toward the end of my interview with Gregg Araki, I remind him of his scene from Michael Almereyda and Amy Hobby’s 1995 documentary At Sundance. Sitting on a couch next to Todd Haynes, Araki is at that year’s festival with The Doom Generation. “The first draft of Doom was done when The Living End premiered at Sundance in 1992” he says. “The hard part is always the money and the financing, and it gets worse, and worse and worse [….] I hate the fact that you write, you make a movie, it’s fresh and what you want to say and […]
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Noah Baumbach on “Jay Kelly”
30 years after his debut feature Kicking and Screaming (1995), writer-director Noah Baumbach, having crafted a notable career both in Hollywood and outside of it, has made his softest film yet, and that’s not meant as a pejorative. George Clooney stars as a fading movie star who embarks on a European trip to attend a film festival that’s planning to gift him a career tribute, using the honor as an excuse to spend time with his unsuspecting, backpacking daughter. Jay Kelly is a movie made by a parent in a time of reflection. That it was co-written by actress Emily […]
