Tag: indie film

Enough council estate and period dramas!

Posted on by Paul Risker

A background in advertising, directing commercials and music videos for bands such as Massive Attack, Ed Morris’ debut feature, the British set family drama, How to Stop a Recurring Dream (2021), is a road movie that leans towards social realism, with a tone of the surreal.

The already fragile bond between two half-sisters, Yakira (Ruby Barker) and Kelly (Lily-Rose Aslandogdu), is tested further when their parents, Paul (Jamie Michie) and Michelle (Miranda Nolan), announce an imminent split-custody separation. For Yakira, the elder sister, it means moving to the other end of the country with their father. In an attempt to reconnect with her younger sibling, she kidnaps her and takes to the road to visit her mother’s grave.

Morris previously directed the now-banned documentary, This Is Not – An Interview with Tony Kaye (2013), an open conversation with the director of American History X (2013), whose antics branded him a controversial figure in Hollywood.

In conversation with DMovies, Morris discussed his love of films that fuse together the blockbuster and the arty, treating the film shoot as an assault course, and not wanting to get hung up on social realism.

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Paul Risker – Why filmmaking as a means of creative expression? Was there an inspirational or a defining moment for you personally?

Ed Morris – It’s a good question, and it’s one that I probably haven’t gotten to the bottom of, but I can tell you this, I’m not really a film buff. If we sat here and started talking film you’d probably get to realise fairly quickly that I’m not that conversant on it, but I do know what I like. What I’m interested in is storytelling, and the structure of story and writing has always fascinated me.

I came into it that way and through directing all sorts of things, and just wanting a bigger canvas through which to express something bigger. I hope that you think the film is psychological to some degree, or thoughtful, and I hope you’re effected by it because that’s what I’m in it for.

PR – Would you agree with the idea that a movie is different from a film, and if so are you leaning towards the latter?

EM – There’s a huge distinction. I love Ghostbusters (Reitman, 1984) and I love Jaws (Spielberg, 1975), whatever it might be. They use certain tricks and they’re deliberately entertaining, and then at the other end you’ve got what you would call arty films, but I like that place in between where you maybe have the work of the Coen Brothers.

I looked at a lot of indie films before I made this to try to set a realistic ambition, because this is a very small film. We’ve been put under a bright spotlight because of Ruby’s emergence into fame with Bridgerton (2020). I looked at Brick (Johnson, 2005), which I thought was excellent, and those films made on a shoe string that are very good, and although you would describe it as a film, it borrows from movie tricks and techniques.

I’m always intrigued by films that fuse the two in some way, or use what there is at hand to make something intriguing. I always like to be surprised, and I remember seeing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry, 2004). [Charlie] Kaufman’s scriptwriting is interesting just for that, and Being John Malkovich(Jonze, 1999), is it a big movie or is it a tiny movie? It found a different voice, or a new skin through which to deliver a message, which is interesting.

PR – Do you think we focus on the opposites of the spectrum, forgetting about the grey in between that’s populated with so many visions, ideas and interpretations of what cinema can be?

EM – Exactly, and I didn’t want it to land in a particular style of film, or be too on the nose. As I was making it I was thinking about social realism and the feel of that, and how it would present itself had I gone headfirst and changed the writing to make it work as a piece of social realism. It’s not what I wanted it to be and the Brits are very hung up on that. It’s either period dramas or seeing kids on a council estate with an alcoholic mom, and I didn’t want to be there. I wanted the film to be deliberately entertaining, and it’s a first film to demonstrate that I am at grips with writing and structure, and being able to put something on the screen that people want to watch. It’s ultimately a feel good movie.

PR – My initial response to the film was that it keeps us off balance with the mix of a road movie leaning towards social realism, alongside the surreal that teases what’s real and what’s not.

EM – The film does fly about, even literally how I edit towards the end, building up through a crescendo of cuts between ‘A’ story and ‘B’ story. You have this family split into two and then Ruby loses Kelly, and so they’re split into two, and then the mum and dad split up. It’s a typical four people together that split up, and then they all come together again.

It has some pattern and shape to it, and what I’m riding is the notion of plausibility, which is interesting, but not giving too much away. Ambiguity is a very powerful thing in characterisation and storytelling, and in life in general. If somebody is completely understandable, they’re often very boring, and so you’re using ambiguity, but you’re using it in a layered way – literally as what’s on the screen, and from moment to moment, what genre am I in? You’re also using that to accentuate what the characters themselves are going through, and I wanted the audience to come out of the first act feeling uneasy.

Yakira goes through a series of rejections and I wanted there to be a very definite unease in the film that’s resolved. … I’m trying to make the film visceral and to demonstrate by feeling to the viewer what the characters themselves are feeling in the moment.

PR – Does ambiguity create a space for the audience to enter a film?

EM – When you’re writing or filmmaking you never want to show exactly what needs to be shown. What you’re showing is a series of reliefs. It’s like drawing, and when you create the shape of a vase or a sphere, by showing the shadow on one side, the highlight is a relief because there’s no actual sphere on the page. You’re drumming around the beat, you’re using tricks and techniques to imply, and I always think what’s implied is much more powerful. The way you engage people is that they’re doing the colouring in, they’re seeing the shape, and so be as implied as you can be.

PR – On the subject of the camera as the filmmaker’s tool, how do you approach its use to capturing your vision for the film?

EM – The DP on the film was Ivan Bird, who shot Sexy Beast (Glazer, 2000). When you’re shooting the speed we had to shoot at with so much to do, we were approaching it like it was an assault course. There isn’t a lot of time to discuss angles, you’re running from setup to setup, and so you need a cameraman who can just land the camera.

Ivan had the good idea to use a monopod because you could just pick it up and move it to change the shot. So there’s movement, but it’s minimal movement, so often it looks very still, and then we went handheld when it was appropriate. We stuck to a simple range of lenses, one or two that we used throughout because we didn’t want to put more pressure on the edit. We wanted to keep things simple for ourselves. We kept to eye-line most of the time, a simple adherence to very basic but good cinematographic rules and guidelines that will keep you on the tracks most of the time.

PR – Would you describe the film as an unfolding journey of discovery as you move through the writing, the shooting, and the editing?

EM – … The process is a long meandering one, and the script is never what you had in your head, what you shoot is never the script, what you edit is never what you shot, and then when you put music on it, it changes it all dramatically again. The music helped bring out some beats that I neglected to shoot, or weren’t quite there.

The score is by Nikolaj Torp Larsen, who is in the band The Specials. He took the title of the film and he just played it as a bass-line: how-to-stop-a-recurring-dream. Now if you go back and watch the film again, the opening scene plays that bass-line and the theme holds the whole thing together, and through some tricky moments because we cut sporadically from ‘A’ story to ‘B’ story. If you watched it without music, you would see how jumpy it was, which was a great concern. The music and that bass-line wrapped it all up and put a thread through it, which worked very well.

The director’s job is to ultimately have a sense of that thread and vision early on. Then you better well bloody stick to it, and be willing and flexible enough to recognise what will contribute to it that you hadn’t thought of as you go along.

How to Stop a Recurring Dream is available on Digital Streaming Platforms

How to Stop a Recurring Dream

Posted on by Paul Risker

In Ed Morris’s British set family drama, the already fragile bond between two half-sisters, Yakira (Ruby Barker) and Kelly (Lily-Rose Aslandogdu), is tested further when their parents, Paul (Jamie Michie) and Michelle (Miranda Nolan), announce an imminent split-custody separation. For Yakira, the elder sister, it means moving to the other end of the country with their father. In an attempt to reconnect with her younger sibling, she kidnaps her and takes to the road to visit her mother’s grave.

Following a brief introductory scene with Kelly in peril, the image is distorted by the visual flourish of the film’s title. The movie possesses an ethereal aesthetic that piques our curiosity. The title sequence is intercut with Yakira racing home, and we emerge into the stark contrast of a drama that leans towards the British social realist tradition.

How to Stop a Recurring Dream has an ambitious spirit as it adds another layer to its plot of a road movie. These tonal shifts are ambitious, and to balance the three is a challenge that overwhelms the filmmaker. They lend the story a series of interesting beats, but unlike the harmonic melody of a trio sonata or string trio, Morris cannot entirely unite them in rhythm.

The recurring surreal segments open up what is an otherwise a grounded story, infusing a dreamlike structure of layers of consciousness. It’s an effective creative touch, teasing us with a possible descent into the surreal. While the two Yakira’s, one in reality, one in a parallel space is undeveloped, it raises questions about dream versus reality, what’s real and what’s not.

A hindrance to the plot developing is the split between the adults and the adolescents. The road becomes an escape from the adult world, and it would have benefited the film to commit more fully to Yakira and Kelly as the heart of the story. It’s a relationship that requires longer than the film’s current 82-minute cut, and stifles the themes and ideas of separation and loss from being expressed. How to Stop a Recurring Dream has a creative ambition, but fails to slow down and hone in on the themes and ideas that would make the travails of the family resonate with us beyond an instinctive sympathy.

How to Stop a Recurring Dream is available on Digital Streaming Platforms

Two British women and the intimacy of trauma

Posted on by Paul Risker

Catherine Linstrom’s British indie, psychological-drama, sees a traumatised teenager and her mother stranded on the outskirts of a remote village, somewhere in the north of England. They’ve fled their home after Emma’s (Emilia Jones) older brother (Oliver Coopersmith) left their mother (Sienna Guillory) for dead in a violent assault. Crashing their car in a freak accident, they find shelter by breaking and entering into an isolated house on the outskirts of the village.

Out one day for a swim, Emma meets a mysterious boy (George MacKay), who’s fascinated with the defunct nuclear power plant that poisons the lake water. Listening to stories of his adventures, she inquisitively asks questions, which amuses him. But she can’t run from her traumatic past forever, and when it catches up with her, she must face it if she is to move on.

Before making her feature debut, Catherine Linstrum directed nine short films, that foreshadowed Nuclear’s unexpected meeting between two characters, the remote setting, and the theme and ideas of violence. Lead actress Emilia Jones plays Kinsey Locke in the Netflix series, Locke & Key, and has also had a recurring role in the controversial black comedy-thriller series Utopia (2013-14). Her film credits include: High Rise (Wheatley, 2015), Brimstone (Koolhoven, 2017) and Two for Joy (Beard, 2018).

In conversation with DMovies, Linstrum and Jones, who took a break from the set of Locke & Key, spoke about their different relationships with the camera, and enduring the 18 day shoot and living in little cottages to create a feeling of nervous anticipation for the audience.

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Paul Risker – Why filmmaking as a means of creative expression? Was there an inspirational or a defining moment for you personally?

Catherine Linstrum – I feel film is a way of telling a story in several different ways at once, and in that sense it’s the most complete, and also can be the most frustrating way of telling stories.

I just fell more and more in love with film as I was growing up, and it was something I wanted to do. But it wasn’t like from the age of 12, “This is what I want to do”, unlike Emelia, who from the age of about five minutes wanted to be an actress.

I started out studying poetry and being an academic, so I was doing things in a very cerebral way. I then realised what I wanted to do was to convey emotion, and that’s the thing that has driven me all the way through everything that I do. It’s about emotion, and about bringing an audience to experience an emotion alongside me in the story.

PR – While you started out acting at a young age, was there a moment where it became a conscious choice?

Emilia Jones – I started acting when I was eight, and I always wanted to do it. I found it fun and I loved it. When I turned 13, I did a film called Brimstone, which was my first big role. I was in every day and so it pushed me a lot as an actor.

When you’re younger and you play the kid, you have to come in and say a couple of lines here and there, and do a couple of scenes, but this was a heavy role. I just fell in love with it from then because I loved that I got to portray emotions that I don’t portray in real life – thank goodness [laughs]. I got to cry and challenge myself, and put myself in someone else’s shoes and learn skills. I like to learn for different films and I love that it takes you to places that you’d never visit, and yeah, I just love the opportunities that acting gives me.

PR – Was your intention to not play to the drama of the story, but to ask the audience to proactively engage with the characters to create the drama?

CL – It’s a very intense story and it could in some ways be melodramatic if it weren’t treated in the right way, because it has some pretty big things going on with a small number of characters, and in a very small world. So it could be too big for its boots if you like, if we overplayed the drama. I think because it’s an internal world, it’s very much perceived through the character of Emma right the way through. It’s all about her experience, and we tend not to experience things in such a super dramatic way because we’re always thinking about what’s going to happen next – either fearing the worst or fearing the best. So it’s an anticipation, and that’s probably something that does work in the film.

They [the audience] don’t know what’s going to happen next, but they’re pretty sure it’s not going to be great for Emma, but not in a, “Oh my God, there’s a big avalanche coming.” It’s more, “This is going somewhere difficult, so we better hang on and go along with it.” I think that’s how audiences are experiencing it.

EJ – Emma is quite strong, so you’re also watching it and asking when is she going to break? Honestly, lots of things happen and you’re thinking, ‘How much can this girl take?’ So you’re wondering what’s going to happen, but you’re also wondering how’s she going to cope with it, or what’s she going to do?

CL – Emilia has an ability to dig really deep for emotion, but she’s also extremely good at having layers, and that’s what interests me in terms of character. I’m interested in seeing how people layer up the things that they’re going through, and as an actor you create those fantastic onion layers that the audience can peel them open and go, “What’s underneath there? Oh, I see, but right underneath there is something else.” Emilia is great at that.

PR – The camera is a tool for not only the director but also the actor. Is there a conscious awareness as a performer of using it as a tool?

CL – I know how Emilia is with the camera, but I’m not actually sure what her mechanism is. I know the way she is with it is the best way, in that she’s completely in what she’s doing. She knows it’s there all the time, and it feels that it’s an observer and a listener, a kind of wise figure that’s almost with her, going along on the journey, but unable to intervene.

EJ – That’s exactly how I feel. I don’t think about it, but I know it’s there. We shot for 18 days and we were living in little cottages. We’d go to set, work crazy hours and I was just living Emma. So on set I would just think to myself, ‘What would I do in this situation?’ I was just constantly thinking about that and I never really thought about the camera. I’m aware of what the camera needs from me, in that it needs to see my face, or it needs to do this or do that. Other than that, I forget it’s there because it’s what’s happening with the other actor, or it’s what I’m thinking about, or what I’m doing that means the most to me.

CL – With Nuclear we had a very specific little rationale, but without giving anything away, there are three distinct camera styles for different relationships. One of the things about that means because we have those different styles, we had to be quite simple, otherwise it could get cluttered if you had three different styles, and then those styles within themselves are quite complicated. Also because it was very low budget, we had to be economical with what we were doing, so we wanted things to play out in the shot. We couldn’t shoot huge amounts of coverage because we just didn’t have the time. But yeah, it was a very special relationship between the camera and the characters because of those rules.

I have to talk about it in a slightly hypothetical way because otherwise it does give the game away if I explain why it’s done in those ways with the different characters. It was nice that Emilia was aware of that, and it gave her certain challenges with the things she was being asked to do. But at the same time it’s quite exciting because actors like challenges like that – good actors do anyway. Good actors like to feel they have an extra little trick, and it’s not performing, but it’s a little trick that they have to play.

PR – If we consider that we are immersed in the world of the characters, while simultaneously aware that we are watching a film, would you agree that film is an out of body experience?

CL – In some ways it might depend on the film because if it’s a real action piece, then I think you can just lose your awareness of the aesthetic and what’s going on, and just be caught up in it. If it’s a terrible film, then all you notice is the way that it’s made. But if it’s a good film, then that’s one of the pleasures of it.

As I said, I started out studying poetry and there’s that double thing going on. If you read poetry you’re moved and carried along by it, but at the same time you have a little analytical process going on. I don’t think it diminishes it, but enhances it because you’re functioning on different levels at the same time. As you say, an out of body experience – you’re in it and you’re out of it, analysing at the same time. So that’s what happens with intelligent art I suppose, or intelligent cinema, or that’s the idea anyway.

Maybe a slightly different question for you Emilia is if you watch yourself in something, what’s that experience? If you’re aware of you, Emilia, and then you the character, and then the whole film around it that’s a whole other layer, can you ever enjoy watching yourself?

EJ – With Nuclear, I feel like I’m so close to it that it was harder to distance myself and to forget. But most of the time, it’s odd because I can watch the films as though I’m watching a movie that I just want to see that sounds good. There are a lot of people who watch their films and think, ‘Oh, why did I do that?’ I don’t do that. You can’t overthink with acting; you just have to get out of your head and do it. Also sometimes you read a script, you film it and then when you watch it, the film is normally a lot different to how you read it. Things change and that’s what I like about it.

PR – Do you find stories and characters follow you and stay with you, and can stories become safe spaces that as storytellers we never fully separate ourselves from?

CS – It’s an interesting thing actually because what you just said there about that safe space, it’s possible that it’s actually something scary or dark, and Nuclearisn’t exactly a bed of roses. It’s not like, “Let’s go and have a lovely time for an hour and a half.” But it gives me a warm cosy feeling when I think about it, and that’s about if you’ve really connected with the thing that you’ve created, then you do feel safe in there, and you do feel a kind of glow about it.

I use that as a measure when I’m working on something, and if I don’t feel that, then I know it’s not right. When I get the feeling, it’s almost like going back into a book you’re enjoying reading, that you haven’t written.

I don’t know if that’s to do with creating stories, and I don’t know if Emilia feels the same thing with a character, if you feel you haven’t yet got the character. What’s the difference between how you feel when it’s not quite there and when you are there?

EJ – I always feel that if I have to think about what I’m going to do in a scene, then I haven’t quite got it. Sometimes I’ll do the first week, or the first couple of days, and then it’s like a switch and I just am that character. But I felt like I became the character very quickly on Nuclear.

The image at the top is of Catherino and Emilia on set; the ones below are stills from ‘Nuclear’

Nuclear

Posted on by Paul Risker

Emma’s (Emilia Jones) older brother (Oliver Coopersmith) left their mother (Sienna Guillory) for dead in a violent assault, forcing mother and daughter to flee. Crashing their car in a freak accident, they find shelter by breaking and entering into an isolated house on the outskirts of the village.

Out one day for a swim, Emma meets a mysterious boy (George MacKay), who’s fascinated with the defunct nuclear power plant that poisons the lake water. Listening to stories of his adventures, she inquisitively asks questions, which amuses him. But she can’t run from her traumatic past forever, and when it catches up with her, she must face it if she is to move on.

Nuclear opens with a poetry of words and imagery. The mysterious female figure (Noriko Sakura) who first appears in the film’s opening scene, offering a poetic contemplation on death, echoes the Lynchian surreal. The cinematography and the editing rhythm, staring up and across through the crowded woodland of trees, evokes the aesthetic poetry of cinema. The opening has a feeling of waking, and as our eyes open we see before us the first glimpses of the birth of Nuclear’s world.

The intense and unnerving opening, as we hear the cries of pain from the mother, the aggressive grunts of violent exertion from the son/brother, is disturbing. It’s not gratuitously violent, but Linstrum and her cinematographer Crystel Fournier do not pull their punches. We feel uncomfortable and we want to pull our gaze away from the screen. In this moment a bond is forged between the audience and the two women.

What quickly defines this as accomplished and mature storytelling is how we should feel about the characters is not as black and white as the opening scene suggests. Revealing familial tensions complicate our feelings towards the young man. Yes, his violence is full of hate, anger and frustration, but it’s an anxiety whose roots lie in the imperfections of people and relationships. Linstum and her co-writer David-John Newman, take the neat juxtaposition of the terms like and dislike, good and bad, and plunge them into the murky grey.

Without entering the world of horror, the director and her co-writer touch upon the idea of the origins of the monstrous. They flirt with horror, but remain interested in the psychological drama. Linstrum utilises horresque cinematography: the female protagonist stalked by the angry male antagonist i used as a complimentary tone. The focus is on the psychological, and a repeat viewing will reveal a nuance to the internal conversation of the mind in response to trauma. Here is a meticulous and thoughtful contribution to cinema’s representation of this mental disorder.

Nuclear subverts our expectations by downplaying the drama of its story. The interest of the filmmakers is that we contribute to its creation, by bringing ourselves to the film and emotionally connecting with Emma. The drama comes out of our own feelings of desperation and urgency, empathy and anxiety that we share with not only the characters, but also the filmmakers, who have crafted the film with a deliberate intent to engage with us through shared thoughts and feelings.

Contributing to this repression of the drama is the limited screen time of the unnamed boy, who traditionally would be subject to a more thorough character development. This choice sustains the feeling of Emma’s isolation, by holding the surrounding world at arm’s length. Even when she enters the village shop, any interaction is unseen – we only see her enter, cutting to her back at the house. What is so striking is this artificial feel, life neatly blocked out and streamlined with a minimalism, that contrasts to the rigorous portrayal of the psychology of trauma.

Nuclear is an unassuming film, that subverts the expectations of the mainstream commercial, and refrains from committing fully to the non-commercial aesthetic. There are glimpses of abstract visual metaphors for example, with a potential for an ambiguous reflection on character, themes and ideas.

Linstrum conveys that experience of crossing paths with a stranger, and while the encounter touches us, an aura of mystery remains – what do we really know about Emma, her family or the unnamed boy? This allows for a subtle emotional seduction that sparks our intrigue, and in a film vulnerable to spoilers, it leaves us with the impression that there’s much going on beneath its simple form. And like parables, Nuclear is about us seeing the ideas and reflections of thought that can either offer us a message, or be a spark for our own deeper contemplation.

Nuclear is out now on VOD

Bad Guys

Posted on by Jack Hawkins

Roger Corman, the pope of pop cinema, once said: “The worst thing you can do is have a limited budget and try to do some big looking film. That’s when you end up with very bad work.” Happily, with a nano-budget of just £200, indie filmmakers Jack Sambrook and Will Unsworth are well aware of their limitations, and Bad Guys is all the better for it.

Corman learned the ropes with trashy horror movies, but this Brighton duo have drawn inspiration from the kitchen sink flavours of the British indie scene, namely Ben Wheatley’s Kill List and Down Terrace. As a result, the film’s influences are worn on its sleeve, but this is all part of the Corman philosophy – watch a load of movies, understand how they work, and turn this knowledge into your own cineliterate, nuts-and-bolts feature.

The story, which is a road trip-cum-crime caper, follows Gaz (Sambrook) and Cal (Unsworth), a pair of lowly debt collectors operating in a grey and gloomy Brighton. The dynamic is one you can imagine – Gaz is aloof and stand-offish, while Cal is loquacious, reckless and prone to violent outbursts. When Cal’s temper kills a man, the young men are ordered to drive the body north and bury it in the countryside.

The film’s bleak tone is framed by Rowan Holford’s striking cinematography, which combines long static shots and handheld work that skilfully balances rawness and fluidity. Particularly absorbing are the driving montages through Britain’s bypasses and winding, canopied B-roads, deftly capturing the motion and sensation of travel. Indeed, there is an elemental streak that runs throughout Bad Guys, which is complemented by Matt Unsworth’s orchestral, Carter Burwell-inflected score.

The real draw, however, is the chemistry between the leads. Sambrook is appropriately crabby as Gaz, making the rules as he goes along in an attempt to control Cal, who chinwags with anyone who’ll listen. Gaz does lighten up, though, and their exchanges consider everything from petrol station confectionary to a revelatory discussion of the female urethra. The dialogue never feels contrived and no wisecracks fall flat, which is a reflection of the leads’ performances and their collaboration on the script.

Another merit is a small but marked flair for suspense, which is ratcheted in a bathroom encounter between Gaz and a faceless, ominous stranger. It reminds you that these young men, barely into their twenties, are in a grave situation with some very dubious people.

We love indie film here at DMovies, so it is always a delight when an accomplished nano-budget feature like Bad Guys appears on our radar. Sambrook and Unsworth will have more cash for their next film, no doubt, but this won’t mar their grounded, kitchen sink sensibilities – it will bolster them.

Bad Guys is available on Amazon Prime in the UK now.