CineSkinny 3: GFF16, 23-25 Feb

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FREE OFFICIAL GFF GUIDE

N0 3 | 23 – 25 FEB

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Tue 23 Feb, GFT, 8.45pm | Wed 24 Feb, 3.30pm

White Riot Jeremy Saulnier follows up revenge thriller Blue Ruin with Green Room, a nail-biting punks v Nazis siege movie.

He muses on punk rock, genre labels and casting Patrick Stewart as a white supremacist

T

he Skinny is chatting with American director Jeremy Saulnier in a crowded dining area of London’s Mayfair Hotel. His newest film, Green Room, is having its UK premiere later that night as part of the London Film Festival. It’s his follow-up to 2013’s critically acclaimed thriller Blue Ruin and the

INTERVIEW: comparatively underseen Murder Party, from 2007.

The three films share actor Macon Blair (Blue Ruin’s hangdog protagonist) and acts of violence instigating considerable turmoil, but Green Room sees some more recognisable stars join Saulnier’s talisman on the cast list.

The leads include Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots and Alia Shawkat, as well as rising Brit stars Joe Cole and Callum Turner. The stand-out in terms of profile, though, is Patrick Stewart as Green Room’s antagonistic authority figure, the owner of a far-right club in a secluded part of the Pacific Northwest. Most of those younger actors play the members of a punk band hired to play the venue, only to become witnesses

Josh Slater-Williams

to a crime that subsequently sees them holed up in the club’s green room, at the mercy of figures who want to eliminate all loose ends.

“I think it was certainly a nice shift for him to show a different side to his craft,” Saulnier says of Stewart.

“I consider [his character] Darcy to be very practical.

He’s never sinister in his intentions, he’s just brutally indifferent when it comes to his own interests. He suddenly loses his cool once in a while, but it’s through language or little tics. It’s not through a big monologue, but I think it’s more powerful. And Patrick definitely remarked on set that this is the quietest he’s ever wor- ked in his life. So that was fun.”

The content of Green Room has an element of continues…

HIGHLIGHTS

TUE 23

Videogame Empty

Videogame Empty The Art School, 8pm Watching other people play video games is about as much fun as gastric flu – unless those people give a hilarious running commentary. Burnistoun’s Rab Florence is your host, and his annual empty is now a GFF institution.

I Am Belfast GFT, 3.30pm This bittersweet paean to his hometown is Mark Cousins’ best film yet – it’s also his most beautiful, with painterly visuals courtesy of master cinematographer Christopher Doyle.

Francofonia CCA, 9pm Russian genius Aleksandr Sokurov has another night at the museum – this time the Louvre. It’s basically like one of those Ben Stiller movies, but with a history PhD.

personal resonance for Saulnier, though it’s thankfully due to the film’s music elements rather than any experience with neo-Nazis terrorising him. “I was making movies ever since I was eight years old,” he says, “and I got introduced to punk rock around the same time. I was into the DC hard- core scene for a while – very much an observer, never really considered myself an OG member of the hardcore scene, but I was there. And all the while I was making movies with my friends. For school we’d convert any kind of book report or big project into some kind of film. And I always thought I could meld the two worlds together. It took a long time for the opportunity to arise, but when it did I leapt at the chance.”

We inquire into any favourite punk movies Saulnier might have, and additionally any highlights when it comes to the siege genre: “Just cool vibe and aesthetic-wise, you have SubUrbia, Repo Man. I love Straw Dogs; as a reference, that was a big one. I actually had never seen Assault on Precinct 13.

I knew that if I’m making a siege movie, I shouldn’t watch that until after I write it. So I did finally watch that after I wrote the script, before I shot Green Room. I was aware of the similarities, but I didn’t want to borrow too much, so it was a treat when I finished writing the first draft and finally watched it. And that movie was great because it was such a simple movie, and a good old-fashioned exploitation film.

So it became an influence after the fact.”

A quality shared by John Carpenter’s siege classic and Green Room is their tightness and economic storytelling: so much is said visually through small details; every shot has a clear purpose. “It’s hard designing the script, but everything we shot was for a reason,” explains Saulnier. “The biggest thing in editing is where you emphasise things. We had so much coverage because of the nature of the shoot – between four and eight people in a room, the coverage is just so intense.

And it’s all this physical action back and forth, so editorial was key, doing several passes to make it all seem as if it were spontaneous and immediate. It was shot over the course of 32 days and it’s supposed to be one crazy night. It’s funny how we shot on soundstages and really built it from scratch, but it seems like we went somewhere and shot it really fast; all that production value is wasted.”

If this interview seems a little vague regarding specifics of Green Room’s narrative elements, there’s a good reason. The film thrives on its unpredictable nature; the uncertainty of its character and story directions. Things don’t always go the way you might be expecting based on what’s been set up.

One suspects it’s been a hard film to market. “In a perfect world,” Saulnier says, “the trailer would just have an abstract montage of imagery – just to get the tone across. The pure experience is watching this film thinking it’s one thing and then having it spiral very violently downward. You’re trapped in a room and you’re not getting out. Ideally, the only bare naked exposition you could have in a trailer should be the first act, but then you’ve gotta throw in some one-liners and some cool action montage…”

One thing the director is keen to emphasise regarding how people come to the film is that he’s happy with whatever genre labels they choose to thrust upon it: “People have called it a haunted house film, or a horror film, called it a crime thriller. And they’re all true. I have no problem [with it].

“ People have called it a haunted house film, a horror film, a crime thriller. And they’re all true” Jeremy Saulnier “The reference as we shot it was: it’s a war movie. And that’s how I looked at it. It’s a war film where on one side of the door are professional soldiers, and on the other side of the door are clearly inept protagonists – total amateur night inside that room. I like hybrid genres. I like when there’s a discussion about what it is. Because that means it’s not that easily placed in a genre. So it’s a welcome discussion for me.”

R E VIE WS

“ Ideas remain regrettably out of focus”

Hitchcock/Truffaut  Director: Kent Jones Starring: Alfred Hitchcock, François Truffaut, Martin Scorsese, David Fincher

Half a century ago, Alfred Hitchcock and François Truffaut sat down together for a week to discuss the former’s career in its entirety. The result formed the basis of Truffaut’s monograph, which was intended to convince the reading public that The Master of Suspense was not just an entertainer, but an artist. Truffaut accomplished his mission and the documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut is Kent Jones’ cinematic echo of the book, reigniting that original discourse from years in the future.

Thu 25 Feb, GFT, 3.45pm

“The function of pure cinema, as we well know, is the placing of a few pieces of film together to create a single idea,” says Hitch in just one snippet of vast archival material. It’s interspersed with talking head interviews with filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Richard Linklater and Wes Anderson (ironically) explaining Hitchcock’s brilliant preference to visuals over dialogue with evident enthusiasm and affection.

The ‘placing of film’ is covered terrifically, but the ideas remain regrettably out of focus. However, it doesn’t hamstring what is still a fascinating subject matter and an interesting companion to the original work. [Ben Nicholson]

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HIGHLIGHTS

WED 24

The Clan

“ The film may be light but it’s never lightweight”

Speed Sisters  Director: Amber Fares

This lively doc follows five Palestinian women as they vie to be crowned the fastest broad on the West Bank. By either luck or design, each has a very distinct style and attitude, as if they’ve been cooked up by Simon Cowell to be the region’s answer to the Spice Girls.

What makes Speed Sisters such a joy is that it’s both political and playful; social commentary unspools quietly in the background while the focus is the on- and off-track dramas. The tear gas

Weepah Way for Now  Director: Stephen Ringer Starring: Aly Michalka, AJ Michalka, Mimi Rogers

Stephen Ringer’s debut feature lays out a kind of romantic realism similar in style to Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy – it skims off the most perfect level of real life, the moments when reality seems most movie-like.

Playing former teen idols Elle and Joy, AJ and Aly Michalka get to draw heavily on their own life experience, and the natural quality of their rapid-fire sibling chatter lends the film sweetness and charm.

The Clan GFT, 6pm This Argentinian thriller centres on a seemingly average suburban family who just happen to kidnap then murder the country’s rich and elite. If that sounds a bit far-fetched, you’ll be pleased to know this is based on a true story.

Wed 24 Feb, GFT, 1.15pm

in the streets, roadblocks and lack of any space for them to drive have become daily inconveniences, so commonplace they’ve become humdrum. Palestine still has the power to shock them, however.

When the women venture on to a strip of waste ground too close to the border, an Israeli soldier shoots Betty, the most glamourous of the racers, with rubber bullets without warning. “Did you think because you’re blonde and pretty they wouldn’t shoot at you?” asks Maysoon, the most switched-on of the girls. The film may be light but it’s never lightweight.

(Jamie Dunn)

ONLINE REVIEWS Head to theskinny.co.uk/cineskinny for more reviews, including...

Cain’s Children  I Am Belfast  Green Room  Bang Gang 

The Surprise Film GFT, 8.45pm This event can be a lucky dip – last year’s was stinker The Voices – but you can’t beat the excitement of not having a clue what’s about to come on screen.

Men & Chicken CCA, 8.30pm The programme suggests the tone is The Three Stooges by way of Franz Kafka. That’s us sold.

Wed 24 Feb, CCA, 6.30pm Thu 25 Feb, CCA, 1.30pm

At several moments the main plot is interrupted by flashes from grainy home movies. In other hands this could easily have come off as a hammy gimmick but here it becomes much more: when the sisters perform as their mother watches on and the screen rushes through scenes of them dancing through their childhood, we get what it is to have been with someone for their entire life. Each new moment is folded into a million others. It’s this feeling that the movie captures so perfectly: the glow that life takes on in the little moments that seem better than real. (Ross McIndoe)

“ Their natural quality lends the film sweetness and charm”

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Vol 1: 22/23 Feb, GFT, 6.15pm/12.50pm | Vol 2: 24/25 Feb, GFT, 5.45pm/1pm | Vol 3: 25/26 Feb, GFT, 5.50pm/3.15pm

HIGHLIGHTS

THU 25

“ Each film is having a dialogue with the others, and this dialogue is the film”

Wild at Heart

Miguel Gomes

Tales of the Unexpected Fantasy and reality blend in Miguel Gomes’s epic three-part remix of Scheherazade’s Arabian Nights folktales. We gather round the campfire with the Portuguese filmmaker

Wild at Heart St Luke’s, 6.30pm David Lynch takes a familiar ‘lovers on the lam’ story, then adds references to The Wizard of Oz and some batshit performances (Willem Dafoe even outdoes Nic Cage) for one of the greatest films of the 90s.

Get down early for ‘Elvis’.

INTERVIEW:

Ben Nicholson

coming up and interrupting it. We could stop the previous story to hear this new story and, in this new story, there would also be another story. So I was completely amazed by the possibilities of storytelling – very Baroque of course – that appeared in that book. For me it was like discovering the Holy Grail.” t’s a miracle! A Catholic miracle! The Holy Trinity!”

This rambling, nebulous narrative approach then became exclaims Miguel Gomes when The Skinny ask him all the more intrinsic during the filming. “There was some- whether he thinks of his latest work – the triptych of absur- thing very annoying during the making of the film because dist, docu-fantastical national portraits that comprise Arabian our government, and also people from European institutions Nights – as three films or one six-hour epic. “We thought it that were here, kept saying one sentence all the time: ‘We would be interesting to have the film divided like the book – have to do it this way, because there is not another way.’” it’s so huge that normally it’s divided into volumes,” he says, He’s referring, of course, to the European Union’s austere “but it would be interesting if each one of them had their approach to the financial meltdown bubbling across much of own soul. So, for me, it is the three. And I guess that each Europe. “And hell, I’m not a politician – gladly! – I’m only film is having a dialogue with the others, and this dialogue a filmmaker. But as a filmmaker I know it’s possible to make is really the film.” cinema in very different ways. I know also it’s possible to His starting point was Scheherazade, but this is no straight- tell stories in different ways. So why the hell in economics laced adaptation. Instead, those classic folktales provide and politics is there only one way? Sounds to me like bullshit.” inspiration for a fanciful state-of-the-nation appraisal. “I had As a result Gomes set out to make a film that embraced this idea that to make a portrait of my country, Portugal, it different modalities of storytelling jostling up against one was not possible to only show things as they are in reality,” another: “Different kinds of cinema and ways of looking at explains Gomes. “They should be expanded and the way to reality. For instance, at the beginning, there’s this kind of do it was with fiction. And I also thought that things were paranoid, biblical, ecological plague; this almost slapstick going very wild in Portuguese society – not for good reasons, comedy about a coward film director; and a social documenunfortunately – but they were getting wild and we started tary – direct kind of cinema – about the shipyard workers. to have stories – very strange, very surreal – and I thought They mix together and they start to create this kind of chaos.” this was something that could work with the spirit of fiction For Gomes, this is the medium’s essence: “Cinema, for that appears in Arabian Nights.” me, is a very organic process, y’know? It’s not so rational. Of Gomes first came across the book as an impressionable course, you cannot just be dumb about it – you have to think 12-year-old and, although he never finished reading it (“which a bit – but most of the time it’s really instinct. I think what is a little bit strange for someone that makes a film with the is often neglected by people who talk about cinema is pleasure, same title!”), he was enamored with its labyrinthine structure. which is something that I also got from Arabian Nights the “I found out that it was possible to start a story and then, book; it’s a book about pleasure.” in the middle of that story, find that there were other stories

“I

This is Now Tramway, until Sun, 12-6pm Subtitled Film and Video After Punk (1978-85), this is a celebration of that moment in the early 80s when punk inspired a new generation of artists.

Couple in a Hole GFT, 6pm We’re intrigued by this mysterious portrait of a Scottish couple living feral in the French countryside. Why are they there? The weather’s not that bad, is it?

Produced by The Skinny magazine in association with the Glasgow Film Festival: Editor-in-Chief Rosamund West Editor

Jamie Dunn

Subeditor

Will Fitzpatrick

Lead Designer

Sigrid Schmeisser

Picture Editor

Sarah Donley

Digital Editor

Peter Simpson

Comm. Director Nicola Taylor Sales

George Sully

Claire Collins

Illustration

Elena Boils

GFF Box Office Order tickets from the box office at www.glasgowfilm.org/festival or call: 0141 332 6535 or visit: Glasgow Film Theatre 12 Rose Street, Glasgow, G3 6RB info@glasgowfilmfestival.org.uk

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