What a Great Guest Would Be Happy to Host Alex Again Anytime
Nobody Makes Films Similar Alex Garland. Only He Might Stop Making Them.
The man behind "Men" says of directing, "I don't particularly enjoy information technology. It's something I take to strength myself to exercise."
Alex Garland knows that calling his new film "Men" is a provocative human activity. "It'southward quite interesting that such a brusk, simple word can be and then freighted with massive and entirely subjective meanings," he said.
As a writer and filmmaker, Garland is drawn to subjects that need discussion: In the twisty robot parable "Ex Machina" (2015) and the Natalie Portman sci-fi drama "Annihilation" (2018), he favored a bold, stark setup that sat at the intersection of a cultural flash indicate. The tricky "Men" operates in a similar vein, casting Jessie Buckley as Harper, a woman coming to terms with her married man'south expiry and the arraign he leveled at her in his concluding moments.
Harper rents a British country house to piece of work through her trauma, only the men of the local village (all of whom are played by the actor Rory Kinnear) insinuate, belittle and wheedle her, also. One of them even stalks her, appearing naked in her front yard, merely whom tin Harper register a complaint with when all of the men around her — or all men, menses — are, deep down, the same guy?
I spoke to Garland on a video call this month while he was in the center of directing "Civil War," an A24 activity epic starring Kirsten Dunst. Garland, who is 51 and British, sounded a chip weary. Before making "Ex Machina," he only wrote screenplays for other filmmakers to direct — including "28 Days Afterward," "Sunshine" and "Dredd." The more nosotros spoke, the more he questioned whether he wanted to go on directing at all.
"I'm tired of feeling like a fraud," he told me. "I've got so many other reasons to experience like a fraud, I don't need to add to information technology in a structural way with my job."
Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.
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Do you lot read reviews of your films?
Sometimes, because there'll be a ready of websites that I go to, and and then I will see — with a horrible, sinking feeling — that they've reviewed the thing I worked on, and I'd have to be a monk to not read it. I broadly try to go on away from them. The beginning thing I did in any kind of public forum was write a volume, "The Beach." I was 26 or 27 when it came out and read everything, and I realized that I could get incredibly wounded, that it was really personal. Information technology was a dull stepping back, because it's at present 25 years that I've been doing this. I think I'm probably stepping back from all sorts of different things.
What else are you stepping back from?
I think it is partly a function of getting older: I know less and less people, I have a smaller and smaller circle, and I become out less and less. Everything's simply getting progressively quieter and smaller, I'd say.
Your films kind of reflect that attitude. They have very small casts and very circumscribed locations. There isn't much clutter.
That would definitely be fair to say. I find myself interested in less and less things, but the things I'1000 interested in, I might go deeper and deeper into. And also, I'm not really a movie manager, I'chiliad a author who directs out of convenience.
You didn't await to have this career as a manager?
It wasn't that I had any great urge to direct, it was more born out of feet based on writing: I'd find it very agitating if something [in the moving picture] felt totally wrong to me, or something that I felt was of import was absent. But I have been thinking that after the flick I'm directing at the moment, I should stop and go back to only writing. That might be role of the reversing away from the world — it's fourth dimension to get abroad from it, I think. I'1000 not temperamentally suited to being a motion picture director.
Why is that?
It would be more honest, probably, to say I don't particularly enjoy it. It's something I have to force myself to exercise. It's incredibly sociable, considering you are with a large group of people the whole time — and, in my case, having to practise a lot of office play. At the end of the 24-hour interval, you feel a bit fraudulent and exhausted.
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Because you lot take to go sort of a showman?
Yeah, exactly. I volition notice myself standing in front of a group of extras saying, "All correct, so what's happening now is dah, dah, dah," raising my vocalism and existence encouraging and intense. It simply feels incredibly performative. Whenever I spotter a conversation show, and I see the host engaging in witty banter with a invitee, I look at them and think, "What if they're feeling actually depressed right now?" Here's the requirement for a quip, here'south the requirement to be interested in something you're not interested in, and inside you're feeling incredibly bleak and existential. It always makes me shudder — I nearly can't watch those programs considering I experience that then strongly. And my version of existence a talk-show host is standing on a film set.
Still, I would call up that y'all'd want to be on set to supervise the physical realization of your worlds and themes.
Oh yeah, but that'due south the limit of it. There are many directors where the gear up is where they need and want to exist more than than any other identify, and as soon equally the moving-picture show is finished, they're scheming to be in that space once more with as short a delay as possible. And that's merely not me.
I've seen some directors reach former historic period, and it's as though they take to keep directing in order to alive. Sometimes, there's another film placed in front end of them even before they've finished the last ane.
No question. Immediately, as you said that, I had a Rolodex of names appear in my head, and I was thinking, "That's exactly who he's talking virtually." But in that location's also another kind of director who suddenly stops, people like Peter Weir and Alan Parker. They must take been walking away from something, and maybe they just tired of it.
Is this the shortest menstruation of time between you lot being on two movie sets? You shot "Men" in the middle of terminal twelvemonth and started "Civil War" not long subsequently.
Yep, the last twenty-four hour period of postproduction on "Men" was 48 hours before the offset solar day of chief photography on "Civil War." Literally, it was a Saturday and a Monday.
I remember speaking to Kirsten Dunst after she was cast in "Civil War," and she said she was excited that she finally got to play "the boy part" in a motion-picture show.
I hope she feels happy with the process, but you never know. I don't think it's simply me that finds it hard. Motion-picture show sets are strange places. They're Calvinist, punishing spaces of abstinence. People work really, really difficult — like drop-down wearied hard — and you run into it on everyone's faces at the end of the day. There can be elements of addiction in that, only it'southward like, I've got an alarm bell in my head ringing the whole time, thinking, "You lot demand to stop doing this."
Was "Men" that arduous to make?
"Men" was really difficult. The subject matter gets into yous, and you take to live with it, simply it was also difficult on a technical level. We had a very short shoot, and nosotros were trying to get a lot done very quickly. I often worried about Rory particularly, because the final few weeks of the shoot, he'southward naked in the middle of the night, and information technology's freezing cold. An enormous amount of filmmaking is actually logistics, and information technology'due south like a managerial job. How exercise you lot execute this number of things within this many hours? Literally, how do you do it?
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It'south the sort of motion-picture show that volition get out people arguing about its intent, and about what it's trying to say. You lot one time told me that with "Ex Machina," yous wanted at least 50 percent of the film to be bailiwick to the viewer's interpretation.
Over the years, I have been consciously putting more and more than into the hands of the viewer. There'south probably another element to it, too, if I'm honest, which is that it'south making the viewer complicit. This is another reason to pull back, considering there'south a role of me which is really subversive and ambitious and is kind of [messing] with people. At times, I felt with "Men" that I've gone then far that it's borderline delinquent.
What kind of reaction take you gotten to the motion picture?
I've got good friends who I really respect who I've shown "Men" to, and their convinced interpretation — "I know what this film is saying, it's saying this" — is 180 degrees unlike from what I thought it was.
When that happens, does that feel like a successful experiment?
No.
No?
No, it only feels inevitable. When we're watching a moving picture, we have these responses that on a rational level, nosotros know are subjective, but we care for them as if they're objective, and that'due south just the manner it is. I have such distrust in my own responses and other people'south responses as being reliable — they could vary on a twenty-four hours-by-solar day level. So when I offer something up, I have no expectation that everybody's going to agree on information technology. I accept a full expectation that people volition disagree, and I meet it primarily equally a reflection on them.
What are some of the things your friends said about it?
"Who's the protagonist?" "Is this well-nigh what a woman thinks, or is it about what a human thinks?" It'southward people's certainty that I find strangest: "This means this, this means that." I find myself getting less and less certain near everything.
Even your ain work?
Oh, I accept no certainty near that. That'south just a bunch of compulsions.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/16/movies/alex-garland-men.html
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