Post by avalon on Sept 28, 2007 16:51:46 GMT 9.5
Source:The Monteal mirror
by MALCOLM FRASER
"Nicolas Roeg on the cycles of life, his
long and strange career, and Puffball,
his explicitly erotic new thriller"
Sept 27 - Oct 03 .2007
the best weekend!!just an excerpt from the interview dearest girls & Miranda boys.
Avalon!!!!
!Strange sensibilities"
When I start off by asking about the long break since his last feature, he sidesteps the question: “In between nearly every movie I’ve made, it’s been a long while. That’s the nature of this life.” It’s clear that the break has something to do with his contrarian nature: “I don’t know why, but I’ve been tremendously lucky, and at the same time unfortunate. I’ve been very lucky in being able to do the things I’ve wanted to do, and I’ve been unfortunate, because I’ve never wanted to do the things that were offered at the time.” He continues with a laugh: “I once had an agent, and I said to him, ‘I want to be a working filmmaker. Just send me stuff that you hear about, inquiries.’ He said, ‘I do, but you don’t do them!’”
Evidently Roeg almost dropped the ball on Puffball, only getting back to the producers long after they’d sent him the script, but the film seems designed for his sensibilities.
;)Roeg’s attraction to mysterious, unexplained phenomena is represented by the extended family of rural women—Mabs (Miranda Richardson), a mother of three trying to get pregnant again, Audrey (Leona Igoe), her reclusive teenage daughter, and Molly (Rita Tushingham), Mabs’s mother, who used to live in the old cottage and who dabbles in witchcraft. ;)Threatened by Reilly’s city-slicker architect and all she represents, the women resort to some decidedly unneighbourly black arts to keep her at bay. A strange pierced stone in the woods, and the titular puffball, a giant mushroom that grows in the English countryside, are also used as symbols of forces beyond our comprehension.
When I ask about this supernatural angle, Roeg again demurs. “It’s quite a strange thing to think of the supernatural,” he shrugs. “I believe it’s more natural, but just overlooked. It’s part of all our lives. We’ve invented artificialities; we don’t really dare look at what is quite ordinary. We exist within the compass of what we think is real. You can’t say we’ve known every force in the world. At one time, if someone had said, ‘In 50 years, you’ll be able to push a button and a light will come on,’ people would have said, ‘Bullshit!’”
This unsettling sense of unknowable forces recalls what’s perhaps Roeg’s best film, Don’t Look Now. Asked about the parallels, Roeg says “I think that if one tries to scratch some sort of truth out of what you’re creating, practically everyone keeps repeating themselves, because you never quite get it right. There are things that you don’t quite solve.”
Honest and erotic
While Don’t Look Now caused a minor scandal at the time with the sex scenes between Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, who were widely rumoured to have actually gone all the way on-camera, Puffball goes even further in an honest depiction of sex. The love scenes between Reilly and her boyfriend (Oscar Pearce)—and later, other couplings that complicate the plot—have a similar, uncommon truthfulness, explicit both physically and emotionally. But this time, Roeg takes the sexual realism a step beyond with footage seemingly taken from an interior perspective. You haven’t really seen a money shot until you’ve seen it from the cervical point of view—a jarring sight that’s somewhere between the most hardcore of porn and nature-documentary footage.
Clearly pleased with this perversely matter-of-fact approach, Roeg explains: “It was the idea of the movie, I just took it further. It’s about interiors. Someone said to me, ‘It spoiled the sex scenes.’ (laughs) It’s fantastic! But it’s quite interesting that that was never thought of to be censored. Because the censor would then have to face an absurdity, wouldn’t he? Is it nudity? What is it? Was it Oscar Wilde who said that criticism and censorship are really autobiography?”
As if in a direct, winking reference to Don’t Look Now, Sutherland turns up here as Reilly’s mentor, offering thought-provoking philosophical musings; while not directly related to the plot, his character seems to embody the themes, or as Roeg puts it, “the attitude within the movie.” These themes are nothing less than universal—the stages and cycles of life, the conflict between traditional and contemporary lifestyles, the intimate lives of couples, conception, death and the search for the meaning of it all. It’s not a perfect film; with such lofty ambitions, and Roeg’s tendency to leave questions unresolved, there are some loose ends that don’t get tied up, but it’s one that deserves to be seen for its utter uniqueness.
Hidden truths
After the twists and turns of his career, Roeg is cautiously optimistic about his new film’s prospects. “Who knows what the future will hold for this little movie? I think it’s got a chance, because of the truths hidden in it. And maybe that’s arrogant, but it’s because the artists in it are so marvellous.” He’s not just blowing smoke—not only master thespians Richardson and Sutherland, but the relatively unknown Reilly, deliver performances of great intensity and depth. “They engage so much with their hidden truths—not just acting truths, but hidden truths came across. I hope it will have a life somewhere. I think it will be gradually referred to later, maybe. Bad Timing still seems to be going. And one review at the time said, ‘There’s weird, and then there’s Bad Timing.’ (laughs) That was the total review!”
Near the end of our talk, I ask Roeg if, as an elder statesman, he has any words of wisdom to pass on to new generations of filmmakers. “I would say what Matisse said: Try and see the strange in the familiar. ’Cause what you think it is isn’t always what it is. And don’t make too many plans. I just let things happen.”
Puffball opens this
Friday, Sept. 28
by MALCOLM FRASER
"Nicolas Roeg on the cycles of life, his
long and strange career, and Puffball,
his explicitly erotic new thriller"
Sept 27 - Oct 03 .2007
the best weekend!!just an excerpt from the interview dearest girls & Miranda boys.
Avalon!!!!
!Strange sensibilities"
When I start off by asking about the long break since his last feature, he sidesteps the question: “In between nearly every movie I’ve made, it’s been a long while. That’s the nature of this life.” It’s clear that the break has something to do with his contrarian nature: “I don’t know why, but I’ve been tremendously lucky, and at the same time unfortunate. I’ve been very lucky in being able to do the things I’ve wanted to do, and I’ve been unfortunate, because I’ve never wanted to do the things that were offered at the time.” He continues with a laugh: “I once had an agent, and I said to him, ‘I want to be a working filmmaker. Just send me stuff that you hear about, inquiries.’ He said, ‘I do, but you don’t do them!’”
Evidently Roeg almost dropped the ball on Puffball, only getting back to the producers long after they’d sent him the script, but the film seems designed for his sensibilities.
;)Roeg’s attraction to mysterious, unexplained phenomena is represented by the extended family of rural women—Mabs (Miranda Richardson), a mother of three trying to get pregnant again, Audrey (Leona Igoe), her reclusive teenage daughter, and Molly (Rita Tushingham), Mabs’s mother, who used to live in the old cottage and who dabbles in witchcraft. ;)Threatened by Reilly’s city-slicker architect and all she represents, the women resort to some decidedly unneighbourly black arts to keep her at bay. A strange pierced stone in the woods, and the titular puffball, a giant mushroom that grows in the English countryside, are also used as symbols of forces beyond our comprehension.When I ask about this supernatural angle, Roeg again demurs. “It’s quite a strange thing to think of the supernatural,” he shrugs. “I believe it’s more natural, but just overlooked. It’s part of all our lives. We’ve invented artificialities; we don’t really dare look at what is quite ordinary. We exist within the compass of what we think is real. You can’t say we’ve known every force in the world. At one time, if someone had said, ‘In 50 years, you’ll be able to push a button and a light will come on,’ people would have said, ‘Bullshit!’”
This unsettling sense of unknowable forces recalls what’s perhaps Roeg’s best film, Don’t Look Now. Asked about the parallels, Roeg says “I think that if one tries to scratch some sort of truth out of what you’re creating, practically everyone keeps repeating themselves, because you never quite get it right. There are things that you don’t quite solve.”
Honest and erotic
While Don’t Look Now caused a minor scandal at the time with the sex scenes between Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, who were widely rumoured to have actually gone all the way on-camera, Puffball goes even further in an honest depiction of sex. The love scenes between Reilly and her boyfriend (Oscar Pearce)—and later, other couplings that complicate the plot—have a similar, uncommon truthfulness, explicit both physically and emotionally. But this time, Roeg takes the sexual realism a step beyond with footage seemingly taken from an interior perspective. You haven’t really seen a money shot until you’ve seen it from the cervical point of view—a jarring sight that’s somewhere between the most hardcore of porn and nature-documentary footage.
Clearly pleased with this perversely matter-of-fact approach, Roeg explains: “It was the idea of the movie, I just took it further. It’s about interiors. Someone said to me, ‘It spoiled the sex scenes.’ (laughs) It’s fantastic! But it’s quite interesting that that was never thought of to be censored. Because the censor would then have to face an absurdity, wouldn’t he? Is it nudity? What is it? Was it Oscar Wilde who said that criticism and censorship are really autobiography?”
As if in a direct, winking reference to Don’t Look Now, Sutherland turns up here as Reilly’s mentor, offering thought-provoking philosophical musings; while not directly related to the plot, his character seems to embody the themes, or as Roeg puts it, “the attitude within the movie.” These themes are nothing less than universal—the stages and cycles of life, the conflict between traditional and contemporary lifestyles, the intimate lives of couples, conception, death and the search for the meaning of it all. It’s not a perfect film; with such lofty ambitions, and Roeg’s tendency to leave questions unresolved, there are some loose ends that don’t get tied up, but it’s one that deserves to be seen for its utter uniqueness.
Hidden truths
After the twists and turns of his career, Roeg is cautiously optimistic about his new film’s prospects. “Who knows what the future will hold for this little movie? I think it’s got a chance, because of the truths hidden in it. And maybe that’s arrogant, but it’s because the artists in it are so marvellous.” He’s not just blowing smoke—not only master thespians Richardson and Sutherland, but the relatively unknown Reilly, deliver performances of great intensity and depth. “They engage so much with their hidden truths—not just acting truths, but hidden truths came across. I hope it will have a life somewhere. I think it will be gradually referred to later, maybe. Bad Timing still seems to be going. And one review at the time said, ‘There’s weird, and then there’s Bad Timing.’ (laughs) That was the total review!”
Near the end of our talk, I ask Roeg if, as an elder statesman, he has any words of wisdom to pass on to new generations of filmmakers. “I would say what Matisse said: Try and see the strange in the familiar. ’Cause what you think it is isn’t always what it is. And don’t make too many plans. I just let things happen.”
Puffball opens this
Friday, Sept. 28
