When you think of Misanthrope, the return of Damián Szifrón, the film director who has achieved success and popularity, the kind that cannot be erased, with series like Los Simuladores and films like the Oscar nominated Wild Tales. Szifrón comes from Hollywood, he comes from films that didn’t happen and he always comes talking about cinema. Now, this film finds him in his best form: fierce, classic, in love with authorship that’s invisible but not unforgettable. A current, modern crime thriller of real shootings in the middle of everyday life in Baltimore, starring Shailene Woodley (also a producer, along with Szifrón and Ben Mendelsohn), who seems ferocious, who bites into the marrow of the inconsistencies of American society and greets the Michael Mann cinema. Misanthrope is a movie tremendously in love with a certain classic, modern and classic police, which shows in all its corners a world with real problems (beyond the case and modes of the police). Szifrón himself will say: “I agree, but I need to start by saying something that seems very important to me. Today the classic seems modern to me. The classic has that virtue and it is that it does not go out of style. And there are certain shapes, certain tones, certain systems of thought, action and reflection that will never go out of style. What is often called “modern” goes out of style. Very fast. The avant-garde can only be an avant-garde when it is not trying to be, it is something empty. In this film there is a commitment to a type of cinema that I feel is no longer made. I was thinking of movies like The Sidney Lumet Verdict, I like when the director is present and it’s not noticeable, I like invisibility is not noticeable. I don’t like it when the director takes the center of the photo. I think that the modern in the case of this film is happening in the thematic”.
-Why do you say that? What do you feel is happening in the theme?
—I feel that it is a subversive film, because it shows not sympathy but empathy for the murderer, for the villain. There is a desire for understanding, for rapprochement. And it shows antipathy for those who should really look after common interests. Which is all we see happening in the institution.
—Showing press operations, small political table when deciding and even sacrificing. Why did you want to show the institution, in this case, police from that place?
—I would love for that to be noticed, for it to be subtle, for the viewer to notice it but not attract attention. Somehow, what is experienced within the institution, in this case the FBI and the police, is what I see in corporations, in Hollywood studios, in, basically, people who behave that way. There are two great ways to manage in life: by desire or by fear. In the first, you do what you want, you do what you like, what you think should be done, or, in the second, you do something to avoid being kicked out, you are cautious. The way I see things happen is that nobody wants to be responsible for a mistake. All the systems are thinking to find someone responsible for the error. At times it is more important to show that the person responsible is being sought than to find him. In the cinema metaphor, for example, writing a script, bringing it to fruition, it is more important to show, that it is read that it is being done, than to say we are doing, than to be able to say there is nothing to deliver, than to show that it “is doing” is more important than delivering.
—How do you connect it with these years in Hollywood?
—What I saw in different Hollywood studios and in processes in which I was directly involved, specifically The Nuclear Man but also others, what I perceived is that there are enormous levels of anxiety. I remember that he used the metaphor of a pregnancy. Suddenly an executive comes and says: “Stop, let’s take this baby out of this belly and put it in another, and see what happens.” Stop, stop, he’s four months old, that’s nine. “He doesn’t have hands.” But he doesn’t have to have them yet. It generates despair, everyone has to report to his superior, and that’s how the movies that are made are made. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a movie that not only doesn’t have greatness, but also doesn’t have coherence. How did that come to be? They seem to have been made by an Artificial Intelligence, which has no heart, and which are, this is the important thing, difficult things to treasure. How did it happen to you, I don’t know, with Witness in Danger… what movie do you remember takings from? I don’t know, Die Hard when the guy hoses himself down and jumps. Or from which movie can you whistle the melody? You can’t remember images, they don’t remain. They are a sum of things that happen, it is a big industry and that is why this film talks about cinema.
—How do you live today, after your experience, your love of cinema?
— I remember I wrote a sentence that said: “It’s been a long time since a movie changed my soul, I don’t know if there’s a problem with the movie or with my soul.” At a certain age, perhaps, you stop being sensitive to certain things, or that fewer films are made that are important to those who make them. The platforms generated that. Technically speaking, they pay a lot of money for good directors to go make their movies there, quickly and painlessly, and the guys make them, but are they important to them? It’s been a long time since I said “this one suits me”.
—What do you feel is bravery in cinema?
—It is when you choose paths that can put your career at risk. When you decide to tell things that no one else is telling. In this case there is and will be a lot of rejection for the film. I knew that. The film was financed by sales to many territories, for its exhibition, but the United States was not among those. Until the end it was not bought in the United States. That hurts. It is a complex operation. On the one hand it disappoints you. On the other hand, why would the people that this movie is criticizing want to be a part of this movie? It’s like punk wants to be admitted to a cheap cafe. You can’t complain. There is something to that. I always felt that it was not going to be well received, but I had the illusion that they were going to criticize. I don’t feel like it’s a bad milk movie. That is a society proud of itself, and I’m not just talking about the Trump-voting right.
—The film without being filmed in the United States transmits a lot of the United States…
— In the cinema, one sees that society has certain characteristics. For example, the advertising posters that we see are usually removed (for a thousand reasons). Here one of the greatest achievements, which makes me proud, is a sequence of violence, raw, with a Swarovski poster in the background. That was a permanent tension. They can get angry, he told me. But I am a filmmaker, I am filming reality. How can it be? Am I going to describe a world without advertising in a country where the only thing there is is possibility? He wanted markings on the dump scene. It was essential that this be told.
back to basics
—The film appeals to that physicality of less digital cinema, although of course it has that.
“It’s all physical. street. Try to do it all like this, there is digital from time to time. I wanted to feel what is happening, for things to have texture, to have weight. It doesn’t look artificial. I bet to put the viewer inside that office. The heart of the film is the relationship between Ben Mendelsohn and Shailene Wooley, it is a shared role. One way of looking at it is that she is the apprentice and until the end she doesn’t take the lead. And it is true. But, for example, the reference I had was Dead Poets Society, which is a film in which you remember Robin Williams as the protagonist, but the protagonist is Ethan Hawke, it’s the relationship, it’s that link between the two of them and that the heart of the movie. Here is that too. He is a guy threatened by his bosses, by his competitors. There are people who want to see him fail. That he struggles with institutional stupidity, with the pressures of the day, they already fired him. But this case is his, they are trying to get it out of him. In this context, when you are in such bad company, for example, filming there, you need to be in bad company. Bergman was once asked about his experience filming in the United States, and he said “why would I stop shooting a movie with 20 friends to shoot it with 200 enemies?” It’s a bit like that. They are not enemies because they are bad: it is the budget, it is to deliver on time, so it does not matter what is being counted, it is important to deliver the product. In this context, what happened to me, when an assistant who follows and supports you appears, you want him by your side, and I think that is the reason why the policeman in this film summons the character of Shailene Woodley.
You may also like