.png)
An overwhelmingly intense portrait of motherhood, passion, and mental illness, “Die My Love” brings together Lynne Ramsay, the Scottish auteur behind such anguished psychodramas as “We Need to Talk About Kevin” and “You Were Never Really Here,” with Jennifer Lawrence, the Oscar-winning actress whose tour-de-force performance marks a viscerally affecting high point in her remarkable career.
Ramsay’s latest (now in theaters, via MUBI) opens as a young couple, Grace (Lawrence) and Jackson (Robert Pattinson), move to a remote house in the Montana wilderness; it belonged to his late uncle, we learn, and appears worse for wear, but both are initially hungry for the start of this next chapter in their lives—and for each other, as they prowl through the tall grass and paw at each other on the kitchen floor. But soon enough, Grace is pregnant, and after the baby is born, the fervent heat of their relationship cools into something distant and unhappy. A writer by trade, Grace is creatively blocked, and the intolerable, enraging sense of abandonment that attends her experience of motherhood begins to emerge in increasingly destructive, unsettling ways.
Based on the novel by Argentinian author Ariana Harwicz, “Die My Love” first came to Lawrence via Martin Scorsese, who’d read it in his book club and could immediately envision her playing the central character (who remains unnamed on the page). He sent it to Excellent Cadaver, the production company Lawrence co-runs with producing partner Justine Ciarrochi. Taken with this challenging material, the actress had only one filmmaker in mind: Ramsay, who’s been making harrowing films about broken familial dynamics and the all-consuming loneliness they can breed since 1999’s “Ratcatcher,” a Glasgow-set social-realist drama that stands among the greatest debut features.
Paired up to discuss “Die My Love,” Ramsay and Lawrence spoke for a whirlwind 13 minutes about coming together to tell this story, running on instinct, picking the film’s musical selections, finding its sensorially overpowering visual language with cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, and more.
This interview has been edited and condensed. It was conducted in two parts, also including a secondary, five-minute follow-up with Ramsay.
To ask you first about each other: Jennifer, you’d wanted to work with Lynne since first seeing “Ratcatcher.” What was it about that film, and about Lynne’s filmmaking?
Jennifer Lawrence: Well, when I saw “Ratcatcher,” I knew I needed to see this person’s entire filmography, and so I did—and it’s because her filmmaking was so singular. It was so unflinching. I had never seen anybody make a movie like that. It was just so raw, and it was almost like she didn’t even care if an audience [saw it.] You could tell she wasn’t making it for an audience.
She was making it because of something so pure—she’s just a real artist. She’s been my favorite filmmaker forever, but I just hadn’t really come across something that I felt would be worthy of her. When I read this book, though, it was clear that it would not be a linear movie. It was poetic, so only one person could do that.
Lynne, what distinguished Jennifer as a creative collaborator, both as an actress and a producer on this project?
Lynne Ramsay: When I received an email about the novel, asking, “Would you read this? We really like your stuff,” I was really flattered.
JL: [laughing] “We really like your stuff.” I’m sure it was more effusive than that.
LR: [laughing] The way we started working together, and talking together, it was all about having a trust within our relationship that was unphasable. For me, what was then amazing was to expect the unexpected. I love when you’re working with actors where you feel—especially with a character like this—that you don’t even know what they’re going to do next. I think I gave enough space—I hope I gave enough space—for that to happen.
But, definitely, it was about a relationship that we developed over time: during the script [phase,] actually with sharing some images, by singing songs, and just talking—you shoot the breeze a bit about it, like, “Who is she?” Really uncovering this character, that was done over a month, so it was all a process of really getting to know each other and getting inside each other’s brains a little bit, you know? It just felt there was a match, and that’s—for me—always what I look for, so it was perfect.
How much did you work to plan out in advance in terms of performance, and how much did you want to leave open and reactive to the pressures of being on set? I was curious about the place of spontaneity in a character so driven by impulse and instinct, and what that felt like to embody.
JL: It was really, really fun—and complicated. I mean, it’s really fun to play somebody that has no veneer, that has no impulse control. You’re just kind of living this internal world. You’re living intrusive thoughts—which is satisfying and fun.
But I’ve always relied on my instincts. And this was the first time I was playing a mom since becoming one, so I do have my own instincts, but they were very counterproductive to our journey, so it was a little complicated to try to dissect what I would do, as opposed to what Grace would do.
Ariana Harwicz writes in such a lyrical, unsettling style, and there’s similarly such passion and poetry to your film. Lynne, I know this is your fourth adaptation, but what can you say about finding a visual and auditory grammar to tell this story, adapting that text into sound and image?
LR: Well, it’s a real process. I work a lot on instinct. I think that’s what just clicked with us two; I can feel when something works or doesn’t. Maybe you think it’s going to be great or perfect, and you end up thinking, “Do you know what? Something else is much better.”
You find it in the day. I try to be very present on a set, to look at things that are outside what’s happening, or at moments in between. It just felt like, on this one particularly—and it’s not in every film—one thing I knew was that I really wanted the camera just to follow, to give the actors enough space to let them play in this house, with props or whatever was there.
She was bored at home; there were moments when I just let it run, and beautiful things happened. There’s a laundry basket in one scene that she tips over. It’s a moment of rage. Then she licks a window. Jennifer just went for it, went for these moments. I never asked her, “Every single beat, you need to do this, you need to do that,” but it felt like the character was trapped.
And it was funny. That was important for me. I think Jennifer’s got great, great comic timing, and she really brought that to it, and that was important to me. The film was fun in that respect; it was set up to be this thing, but within that, there was a lot of freedom.
I’m curious to ask about the role of music in heightening our experience of Grace’s inner journey. Of course, the needle-drops—Toni Basil, Cocteau Twins, John Prine, and Iris DeMent—keep you on your toes as a viewer, and Lynne, you perform a magnificent cover of “Love Will Tear You Apart” that plays over the credits. At what stage were you envisioning particular soundtrack choices, and was the music in place during filming?
LR: It was very early on that I’d sent John Prine to Jennifer, and she was like, “I love this track.” It seems like a lovely country track, but underneath it is what’s really inside the relationship, you know? And it’s beautiful. Jennifer really responded to it. I hadn’t heard it before; my music supervisor sent it to me. When I did “Morvern Callar,” as well, I’d made all of that soundtrack well before I started.
We did have music on set—“Mickey” was playing, for real. I thought of the couple having a good vinyl collection, that when they’d lived in New York, he’d tried to be in a band that was unsuccessful, that she threatened to cut off things, and this house was a new hope—even though it was a bit rundown. And it starts from there, then things go… the way they go. [laughs] That meant every piece of music was a little satellite indicator for me, I felt, of these points in the relationship.
I think about music a lot when I’m writing scripts, and playing music when you’re writing is great as well. It was all open, but it was a process of working quite early on, which I try to do as much as possible.
JL: Lynne is the only director I’ve ever worked with who uses music on set. And so, when it was the wedding scene, you know, when you read a scene like that—where she goes nuts and starts throwing things—it’s a little hard. You’re like, “Okay, well, what? Where’s this coming from? What’s the beginning of this?”
And so she played the song, “Infinity Guitars,” by Sleigh Bells, and it just immediately got me there. It was such an “arrggghhh” sound of rage — such a cool beat. And so I had that playing in my ear during that [scene].
One of the first lines of dialogue we hear from Grace, as she inspects the house she’s moving into with Jackson, is, “We need a cat.” I wanted to ask about animalism in the context of this film—rats scurrying upstairs, cats prowling in grass, flies buzzing, horses running, dogs yapping. What drew you to this animal symbolism?
LR: I can talk about that in terms of this character. I don’t know so much in terms of everything, overall, in my work—it’s hard to say. But I used the book as a bit of a jumping-off point; this isn’t a literal translation at all, but there was something so feral, unapologetic, and animalistic about Grace being stuck in this house, like she’s this beast, like there’s something dangerous about her. It kind of came from that. It’s funny that you’ve noticed that it’s the first line of the film. She’s like, “We need a cat.” Of course, he brings a dog home.
Lynne, sound carries emotion so powerfully in all your films. How did you approach the sound design for “Die My Love” with Paul Davies? He’s one of your longest-standing collaborators.
LR: I have worked with Paul in all my films—apart from one short, and I think that was because he was doing something else at the time. We talk about sound being almost like a camera; we focus on this sound, this detail, and we get inside this character, and it’s bringing something up that you don’t expect.
In the case of “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” it was a sprinkler sound, which actually means a lot in the film, but it’s the most innocuous, familiar sound, and then it becomes a sound of horror, later on.
I wrote all that [sound] into the script, and I think we have that kind of relationship, certainly on this film as well. We talked about when the sound goes off, when she’s Alice through the looking glass, and when the changes happen. When do we hear? When do we have silence, and when do we let loose something that we’ve really honed in on?
That process has been going on for years. I always think that sound works so much on your subconscious, in a way that’s often deeper than an image. That is something I’ve always been really interested in. In another life, I’d like to have been a mixer. [laughs]
Jennifer, I wanted to ask as well about the deeply moving scenes between Grace and Pam that you share with Sissy Spacek.
JL: [grins] I mean, I am a huge Sissy Spacek fan.
I love your shirt, by the way. [A/N: Lawrence is wearing a shirt commemorating Spacek’s seminal performance in “Carrie.”]
JL: Thank you. She’s an icon! I mean, I’ve known her since I was a teenager. We’ve just always been in each other’s lives, weirdly. I always remember her being so kind and maternal to me. And then I worked with her husband, [production designer] Jack Fisk, on a movie, [“Causeway,” the first film produced by Excellent Cadaver]. And so, when we started playing together… Sissy herself is so aware and sees everything. When she looks at you, it’s like she’s looking right through you. And she’s so maternal.
It really leapt off the page. I think what was really in the book is more of a normal, average relationship between a mother and a daughter-in-law. But Sissy was so loving and so aware that she ended up being the only one who really saw what was going on with Grace.
LR: I mean, she glows in conversation, Sissy does. She wanted to understand what was going on, to dig deeper. It was great. She’s a total icon. I didn’t know she was going to take [the role] at first, but she really developed that part. It became much more empathetic. It became much more—like Jennifer was just saying—like she sees what’s happening, or she understands what’s happening much more clearly than Jackson does. And so the film becomes about the two women, which I thought really added to it. It added another dimension to the original material.
I love that glorious, bitter, final sentiment there, in Grace’s toast: “May we live long and die out.”
LR: Yeah! That scene was really interesting to shoot, as well, because of the way the two women are acting. There is that toast, where Grace says, “Pam,” and then Sissy says, “Grace.” The two of them are really seeing each other, you know? And I remember sitting gripped. I loved that. I was getting goosebumps at that moment, because there was a real understanding implicit between these two characters.
Lynne, tell me about your collaboration with your longtime cinematographer, Seamus McGarvey, who shot much of this film on Ektachrome, shooting night scenes during the day and then manually darkening them. I’m curious about that process and how it interacted with your artistic inspirations on the film. You had an early interest in photography, and you’re also a trained painter—there are compositions in this film that, to me, palpably evoked the work of Andrew Wyeth.
LR: That’s really smart, actually—Andrew Wyeth, I mentioned in the script, so that’s fitting. I have known Seamus for years. He shot “Kevin,” and we shot that in CinemaScope, which was totally right for that film. There, we talked about the epic in the everyday—you don’t normally shoot a film in scope when it’s all in a house; it’s normally landscape, but that choice suited this Mexican standoff of sorts between Kevin and Eva, the main characters.
With this one, it felt more like a portrait, like the actual location of the house dictated the Academy frame. I hadn’t used that before and wasn’t going to use it. We were going to shoot CinemaScope, but when I walked in, I thought we needed to be shooting Academy so we could always see the full length of the doors, to see them coming in and out. I always wanted to see that patio door, and I wanted later to see these layers of the house. It’s a real prison of a house in a way—not that it’s not beautiful, but it feels like that for her. She’s stuck there, so that dictated that.
I was talking with Seamus also about “Morvern Callar,” which I shot some scenes of, [including a club scene,] on reversal film stock, but you can’t get that same film stock anymore. Seamus was like, “Why don’t we still shoot reversal? Why don’t we try it?” It’s about having it all feel heightened for her. Our minds were rattling; we were looking at these colors in a different way.
We did all these tests. Seamus is such a buddy, and I think he likes working with me because he can experiment, and we can try things out. We could have come off something a bit more conventional before, and it was like, suddenly, we can be trying all this stuff out again. I’ve known him for 19 years, since I was at film school.
But [Kodachrome reversal film stock] had this otherworldly, dreamlike quality, so we were finding the character through how we were shooting it as well. Seamus is so kind; it’s always such a real collaboration with us, and I think that makes it exciting. He’s really thinking about the story and about the characters. Some DPs come in really technical, but he is thinking about what’s going on as much as I am. It was a real pleasure. We were getting excited like little kids when we were doing camera tests or coming up with ideas while we were shooting.
Finally, I was hoping you could share a bit about Nick Nolte appearing in “Die My Love.” It’s always so wonderful to see him, but this is a very special, moving performance. How did he get involved?
LR: Well, I’d thought of him, and so I asked him one day if he would like to play this. He wanted to meet in person, so I went to Los Angeles, and I met him in Malibu with my daughter, actually. There was just something about him, you know? I mean, his face is mesmeric. And, going back to Seamus as well, in thinking about shooting Nick Nolte, the camera can’t take its eyes off him. It is this screen presence he has that’s really magical and wild.
It felt like, whenever we turned the camera on him, he didn’t need to do that much, and it was just mesmerizing. And it was beautiful to work with him. We were all quite taken aback by some of his scenes—the whole crew was—when Grace was with him in the woods and when she sees him later in the hospital… There’s nobody like Nick Nolte.
“Die My Love” is in theaters nationwide on Nov. 7.
from Roger Ebert https://ift.tt/kdGEpVz
.png)
