BeatRoute Magazine BC Edition February 2019

FILM
DESTROYER
DIRECTOR KARYN KUSAMA EXAMINES WHAT IT TAKES TO BREAK A SOUL
HOGAN SHORT
THIS MONTH IN FILM
YOUR MONTH MEASURED IN BPMS
BRENDAN LEE
Velvet Buzzsaw
February 1
Jake Gyllenhaal and Dan Gilroy, who directed Nightcrawler, team
up again for their next mind twister, this time about an eccentric
art critic and a set of paintings with terrifying, unholy powers.
Behind thick-framed black glasses, Gyllenhaal looks to be at his
weird, weird, best.
According to director Karyn Kusama, Nicole Kidman took to method acting to portray her storied character, Detective Erin Bell.
Karyn Kusama, like any woman working in
film (or any industry, really), has worked
incredibly hard to get where she is now.
She had early success in film and television
and has now, along with her screenwriter
husband, found herself able to create
the stories she wants to tell. Her new
film Destroyer is the second film in an
unconnected L.A. trilogy, the first being the
under-appreciated psychological horror
The Invitation. Destroyer is a character
study of a woman whose soul has broken.
Nicole Kidman plays Detective Erin Bell,
who must connect with various people
from a past undercover case to find any
semblance of peace. Kusama talks about
making this gritty character study with one
of Hollywood’s biggest stars and how they
found each other to begin with.
“Nicole actually approached me for
the part,” says Kusama. “She had read the
script before we started casting and was
interested in talking creatively. She loved
the character. Unlike a lot of actors who
won’t have a conversation until they know
the offer, she is willing to hear a director’s
vision of the film and then be a part
advocating for it. The openness in which
she approached this allowed me to be
purely creative.” Kusama’s films have always
had a deep supporting cast, recruiting
top talent to different roles no matter
how small or large. Destroyer is carried by
Kidman’s powerhouse performance but is
held up in every moment by an amazing
ensemble that includes Sebastian Stan (I,
Tonya), Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black),
Bradley Whitford (Get Out), and many
more. To piece a cast like this together
while writing each character to have depth
and a real sense of uniqueness is rare, and
Kusama has handled that task beautifully.
“I got a great piece of advice a long time
ago from director John Sayles (Lone Star),
who I was an assistant for for three years,”
she says. “He read Girl Fight [Kusama’s first
film to earn wide critical acclaim] and he
told me, ‘As you get closer to finding your
story, put yourself through an exercise of
looking through the eyes of every person
as if they were the main character.’ It gives
a vividness and specificity to everyone
onscreen. My hope is that it means I get
to work with really special actors who can
really fill those roles. Casting is the single
most crucial part of the process.”
Kidman’s performance in this film is
doubly impressive when considering she is
essentially playing two different characters.
She plays a young undercover Erin Bell,
in love and excited about the work. She
also plays an aged, broken down Erin Bell,
seemingly incapable of feeling happiness
on any level. On set, there was a creative
and budgetary decision to shoot Kidman’s
later years first. “As we were prepping, we
recognized that it would be really nice
to get a sense of what the present-day
Erin Bell was like, what informed her and
emotionally drove her. Nicole would then
be able to hook into younger Erin Bell,
because by the time we finished all her
material she was pretty rung out. To be able
to play the younger version who is more
optimistic, it came at the right time to
jump into that work.”
Jumping into the work was something
Kidman did completely, to Kusama’s
surprise: “She stayed in character. She
approached the role as a method actor
more than I anticipated. On set when I
chatted with Nicole about an adjustment
or a performance, I wasn’t speaking with
Nicole. It was Erin Bell, which was a little
more daunting. Initially I thought she was
really grumpy, but no, she’s just Erin. Erin
lives in that broken, dissatisfied place, so it
was interesting to have the a-ha moments
on set. In many respects I was witnessing a
channeling of the character through Nicole
until we finished.”
One of the most important characters
in Destroyer is actually the city of Los
Angeles itself. Typically, in gritty, street level
detective films like Taxi Driver and Serpico,
we see New York City. L.A. seems to be
used for sprawling sunset car chases and
palm trees. Kusama and her locations team
have created this dirty, small world in L.A.
that we haven’t seen very often on film.
“It was really important we keep this in
L.A.,” she says. “Destroyer was written to be
an odyssey in a dense and complicated city.
Few cities for that bill the same way as L.A.
because you have to drive everywhere, so
there’s a sense of a quest, like you have to
chariot across the city. We live in and love
this city. We wanted to uncover corners of
the city and the original inspirations came
from New York filmmakers. That sense of
struggle with despair and the larger world is
the same in any city.”
Destroyer is a film that burns into you.
It forces you to live in this despair with
Erin Bell, but also keeps you asking what
happened to this person. When answers
are revealed, you are forced to ask yourself
about what is right and wrong in life and in
love. This is a complex film with complex
characters in a year that also included so
many beautifully layered female directed
films like Can You Ever Forgive Me (Marielle
Heller) and You Were Never Really Here
(Lynne Ramsay). The Oscar nominations
were announced the day of this interview
and Kusama, as a powerful female voice in
this industry, touched on what it means to
see another year without a single female
nominated for Best Director.
“I’m a sober person about the march of
progress,” she says. “I’m old enough now
to understand the march is really slow
and sometimes zig-zags. It’s disappointing
because there was so much strong work
from so many women this year. All of
the editors, sound mixers, visual effects
artists, writers, and producers who aren’t
even getting a cursory nod, that feels
beyond insulting and has to change. I don’t
know how to change it, but when I see
nominations like this I feel disheartened.”
Hopefully powerful films like Destroyer
can raise voices like Kusama’s and create
the change for equality.
Piercing
February 1
Written by Ryu Murakami and based on his novel of the same
name, Piercing depicts a night in the life of a man who only finds
release in the brutal killing of prostitutes. It’s gruesome, ethereal,
and a sick kind of fun – if you’re into that kind of thing.
The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot
February 8
I’m generally not one to judge a book by its cover, but damn.
Calvin Bar has lived most of his adult life knowing he has Adolf
Hitler’s blood on his hands. Now, years later, his next target is an
even bigger, scruffier legend.
Lords of Chaos
February 8
They painted their faces black and white, they played an
aggressive, teeth-shattering form of rock ‘n’ roll the kids were
calling “black metal,” and to top things off, they actually burned
churches. Lords of Chaos tells the true story of Mayhem, the
Norwegian band of misfits who defined a genre and caused a
whole lot of it.
Hotel by the River
Feb 15
The latest art-house feature by South Korean auteur Hong
Sang-soo is shot in bleached black and white and follows a poet
nearing the end of his days. The man invites his two estranged
sons to stay in a lone hotel at the edge of a river, where two
women also happen to be staying for their own reasons. And as
fate has a tendency to do, their five paths intertwine.
Velvet Buzzsaw
February 2019 31