Main Page
Interviews Menu
Alphabetical Menu
Chronological Menu
Focus Features releases The Eagle nationwide on February 11th, 2011. NYC MOVIE GURU: How did you find the right balance between entertaining the audience and provoking them emotionally and intellectually? KM: I’m a believer that you can make a movie that’s fun and hopefully popular, but also makes you think a bit and leaves you with something at the end. So that’s what I hope that this film does. It’s a Roman epic in some ways, but done in a very realistic manner I hope. It has battles and fights, but it also has a dramatic element which is the relationship between two men. What’s going on there is that you’ve got someone from a dominant culture, the Roman culture, who feels that everything in his own world and own culture is superior and correct. He makes no effort to understand or empathize with this person who’s his slave. So the process of the movie is about how these two people go through this kind of hierarchal, classist relationship of master and servant and then become friends in the end. The whole movie really deals with whether or not they can trust each other. NYC MOVIE GURU: How did your prior experiences as a filmmaker enhance this particular one? KM: I come from a documentary filmmaking background, so when I make a feature film, I always start with the simple thought, “What was the place really like? What did people look like? What did they wear?” and actually do the research. So when I did The Last King of Scotland, I went to Uganda to film it and went to the real buildings to film what it was like in 1970’s Uganda. In The Eagle, I obviously couldn’t do that, but I could take the whole cast and crew to Scotland and put them through all the hardships of the weather which was to make them feel what it must’ve been like before we had GORE-TEX. We’re all used to seeing sort of sword-and-sandal kind of movies which, these days, is all CGI and armies of 200,000 meeting each other on a plain with Eagles soaring and clouds bursting. We all are fed up with that because we know it’s not real and we know you could do anything you like like that. It can be more engaging and visceral without CGI because all of those people were there—they are in that water and all beating the shit out of one each other. So, it’s getting back to the fundamentals of movie-making. That was the idea. NYC MOVIE GURU: Did you consider to shoot the film in 3D? How do you feel about the current phase of 3D films? KM: I never thought of doing this film in 3D because I think that 3D goes against the realist grain that I was going for. I wanted the interiors in the opening scenes to be dark and gloomy which is what they would have been because Romans only had two or three windows way up high and there’s not light coming in from down below. That comes from Mediterranean architecture where it was very hot, so they had high ceilings and windows up high, so the feelings inside those rooms were very gloomy, so I wanted to capture that. I’m not sure that 3D would really enhance that. Personally, I don’t know many people who actually enjoy seeing a 3D movie. I think it’s a gimmick, but I think that it’s a gimmick that will become more and more accepted and become less gimmicky as time goes on. It’s probably now the way that big movies will be made, but it never crossed my mind to make this one 3D. NYC MOVIE GURU: What do you think are the basic elements that turn an action adventure into a classic and what are some examples of those classics? KM: This film, I suppose, is a bit like a cowboy movie. That’s what I said to the actors. It’s a cowboy movie except you’re not in Monument Valley; you’re in 2nd century Scotland. We’re just on horses and the landscape and dealing with different stages of a quest. The kinds of movies that I looked up when I was making this other than the obvious one like Spartacus which, of all the Roman movies, I think it’s the best because it has a sense of realism in it and Stanley Kubrick’s close-ups of all the peasant’s faces which are stunning. My influences were cowboy movies, things like Ulzana’s Raid which is a great, brutal 70’s western with Burt Lancaster. John Ford’s The Searchers was another film that influenced me. I also love The Last of the Mohicans which I think is Michael Mann’s finest film for some reason. It was a very different film than this one, but it has a feeling of place and time which I really admire and try to emulate. NYC MOVIE GURU: Did you have to scale down the violence/gore to get a PG-13 rating? KM: The audience for this movie was always intended to be a kind of broad audience, but I read the book that this was based on when I was 12, and there’s an obvious appeal to young teens in this kind of story. I wanted them to be able to see it, but I also wanted to make something that grown-ups could appreciate that had artistic qualities and that had an excitement that an adult audience could expect. When I went and shot it, Focus Features, the company who paid for it, were very generous for allowing for me to do what I like. So, I did it a little more violent than what you see at the moment. When the film was finished, in Europe it was given an equivalent of a PG-13, but, in America, that same cut was given an R-rating. So, I was faced with a real dilemma. I cut out only 10 or 12 seconds of the bloody bits. It’s not something if you had any choice. I think that the rating system is crazier in America because it has all to do with the letter of the law. So you can suggest anything you’d like, but if you see a bit of blood flying through the air---they came back to me and said, “This is a historical film. If you made it an action film, then you’ll get your rating.” And I’m like, “I’m sure that’s the wrong way around. If it’s a historical film then surely that’s good.” So I had to cut a little bit out, but it was my own decision to do so because I want it to be seen by a wide audience which is what it was made for. Main Page Interviews Menu Alphabetical Menu Chronological Menu ______________________________________________________ |
The NYC Movie Guru
themovieguru101@yahoo.com
Privacy Policy