ON A MISSION WITH BRITISH CINEMA'S ONCE GREAT HOPE...
By Calum Waddell
I conducted this interview at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. It has never been seen before. oland Joffe was in town to promote You and I, a film which stars Mischa Barton and the girl-pop group t.A.T.u. The film was finally released a year ago and has been seen by practically no one. It is a shame that Joffe ended up directing a movie based upon the years-after-the-sell-by-date appeal of one-hit-wonder pseudo-lesbian chart moppets t.A.T.u (whose 'one hit' was, to be fair, actually really good) given that he was once hailed as the future of the British film industry. Acclaimed after his first two movies, 1984’s The Killing Fields and 1986’s The Mission, as the darling of our national cinema, the filmmaker nevertheless saw his career hit hard times. For instance, 1992’s follow-up drama - City of Joy, failed to set the box office on fire and met with a lukewarm critical reception, whilst 1993’s disastrous video game adaptation Super Mario Bros. is rightly forgotten about. 1995’s Demi Moore vehicle The Scarlet Letter was an attempt to return to artier material, but proved dead on arrival, whilst 2000’s black comedy Vital met with similar commercial silence. His entry into the 'torture porn' horror genre with 2007's occasionally stylish Captivity saw Joffe back in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. His film was slammed for its misogynistic advertising campaign and, even worse, the Elisha Cuthbert-starring slasher picture failed to illicit even the sleazy shocks that its marketing promised.
It is a curious story but, unlike most of the bored press hacks I came across ("Just doing this to meet t.A.T.u really") I was fascinated by the prospect of speaking to Joffe. For a start, he made one of the greatest, and most important, films of all time in The Killing Fields. Ask yourself how many filmmakers make even one great feature. Very few. But Joffe has. Moreover, anyone who has read my blog on Hamburger Hill will know that the Vietnam War is a personal interest of mine - and there is no discussing that torrid period in US foreign policy without speaking about Cambodia and its fall to the Khmer Rouge.
The Killing Fields remains the best [fictonal] feature to date about Pol Pot's attempt to create "year zero" and its star, the actual genocide survivor Haing Ngor, who wrote the essential book "Survival in the Killing Fields", won an Oscar for his role in Joffe's production. Unfortunately, Ngor - whose wife and unborn child lost their lives under the Khmer Rouge - would be shot on the streets of Los Angeles in 1996. A tragic end to a tragic life.
Naturally, I spoke to Joffe about Ngor - and I am happy to finally have these words available. For anyone who has not seen The Killing Fields: shame on you. It comes highly recommended, along with The Mission - evidence of an artist at the prime of his power and someone who, by rights, should have gone on to form a legacy of provocative and thought provoking productions...
What was it that attracted you to your new movie, You and I?
There are a couple of things that drew me to this film and I am unsure which was the most attractive. However, first of all there was the idea of making a film in modern day Moscow. If someone asked me what Moscow looked like before I actually went there then I could describe the Kremlin and a couple of other things, but it really lives in your head in the way that other cities do not. You see, life is so frenetic in modern Moscow, and so brutally different for different groups of people, that you are not quite the same person when you leave. So the more time you spend in modern Moscow the more you see a city in total change. I think that the Russians are trying to work out who they are right now and they are going through an incredible crisis over this and what part they have in the world. I believe that part of this is also related to their relationship to capitalism. Does capitalism mean that you only make money and that is the most important thing? You know, the more money you make the more powerful you are? Or does capitalism mean that you give everyone the chance to makes some money? Or does capitalism mean that you turn everyone into a consumer so that those who have the money hold the power and everyone else is stuck like flies to flypaper just being consumers? Perhaps that is a hell of a lot smarter than trying to hold fixed elections as a communist country. All of these things are being debated right now by people in Moscow and that was one part of the story which I really loved. But I when I was doing The Killing Fields it was, primarily, a story of friendship because you can only understand war if you understand friendship. As long as you understand that then you can understand the price of war – otherwise it is just “bang, bang, you’re dead.”
Yeah, I want to touch upon The Killing Fields. Can you talk about your memories of the late Haing Ngor?
It is a curious story but, unlike most of the bored press hacks I came across ("Just doing this to meet t.A.T.u really") I was fascinated by the prospect of speaking to Joffe. For a start, he made one of the greatest, and most important, films of all time in The Killing Fields. Ask yourself how many filmmakers make even one great feature. Very few. But Joffe has. Moreover, anyone who has read my blog on Hamburger Hill will know that the Vietnam War is a personal interest of mine - and there is no discussing that torrid period in US foreign policy without speaking about Cambodia and its fall to the Khmer Rouge.
The Killing Fields remains the best [fictonal] feature to date about Pol Pot's attempt to create "year zero" and its star, the actual genocide survivor Haing Ngor, who wrote the essential book "Survival in the Killing Fields", won an Oscar for his role in Joffe's production. Unfortunately, Ngor - whose wife and unborn child lost their lives under the Khmer Rouge - would be shot on the streets of Los Angeles in 1996. A tragic end to a tragic life.
Naturally, I spoke to Joffe about Ngor - and I am happy to finally have these words available. For anyone who has not seen The Killing Fields: shame on you. It comes highly recommended, along with The Mission - evidence of an artist at the prime of his power and someone who, by rights, should have gone on to form a legacy of provocative and thought provoking productions...
What was it that attracted you to your new movie, You and I?
There are a couple of things that drew me to this film and I am unsure which was the most attractive. However, first of all there was the idea of making a film in modern day Moscow. If someone asked me what Moscow looked like before I actually went there then I could describe the Kremlin and a couple of other things, but it really lives in your head in the way that other cities do not. You see, life is so frenetic in modern Moscow, and so brutally different for different groups of people, that you are not quite the same person when you leave. So the more time you spend in modern Moscow the more you see a city in total change. I think that the Russians are trying to work out who they are right now and they are going through an incredible crisis over this and what part they have in the world. I believe that part of this is also related to their relationship to capitalism. Does capitalism mean that you only make money and that is the most important thing? You know, the more money you make the more powerful you are? Or does capitalism mean that you give everyone the chance to makes some money? Or does capitalism mean that you turn everyone into a consumer so that those who have the money hold the power and everyone else is stuck like flies to flypaper just being consumers? Perhaps that is a hell of a lot smarter than trying to hold fixed elections as a communist country. All of these things are being debated right now by people in Moscow and that was one part of the story which I really loved. But I when I was doing The Killing Fields it was, primarily, a story of friendship because you can only understand war if you understand friendship. As long as you understand that then you can understand the price of war – otherwise it is just “bang, bang, you’re dead.”
Yeah, I want to touch upon The Killing Fields. Can you talk about your memories of the late Haing Ngor?
Haing was a very exceptional man because of the life that he had led. He never thought that he was a very nice person. He was a bit of a playboy when he was young and he felt dreadful about what happened to his own wife. I think that Haing could never expiate this terrible conundrum that life had given him but he never shrank from it.
He had never acted when you put him in The Killing Fields...
One of the reasons I wanted him to be in The Killing Fields was because he was telling me all about his own ordeal one day and I thought “I cannot put an actor in this film.” I turned to him and said, “Haing, why don’t you tell me that story again? But act it.” He said “Oh no, I can’t act.” So I told him to go and stand at the window and to tell me about when the Khmer Rouge came and he began to act. At a certain point he turned to me and he said “you have to leave now!” He began crying after that. I said to him, “Haing, I am sorry about this but I have to blackmail you – for the sake of your country you need to play this part because no one else can do it better.” He didn’t speak any English, really, mainly French – so I had to lie to Warner Bros. and then, during the filming, run around the floor underneath the camera and say all kinds of terrible director things to get his emotions going. But I loved him very much. He had tremendous grace and was very, very giving. When he died they found his Oscar in his room. All the gold had been wiped off it because he treasured it so much. And that was a big thing.
He had never acted when you put him in The Killing Fields...
One of the reasons I wanted him to be in The Killing Fields was because he was telling me all about his own ordeal one day and I thought “I cannot put an actor in this film.” I turned to him and said, “Haing, why don’t you tell me that story again? But act it.” He said “Oh no, I can’t act.” So I told him to go and stand at the window and to tell me about when the Khmer Rouge came and he began to act. At a certain point he turned to me and he said “you have to leave now!” He began crying after that. I said to him, “Haing, I am sorry about this but I have to blackmail you – for the sake of your country you need to play this part because no one else can do it better.” He didn’t speak any English, really, mainly French – so I had to lie to Warner Bros. and then, during the filming, run around the floor underneath the camera and say all kinds of terrible director things to get his emotions going. But I loved him very much. He had tremendous grace and was very, very giving. When he died they found his Oscar in his room. All the gold had been wiped off it because he treasured it so much. And that was a big thing.
At the time Cambodia was operating under Pol Pot, Noam Chomsky, perhaps surprisingly, expressed considerable denial about the genocide that was taking place under the regime. He would later blame the Khmer Rouge's rise to power on the Vietnam War and America's bombing of Cambodia and infiltration of her borders - something that I would largely agree with. That said, this in no way justifies slamming the press reports, of the time, which rightly indicated the Khmer Rouge was murdering hundreds of thousands of people. I am surprised that Chomsky has not been more vocal in apologising for his, let's say, soft-handed approach towards a form of government that was as cruel as the National Socialists... (For a solid report on this see: Chomsky and the Khmer Rouge)
Yes, I was offended by him. It comes back to something I feel about belief. Noam Chomsky reminded me of it actually. When I agreed to do The Killing Fields I got a visit from two members of the WRP (note: Worker’s Revolutionary Party) who told me I should not do the movie because I would be attacking a young socialist state that was only trying to find its feet. I said “Well yes, but can you see the shortcomings of this argument?” they told me they could not. I said “You want me to gloss over what happened in order to do what?” And they told me “to protect socialism.” I said, “I am sure socialism is strong enough to take the criticism.” I then said, “I don’t think I am betraying socialism at all, but if I am then I will live with it.” Chomsky had the same problem.
Right, I also fail to see why criticising the gross inhumanity of the Khmer Rouge - which owed little to the ideals of Marx and Engels anyway - is attacking any sort of left-wing order. Chomsky is a great mind, but he really should have known better...
Chomsky is a very, very bright man but you have to ask, “Why did he go blind in that area?” Well he went blind in the area that we all go blind in and that is why I have never tried to make a movie about a specific political point of view. Belief and personality is so interwoven that we are often deformed by them. They become us. So Noam Chomsky, who could be so observant about language, could not bring himself to see what had happened in Cambodia. He could only read it as propaganda. I don’t think he was bad – but his comments did make me think, “If Noam Chomsky is that smart and he can’t get out of that trap then why would you believe you could?” That is why I have not tried to make my career as a movie director attached to politics. Rather it has been as a movie director attached to people.
Right, I also fail to see why criticising the gross inhumanity of the Khmer Rouge - which owed little to the ideals of Marx and Engels anyway - is attacking any sort of left-wing order. Chomsky is a great mind, but he really should have known better...
Chomsky is a very, very bright man but you have to ask, “Why did he go blind in that area?” Well he went blind in the area that we all go blind in and that is why I have never tried to make a movie about a specific political point of view. Belief and personality is so interwoven that we are often deformed by them. They become us. So Noam Chomsky, who could be so observant about language, could not bring himself to see what had happened in Cambodia. He could only read it as propaganda. I don’t think he was bad – but his comments did make me think, “If Noam Chomsky is that smart and he can’t get out of that trap then why would you believe you could?” That is why I have not tried to make my career as a movie director attached to politics. Rather it has been as a movie director attached to people.
You mentioned there that you do not make movies with a specific point of view but, judging from what you said earlier about You and I, you seem to be a little taken aback by Russia’s open armed acceptance of free market capitalism. Is that a fair statement?
Well if you can take this from a very ignorant human being… If we accept that capitalism is just a system in the same way that our bodies are just a system and the movie industry is just a system… For me, if we lay aside any criticism of it and look at how the system operates – no system operates without checks and balances. The body checks that your liver doesn’t turn into your spleen for example… So capitalism, of itself, is not necessarily bad, but it is designed to make profits and we need to ask what the profits should be. You see, of itself it won’t stop – it is like cancer, it wants to keep growing, but when cancer grows it eventually kills the body. Capitalism is exactly the same – it will just keep growing.
I agree. I think we can see by the exhaustion of our natural resources, global warming and the life opportunities afforded to those in developing nations - illustrated by sweatshop labour and so forth - that unregulated market capitalism is of benefit to only a small minority of people who have little interest in the morality of how they are making their millions or billions.
I think that Milton Friedman’s idea of an unregulated market was totally banal and utterly, utterly immoral and disgraceful. Yet the Victorians, who we criticise, at least had the balls and the guts to know that was a mistake and Teddy Roosevelt, who was a Republican, at least understood that if you don’t put checks and balances on those train and coal barons the country would fall apart. But here we are 70 years later running around thinking that free market trading is the answer to everything and it can’t be, because if you allow capitalism to run wild it becomes a cancer in its own right. Human beings love to trade and to banter and capitalism is based on trading and banter. Human being also like power – we like it because it makes us feel safe but too much power is a nightmare. Russia is totally dedicated to power and committed to using capitalism for that means in a way that no one in the West has dared to do since the days of the old train and coal barons. It is a throwback to the way capitalism was and that is very scary… They think they are ahead of the curve and they are not.
I agree. I think we can see by the exhaustion of our natural resources, global warming and the life opportunities afforded to those in developing nations - illustrated by sweatshop labour and so forth - that unregulated market capitalism is of benefit to only a small minority of people who have little interest in the morality of how they are making their millions or billions.
I think that Milton Friedman’s idea of an unregulated market was totally banal and utterly, utterly immoral and disgraceful. Yet the Victorians, who we criticise, at least had the balls and the guts to know that was a mistake and Teddy Roosevelt, who was a Republican, at least understood that if you don’t put checks and balances on those train and coal barons the country would fall apart. But here we are 70 years later running around thinking that free market trading is the answer to everything and it can’t be, because if you allow capitalism to run wild it becomes a cancer in its own right. Human beings love to trade and to banter and capitalism is based on trading and banter. Human being also like power – we like it because it makes us feel safe but too much power is a nightmare. Russia is totally dedicated to power and committed to using capitalism for that means in a way that no one in the West has dared to do since the days of the old train and coal barons. It is a throwback to the way capitalism was and that is very scary… They think they are ahead of the curve and they are not.
According to the excellent book My Indecision Is Final: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Goldcrest Films you were told during the making of The Mission that if your movie failed to make a profit Goldcrest would go under. What kind of pressure did that put you under? (Note: The Mission failed to go into profit during its initial release and Goldcrest folded)
It was very strange in a way (laughs). I recall being told, in the middle of shooting, “we need to cut $5 million out of the budget and the movie still has to work,” and everyone at Goldcrest was very distressed. I said to them, “Right now Jeremy Irons and Robert DeNiro don’t like each other, I am working with a waterfall which does what it wants, not what I want, and I am responsible for group of Indians - who I have flown over 235 miles across Colombia - and who have a rat infestation in their village. And now I have to add Goldcrest to the list?” I thought to myself, “Well if it really comes down to it, I have to protect the Indians first, DeNiro and Jeremy second and Goldcrest third.” It had to be in that order. I just had to get on with making the movie and you never know if a film is going to work. It is an exercise in faith and trust.
Why didn’t DeNiro and Irons get along?
They came from very, very different acting areas. Bobby is very interior – he finds his way outside by going in and Jeremy finds his way inside by having been out. He wants to know what his costume is, what his clothes are, where he is going to do and what he has done. But Bobby doesn’t want to know anything. He wants to find his interior. So I had to be the bridge between them both. But that is what I am paid to do.
You shot the movie in Colombia, in the rain forest, what were the conditions like?
The conditions varied. We also shot it in the middle of an area used for coke trafficking, which led to some problems because we were in their way. I remember we had to leave the set one weekend for that reason. However, because I am not a sadist, and I didn’t want the crew to have a bad time we all stayed in hotels. In truth, when I was scouting the movie and I went down the river by boat and lived in an Indian village for two weeks, it was pretty fascinating to me but also tough in its own way. I tried to locate the set somewhere that we could reconstruct all of that, but also be near a hotel so that we could always go back and relax at night. If you really, really look at the end battle scene you can see, under camouflage netting, the main Transamerica highway with things going backwards and forwards on it. That was also the highway where the coke trafficking was going on.
How did you feel about the accusations of misogyny that greeted Captivity?
(Sighs) Whatever people say about you, you have to live with it but if it is not true then it should not worry you. Captivity is not a misogynistic film at all but I had a different end to it. At the end of my version of the movie you see a vigilante killing and it turns out that the character played by Elisha Cuthbert had actually done this before she was kidnapped. So in my version of the movie the message was “if you treat women with violence then they will become violent back.” Personally I was furious that they changed the end. I just could not come out and say anything at the time but I can now. So the misogyny in that film was not my fault. I don’t believe it is a misogynistic movie but, on the other hand, you cannot fault the press for coming to something with an attitude. You hope that some journalist will say it is not misogynistic – and some did – but if you adopt any kind of public persona then you have to take the knocks. I spent a lot of my life with people saying I was a moralist and I was too emotional so it was quite funny to be labelled as something else entirely.
The marketing for Captivity also came under scrutiny because it highlighted a series of very visceral advertisements with women being tortured…
Again, it all got sucked it into some kind of marketing system that I had no control over. I said to them “if you show this movie to women with my ending then they will say that it does raise some serious issues.” If a woman is raped is she not entitled to be angry? A lot of women have written that when they were raped, people were angry at them for being angry. They would say “I want to kill this man and castrate him” and they were told that they could not have those feelings. That argument kind of fell on deaf ears - although I made it to the press as much as I could and as often as I could… Eventually, however, I had to shut up because I didn’t feel like I should sabotage the movie. I didn’t realise that they had changed the end, which I thought would justify everything, but what can you do?
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