Black Sheep interviews Paddy Considine

WHAT MAKES A MONSTER
An interview with TYRANNOSAUR writer/director, Paddy Considine.

When Paddy Considine decided to write and direct his first film, TYRANNOSAUR, he had no intention of making one of the most bleak films in history. And, depending on how you read it, he may very well have not, but the surface of the film itself might make it difficult for some to see the hope buried beneath the heartache.

“Some of it, I’m still uncomfortable with,” Considine begins to explain when we meet at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2011. “I wanted to make a film about redemption, about how souls are pushed to the limit. I just hope there is something in there that people can identify with.”

TYRANNOSAUR is the unlikely love story between Joseph (Peter Mullan) and Hannah (Olivia Colman). Joseph is a lower class brute, who has just realized that his violent nature is holding him back from any sense of peace. Hannah, a middle class shop owner, has violence in her life as well, in the form of her husband’s (Eddie Marsan) fist. Neither can understand it nor explain it but they each come to know a newfound calm inside after they meet.

“To me they’re heroic because they’re just bearing their soul to you. I couldn’t help but care for them.” Considine says of his own creations. “There were times on the set where I had to take myself to the corner because I was quite upset. I didn’t realize how much I loved them.” Considine, a stoic man in person, is clearly enamored with the process itself and seemingly surprised still by just how much so.

Considine in action

North American audiences will likely best know the 37-year-old Considine for his acting parts in films like THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM or the Oscar-nominated, IN AMERICA. While directing is something he knew he wanted to do, it is not something he ever thought he would just pick up naturally. In fact, it wasn’t until he was on set with Mullan and Colman that he knew he had made the right choice. “They confirmed a couple of things to me. One, that my intuition about casting them was right and two, that I actually could direct.” Considine confides. “It wasn’t just a sort of a notion I had, ‘I fancy directing a movie now.’ No, I had this burning desire and they just grasped the tone of the film.”

That tone, as troubling as it is at times, still came from Considine’s mind, so I cannot help but wonder what inspired this story to be the first he would tell. “It’s just a build up of everything, my life growing up, the people I was around,” Considine admits freely and then quickly denounces any notion of autobiography. “To be honest with you, I suppose a lot of it is me just trying to make sense of a lot of things and a lot of people.”

Colman and Mullan in Tyrannosaur

If you can stomach the pain in TYRANNOSAUR, then you can see the light hiding underneath that pain. It is clear to me that Paddy Considine sees that light quite brightly. “These people, after these wars, are still soul mates. They’re like soldiers who have shared an experience. Their understanding of each other is far beyond attraction; it’s not about that. It’s a higher love that they share.”

This would be the opposite of bleak.

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SUBMARINE

Written and Directed by Richard Ayoade

Starring Craig Roberts, Sally Hawkins and Paddy Considine

Oliver Tate: I live in a large house with my parents. It has breathtaking scenery. I’m not sure I believe in scenery.

The adolescent mind can sure be a dramatic one and that intensity is played up to hilarious heights in Richard Ayoade’s narrative feature film debut, SUBMARINE. The mind that we are given unadulterated access to belongs to one Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts), a 15-year old only boy obsessed with but two things - a girl in his class (naturally) and preventing the dissolution of his parents’ marriage. It his belief that these fascinations and the way he deals with them would make a great film and despite this blatant narcissism, he is actually spot on about that.

Oliver is an unassuming chap. When he speaks, he can barely form a proper sentence without tripping over nearly every word. He watches the people around him while hiding behind corners, all the while fearful that if he doesn’t intervene, they won’t get it right. That said, he rarely speaks up because he does not yet know his own voice, or more specifically, he has not yet learned how to make that voice heard by others. In his own head however, his world is the center of all worlds, typical of most teenagers and sadly, fairly typical of most adults I know as well. And while his problems are hardly unique, it is the way in which Oliver tells his own story that gives them all the importance required to make them seem monumental. 20-year-old, Roberts, is brilliant as Oliver, making him the most memorable angsty  adolescent on film since Jason Schwartzman’s Max Fischer in Wes Anderson’s RUSHMORE.

The actual man behind Oliver’s movie in his mind is Ayoade and the choices he makes in SUBMARINE are inspired and incredibly clever. By constantly drawing attention to the filmmaking process - calling out his shots before they happen, pointing out conventional approaches to storytelling and then carrying out those exact same approaches - Ayoade demonstrates a fine understanding of film language and great ability to make memorable moments. Once you dive in to SUBMARINE, you will not want to surface again.

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