SAVAGE GRACE

Written by Howard A. Rodman
Directed by Tom Kalin
Starring Julianne Moore, Stephen Dillane and Eddie Redmayne


Barbara Baekeland: One of the uses of money is that is allows us not to live with the consequences of our mistakes.

When I was growing up, my mother could be a little over involved in my life but she’s got nothing on Barbara Baekeland (Julianne Moore). SAVAGE GRACE tells Barbara’s story and that of her incalculable influence on the direction of her very tight family. Together, Barbara, Brooks (Stephen Dillane) and Tony (Barney Clark as a boy, Eddie Redmayne as an adult), exist in a tiny bubble where they can be seen by and perform for the rest of the world but ultimately exist solely for each other. Rich beyond their own comprehension, the Baekeland’s exude an air of arrogance and thrive on the act of acting. And even though, as the years pass on, the friends, acquaintances and passersby will have run far away, the Baekeland’s still have us.


The Baekeland’s come from money. Well, at least Brooks does. His father was the inventor of Bakelite, a popular plastic. Barbara, a former model and almost famous actress, married into the fortune and it suited her just fine to do nothing but be seen. With no real drama to occupy their time, the Baekeland’s must create their own and they become experts in the craft. And like the entirely selfish parents they are, they teach their young son, Tony, everything they know. First time feature filmmaker and brave soul, Tom Kalin, tells their revolting yet tragic story in a manner that neither glorifies nor condemns their demented ways. All the while though, he centers his attention on Tony so that we never forget who the real victim is. This makes it all the more deplorable when Tony abandons reason to embrace his family heritage.



SAVAGE GRACE is not for all. Make no mistake, when I say that the Baekeland’s ruin each other and bring about all of their own misfortune, I am not speaking lightly. This is a family that shares baths, beds and lovers. Kalin is mindful of his audience’s likely discomfort but also never afraid to show that audience the dirty details. Besides, when all the debauchery becomes too much to handle, one can always look to Moore and bask in her brilliance. Moore is flippant one moment and affected the next. Her performance is so delicately balanced between calculated control and callous chaos that one never knows which way she’ll turn and one is always shocked to find out. Both Dillane (who is practically unrecognizable) and Redmayne (who could so easily be related to Moore in reality with his pale, freckled skin) do more than simply hold their own. They complete the trio and it is a delight to watch them play off of each other, albeit a disturbing delight.


Kalin has not only crafted an engaging film but also a bizarre experience. If you can stomach this true story, then you will be treated to a frankness that is not common in American cinema. You will also get to spend time in dark places you may not be accustomed to. However, when you inevitably arrive safely on the other side, you will know the drastic differences in what it means to be fortunate.

FUGITIVE PIECES

An interview with writer/director
Jeremy Podeswa


When Jakob was a boy, the last thing his mother said to him as she hid him underneath a covered table was not to come out, no matter what. In the moments that followed, Jakob watched as his mother took a rifle to her head, his father then shot dead and his older sister was dragged out of their home by her hair. It’s no wonder Jakob would grow up to become a man who lives his life as if he were still cowering under that same table. The connection between past and present centers the vast story of Canadian director, Jeremy Podeswa’s FUGITIVE PIECES. Based on the prize-winning novel of the same name by Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces follows Jakob from his childhood through the rest of his life, from his escape from Nazi-controlled Poland to his exile in Greece alongside his surrogate father, Athos, and finally to Canada, where he will live out the rest of his tormented years. The film’s beauty can easily be found in the sweeping shots of the Greek Islands or the intrinsically linked performances of Jakob, young and old (young, Robbie Kay, old, Stephen Dillane) but its purest form of beauty comes from the manner in which it is told. Rather than allow the events to unfold chronologically, Fugitive Pieces tells Jakob’s story in precisely that, pieces. They are fragmented but still connected through the spirit of a man who not only had to endure atrocities but move past them in order to live instead of just survive.

Canadian filmmaker, Jeremy Podeswa, has found himself on the cusp once again. His third feature, FUGITIVE PIECES, opened last year’s Toronto International Film Festival and is finally finding a home in North American cinemas this spring after a lengthy festival run. This is not the first but rather the fourth time he has found himself showcasing his work at one of the world’s most prestigious film festivals. After pursuing his studies in film at Toronto’s Ryerson University and the American Film Institute in California, one of Podeswa’s earliest short film works was given a spot at the fest. His first two features, ECLIPSE and THE FIVE SENSES, followed the same path and brought him opportunities to work on numerous television series, ranging from SIX FEET UNDER and NIP/TUCK to QUEER AS FOLK and CARNIVALE. While these vastly different shows have given him the chance to shoot around the world, it is his love for Michaels’ novel that has brought him home to Canada for his first feature in eight years.

I caught the Genie award-winning director just hours before he would fly home to Toronto for a few days of rest – a concept that has become elusive in his new life. He was here in Montreal to support the latest stop on the FUGITIVE PIECES promotional tour, screening as part of the Festival de Nouveau Cinema. It was early; he hadn’t had a chance to have breakfast and I blew in there just on time, having just come from stuffing my face. Considering this, he was extremely pleasant, insightful and open about his success, the difference between television and film direction and the delicate process of translating a beloved novel into something he could call his own while not angering the entire literary community.


Joseph Belanger: FUGITIVE PIECES is obviously not your first taste of success but it seems to be making some major waves, which is just fantastic for you. Congratulations, by the way. How are you handling everything considering where it seems this all going?
Jeremy Podeswa: Thank you. I think when you’re inside of everything, it feels different than what it looks like on the outside. For me, I’ve been making films for a long time, directing television, doing other things. Obviously, this is a big project for me but it doesn’t feel like my life is changing. It feels more like a further outgrowth of what I’ve already been doing. We’ve had nice things happen, like opening the Toronto Festival and people responding well to the film but the work is the work. For me, the important thing was to make a faithful adaptation of Anne Michaels’ novel and people are responding very well to that. That’s the biggest achievement for me.

JB: At what point in time, when you were first reading Anne Michaels’ novel, did you think, “This would make a great film and I could make this a great film”?
JP: I read the book when it was first published, ten years ago. I was already a filmmaker at that point. However, I didn’t think that I was the kind of filmmaker who would ever get to make a movie like this. I was making very small, intimate movies and this was clearly a big, sprawling story. It didn’t occur to me for a second that I would be the person to make this movie but as I was reading it, I did think there was a beautiful movie potentially in it. It’s so poetic and beautiful and deep, I thought somebody is going to make a great movie of this someday.

JB: So how did it come together then?
JP: I had heard, very shortly after the book was published, around the same time that THE ENGLISH PATIENT got made, that there was interest from Hollywood in doing a very similar kind of movie and I thought that was going to happen; it would just go to Hollywood. It would be made as this big, gorgeous thing but it will have nothing to do with me. Then, five years later, after I had just got back from Cannes with my second feature, THE FIVE SENSES, I found out the movie rights had been sold to a Canadian company. I wondered what they planned on doing and I approached them at that point. As it turns out, they were actually looking for a director at that point and I thought I was ready to do it finally and if they want me to do it, I’m there.

JB: Obviously, they did want you and I’m glad they did. As you said, it’s a very ambitious project that stretches across continents and decades. Comparatively, with your television work, that is arguably more limited in terms of scope, how does it feel to get outside of that?
JP: I’ve actually done a lot of television which is not just two people in a room talking. I’ve actually done a lot of period stuff, from ROME to INTO THE WEST, CARNIVALE. For me, it’s not such a huge difference in terms of scale. Like ROME, one episode of that cost more than this movie so in terms of budget, it’s not that big of a stretch either. The difference is that I wrote FUGITIVE PIECES and it was something that sat with me for a very long time. It was up to me to create the entire aesthetic of the movie. When you work on a television show, the vocabulary of the show exists already. I tend to do shows that I have a strong affinity for the vocabulary but it’s not my vocabulary. With Fugitive Pieces, we were really creating it from the bottom up. It started with the novel but then from there, I wrote the screenplay and directed it and was involved in casting it and making all the creative choices, in terms of art department and so on. It was up to me to establish how this movie would be realized. It is very different but what TV did for me was give me the confidence to work with such a wide variety of material and in so many different places. It gives you a lot of flexibility and versatility, just comfort with the process. A lot of the fears that I had walking into FUGITIVE PIECES were dissipated or diminished from doing all these other things before.


JB: So you did have fears going into this?
JP: Well, fears I might have had. With all my past experience, I felt pretty prepared coming into this. When the movie was finished, I feared how the people who embraced the book would embrace the movie but I think when you’re making something like this, you have to have a certain blindness or imperviousness to these kinds of things and any kind of doubt really.

JB: So no catering to the future audiences but does catering to Anne Michaels come into play?
JP: Hugely. For me, it was very important because I was a huge fan of the book and a huge fan of her writing. It would have been unthinkable for me to make a movie that she wasn’t happy with or to move in a direction through the process where she wasn’t involved. I included her in the process a lot. At the very beginning of the process, she said, “I know a movie is a movie and a book is a book and I will be as involved or not involved as you want. That’s really up to you.” I chose to bring her into the process because I felt she had a huge amount to contribute and she did. She was sort of like the guiding light. I asked her to look at drafts of the script, look at casting tapes. She came to the set many times. She was very much a part of the movie family. I know when she saw Rade [Serbedjiza] and Robby [Kay], Athos and Jakob, together for the first time, she almost fainted. She actually pulled me aside and said, “I can’t … I’m just having a moment.”

JB: One of the major themes in FUGITIVE PIECES is how the past affects the present and subsequently the future. To get this across, it tells its story entirely out of sequence, following Jakob back and forth between manhood and boyhood. When you have to have such a strong connection between two actors playing the same character at different points in his life, how does this affect casting?
JP: I think you have to have an intuitive sense in your casting that there’s a spiritual connection between your two actors, that there is an essential aspect to them that they both have that will make you believe that this boy will become that man and within that man is this boy. It’s really instinct in casting and I had a very strong instinct in both of them. Spiritually, essence-wise, they both just lined up in certain ways. I also think they both have this intelligence, that there is something going on behind their eyes. They don’t have to say anything or do anything but there are all these wheels turning.


JB: I’d like to finish by getting your thoughts on one of the film’s other major themes, which is the process of healing and letting love in. Do you think the film suggests that we heal ourselves or that we are healed by others?
JP: A lot of it has to do with timing. Jakob essentially has two love interests in his life and I think Jakob was just a little more ready to let someone into his life at the point he meets the second woman. Still, there is an essential difference between the two women. His first wife is someone who absolutely has the best intentions and feels that Jakob should be able to start a new life and move on with her. He is absolutely not ready at that point but you can see how she would imagine that’s possible and want that to be true – not just for her but for him too. He’s tortured and she doesn’t want to see the person she loves tortured. Who would? His second wife has no expectations of him changing, which gives him the comfort to actually change because he doesn’t feel any pressure or that he isn’t understood or that his past isn’t being appreciated. Still, he’s done a lot of work on himself by the time he actually meets her.

JB: Love comes into your life when you’re ready for it.
JP: Exactly.

FUGITIVE PIECES opens in select cities Friday, May 2, and Jeremy Podeswa will next be directing an episode of the Steven Spielberg/Tom Hanks-produced mini-series, The Pacific.

BLACK SHEEP @ THE FESTIVAL NOUVEAU CINEMA

Every fall in Montreal, a seemingly small festival sneaks in with the colder weather. I had never paid it much mind in the past. It always appeared as too experimental for my taste. This year though, I was asked to cover the festival and interview directors so I had to put my entirely unfounded apprehension aside and deal with my fear of the experimental. If only I had done so sooner. As it turns out, there is very little that is experimental about the FESTIVAL NOUVEAU CINEMA. The festival is dedicated to showcasing new and original works from the independent field of cinema. New films by Denys Arcand, Brian De Palma and Gregg Araki were screening. Films that were already working the festival circuit, like PERSEPOLIS and LARS AND THE REAL GIRL, were screening. And then there were the three films I caught that I am now presenting to you – FUGITIVE PIECES, DEFICIT and I’M NOT THERE. One is by an experienced director whose works are only getting bigger all the time; one is by an actor-turned-first-time-director who should perhaps stick to what he’s already good at; and the last is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.


Jeremy Podeswa. The name meant nothing to me when I was asked to schedule an interview with him to discuss his new film, FUGITIVE PIECES. The night before the screening of the film, I sat down to watch a season two episode of SIX FEET UNDER, entitled “The Invisible Woman.” The opening credits were rolling and there it was, “Directed by Jeremy Podeswa.” I paused for a moment to grasp the coincidental timing of it all as this was just the next episode in line on my trek to rewatch the series. By the time the episode, in which a woman dies alone in her home and no one discovers her for three weeks, was finished, I could not wait for the screening. Podeswa not only allows his characters to be flawed, he encourages it. At the same time, he does not lay blame on the characters for their troubles but rather forgives them and gives them the space to understand themselves. FUGITIVE PIECES is sweeping and romantic but still hard and honest. When Jakob is a young boy (Robbie Kay) in Poland, he is hidden under a table by his mother before Nazis break into the home, kill both his parents and leave with his older sister. He survives the ordeal and the war but years later (now played by Stephen Dillane), as he struggles with relationships and himself in Canada, it is clear, he is still hiding under that same table and praying for it all to end. The film defines itself by its nuanced performances, tight storytelling and unorthodox editing, choosing to tell both Jakob’s story as a boy and as an adult simultaneously instead of one after the other. The result is an intimate portrayal of his life with an understanding of how he became who he did and desperate longing for him to realize whom he could be.


Gael Garcia Bernal is a talented actor. He brings depth and innocent curiosity to his performances. The roles he takes on are often socially relevant and insightful contemplations on human interaction. After so many years in the business, making the move to directing would seem like a natural progression for someone of his pedigree. Somehow, this is simply not the case. His first feature, DEFICIT, is aimless. Any point it thinks it might be trying to make is entirely undermined by lack of driving action in the plot and the exhausted clichés that are used as character definition. Bernal stars in his own movie as Cristobel, a spoiled, young college student who has come to his Mexico home for the weekend to party it up with some friends. He gets to the house. His sister is already there with friends. His friends show up. They party by the pool. They drink and do drugs. The boys try to get with the girls. Someone almost overdoses. He cries about how he’s lonely and can’t get into the college of his choice. People go home. The movie ends. The young party goers all seem to be having a grand time but why would I want to watch this? Quite frankly, I’d rather be at such a party than watch other people have it. Throughout the day, Cristobel makes looks and comments at the house staff so it would appear as though he is trying to point out the disdain between classes. It is so plain a statement, so obvious in its execution and so underdeveloped that it hurts the film more than it helps. Why bother trying to make a point when you’re not quite sure what point it is you’re trying to make?


And then there was that Dylan movie everyone’s talking about. This is the one where six different people play different incarnations of the American icon from his illustrious life. There is no sequence to the story; there are no boundaries in the casting. Todd Haynes’ I’M NOT THERE is simply the most accessible experimental film I have seen and the most original film of this year so far. Throughout his life, Bob Dylan has filled many roles. He has been a folk-singer, a sellout, a husband, an outlaw, a hero and, at one point, he was someone he was not. Much like FUGITIVE PIECES, Dylan’s story is told in a fragmented fashion to paint the complete picture of this one complex man. Each fraction of his life is a story unto itself but intrinsically linked to the whole and each features a different actor playing the Dylan part. Albeit fine performances are delivered by Christian Bale, Heath Ledger and even Richard Gere, it is Cate Blanchette’s performance that is most memorable and most moving. She plays Dylan at a very low point in his life. His fans worldwide have turned on him, accusing him of being a sellout and going against everything he ever stood for. He has also traded sleep for drugs, making it near impossible to stop shaking his leg. In this time of confusion, all he is trying to get across is that he never believed he could change the world with a song despite everyone wanting him to do just that. Blanchette plays him as righteous, put upon and fragile and she is a marvel in this man’s shoes. I’M NOT THERE implies that Dylan is at the same time none of these people and still all of them at once. Haynes’ direction of the brave effort is genuine in intention, not the least bit pretentious and creatively alive – just like the man whose portrait it paints so beautifully.

As the festival has now wrapped, I can look back and honestly say that covering it – from morning press screenings to free passes to interviewing directors to mocha javas in between – has made me feel more like a legitimate film critic than I ever have before. Funny how being a part of something designed to distance itself from the mainstream managed to make me feel so included.