A director sinking in quicksand and actors in tears: is this the perfect example the old adage ‘suffering for your art? The first science fiction film since Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey to be shot amongst Scotland’s unforgiving Outer Hebrides brings considerable pain for the cast and crew, but a stunning vista and a neuron-tickling premise for audiences.
Focusing on a tennis coach, his protégé and a guerrilla fighter forced to put down his weapon in favour of invisible tennis during an unspecified war, The Open is an impressive, yet surreal, tale about belief, hope and faith in the darkest and most desperate of circumstances.
Director Marc Lahore tells HeyUGuys’s Greg Wetherall, “To me, in the end, it is not so much about tennis as it is about cinema. It is about the necessity to believe in something, to believe in a story enough to go on”.
We caught up with the filmmaker and promising new talent James Northcote (The Imitation Game, Nymphomaniac) as they talked us through the tough travails encountered in the shoot, James’s experiences working with Lars Von Trier and Marc’s influence from Jim Jarmusch and Neil Young.
Marc, which came first: the idea or the location?
ML: The location. The thing is, I always knew that I was going to make the film with almost no money, so I had to keep my crew reduced to the bare minimum. Very early on, I wanted to write a script with only 2 or 3 actors max. Once you get this idea, you think, ‘what do I do with these people?’ I’ve been in love with Scotland since I was a teenager. Very early on, I thought I was going to shoot a romantic movie in the 19th century sense with these huge wild landscapes. Then, I thought, ‘what the hell can I talk about?’
I love sports, and there is a lot of strategy with tennis… building the way you win a match. It is like a chess game. Everything is in your head, basically. I thought it was interesting to have these guys who live for tennis and pretend that it is still possible in a post-war world. I found it both graphic and absurd enough to serve my purpose.
To me, in the end, it is not so much about tennis as it is about cinema. It is about the necessity to believe in something, to believe in a story enough to go on. I also liked the idea that tennis is a rectangle on the grass; cinema is no more than rectangle on the wall.
What were the biggest challenges for you in making this film? It has been claimed that you’re the fifth film crew to ever shoot in the Outer Hebrides, is that right?
ML: That’s what I heard too! It was really hard on the team, and especially the actors. Had I known it was going to be that difficult, I probably wouldn’t have gone there in the first place. I would have chosen another setting; less massive, less spectacular, but more comfortable, because the actors suffered a lot. We all did, but the actors especially. There came a point where it was really painful just to watch them suffer all day long. I would say that the climate too was a bitch. It rains every two hours, and you get half an hour of proper heavy rain, where you have to wait for it to pass.
JN: The weather was exhausting. There was such a varied landscape: dunes, mountains and bogs, lakes in the hills. The amazing thing about the Outer Hebrides is that you can get all of that in a few square miles. It’s crazy that you have that diversity and that it’s so accessible. Nowhere else could film somewhere that was like a village, and then a desert and then a forest… but the weather was so changeable.
ML: Because we were walking under the mountains, we had to stay standing up waiting for the rain to stop to do the next take, which is really uncomfortable. Apart from that, we had a lot of wind, we had a sandstorm, we had quicksand twice. I found myself covered in quicksand up to here (points to shoulders). The first time, I actually thought I was going to die. It was awful. The two times it happened, I was alone. The others were preparing the shot and I was going somewhere else to see the following shots. You just see yourself trapped in the sand. You just have to grab onto something and crawl out of the ground…
JN: It was the toughest shoot that I’ve ever been on, bar none. Marc and Cyril (Cadars – producer) brought together a group of people that were willing to go beyond what they thought they were capable of doing in order to make the film. I remember thinking whilst we were making it that literally everybody here is going beyond what they’re physically capable of. And that’s amazing. You’re just in awe of everybody that you’re working with and it spurs you on to continue trying to do the same.
ML: We also had midges. Stupid, fucking midges! A million of them all the time! And you actually see them on the screen. You’re shooting a scene and you suddenly see hundreds of things going across your objective!
James, how much were you aware of when you read the script? Did you know what you were letting yourself in for?
JN: I think I did. It was a challenge that I wanted. I remember reading the script thinking that it would be really hard, but it was also really exciting. Also, the fact that that script was unlike anything I’d ever read in my entire life. I’m a really big fan of films that, at their heart, don’t really seem to explain themselves. Whether that’s Dogtooth or Stalker or… I’ve always been really drawn to films that have a bit of mystery at their heart. When this came into my inbox, I thought that this is crazy, but also really exciting at the same time.
Do you like art to provide you with more questions than answers?
JN: I don’t know. I always think that the stuff that excites me the most is the stuff that keeps you coming back again and again, which keep giving you more. You’ll still have more questions that you’ll want to have answered and you might answer them in a second or third reading, but even those will throw up new questions. Anything that manages that is pretty cool.
Marc, which films did you look to for inspiration?
ML: The first one is the Road with Viggo Mortensen by John Hillcoat, but that’s far too obvious. The other one was Dead Man by Jim Jarmusch. I really love that one. There’s a very strange atmosphere and there is this sense of going through the wilderness. When we talked about the music that I wanted to have composed for this movie, I forced the composer to listen over and over again to Neil Young’s score for Dead Man. That’s probably the best source of inspiration for me.
How long was the shoot?
ML: Three weeks. It was three 6-day weeks. I let them rest on Sundays – very generous of me! And they could sleep in a little bit on Saturdays, as I had to go location shooting for the days to come, so I usually took Cyril with me. It was 18 days of shooting. The 3 last of which were really, really tough. Hell on earth.
The experience wasn’t bad enough to send you back to the world of short film?
ML: No, never! I’m used to suffering on my shooting. It’s not a problem for me, as I’ve been doing my thing but, usually, I don’t have people around me suffering that much too. That was the hard part for me. I can be quite an ass on my set, but never to this point, because I could see people crying and I don’t want that, not even for cinema.
Why were they crying?
ML: Because of the cold. They were never complaining. They were real warriors, actually, but by the end of the third week it was so cold and they were dressed as tennis players in little t shirts, shorts and trainers. That meant that by 9am, by the time they had done their first take, they were essentially walking in water, because their trainers were not water proof.
They spent their whole day drenched, in the wind, under the rain. Especially two days before we stopped shooting, they had to go to the make-up girl and get her to hide their tears. That’s how bad it was. There was even a day where the make-up girl made a big fire, so that the actors could warm up between takes. They were met with covers and the fire in between takes.
Does tennis in the film represent more than just tennis?
JN: Yeah, I think it represents faith. I think, for me, it represented having a faith in something that allows you to overcome your present circumstances. It definitely is a coping mechanism. In some ways, maybe it’s a form of art in itself, because it’s a performance of tennis. It’s not tennis itself. Particularly for Ralph (James’s character), who has never pretended to play tennis in his life, becoming adept at that and accepting that as a skill that he can learn and that there is something normal about that, I think it’s about creating a new world in order to escape and survive the real world.
It’s what the coach, Andre, is doing. They’re definitely trying to survive something terrible and Ralph recognises that there is maybe something more valuable in that fantasy than whatever he was doing before; that there’s something transcendent about it.
James, you worked with Lars Von Trier on Nymphomaniac. He has a reputation for being slightly ‘off the wall’ from time to time. How was that experience?
JN: Because I am such a huge fan of his, I was just excited to work with him, so any rumours or preconceptions that I might have had didn’t really matter, because I was so interested to find out for myself what it would be like to work with him. He’s mischievous, very funny, very nervous, but also very kind, gentle and impulsive. He’s a bundle of things.
I think everyone on Nyphomaniac felt hugely supported and hugely cared for, and that was my experience as well for the short time that I was there. I was there in Germany working with a German crew at the very the end of the shoot in Essen near Dusseldorf, and they’d had 18 weeks of shooting. Usually, by that point, people just want to get out, but I remember that every member of the crew that I talked to just didn’t want it to end. They loved working together. It’s partly down to him and the vibe that he brings with him of trying to make something that matters.
Marc has that same kind of leadership. He has a very, very clear vision. He really believes in it and he wants to bring you along with it. From the first time that I spoke to him on Skype about the script, I felt that whatever we were about to embark on, we had a safe pair of hands, because he believes so much in the story, and to believe in a story that’s as obtuse and complicated as the Open, you have to really know what it’s about for you and I could tell that he did. I could tell that it meant something to him and that there was a lot behind it and that it was something special.
The Open is produced by Cyril Cadars for Village 42 & Marc Lahore, co-produced by MLC, Rubykub, Ring Ring Ring, Bruit Blanc and StudIO*.KgB
