c. 2005 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) Other directors get more ink, seem hipper, and more regularly dominate the gossip pages, the awards shows and the movie blogs.
But the look and feel of contemporary cinema might owe more to Ridley Scott than to any other filmmaker.
In the ’70s, Scott became one of the first directors to cross over from the world of advertising to feature film production, and he quickly made two of the most influential films of the era: “Alien” and “Blade Runner.” Straining to move away from a science-fiction rut, he made a few contemporary thrillers before creating “Thelma & Louise.” After another long transition, he looked backward in history for “Gladiator” and into the more recent past for “Black Hawk Down.”
In each of those cases, the storyline and particularly Scott’s patented visual style wound up bleeding out to influence dozens of other filmmakers. Indeed, the so-called MTV style of filmmaking _ moving cameras, quick cuts, packed frames _ can be seen as a distillation of Scott’s style.
You can always tell Scott’s work after just a couple of frames: dense production design, elaborate costuming, filtered lenses that accentuate the effect of this or that color, and motion, always motion _ fire or smoke or billowing curtains or rain or snow or sea spray.
But there’s a common theme, too, despite the wide-ranging focus of his work. The typical Scott hero is a man or woman of strident morality and bravery who stands apart from the institutional mores of his or her time, often because he or she has been plopped down in an alien culture. And unlike that of many other big-budget directors, his work doesn’t always end happily.
Scott’s emphasis on outsiders is so frequent that you wonder if it isn’t somewhat autobiographical. The 68-year-old from England’s hardscrabble northeast broke into feature films at nearly 40 years of age and has hardly played the predictable game of Hollywood cheek-kissing since. Or have you forgotten the look of plain displeasure on his face when he lost out on a best-directing Oscar for “Gladiator”?
His latest film is “Kingdom of Heaven,” which opens Friday (May 6). A typically ambitious and handsome vision of the Crusades of the 12th century, it stars Orlando Bloom as a French blacksmith who learns one shocking day of his noble heritage and is impressed into securing Jerusalem from the Muslims. It’s got some people a bit edgy because of the obvious parallels with contemporary global events, but film geeks should just be happy that they get to see more of the sort of battles that made “Gladiator” such a kick.
Scott recently spoke about the film from Paris.
Q: One of the delightful things about your work is the richness of each frame. Something’s always moving. Is it hard to keep that intensity?
A: Nope. It gets really fast, actually. Even when I’m choosing a location, I always get very involved with the designer of the set, knowing that I want something to move, so it’s all predetermined. It really takes very little time. I’ve learned to work very fast now.
By the time I became a director, I was 38. I’d come a long way through a process of advertising and commercials _ many, many commercials in every possible form, shape, location and requirement. That’s one of the great film schools, because you’re always hitting the clock. And what film schools don’t teach you is the clock. The clock being money: money, money, money. You have to get it. You have to hit it hard in the morning.
So I always hit the ground running; that’s my ethic. And everybody knows that. Everybody who’s in the unit knows they’re in for a marathon. If you don’t enjoy marathons, don’t join, because it’s gonna be fast. But by doing that over a long period, you cover a lot of ground. And I discovered that good actors like to move quickly, and I like to move quickly. I love to move.
Q: When you do a picture of the scale of “Kingdom of Heaven,” you have to find a lot of actors who can take on huge parts plausibly. Is that a difficult process?
A: They’re there. It’s a matter of digging ’em out. Particularly this kind of movie; you don’t want the movie to swallow ’em up. The term `theatricality’ is something I try to avoid, and yet I want characters who are larger than life. I always thought Orson Welles was great at that. Welles could push the envelope and know just where to stop.
Particularly in a period drama, you want characters who are larger than life just to fill out those incredible costumes. But you also want to feel comfortable with them taking you through a journey to the Middle Ages. It’s kind of tricky.
Q: You’re partly responsible with “Gladiator” for the modern revival of the epic set in the early Christian era, and with this film it’s as if you’ve decided to return to the genre to show other people how it’s done.
A: Period films are tricky, and people misconstrue it and think they can get away with theatricality because it goes hand-in-hand with history. I don’t agree. History was as alive then as we stand today, and I think people forget that. They think of it as non-reality, and I always think of history as absolutely real. That’s the thing you must remember: that these people once lived.
Q: It’s almost inevitable that people who see a film about a Western power invading the Middle East and encountering Islam will think of contemporary politics. Do you welcome that sort of approach?
A: I think it’s there if you want it, but we didn’t set out to do it that way. We started before 9/11. (Screenwriter) Bill Monahan and I were already mumbling about doing the Crusades. I’d been offered the Crusades before _ maybe about 10 years ago, when Arnold (Schwarzenegger) had one. It was a bit of a romp, more like “Conan.” It wasn’t for me. And prior to that, I developed another script called “Knight,” maybe 18 years ago. So it’s always been in the system.
And the more I thought about it, the more I thought that I didn’t want to make a film about a knightly romp, an action adventure. I figured that you had to address the period of what Bill called `wars of the Cross.’ He said there was this period of peace and tolerance between the second and third crusade between these two incredible characters, the revered and famous Muslim leader Saladin and the leper king of Jerusalem (Baldwin IV). And I thought, `My God, that’s two incredibly cool characters’ _ without thinking of today. And our hero takes a journey down that time warp and is taken into Jerusalem where he meets politics and religion and the Muslims, who I thought we would treat in a balanced and fair fashion, which Bill did. One of the most compelling people in the film is Saladin.
(OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)
Q: Early in the film you’ve got this crackling little battle that’s filled with detail. But later you choose to pass over a major battle and use a dissolve to speed through another. Can you talk about the contrast between those choices?
A: That first one to me is a medieval punch-up where people die, and the shocking thing is that a couple of people you’re just getting used to go down. And I thought that was a brilliant bit of the structure. That’s the way it goes; that’s life. So that punch-up was always treated as a fracas, a gunfight. Like a Western. And the more detailed you get, the better it’s gonna be. But the danger about battles is they can get boring. And the siege of Jerusalem was such a massive undertaking. Funnily enough, it only lasted 10 days, which was quick for that time. I think both sides realized that they would destroy this holy place if they went on doing this.
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(Shawn Levy is a staff writer for The Oregonian of Portland, Ore. He can be contacted at shawnlevy(at)news.oregonian.com.)
