Nordling here.
Willem Dafoe is excellent in THE HUNTER, Daniel Nettheim's thriller about the hunt for the last Tasmanian Tiger and the man assigned to snuff it out. It's a quiet, sensitive movie, a character piece about a man who has probably seen and done too much in the world and has disconnected from people and from society. But when he meets a struggling mother and her children in the Tasmanian outback, it stirs something in him that he hadn't felt in many years. Add to that Sam Neill as a nefarious businessman and you get a quite effective movie that will be opening theatrically this April, and is available On Demand right now. Check it out; I think it's pretty great, and Willem Dafoe is one of our greatest actors.
I was able to sit down with Mr. Dafoe and the director of THE HUNTER, Daniel Nettheim, at South By Southwest last week and talk to them about their film. I also managed to get in a Lars Von Trier question to Dafoe - having just seen MELANCHOLIA I was pretty stunned by it, and wanted to get Willem's best Von Trier story. What he gave me is definitely a more childlike view of the man, but read for yourself:
Nordling: Thanks to both of you for agreeing to do [this interview] together. It makes talking about the film a lot easier.
Willem Dafoe: Sure.
Daniel Nettheim: Yeah, yeah sure.
Nordling: I hate to be reductive, but I loved THE HUNTER. It’s like an eco-noir. That’s how I describe it and I wanted to ask both of you…
WD: May I use that?
Nordling: You sure can. Absolutely, no problem. (Laughs) I wanted to ask you, it’s very much a movie about the passing of nature with the logging and your character and what your character does. Was that something you were looking at when you decided to make this film? Was it like “Well this is a movie about how the environment is kind of being co-opted” and how basically your character in the film is kind of an instrument, but it’s like the scene with the loggers when you are passing the loggers and they are all calling your character “greeny” and at the same time you’re going “Well, I’m pretty much doing exactly what you do.” How did this film project come across with your desks?
DN: Well it was a novel, to start off with, but I think what you just spoke about for me was thematically at the core of this story even though in the novel it’s a character journey and a meditation on the passing night shift more than anything. Thematically we chose to enhance that a lot. I think Tasmania is the perfect setting for this story, not only because of the demise of this actual creature that lived there, but because it’s still one of the global frontlines of the debate between progress and environmentalism with the battle to save the forests. It’s impossible to tell a story set in the landscape of Tasmania without referencing that ongoing debate. I thought it provided a very rich backdrop for this character who is essentially an outsider to kind of inform his experience in this land. So we augmented it in the script and in the filming and the more we researched it the harder it kind of became.
Nordling: What did you find in your character that was fascinating that made you think “Wow, I want this part.”
WD: I think… Well there were a couple of practical things, just the adventure of playing this role and doing the things that he does and shooting in Tasmania. That was attractive. I think above all it’s his emotional journey, which is sort of classic. I mean to really short hand it, it’s a man that goes from not feeling to feeling again. (Laughs) It’s a story about reclaiming or redemption or a reawakening.
Nordling: One of the interesting aspects of the film to me was that it’s very quiet and it very much felt like an eco-noir, because it’s a quiet film, but the way your character goes through… When he leaves people in the film, it’s like “Thank God.” It’s like “I’d rather be alone in nature, even though nature is dying.” How was it shooting in the wild for you?
WD: That was the world and we are on its turf, so it beats you up. It points the way. It’s everything. It informs everything we were doing. We were guests there. This film could not have been shot any place else, so it made everything practical and tangible in terms of the action that we had to do and then if we really considered and committed ourselves to doing those actions, the story would just work on you, things would occur to you. The world was so complete.
Nordling: It’s like the best special effect is always the location. How was it shooting there for you?
DN: It was a lot like the experience of the main character. I mean we were living kind of Martin’s journey in a way in that when we went out to the wilderness we were out in the wilderness. Whatever the weather chose to do to us that day, we had to respond to, and we had to find a way to kind of co-exist with that landscape rather than kind of beat it into shape and try to tame it to the needs of the script. We had to kind of obey it and that was daunting, but I think fortunately that landscape can look so spectacular under so many different conditions. We were fortunate in that aesthetically I would kind of… I wanted a noir kind of feeling. I liked the overcast days and the fog and we didn’t ever really want to shoot in full sunlight, particularly not in the middle of the day. So we had a shooting schedule that was designed to kind of bounce around, so that when the conditions were right for exteriors we could go and shoot exteriors and if it was sunny or too pleasant, then we could go indoors and shoot night interiors or something.
Nordling: Right.
DN: But yeah, out in the wilderness we really had to respond to what was happening and it was a good discipline.
Nordling: It’s interesting. I guess since you’re kind of in the mud now and have the effects of all of the logging… Did you actually see how basically the countryside has been changed by everything that’s been happening?
DN: It’s quite interesting, the logging industry. I mean there’s a lot of plantation forests that have been logged and that’s kind of a sustainable industry, but the frontline on the battle is those areas of old growth forests that there’s still a debate going on about which parts to protect and which parts to log and the boundaries are shifting. Really the eye on this for us was when we went to this greenie blockade and they took us on a tour of old growth rainforests and showed us where the loggers had come and showed us the devastation and that has quite a profound impact.
WD: You talked about the location. In the movie we used… the green is from the blockade and we used loggers. (Laughs)
Nordling: Right. Did you have any actual problems with anybody like that there?
WD: They were kind of… They wanted to present their side, so they were glad that their characters were represented.
DN: There’s only a couple of scenes where the loggers and the greenies had to appear in the scene together and one of them is sitting by the campfire around the house. We had a location base that was a few hundred meters down the hill and we were busing people up to the location and at one point one of the logger guys said to the assistant director, “We are not going to get in the bus at the same time as those guys,” as the greenies, like they wouldn’t go on the bus with them, yet at the end of that night I saw them sitting on either sides of the fire talking.
WD: Yeah, it’s like the trench wars and then Christmas comes and they have a toast together.
Nordling: Yeah, it’s kind of like the Warner Brother’s cartoon with the sheep dog and the…
WD: Yeah, exactly. Where they punch in the clock…
Nordling: Basically your character is an extinctualist. He’s going to wipe this animal off the face of the earth, that’s his job. How is that, as a character, to portray for you?
WD: You say it and I think “Is he?” I don’t disagree with you, but that’s not what I’m thinking about. I’m thinking about a man that is sort of at the end of his career of doing whatever he does, which we aren’t absolutely clear about, but we have the sense that he probably has not had a totally honorable life and lives by a certain kind of violence and he’s paid to do probably predatory things. (Laughs) So I’m focusing really on the tiger and focusing on the clues to the puzzle. I mean I know how the story is going to end, but it’s almost like I don’t, because we have to find out where we have the information that we don’t. I mean it’s scripted, but really how it rolls off and how we tell the things that happen, we’ve got to figure out when we get there, because that’s the big difference between on the paper and how it feels when you’re shooting. So there was a lot of… We always had to find the right tone. I mean that’s mostly Daniel’s job, because he’s over seeing it, but also for me in my approach. Yeah, it was like being on a great adventure and the end objective is the tiger and what that means is lots of things, but practically speaking it was the tiger.
Nordling: Yeah. It’s interesting the character kind of comes to… To him it’s just another job until towards the end of the film where it’s like “I’m really changing the planet by this simple action and it’s all on me.” It’s all on his character and what he does. I’m dying to ask you this question, what’s your craziest Lars Von Trier story from ANTICHRIST?
WD: Oh god. I love Lars. I want to work with him again. I’ve worked with him twice. I think he’s a great filmmaker, but lots of crazy stories. (Laughs) Where do I start? I’ll tell you a gentle one.
Nordling: Okay.
WD: After the first day working he called Charlotte [Gainsbourg] and I over and he took out this little piece of paper with little adhesive stickers on like you give children when they do good work in school and he asked for our scripts and he peeled them off and he gave each one of us like a little heart and a little star, because we had done well for the day.
[Everyone Laughs]
Nordling: I just saw MELANCHOLIA for the first time this week. I thought that was amazing, an amazing film. I think that’s all I have. Thank you guys. I really appreciate the time. I loved your movie. I thought it was really great. Oh, I did have one more question. It’s interesting; it’s going to be on Video On Demand before it goes into theaters. How is that as a filmmaker and as an actor? Do you feel like it’s more of an opportunity to expose the film to an audience that might not ordinarily see the film?
DN: I think it’s a really great distribution model. At Toronto we had a number of distributors who wanted to take on the film and these days independent films really struggle. We could have sold it to someone who would shot it in 25 cities theatrically and release it on DVD and that would be its life, but the idea of premium VOD, in other words presenting audiences across the country with an opportunity to see an upcoming theatrical release before it hits theaters I think is presented with a certain kind of cache and I think it’s something that people will and have actually responded to very positively, like I think that the first week VOD release has gone through the roof. So I think as a way of generating word of mouth publicity for the upcoming theatrical and presenting people with a choice of platforms on which to watch it, it makes sense and I think it’s kind of moving with the times and those people who want to seek it out in the theater will still seek it out in the theater, but those who might not otherwise go to see it will have the opportunity.
Nordling: I really though the film was great.
WD: Good.
Nordling: How has the response been for you?
WD: Great so far, yeah. I mean it’s just starting its life here, but you know friends and strangers seem to respond to it.
Nordling: This is a great festival to play it in, because you’ve got an audience of movie fanatics like myself, so I think it’s going to play really well.
DN: The screening yesterday was very rewarding. It was a great Q&A.
WD: Beautiful theater, that Paramount.
Nordling: Oh, I love the Paramount.
WD: It’s gorgeous.
Nordling: It’s a piece of art. I wish we had more theaters like that instead of being stuck in the mall, we need to have more theaters like that. Thank you all very much.
DN: Thank you.
Nordling: It was a wonderful movie and I really appreciate your time.
DN: Thanks very much.
THE HUNTER is available now on VOD, and opens in the States theatrically in limited release on April 6th.
