David McKenzie Full of deceit. His movies, not him.
Mackenzie may charm you with the scheming illegitimate couple played by Tilda Swanton and Ewan McGregor in the 2003 drama. young adam. “Give us this look here,” I remember him instructing Swinton on a barge on the Forth and Clyde Canal in Scotland.
A different kind of betrayal is playing out in his latest film Relaywhich had its world premiere on Sunday at TIFF.
The chicanery is there. There is no sex, but seduction.
The audience is enticed too; We are being tempted. You have been warned.
Look at the timeline
Played by two protagonists Rais Ahmed And Lily JamesAt the top of their game. And what lovely games they play.
Beige is the color of harmony. James is first seen wearing a suit in that tone because she doesn’t want to stand out. She is a scientist working in biotechnology and was part of a team that developed an insect-resistant wheat strain. However, food safety experts consider Wavin wheat unsafe because they have discovered side effects that can harm those who break it down. He is being flogged in African countries, and the feeling is that they don’t matter.
But the people of Africa matter to James’ Sarah, who is stepping up to blow the whistle on nefarious activities.
Sarah will need protection as some lead corporate goons Sam Worthington is out to stop its dumping on wheat bound for Africa.
Tom (Ahmad) is her man. He is a cautious man; Let’s go up a level and call it paranoid.
Anyone who interacts with the 1970s classic of paranoia Parallax view, conversion Or Three Days of the Condor Soon you will get a layer of soil. Tom uses a phone service to relay messages between his customers. The service also acts as a kind of safety buffer.
He leads Worthington and his flunkies in a hilarious cat-and-mouse dance played by Willa Fitzgerald and Aaron Roman Weiner, who is our Tom.
It’s Hitchcock mixed with, well, pure Mackenzie cinematic fraud.
The filmmaker saw Justin Piasecki’s pre-Covid script, and stuck with it. He spent three years “fiddling with it a lot,” he says.
“We pulled together to make it last year, and I was drawn to the whistleblower world and the slight politics of it without being political,” he tells us. “And the notion of people who go out on a limb to blow the whistle has a personal cost.”
The idea for the story, he says, was to find something that showed “sympathy” with the whistleblower “but in a kind of very exciting way.”
Once he was cast, McKenzie spent time working with them. I love how it draws on Ahmed’s past work, especially the actor’s use of sign language from his Oscar-nominated turn. metallic sound, where Ahmed played metal drums and suffered hearing loss. “I’m always developing material with my cast, and Reese is a fantastic actor to work with and is very creative and very engaging on screen,” says Mackenzie.
Ahmed’s character doesn’t say much for the first 25 minutes of the film ”so you have to inhabit his space and his combination of paranoia and vulnerability, which I think is part of the tension that gets you through. film
“He lives life on the edge and prefers a kind of lonely spy existence,” he explains.
Mackenzie says he was thrilled to work with James as well. “She has a quality where she’s becoming more feminine and interesting. And I think the scientist story that she has is a really interesting thing for her to play,” he says admiringly.
I ask what he means by saying James is more of a womanizer.
“I mean, she’s obviously played a lot of young women and romantic roles, but she seems to have kind of entered another phase now. And I think there is something really interesting; She is playing a bit more mature character,” he adds.
Yes, indeed. What does it mean when we see James’s Sarah in her fourth-floor apartment, by the window, wrapped in black silk lingerie, backlit?
Mackenzie laughs and says that Sarah is looking out at night and that “the goldfish is in the bowl and she knows it.”
She is being watched for more reasons than one.
There’s obviously more to the story than I’m giving away here, and I sincerely hope Sunday’s audience at TIFF cares about the plot!
“Yeah, don’t give anything away. Keep secrets,” urges Mackenzie.
He really likes the “cat-and-mouse-type style”. And, he says, “You have some very attractive bad guys and you’re rooting for one person, then you’re not sure if you’re rooting for them. … is fun.”
McKenzie and her stars spoke with former and current whistleblowers and former and current spies to “give Reese and Lily information about Tradecraft elements and the personal toll these things take on people.
“I always try to get some authenticity in the vibe,” he says. “So there were many important conversations with people who are often feeling alone and sad and remorseful. Tom, in the case of Reese’s character, is very sad. He is very isolated, has no friends and lives a hermit-like existence. And Lily’s Sarah, when we first see her, is feeling victimized, and I want her to meet people who can talk about that.”
In the world of corporate whistleblowers, and in the world of corporate security “and things like that,” McKenzie says, “a lot of things happen with whistleblowers who are intimidated in one way or another to stop what they’re doing. So we’re experiencing that kind of intimidation. is, which is definitely part of the tension of the film.”
And James is pitch-perfect as the whistleblower. That beige suit is perfect camouflage.
“Some people remain anonymous,” Mackenzie explains. “Successful whistleblowing often means financial rewards, but you’re completely shunned by your peers for doing so. It’s often the kind of culture where anyone who blows the whistle on wrongdoing or whatever really Seen as someone who has betrayed people, even if they are trying to do the right thing. It is a certain type of personality who is capable of doing it, who has a very strong sense of right and wrong to go along with it. Can’t get along. They have to be honest about it.” And, he notes, “it’s a very murky world.”
And some corporations are pretty scary. Mackenzie nods knowingly. “I think, generally speaking without being specific, there are large corporations that are apparently willing to do whatever is necessary to protect their interests. I think they are very capable of doing what they need to do,” he says, adding a menacing tone to his voice for effect.
“That’s the game we’re trying to play. … But hopefully it’s a fun, intense kind of thriller.”
I tell Mackenzie that I always love her ability to dip in and out of genres. I remember being in Cannes when it was the 2016 Contemporary Western Hell or high waterJeff Bridges, starring Chris Pine and Ben Foster, played the role of Palace. He knocked me for six.
He laughs and says, “The idea of doing the same thing – making movies is so hard, and the idea of doing, it feels like you’re on a treadmill doing the same thing because you’re so good at it, it feels depressing. . . . and I want to explore new things and discover new possibilities.
“Earlier, when we first met, I was more interested in arthouse cinema. And I still have some of those sensibilities, but I’ve tried to make films that I hope will reach and engage a larger audience. … I definitely don’t want to do the same thing twice,” he says.
Mackenzie has just finished shooting her latest film fuseIn and around London.
for fuseMackenzie reunites with Aaron Taylor-Johnson, they did Outlaw King with, and the third time with Worthington; They also worked together in a TV miniseries Under the banner of heaven. And they are joined by Theo James, Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Honor Swinton Byrne.
Taylor-Johnson plays a British Army bomb disposal officer called in to disarm a WWII bomb found at a site in west London. But is the bomb a plot to cover up the robbery?
Mackenzie shakes her head. “You’re getting too close,” he warns.
However, to help put my mind at ease, he allows Mbatha-Row to play the police superintendent.
This news doesn’t quite do the trick to calm my restless mind. Mackenzie plays with me.
I have, after all, seen his fiery cat and mouse thriller Relay.
And it is a masterpiece of misdirection.
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