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Here comes Hell or High Water
Interview with director David Mackenzie and costar Gil Birmingham
Ben Foster and Chris Pine star in David Mackenzie’s Texas tale of the New West — which is mostly the same as the Old West.
Movie
Hell or High Water ****
The stars align in the Western sky. <em>Hell or High Water</em> is the sort of film that tempts the critic — well, this one, anyway — to start writing the sort of copy that might end up as a promo-poster pullquote. “Timeless and yet supremely timely,” “A movie with tremendous action that, wonderfully, doesn’t turn into an action movie,” “Hooks you hard and reels you in, but not before it pulls your sympathy in every conceivable direction.” That sort of thing. Chris Pine and Ben Foster star as Toby and Tanner, luckless but savvy brothers just setting out on a controlled spree of bank robberies. Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham star as Marcus and Alberto, the aging Texas Rangers out to stop them. The outlaws believe their cause is just, or something close to it: they were dealt a bad hand at the outset, and that was before the house started rigging the game. The Rangers, on the other hand, have the luxury of simply enforcing the law. (Then again, that means they have to chase gun-toting outlaws.) And the rotten world keeps on spinning. Director David Mackenzie tells a sad story about desperate characters that is somehow as thrilling as it is heartbreaking.
The stars align in the Western sky. Hell or High Water is the sort of film that tempts the critic — well, tempts me, anyway — to start writing the sort of copy that might end up as a promo-poster pullquote. “Timeless and yet supremely timely”; “A movie with tremendous action that, wonderfully, doesn’t turn into an action movie”; “Hooks you hard and reels you in, but not before it pulls your sympathy in every conceivable direction.” That sort of thing.
Chris Pine and Ben Foster star as Toby and Tanner, luckless but savvy brothers just setting out on a controlled spree of bank robberies. Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham star as Marcus and Alberto, the aging Texas Rangers out to stop them. The outlaws believe their cause is just, or something close to it: they were dealt a bad hand at the outset, and that was before the house started rigging the game. The Rangers, on the other hand, have the luxury of simply enforcing the law. (Then again, that means they have to chase gun-toting outlaws.)
And the rotten world keeps on spinning. Director David Mackenzie tells a sad story about desperate characters that is somehow as thrilling as it is heartbreaking.
Matthew Lickona: The slow pan that opens the film is probably my favorite opening shot of the year: the way it introduces both the action of the film and the world in which that action takes place.
Dave Mackenzie: I’m not always allowed to, but I try to shoot my films sequentially, and with this one, I was able to shoot the outlaw scenes [with Ben Foster and Chris Pine] almost sequentially. So that was our opening shot. Conventionally, that means the team is a bit ropy, but I’m delighted that it worked.
ML: Do you pause on the church in that shot?
DM: We pass by a church, and you get one, two, three crosses as you’re going past.
ML: I was struck by that because it felt like religion was withered in that world. You might think these Texas Good Old Boys would be all, “Guns, God, and Rock ’n’ Roll,” but it doesn’t seem like religion is much of a guiding force or source of consolation.
DM: Apart from one quite significant scene — and I think that’s possibly enough — it does feel like a godforsaken world in some way. Religion was part of the tapestry of Americana that we were trying to create in the film, but it doesn’t go into it [too much]. There is also that scene in the motel room with Marcus and Alberto where they’re watching that televangelist...
Gil Birmingham: It’s actually quite heavy. Alberto is Catholic...
DM: ...and Marcus is slightly more pantheistic. He distrusts what he regards as the bogus nature of televangelism, and in a weird way, he almost seems to want to be more Native American than Alberto. You sense it in their banter, and in the way he pulls the Native blanket around himself.
ML: And Alberto seems like the only guy with any real measure of peace. Toby and Tanner don’t have any, and Alberto tells Marcus, “You’re not going to be able to function if you don’t have someone to outsmart.” Alberto can weather the slings and arrows from Marcus, and also the great tragedy of his history. Talk about developing that character for yourself.
GB: Albert does endure, but he’s endured throughout his life. He’s half Comanche and half Mexican, and they’ve dealt with these things for years. I thought it was important that he have a spiritual core. That’s how he was able to survive. And I used to have this question about why he would serve as law enforcement. Native Americans, per capita, there are more Native Americans who sign up for the military and serve their country. My question used to be, “Why would you join forces with the invading force that came and took your land? But for us, it’s still our land. And we will protect our land, whatever the governing forces are.
ML: As opposed to Toby and Tanner, whose response to the loss of land is violent counterattack. Does family have anything to do with it? Toby and Tanner come from so much brokenness and violence, whereas Alberto...
GB: Yeah, he’s got a family to provide for. My father was a military policeman for 30 years; it really was a situation of survival. You’re working within the arena that’s present, and asking, “How do I survive?” So that was the choice he made, and I carry that over as well, because I’ve been watching it all my life.
ML: Talk about the film’s conception of/relation to the past. On the one hand, you have the Comanche, once Lords of the Plains and now, as he says, “Lords of nothing.” On the other, you have the old guy in the diner, who sounds mighty wistful when he says, “The days of robbing banks and living to spend the money are long gone.” There’s a kind of admiration for the days when you could build your own world out west.
DM: One of the big themes of the film is the erosion of the Old West and the value of the Old West — whether that be a mythological West or a real West. If you look at contemporary cowboy magazines, a lot of them are referring to representations of the West in movies. So it’s a sort of cycle: films inflecting the world that they previously reflected. It’s very much a contemporary film, a film about many of the open wounds in American society now, which I am privileged to look into as an outsider. But it does have resonances: my particular fondness is for 1970s American movies. That slightly revisionist, slightly freewheeling, very humanistic version of the West. I hope we’re channeling a little bit of that. It’s not a nostalgic film, but there is nostalgia within the characters.
GB: And for such heavy subject matter, it’s done without really taking a side, and it’s done with great humor.
ML: Speaking of humor, at one point I started to think that the constant parade of debt relief billboards was a little bit on the nose. But after a while, it almost became funny — they were everywhere. And after that, it started to feel like a representation of what defines these people’s world.
DM: We did put those billboards in there, but they were reflections of things we were seeing. You travel around eastern New Mexico and west Texas, and you do see those things. And it is a landscape film. Westerns are essentially landscape movies; you have all these heroes who are trying to save the land, protect the land.
ML: Jeff Bridges seems to me like an actor who responds tremendously to direction and costars when it comes to pitching his performance. Could you talk about working with him in that regard?
GB: Jeff and I connected right from the start. As is often the case, we had very little time to create a chemistry for characters who had been together for 10 or 15 years. Our connecting point was music; we both play, and we did a lot of playing on set. It opened a window for us to creatively exchange energies that were easy to transpose over to the acting relationship.
ML: What were you playing?
GB: A lot of Jeff’s songs. It was perfect, because I had to improvise over his stuff — lead playing, fills. I’m more of a blues player, and I wasn’t very familiar with his music. So it was a great launching place for me to learn about him. Music is another language...you get to know each other very well.
DM: I found Jeff to be very creative. There were a lot of fantastic moments that kind of came out of the ether. I can’t talk too much about my favorite because it’s got spoiler problems, but he does something very strong, and then suddenly, he leans back and starts laughing. And it’s a point where you really don’t imagine that he should be laughing. Totally unscripted, totally undirected, but it was an amazing moment. I’m always looking for those kinds of things in a film. You’re trying to serve the material, but you’re also trying to get something that you’re just not expecting, and it’s great when it happens.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Here comes Hell or High Water
Interview with director David Mackenzie and costar Gil Birmingham
Here comes Hell or High Water
Interview with director David Mackenzie and costar Gil Birmingham
Ben Foster and Chris Pine star in David Mackenzie’s Texas tale of the New West — which is mostly the same as the Old West.
Movie
Hell or High Water ****
The stars align in the Western sky. <em>Hell or High Water</em> is the sort of film that tempts the critic — well, this one, anyway — to start writing the sort of copy that might end up as a promo-poster pullquote. “Timeless and yet supremely timely,” “A movie with tremendous action that, wonderfully, doesn’t turn into an action movie,” “Hooks you hard and reels you in, but not before it pulls your sympathy in every conceivable direction.” That sort of thing. Chris Pine and Ben Foster star as Toby and Tanner, luckless but savvy brothers just setting out on a controlled spree of bank robberies. Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham star as Marcus and Alberto, the aging Texas Rangers out to stop them. The outlaws believe their cause is just, or something close to it: they were dealt a bad hand at the outset, and that was before the house started rigging the game. The Rangers, on the other hand, have the luxury of simply enforcing the law. (Then again, that means they have to chase gun-toting outlaws.) And the rotten world keeps on spinning. Director David Mackenzie tells a sad story about desperate characters that is somehow as thrilling as it is heartbreaking.
The stars align in the Western sky. Hell or High Water is the sort of film that tempts the critic — well, tempts me, anyway — to start writing the sort of copy that might end up as a promo-poster pullquote. “Timeless and yet supremely timely”; “A movie with tremendous action that, wonderfully, doesn’t turn into an action movie”; “Hooks you hard and reels you in, but not before it pulls your sympathy in every conceivable direction.” That sort of thing.
Chris Pine and Ben Foster star as Toby and Tanner, luckless but savvy brothers just setting out on a controlled spree of bank robberies. Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham star as Marcus and Alberto, the aging Texas Rangers out to stop them. The outlaws believe their cause is just, or something close to it: they were dealt a bad hand at the outset, and that was before the house started rigging the game. The Rangers, on the other hand, have the luxury of simply enforcing the law. (Then again, that means they have to chase gun-toting outlaws.)
And the rotten world keeps on spinning. Director David Mackenzie tells a sad story about desperate characters that is somehow as thrilling as it is heartbreaking.
Matthew Lickona: The slow pan that opens the film is probably my favorite opening shot of the year: the way it introduces both the action of the film and the world in which that action takes place.
Dave Mackenzie: I’m not always allowed to, but I try to shoot my films sequentially, and with this one, I was able to shoot the outlaw scenes [with Ben Foster and Chris Pine] almost sequentially. So that was our opening shot. Conventionally, that means the team is a bit ropy, but I’m delighted that it worked.
ML: Do you pause on the church in that shot?
DM: We pass by a church, and you get one, two, three crosses as you’re going past.
ML: I was struck by that because it felt like religion was withered in that world. You might think these Texas Good Old Boys would be all, “Guns, God, and Rock ’n’ Roll,” but it doesn’t seem like religion is much of a guiding force or source of consolation.
DM: Apart from one quite significant scene — and I think that’s possibly enough — it does feel like a godforsaken world in some way. Religion was part of the tapestry of Americana that we were trying to create in the film, but it doesn’t go into it [too much]. There is also that scene in the motel room with Marcus and Alberto where they’re watching that televangelist...
Gil Birmingham: It’s actually quite heavy. Alberto is Catholic...
DM: ...and Marcus is slightly more pantheistic. He distrusts what he regards as the bogus nature of televangelism, and in a weird way, he almost seems to want to be more Native American than Alberto. You sense it in their banter, and in the way he pulls the Native blanket around himself.
ML: And Alberto seems like the only guy with any real measure of peace. Toby and Tanner don’t have any, and Alberto tells Marcus, “You’re not going to be able to function if you don’t have someone to outsmart.” Alberto can weather the slings and arrows from Marcus, and also the great tragedy of his history. Talk about developing that character for yourself.
GB: Albert does endure, but he’s endured throughout his life. He’s half Comanche and half Mexican, and they’ve dealt with these things for years. I thought it was important that he have a spiritual core. That’s how he was able to survive. And I used to have this question about why he would serve as law enforcement. Native Americans, per capita, there are more Native Americans who sign up for the military and serve their country. My question used to be, “Why would you join forces with the invading force that came and took your land? But for us, it’s still our land. And we will protect our land, whatever the governing forces are.
ML: As opposed to Toby and Tanner, whose response to the loss of land is violent counterattack. Does family have anything to do with it? Toby and Tanner come from so much brokenness and violence, whereas Alberto...
GB: Yeah, he’s got a family to provide for. My father was a military policeman for 30 years; it really was a situation of survival. You’re working within the arena that’s present, and asking, “How do I survive?” So that was the choice he made, and I carry that over as well, because I’ve been watching it all my life.
ML: Talk about the film’s conception of/relation to the past. On the one hand, you have the Comanche, once Lords of the Plains and now, as he says, “Lords of nothing.” On the other, you have the old guy in the diner, who sounds mighty wistful when he says, “The days of robbing banks and living to spend the money are long gone.” There’s a kind of admiration for the days when you could build your own world out west.
DM: One of the big themes of the film is the erosion of the Old West and the value of the Old West — whether that be a mythological West or a real West. If you look at contemporary cowboy magazines, a lot of them are referring to representations of the West in movies. So it’s a sort of cycle: films inflecting the world that they previously reflected. It’s very much a contemporary film, a film about many of the open wounds in American society now, which I am privileged to look into as an outsider. But it does have resonances: my particular fondness is for 1970s American movies. That slightly revisionist, slightly freewheeling, very humanistic version of the West. I hope we’re channeling a little bit of that. It’s not a nostalgic film, but there is nostalgia within the characters.
GB: And for such heavy subject matter, it’s done without really taking a side, and it’s done with great humor.
ML: Speaking of humor, at one point I started to think that the constant parade of debt relief billboards was a little bit on the nose. But after a while, it almost became funny — they were everywhere. And after that, it started to feel like a representation of what defines these people’s world.
DM: We did put those billboards in there, but they were reflections of things we were seeing. You travel around eastern New Mexico and west Texas, and you do see those things. And it is a landscape film. Westerns are essentially landscape movies; you have all these heroes who are trying to save the land, protect the land.
ML: Jeff Bridges seems to me like an actor who responds tremendously to direction and costars when it comes to pitching his performance. Could you talk about working with him in that regard?
GB: Jeff and I connected right from the start. As is often the case, we had very little time to create a chemistry for characters who had been together for 10 or 15 years. Our connecting point was music; we both play, and we did a lot of playing on set. It opened a window for us to creatively exchange energies that were easy to transpose over to the acting relationship.
ML: What were you playing?
GB: A lot of Jeff’s songs. It was perfect, because I had to improvise over his stuff — lead playing, fills. I’m more of a blues player, and I wasn’t very familiar with his music. So it was a great launching place for me to learn about him. Music is another language...you get to know each other very well.
DM: I found Jeff to be very creative. There were a lot of fantastic moments that kind of came out of the ether. I can’t talk too much about my favorite because it’s got spoiler problems, but he does something very strong, and then suddenly, he leans back and starts laughing. And it’s a point where you really don’t imagine that he should be laughing. Totally unscripted, totally undirected, but it was an amazing moment. I’m always looking for those kinds of things in a film. You’re trying to serve the material, but you’re also trying to get something that you’re just not expecting, and it’s great when it happens.
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