Prolific British film director Michael Winterbottom is no stranger to taboos. In 9 Songshe drew criticism for bringing real sex to the big screen. Now he's done the same with violence. It's not too much, he tells DONALD CLARKE, it's how you shouldfeel if you see a man beating a woman to a pulp
IF IT'S Friday, it must be time for another Michael Winterbottom film. Mind you, Winterbottom has, by his own absurdly prolific standards, been taking it easy recently. On several occasions during the last decade, the Englishman has managed to deliver two films in one year, but it's been a staggering 14 months since Genova, his last picture, opened to modest acclaim in Irish cinemas. Winterbottom, now 49, didn't make his first theatrical feature until 1995. In the interim, however, he's delivered some 16. He's directed loose, naturalistic pieces such as Wonderlandand I Want You. He helmed a science fiction piece entitled Code 46. He put the Factory Records story on screen in 24 Hour Party People. And there's plenty more where that came from.
It’s nice that he keeps busy. There is, however, a danger that cinemagoers will come to take Winterbottom’s films for granted. Ho hum! Another one of those.
Then again, there is no chance that The Killer Inside Mewill be so dismissed. An adaptation of a key novel by Jim Thompson, the Camus of dark, dark pulp, Winterbottom's picture has already caused typhoons of controversy to spin about the world's film jamborees. Early this year, at the Sundance Festival, the director was lambasted for including scenes depicting appalling violence against women. Early on, Lou Ford, the film's psychotic protagonist, played with blank detachment by Casey Affleck, takes some time to beat his girlfriend's face into meaty pulp.
The camera lingers on Joyce’s bloodied features – it’s Jessica Alba, of all people – with a concentration that many regard as creepily pornographic.
Winterbottom, a talkative, if somewhat cool interviewee, claims that the controversy took him by surprise.
“That certainly wasn’t what I was thinking about it when I was making it,” he says. “We never thought the controversy would be an attraction. It sprang simply from a desire to translate the book very literally. We tried to get the emotional impact across.”
There is, of course, an ancient argument here. Which is the more reprehensible: to risk downplaying the horror of violence by coyly looking away or to risk accusations of prurience by dwelling closely upon the blood and viscera? The quandary has been chewed over in debates surrounding the releases of such key pictures as A Clockwork Orange, Irreversibleand Funny Games.
"It seemed to me very important that those moments be properly shocking," Winterbottom says. "It was significant that they be very brutal. We had to give people time to think: why is he doing this? Why doesn't he stop? The second layer is in the editing. I have heard people say it's too much. But that's what you shouldfeel when watching a man punch a woman to death – particularly a woman that he loves. It should elicit that response."
Winterbottom certainly has a point. Most viewers will, after the eighth or ninth blow to Alba’s face, feel that they have got the message, but it’s hard to argue with his thesis that extreme violence should seem, well, extremely violent. It would, moreover, be disrespectful to Thompson’s pitch-black vision to introduce even the faintest hint of coyness.
There is, however, a more troubling aspect to the violence in The Killer Inside Me. At certain points in the story, Ford's victims – Kate Hudson also suffers at his hands – seem to invite (or enjoy) their punishment. As the film progresses, it becomes clear that we are seeing the story from Lou's warped perspective. This does, however, remain very dangerous territory indeed.
“It is very much open to interpretation,” Winterbottom says, with an uncomfortable shuffle. “There is a scene where Joyce says ‘I love you’ during one of these scenes. Lou will think one thing. But what she actually means is maybe: I love you, so why are you doing this to me?”
It's not often you meet a director who owns up to consciously stirring up controversy. Winterbottom's current response is the industry standard: who knew my little film would anger so many people? It's not as if he hasn't been here before. Six years ago, the director's 9 Songstriggered furious debate when it featured scenes of actual (and unmistakable) sexual intercourse.
Let's accept that he doesn't actively court controversy. Would he, however, admit that he rather enjoys it? After all, such yelling and wailing helps get the films discussed in all kinds of unlikely places. Channel 4 News has already had a discussion about The Killer Inside Me, and 9 Songswas debated on The Late Late Show.
"I don't really think about it until it happens," he says. "The starting point of 9 Songswas simply a question: why can't you show sex in a film? It used to be that you couldn't write about it in novels. It's a huge part of people's relationships, but you can't show it on film. It definitely wasn't to do with getting in the papers. In the case of The Killer Inside Me, the question simply was: how do you get this horror on screen?"
He’s not a particularly cuddly guy, this Michael Winterbottom (not in interviews, anyway). Raised in Blackburn, his mother a teacher, his father an engineer, he began watching films at that city’s film society when he was a teenager. Obviously a smart bloke, he then studied English at Oxford and, having begun experimenting with a Super 8 camera, went on to film school in Bristol.
A dogsbody job at Thames Television followed. After carrying his share of tea trays, he managed to secure work on an Ingmar Bergman documentary. Later, in 1994, Winterbottom got to show off his dramatic chops when he directed Roddy Doyle's Family. His first feature, a strange avant-garde thriller named Butterfly Kiss, made very little noise, but the avalanche of productivity had begun. He has barely rested since.
When asked about the prolific nature of his work, Winterbottom has pointed towards the directors from Hollywood’s golden years. It’s true to say that the film-makers of the 1940s and 1950s did deliver at least a film a year, but they were contracted to a studio. As an independent operator, Winterbottom also has to knock together funding and organise post-production.
“That’s not the whole story. There are directors today who make a film a year. Look at Ridley Scott. He is still doing that at 70. In the 1940s they might do two or three. One of the first films I made was on Ingmar Bergman, and he made a film a year and directed several stage productions.”
Warming to his theme (in so far as he ever warms up), Winterbottom goes on to ponder the unhelpful attitude of the money men. “Very often, it’s market pressure that makes it complicated. The market doesn’t really want a film by Ken Loach every year. Financiers don’t want them that often, because it’s harder to market films when they arrive like that. But I actually think it’s easier to make a film than not make one. Look, whatever about a studio film, almost nobody spends three years actually making an independent film.”
And Winterbottom has, indeed, remained proudly independent. Though he’s made the odd genre piece, there is nothing in his long CV that you could call a mainstream commercial picture. The moguls must have made offers.
A director with a proven ability to deliver complex films in decent time – within tight budgets – would be a significant asset for any eager studio boss.
True, he has his own eccentric ways of working. He invites improvisation and never repeats the same shot. Still, Sony might put up with that if they could get a James Bond film at half the price.
“In the past, they have offered me stuff,” he says. “It always used to be middlebrow Miramax stuff. Occasionally I have considered it. But, if you’re not interested in the material, you just don’t think seriously about it. To be honest, we rarely get far enough into the conversation to take the offer seriously.”
The closest he has got to the glossy, mainstream fare was A Mighty Heartfrom 2007. The story of Mariane Pearl, widow of Daniel Pearl, an American journalist slain in Pakistan, the picture saw Winterbottom directing Angelina Jolie and taking advice from Brad Pitt, the picture's producer. It seems his methods remained unchanged.
“It may sound boring to say it, but Angelina and Brad were both great,” he says. “We had non-professional actors about the place, and we shot almost entirely in this one house. We were using hand-held cameras and shooting constantly. I didn’t know what Angelina would make of it. But she was totally cool the whole time.”
So, he's collaborated with Angelina. He's made a controversial sex film. With The Killer Inside Me, he's attempted depraved noir. He's given us the odd literary adaptation: 1996's Judewas derived from Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure; 2005's A Cock and Bull Storyemerged from Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy.A possible explanation for his professional promiscuity begins to present itself. He's trying to tackle every genre known to Homo Cinematicus.
“Not in that sense,” he says without exactly laughing. “Obviously, a kind of order develops. One thing leads to another. If you are working on a 19th-century novel, it’s nice if your next film is something else.
“The other good thing is that, if you do a lot of different work, there is no need to pack everything into every film. You’ll get another chance.”
Expect plenty more chances. Hang around for another year or so and Mr Winterbottom will, no doubt, deliver a film in the genre of your choice.
