Have you ever wondered what might have happened if troubled interwar Europe had a chance to lie down on Sigmund Freud's couch? Wonder no more. Brady Corbet's audacious new film, The Childhood of a Leader, dramatises the making of a fascist megalomaniac with a precision that would make The Boys from Brazil look half-hearted.
The Childhood of a Leader's discombobulating contemporary relevance sounds as a warning from a century ago. As the film opens it is 1918, and Prescott (Tom Sweet), a bratty nine-year-old boy, is throwing tantrums (and sometimes stones) in the stately French house where his diplomat father (Liam Cunningham) is hammering out the Treaty of Versailles on behalf of Woodrow Wilson.
This is not a happy home. Prescott's mother (Bérénice Bejo) is religiously devout and strangely ineffectual. There are hints of a previous affair with a family friend played by Robert Pattinson. The boy's father, meanwhile, seems to be involved with the governess (Nymphomaniac's Stacy Martin).
Loosely speaking, we are watching an adaptation of Jean-Paul Sartre's short story The Childhood of a Leader. But there's a little more to it.
"Around nine years ago I became fascinated by Margaret MacMillan's book Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World and from there kept reading around the interwar years, leading up to the Pact of Steel," says Corbet. "I always envisaged something like a fable or allegory, initially as a way of drawing parallels with the Iraq war or as a way of illustrating how little American foreign policy has changed. Something in the tradition of Volker Schlöndorff's The Tin Drum or Pasolini's Salò. The family allowed me to explore hierarchies of power and the abuse of power."
Conversations
Eagle-eyed viewers may also note some small resemblance to Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon. Corbet starred in the Austrian director's English-language remake of Funny Games in 2007. "If it feels like the films are having a conversation with each other, that's probably because Michael and I have had conversations with each other about those films."
It was a tricky project, one that required the assistance of cowriter Mona Fastvold. Corbet met the Norwegian filmmaker three years ago when they began working together on the screenplay for her 2014 drama, The Sleepwalker. They subsequently became romantically involved and now have a two-year-old daughter.
"We were actually writing together for several years before we were a couple," says Corbet. "We were writing partners before we were even friends. Mona convinced me to pick up on Childhood again. She injected the movie with new ideas and new characters and then, suddenly, it was ready."
Corbet shot his debut on 35mm film and used a 120-piece orchestra to record its wildly impactful score, composed by Scott Walker. That wasn’t easy on a $3 million budget, and various attempts at production – including one with Juliette Binoche and Tim Roth – fell through.
“It happened again and again. The film kept falling apart. We lost the first version of the cast due to scheduling. So that became a problem. Because nobody gives a f*** that I want to make a film. It’s all about who else is involved.”
In the end, Corbet and Fastvold had to forgo their own small salary to avoid shooting on digital: “We walked away with less than $20,000 (€18k) for 3½ years of work. It was just really difficult to get made.”
The film’s historic double win at the 72nd Venice International Film Festival last September helped take the sting out of the couple’s financial crisis. As the winner of the awards for best director and the Lion of the Future, Corbet pocketed a $50,000 cash prize.
“Outside of feeling vindicated on an artistic level, it allowed us to get back to New York – where my mother lives – and get back on our feet, because we were bankrupt, with a new baby.”
Somewhere, in a parallel universe, there's a more comfortable version of Brady Corbet. As a teenager, the actor landed the lead role in the 2004 Thunderbirds reboot and a recurring role as the son of Jack Bauer's girlfriend on 24. But the Arizona-born actor soon found that he greatly preferred the road less travelled. His CV includes work with Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen), Michael Haneke (Funny Games), Lars von Trier (Melancholia), Gregg Araki (Mysterious Skin), and Olivier Assayas (Clouds of Sils Maria).
Quite good teachers, we’d imagine. “Well, I never arrived anywhere with a notepad,” he laughs. “It was just my life. I’ve been acting in movies since I was 12. I was always very aware of how special it was to be working on movies, but I didn’t have time to grow up, being too much of a fan. They weren’t shrouded in a great deal of mystery – with the exception of Lars von Trier, who operates a film set in a unique way. But no one would ever dare to make a movie the way that Lars does. I don’t think any of us know how he does it. He allows for a lot of randomness and chaos. And yet, somehow, there’s a remarkable consistency of tone when it’s all put together.”
He continues to act, but often in small roles: the embarrassed American tourist caught between the warring married couple in Force Majeure; the Afghanistan veteran in While We're Young; a cult member in Martha Marcy May Marlene. "I think I realised at a certain point I really should be making films as opposed to being in them," he says. "I'm only interested in challenging myself. And I think I like it out on the fringes."
CORBET ON SCOTT WALKER'S SCORE
"Scott was the first person to come on board. I wrote him a very short letter and then he read the screenplay and reached out straight away. We found some camaraderie in being Americans in Europe. He's incredibly smart. Which isn't too surprising. He's very easy to talk to. And he has a vast knowledge. He knows every composer and every film score.
So we'd have conversations, and if you mentioned Penderecki's Dream of Jacob or Richard Strauss or Shostakovich in a breath, you'd suddenly find they'd been incorporated into the score, in a way that's completely original yet recalls something you truly love. Maybe the most painful thing about the film falling apart was having to tell Scott: well, it won't happen this year. Because when he works on something, he puts everything into it. And while he's working for you, he's not working on something else."
- The Childhood of a Leader opens on August 19th
