Interview with Bek

http://www.close-upfilm.com/features/Interviews/Timur_Bekmambetov.html

TIMUR BEKMAMBETOV Talks About DAY WATCH

Former commercial director Timur Bekmambetov, 46, first made his impact on Russia’s growing film world with 1994’s Peshawar Waltz, a micro-budgeted drama made for less than $60,000 and described by Variety as “a gritty, violent account of Russian soldiers taken prisoner during the Soviet-Afghanistan war of the 80s”. But after a US-financed, Roger Corman-produced female gladiator movie The Arena in 2001, Bekmambetov really made his presence felt with Night Watch, the first modern Russian blockbuster, which became a huge cult hit in his native land, outgrossing even The Lord Of The Rings despite a budget of less than $5 million. Adapted from the first of a cycle of cult novels by Kazakh writer Sergey Lukyanenkov, published in 1998, Night Watch starred local superstar Konstantin Khabensky as Anton, an apparently normal Muscovite who finds he has paranormal abilities and is recruited by the forces of Light (the Night Watch of the title) to police the forces of Darkness. In Bekmambetov’s new film Day Watch, the sequel, Anton is charged with tracking down his own son, also an ‘Other’, as they are known, and preventing him from siding with the Dark and by doing so bringing on the apocalypse… How would you describe the difference between Night Watch and Day Watch? The first film was very provocative. People said, ‘Wow, there are vampires in Moscow!’ But the second one is more about the story, and what was happening with the characters. The first movie was for men, and so perhaps the second one is for women. Was it harder to make after the success of the first film? If anything, it was a little bit easier, because we’d already shot something like 30 per cent of the second movie before the first – we just had to adjust it for release. Would you say it was a fantasy film? No. I think it’s a very realistic film – it’s just that something unreal is happening. I don’t like the term fantasy. Well, it’s not that I don’t like it, I just don’t understand it. It’s not that interesting to me. What’s interesting about these films is what’s happening with the main character, Anton, who’s played by Konstantin Khabensky, because he is a real human being. Everybody has two parts, light and dark, and when you have a problem like Anton does in the first movie, with his son, then it becomes a big problem because your whole world, everything breaks apart and all your fears are unleashed. This happens in real life, to real people, and these are Anton’s demons. It’s not a metaphor for human suffering – it is human suffering! At the beginning of the first film Anton’s world explodes, this nightmare happens, and so he’s trying to survive. His only hope is to go back to the beginning with the Chalk Of Fate and rewrite his destiny. What is the main theme of these films? Is it a comment on the age-old struggle between good and evil? I think that the main message from the movie is that there is no good and bad in this world, there is only dark and light. There’s a big difference - light represents responsibility and dark represents freedom. This conflict is more real nowadays. We are very smart now. We understand that ‘good’ means what’s good for you, but for another person it can mean the opposite. It’s a really very childish way to see things – it’s very black and white and it doesn’t work. But look at it another way: freedom or responsibility? That’s a very important decision, and we have to make it every day. It’s a decision that’s made by the individual, by the family, by every city, every country of the world. If you have enough energy and you have a childish spirit, you will choose Dark. If you’re more grown up, like a hero, responsibility becomes a culture. It’s something that comes with experience. So would you say that these are political films? I think they’re philosophical, which means political, ethical and, I don’t know, sociological. I think it’s a very important question. There’s no discussion of it in the film - it’s just a story, it’s entertaining, and that’s all. I know that the way to deliver a message is to put it in a dramatic context, create conflict, and people will feel this. (Laughs) I’m not a teacher! There’s a great deal of humour in Day Watch… Yes. We are healthy enough to be ironic about ourselves! Particularly in the party scene, where Anton’s son starts to become a man. What can you tell us about that? It was a real party, and we invited a lot of famous Russian pop-cultural icons. For example, if it had been in London we’d have invited someone like, I don’t know, maybe Madonna! (Laughs) Celebrities. People like them, masses like them, and they are sucking energy from them. They live because they’re sucking energy out of their fans. It happens with politicians too. There was a communist politician there, a big bald guy, and Konstantin, during the party, went up to him and starting singing a communist song. He didn’t know the words! So it’s sort of a fake world, and we decided that that world would be good for the party scene. Celebrities and politicians are really dark. It’s in their nature. Dark means freedom. And they’re really free. How did you film that scene? We shot 15 scenes for the movie, but we spread it all out, in a four-hour party. We’d shoot a three-minute scene then spend five minutes reloading the camera. Then we’d shoot a three-minute scene and spend ten minutes preparing. Everything was planned from the beginning. We had the exact timing for every cue. And I invited a TV director to come and control the cameras, because there were 15 of them. It was very interesting behind the scenes. There were ten people: the DoP, me, this guy from TV, the first AD… everyone was in front of the monitors and during the moments when the cameras were all shooting, everyone was like, ‘CAMERA FIVE: LEFT!!! CAMERA EIGHT: RIGHT! AAAAAAHHHH!!!’ Was that difficult to direct? Energy-wise, it was great, because when you’re shooting normally it’s just the director sitting in front of the monitor, the camera rolls, and then you call, ‘Cut!’ The process is very logistical. Sometimes it’s different, like when you’re going to shoot an explosion, but normally it’s a very boring process. But this was a real adrenaline rush . Every actor had a microphone and every cameraman had a microphone, and there were microphones by the monitors too. Were you happy with what you filmed? Yes. But I was lucky. I wouldn’t say I was necessarily happy, I was just lucky to have everything done, because it was a very risky project and a very risky idea to do. The idea was that we would have to recreate the real ritual, the traditional ritual, of a Russian birthday party, and it’s a birthday party where the guests are Dark Ones. And since the Dark Ones represents freedom, we invited famous Russian faces and personalities, because they represent freedom. But it’s difficult to manipulate those kinds of people because they are such personalities: I can’t say, ‘Go over there,’ or ‘Stand here.’ I simply had to entertain them to get the right reactions. What is the idea behind ‘the gloom’ that the characters constantly step in and out of? That was in the books, by Sergei Lukyanenko. The idea was that the gloom was some parallel world that only the Others can enter and survive. We had a problem with this when we came to shoot it, because although it’s easy to understand the concept, it’s hard to actually show it. And then there was a problem deciding why these people had to go into the gloom in the first place – is it just to show that they’re different? So in order to create drama, we had to make it really important for the characters to go there. Your approach to effects is very low-key in that respect… It’s connected with reality. It’s grounded and it’s dramatised. The secret is that you have to dramatise CG. You want people to think about, for example, who will survive and who will not. You don’t want them to think about how good the Chroma Key is. Do you think Night Watch and Day Watch both show a particularly Russian approach to filmmaking? I don’t think it’s a Russian approach, I think it’s just contemporary. I’m using genre tools; it’s cinema. It’s like your computer – in your computer you have a lot of programmes, loads of elements, and you pick the one you want. As a filmmaker, your ideas can come from Andrei Tarkovsky or the Wachowski brothers or a Coca Cola commercial or a computer game… I can take whatever I want to tell my story, to create my own unique world. I’m not starting from scratch! Are you working within a tradition of Russian cinema? It’s not my goal. I don’t have any ambitions to represent this country, I represent myself. Russian directors like Eisenstein and Tarkovsky are the same to me as James Cameron and Roman Polanski – I feel their influence because it’s in my background. But what I feel now is that the world has to understand Russia, somehow, and my films offer a very interesting way for them to understand Russia. It’s a good legend, a good myth. OK, Russia is a scared country, with vampires and witches and a lot of fantasy stuff. And if folks will help us distribute this film around the world, I think a lot of young people will like the look of Russia. They’ll think it’s cool. It’s the place. So you have an eye on the international market? Sure. We made it for Russian people, but the world is global now, and a young boy from Minnesota and a young boy from Russia live in the same world. They know how to chat, they know how to explore, and they have the same background now. Or similar. Of course, they have different backgrounds in terms of nationality. For example, in Russia we have Russian people, Armenian, Georgian, Kazakh, but they all live the same way. Do you see yourself as part of a new wave of Russian directors? No. I don’t like them. They don’t like their audience, I don’t like them. I think any movie is good when the creator likes his audience. But when the creator likes himself, I don’t care. Are you looking forward to working outside Russia? Of course! It’ll be a new experience for me, because this is my home. I know where everything is! But for me it will be very interesting to discover other territories. Be more imperialistic! (Laughs) In a way, it’s my nature. Because I come from a very small town in Kazakhstan, the name of the town’s Guryev, and it’s a small city with, like, 100,000 people, but then I came here, to Moscow. Do you have an outsider’s perspective? I think it’s more the fact that a provincial background gives you the energy to go forward. When you grow up in a big city you don’t have this drive. And to grow up in a small city is very interesting because the world is easily understood. You know where your world ends, because my city was, like, three kilometres! You know everybody. You have one madman, one prostitute… everything’s very personal. But it’s in my nature to find new places. My family, my tribe, has a slogan: ‘Live where the grass is green.’ I feel now that the grass is green somewhere else. You had a brush with Hollywood in 2001, when you directed The Arena for legendary B-movie producer Roger Corman. How did you meet him? I had a friend in Los Angeles who sold him on the idea of me. I had made 17 short commercials for the Russian bank, it was a huge, six-year campaign, about different kings, queens, stars and lords around the world, and I had a very good showreel of historical material. A friend of mine showed Roger these commercials and he said, ‘There’s a guy in Russia who can do this kind of thing for nothing.’ (Laughs) And so of course Roger said, ‘Yes!’ Was The Arena a success in Russia? No, but it was very successful on a B-movie level. I heard good things from Quentin Tarantino – he was a big fan. What did you learn from Roger Corman? He blew my mind totally. He’s a real character in this landscape. He’s always been there in the background for everybody, I think he affects everything. Tarantino, Cameron… These people feel him because he’s like a child. His way of filmmaking is very childish and very playful, because his idea is to entertain the audience, maybe with not a lot of money but who cares? He’s like the Lumiere brothers, right back at the beginning of moving pictures: what was interesting for them was filming the train arriving at the station, and that would be interesting for him too! I got that from him. Filmmaking is interesting in itself. The movie is interesting in itself, even without the individual input of the director or the actor – if the train comes, wow! And if there are vampires trying to kill somebody that’s interesting too. (Laughs) It’s just a movie. So after that, was it a big step up, budget-wise, to making Night Watch? Not really. Night Watch wasn’t so expensive, although we had to enlarge the budget for Day Watch because of expectations. But I had almost finished the second film by then, and then we decided to produce a third film with Fox. Maybe that will happen in a few years time, who knows? We don’t know what will happen in the third yet, because we decided to squeeze two stories – the second and the third – into Day Watch and finish the Russian story. After that, we’ll tell the new story with Fox. So there will be a third Day Watch? Yes, there will be a third part but it will be different, a different instalment. There’s no script yet, just ideas. I think we will keep Anton, but I don’t know what will happen to him in the United States. (Laughs) We’ll see!