He won an Oscar for his documentary, One Day In September, and went on to much acclaim as a fiction film director with the likes of The Last King Of Scotland and State Of Play. Now his latest movie, the Roman tale The Eagle, is coming to DVD and Blu-ray on July 25th, and so he talks about what drew him to the movie, working with Channing Tatum and Jamie Bell, and shooting in Scotland.
Can we talk about the genesis of this film? Its based on a very well-loved book, so did you read the book as a boy?
I first came across this book when I was about 13. I read it then and it made a huge impression on me, something to do with the fact that it was about Romans and Scotland and I grew up in Scotland. Then it was many years later, I hadnt really thought about it for a long time this was maybe six or seven years ago now and I heard that Duncan Kenworthy, the producer, had the rights and so I went and pleaded with him, Please let me do it.
So what is it about the story that is so powerful?
I think there are a couple of different things about the nature of this kind of story that are really, really strong. Firstly is that its a quest narrative. Its about somebody looking for something incredibly valuable, in this case the lost Golden Eagle that belonged to the 9th Legion; its gone missing in Scotland, its been taken by these wild Scottish tribes. And just the journey that he has to go on, through incredible landscapes, all sorts of adventures, fights, battles, whatever, the simplicity of that story is very, very good. But also its something about the idea of Romans in Scotland and of Romans passing Hadrians Wall, which is the end of the Empire and going into the unknown, which is very mysterious to them. What are they going to find? Whats up there? Whats in the terra incognita?
It feels very historically authentic. Was that important to you?
Yeah, one of the things we wanted to do differently to the mainstream sword and sandals movies is that we wanted to try to make it feel as historically accurate and authentic as possible. Not just in the texture and the way it was filmed in a kind of realistic way, but also in the amount of research we did into exactly what armour they would wear, what insignia, what their swords would have looked like, what the weave of their cloth would have even been like on the kilts, so that the details hopefully would build up into making the film feel completely real.
And the battles feel quite visceral.
I think what we decided, was not to use any CGI in the film. Im kind of fed up with all these CG films where anything is possible and you have sweeping aerial views from the point of view of an eagle and that kind of thing. I thought, Lets make a film where the fighting, the battles, are actually with real people. We had 500 people in a field battering each other, so the action does feel very, very visceral. But also we were very careful to research the different fighting styles these different groups had; so the Romans fight in a particular way that Romans fought with their shields and with a stabbing, short sword and the Celts fight with these sweeping axes that they have with blades on the end of them. Thats all based on surviving texts and archaeology, as to how they used to fight.
Can you talk about the relationship between the Roman master and the British slave that he saves from death? And what did Channing Tatum and Jamie Bell bring to that relationship?
Well the heart of the film is really the relationship, the uneasy, fractious relationship between a Roman master and his British slave. The slave is from a tribe that had been completely wiped out by the Romans, so he is incredibly resentful and despises the Romans and despises Channing Tatums character, Marcus. But through the course of their journey, all sorts of things occur to them. They betray each other, then they become friends again, and at the end of it they really do become friends. They overcome their cultural differences and I suppose that is the message of the movie: its about friendship overcoming everything.
Can you talk about shooting in Scotland? Its so majestic and beautiful, but what were the challenges of that?
One of the things I wanted to do was show Scotland as I remembered it, which is not the Scotland of beautiful watercolours and shortbread tins, its a Scotland that is very, very harsh and bleak but beautiful at the same time. In order to do that, we had to film in the winter because thats when its at its best and the winter of course is terrible weather: rain all the time, practically every day. Also, a lot of the film is shot in a river. There is a big sword sequence at the end thats all in a river, and that was freezing. Poor Channing and Jamie had to go through God knows what to actually survive that. They had wet suits on underneath their costumes and they were freezing. Thats one of the great advantages of having young actors, they will put up with quite a lot. Theyre not too precious yet!
Thank you, Kevin.