About an hour into Fatih Akin’s The Edge of Heaven , there is a scene that takes place in a hotel room in Turkey. A mother, played by the great German actress Hannah Schygulla, has come to find information about her daughter, who recently died.
The scene is very unobtrusively shot. There is only one camera, placed overhead in the far corner of the room. We see the whole room, and through the windows we can see the busy street outside.
What follows is perhaps the most beautiful portrait of grief I have ever seen on film. We see this woman over the course of her day. At one moment she is sitting on her bed, reading. At another moment she is on all fours on the floor, wailing in agony. Then she watches TV. Then she pours everything she can find from the minibar down her sobbing throat. Finally, eventually, she sleeps.
The next morning when we see her go out, and we know everything about her.
This scene came to mind when I was watching Oren Moverman’s The Messenger the other day. The movie is about the soldiers who notify the next of kin when someone has died in combat. The scenes of the notification are done with only one or two cameras, and very little editing. They have the power of the unexpected, filled with sudden violence and silent, awkward moments. They feel unpredictable and incredibly dramatic. In short, they feel like life.
In a recent interview, Laura Linney said that most film directors don’t know anything about acting. Alec Baldwin, who was interviewing her, burst out laughing, saying, “I’m glad someone had the courage to say it!”
But is it really such a secret? Watching most movies, you can see the directors know nothing about acting. The performances are shot from a hundred angles, then spliced together from God knows how many takes. They may end up looking very nice, but they are dramatically inert. The scenes may move the story along, but nothing is really happening.
Watching The Messneger and the Edge of Heaven me want to send out a letter to the film directors of the world. It would read, “Let the cameras roll! There are so many good actors out there for you to hire. Give them words they can use. Or if not words, just a situation and a character that they can work from. And then LET THEM WORK!”
And yet it is so rare. Why is that?
I suspect it has something to do with control. A big part of respecting actors and letting them work is giving up control. You have to be willing to be unsure exactly how a scene will play out. If you want it to happen organically, you have to accept that it won’t necessarily happen exactly how you imagined it. That risk may be too much for many directors.
But when the directors play it safe, we all lose.
Here’s the thing – if you hire Hannah Schygulla, give her the right situation and get out of her way, she will tell your story for you. She will tell it beautifully. She will breathe more life into it than you could ever imagine. If you give a scene to Ben Foster where he has to tell Steve Buscemi that his son is dead, and then just let the camera roll, you will capture poetry. You will make art. It just might not be the art you imagined.
So kudos to Fatih Akin and Oren Moverman. By giving up control, by embracing what actors can do instead of fearing it, they made beautiful films. Here’s to hoping that more directors follow your lead.
