Director and sometime-writer Gavin Hood tends to do his best work when he stays small. He first become noticed for his harrowing story of a young Johannesburg gang leader in TSOTSI, which won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar about 10 years ago. He followed that up with the interrogation drama RENDITION. He got into the classic “creative difficulties” with the studio when making X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE, which may or may not explain why that turned out so poorly; and his adaptation of sci-fi, young-adult story ENDER’S GAME in 2013 was met with mixed reactions.
But the latest from the South African-born filmmaker, EYE IN THE SKY, is worthy of checking out for many reasons, chief among them is that it features the final on-screen appearance of the recently departed Alan Rickman. But it also had Helen Mirren playing perhaps her baddest-ass role ever as a British colonel who is leading a surveillance mission to find a traitor turned terrorist. When the target is located, it becomes clear that unless she is taken out immediately via drone stroke (courtesy of the USA), there could be horrific consequences in the region (the film is set in Kenya). Switching from a capture to a kill mission triggers a debate and series of sometimes-necessary, often-ridiculous conversations in many nations about whether killing this target is approved and what the allowable collateral damage is for the strike.
EYE IN THE SKY is a film that treads not so lightly on the cowardice of politicians to make a worthy decision. But it also puts a face on the cost of these impersonal drone strikes . The cast also includes the likes of Aaron Paul, Jeremy Northam, and CAPTAIN PHILLIPS star Barkhad Abdi, who has some of the film’s best scenes. I had a chance go sit down with Gavin Hood recently in Chicago to talk about his film, Rickman, and the state of modern warfare. Please enjoy…
Capone: In the last year or so, I’ve seen a couple of films that have focused on the realities of drone warfare, which is not all that this film is about, but have really taken the time to try to understand what those pilots go through. I’ve had other conversations with directors who ask, “Why do they put them in flight suits?” and “Who are better drone pilots: those who used to be real pilots or the people who are 19 years old and play video games?” What made this story worth telling right now?
Gavin Hood: I think we are in an era where warfare is changing. It is becoming more and more automated and will be increasingly more automated until it is ultimately fought by robots, and I’m not saying that lightly.
Capone: You’re probably right.
GH: The science fiction of Cameron is becoming the reality. For example to talk about the tiny drones in the film, people say, “Is that real?” We’re already falling behind on what those drones are. The evolution of drones goes as follows: That little tiny drone has facial recognition software inside, it flies into a conference where it picks a particular target, it flies past you, it releases its little spray of anthrax under your nose, and it’s gone, or it simply detonates next to your temple. So you can end our movie very quickly by flying the drone off the beam and blowing up the guy next to his head, and that’s not fiction.
When I read Guy Hibberts’s script three years ago, I immediately started researching, because I wasn’t sure if it was fiction. I can assure you that having talked to people in this world of the development of micro drones—they call them micro-arial vehicles—it’s not fiction. So, what drew me to this movie was that I think that what Guy does so well as a writer is he examines a complicated situation from multiple points of view through characters that are dealing in the real world. This is an accurately researched scenario, so you see a character such as Helen Mirren who is a military intelligence officer, and I got to interview military intelligence officers who do this kind of work, and one of them said to me, “Gavin, you have to understand when I’ve been tracking someone for 10 years, I am not objective. I want that person off my list. And that is why,” he said, “it is sometimes necessary for the military lawyer to step up to me and say, ‘You’re not seeing it objectively.’”
It was thrilling for me having initially read Guy’s script to go and do the research and have it confirmed by many, many different people that these attitudes do exist. What I also think is brilliant about Guy’s script is he does something that in screenwriting is hard to do. He takes a passive character, an innocent bystander who really does nothing except sell bread and builds so much tension around that event, and so you can see the story from the point of view of what it might be to be someone on the ground, the parent of that child, where a missile flies in and you have nothing to do with it. Nothing to do with it.
At the same time, you see it from the point of view of Helen Mirren’s character who has been hunting someone for six years, and again, the person she’s hunting is based on Samantha Lewthwaite, the British woman who was married to Germaine Lindsay, the 7/7 suicide bomber. So I just love the fact that the script is accurately researched and I hope gives an audience insight into what, for many people, is abstract. “Drones—they’re good. They’re bad.” Well they’re not good or bad. They’re a tool that we need to think about how to use effectively. So the question isn’t “Is a drone a good thing?” The real question is “Is taking out that particular target in that particular neighborhood with this level of collateral damage and thinking through what the blowback consequences may be, is that a good thing?”
We can get hung up on the technology and forget that technology has always been evolving. There was a time when people invented the long bow, and people objected. “That’s not manly. You should come face-to-face with a sword. Why are you shooting me from a distance with a bow?” It’s the same thing.
Capone: Warfare technology through the ages has been about making it less and less personal.
GH: Less and less personal, and that’s exactly the point. You still always have to fall back on, “Is this tactic, because the drone is something you can employ tactically, useful for our overall strategy?” And if you don’t know what the overall strategy is, which much be ultimately to win the ideological war, because if we don’t this radical ideology is going to continue to spread, and it is spreading, and we’re now in seven countries. I like the fact that Guy chose to set the story not in Iraq or Afghanistan, two defined conflicts, but in Kenya where the conflict is spilling. I’ve been to Kenya. It’s spilling from Somalia into Kenya. I hope I haven’t overstated.
It’s a tricky one, because it gives you so much to think about. You could almost pause the film anywhere and spin off into a conversation about that moment. You can talk about the drone pilot, Aaron Paul, and stop there. You could talk about post-traumatic stress in these guys. Why are they suffering more post-traumatic stress than the real pilots? Or you can pause where Monica Dolan makes the propaganda argument: “I’d rather have 80 people die at the hand of Al Shabaab than one die in our hands, because I’ve got to win the hearts and minds of the local population.” That’s a chilling argument. So I liked the fact when I was reading it that I thought one thing, and then I thought another thing, and then I finished reading it and I wanted to talk to someone, but there was no one to talk to. We tried to put it all into two hours. It was quite stressful. We worked a lot on how can we refine the argument to fit into the time space, but also make sure it’s not dumbed down, and I think Guy did a great job of that.
Capone: I don’t know this for sure, but the whole time watching this, I was thinking “I bet Helen Mirren character was written as a man.”
GH: It was. You’re absolutely right. Was that a good thing or a bad thing?
Capone: It’s Helen Mirren, so it’s a good thing. But I felt like someone, I’m assuming you, made the decision that a), it didn’t matter, and b) we may not have seen this before, but people will adjust.
GH: Isn’t that interesting? And yet, there are women doing these jobs. So first of all, that’s accurate, and that’s another reason to do it. It’s not all about a bunch of guys doing stuff all the time. Secondly, I’m hoping that by having a cast that is men and women, hopefully in a balanced way, the questions that Guy’s script raises can be discussed by men and women without any gender bias. I didn’t want women to be able to say, “Men would do that.” Well, here you are; here’s one of you. I wanted men and women to engage in the conversation, and I hope that’s the case, as equals, as it should be. These are tricky questions, they’re important questions, the legal framework governing the use of this technology is not clear. We’re in this weird zone between what was warfare and what was policing, and they’re becoming this weird blend. What rules govern this? We don’t yet have a clear legal framework, and I think men and women need to talk about that. Many highly intelligent women should be talking about this.
Capone: It goes back to DR. STRANGELOVE, where it’s a room full of old men making these decisions.
GH: I love that you say that. Here’s a room full of men and women. This is an updated version. Thank you. I hadn’t thought of that. You’re right. Thank you for that.
Capone: I love that what I believe is Alan Rickman’s final on-screen performance that he’s playing a guy surrounded by these political ninnies, because he’s a masterful eye-roller.
GH: That’s a beautiful way to put it. He does. In the most economical roll of an eye, raise of the eyebrows, dismissive movement, he can say so much, and he does. I think we were very, very fortunate to have Alan in this movie, because you can imagine that role being played by a lesser actor being very stereotyped—a frustrated general. He brings humor in moments of extreme tension that a lesser actor would not be able to pull off.
Capone: That was going to be my next question: why was he perfect for this role?
GH: The answer is, in a film like this, where you’re looking at something from multiple characters’ points of view and you have very little time to establish backstory because you need to keep the engine going. We spent a lot of time refining the dialogue in the moments so that you get layers of a person’s personality in the shortest possible time. So, who’s Helen Mirren? We have very little time to establish that. She’s a woman, she has a husband who snores, that endears us to her for a moment, she has a dog, she’s clearly isolated, and guess what? She’s a military commander. Oh my god. Done.
Who’s Alan Rickman? He’s a gentlemen who’s been able to compartmentalize his personal life and his military life, which Aaron Paul is now going to struggle to do. So that was the wonderful parallel, because that came out of the research. If you can’t compartmentalize as a drone pilot, you end up with PTSD. Now they’re starting to say well maybe we should look personalities that can compartmentalize before we even begin to train these pilots. Because you have to go from being at home one minute, to a war zone the next, then back home. In a way, that’s what the general does too. He goes from his granddaughter’s birthday, into a room full of screens where he makes life and death decisions, then he leaves. He is someone who’s able to compartmentalize that. Now how can I bring a fully-rounded personality to a character that’s only got a few scenes to pull that off? A lesser actor would not have pulled that off. Alan pulls it off magnificently, and I’m very upset he’s not here to talk about it. I really am, because not only was he a warm, highly intelligent man, full of wit and warmth, he also would be able to talk to you about the questions the film raises.
He said to me when I called him up, I always do this—I’ve learned always ask the actor if they have any script issues well ahead of time. There’s nothing worse than getting on the set and being shut down. And Alan said, “Gavin, I love the story and I just don’t want to get in the way of telling the story.” Can you imagine? Get in the way? You’re not going to get in the way. That’s what he said to me. He said, “You just make sure that I don’t overplay the comedy. Let’s just find a way to let the audience release their tension through a laugh and get right back to the tension.” And I think he does that magnificently.
Capone: We almost forget that he begins the film in a very silly way with this doll he’s buying as a present, which he’s bought for a little girl, and he comes out of that meeting knowing that he may have just killed a little girl in another part of the world.
GH: Yeah, there’s the bitter irony of the whole thing. It’s awful.
Capone: There’s a brief second when the guy hands him a new doll, and he just snaps back to his reality and goes, “Oh, right.” Something about that experience phased him.
GH: That moment was very carefully crafted by Alan and me. We worked on it, and it’s just enough. He just needs a moment of “Come back to this world; leave that world.” And he’s so good at it. He doesn’t just move the moment. No. He knows exactly how to play a moment, fill a moment with meaning in the most economical way.
Capone: Let’s talk about the comedy.
GH: The farce, yes.
Capone: There are moments, and most of those moments occur in that room where Rickman is, where you just throw your hands up. “Do it or don’t.” It’s funny because after a while you realize, this may not happen. We’re so pre-disposed to assuming we get to see an explosion and the bad guys die that to get in that one moment, about halfway through, and think “This might not actually happen” was a bit startling.
GH: Great. An actor who helped so much with the comedy is actually Jeremy Northam. I think it’s easy to forget.
Capone: I haven’t seen him for a while.
GH: You haven’t seen him for a while, and again, that’s a role that could easily be thankless. He’s the dithering minister. But he and Alan play off each other brilliantly. I love the moment Jeremy takes his jacket off, and his armpits are all sweaty.
Capone: The room where I saw the film, people laughed when they saw that.
GH: That was the intention. Then it worked, because he’s trying to be all calm and he just does this and he’s clearly sweating.
Capone: Talk about the use of humor to deliver very serious messages.
GH: What I’ve been trying to learn as I get older as a director is what you’re trying to do is keep the rhythm. You know you’ve got an engine running here, but you want to vary the rhythm as you move through the film so you’re not one note, right? It’s like a piece of music. So is there an opportunity for the audience to release their tension through humor in order to give us a chance to breathe, or will we lose them? And if we do it wrong and turn it into slapstick, it will just look cheap
I remember Iain Glen even said to me—and he has the most difficult moment when he’s sitting in the bathroom. That came from research. There was a guy who said to me, “Sometimes, I get a call when I’m in the bathroom.” I said, “That’s in the movie.” But he said, “Am I sending this up?” I said, “Not at all. Just play every moment as if it’s real and really happening, and the audience hopefully will find the humor in real life.” We all know this happens. You’re sitting there going, “Could somebody make a fucking decision?” And it’s both annoying and funny. That’s real life, so let’s play it for real, give the audience an opportunity to release without taking them out of the movie, and that’s a fine line. When you have actors as good as Jeremy and Alan and Iain and Helen—Helen has wonderful moments of humor where she walks away from the guy doing his calculations, and she turns back with her hands on her hips. “I’m sorry to rush you, sergeant.” So we very carefully looked for these little beats of humor, and we’re very conscious of the danger of overplaying them.
Capone: The movie is compartmentalized. You have these lawyers, you have the military, you have politicians, but you always bring it back to that family in Kenya—the little girl and her parents. That’s the part that often gets lost in stories like this. What did you do to make sure that never left our minds?
GH: Yes. It’s a great question. I think there’s a danger as we begin to try and take man out of war, which is weird, because who are we taking out of war? We’re taking our soldier out of war, but war is about killing people. It’s about winning battles and it’s bloody. So if we’re out of the picture, who’s on the receiving end of this? And if you dehumanize the enemy, does it become easier to pull the trigger? And is that ultimately bad for us in terms of the blowback it has on the population that is on the receiving end of this? Because if we alienate large populations— I love that moment when he says, “Revolutions have been fueled by videos on YouTube.” Let’s just understand, the Egyptians and the whole Arab Spring was YouTube and cellphone fueled, so make a mistake, it spreads.
So what is important about that child is to humanize the potential victim so we really think through strategically. It’s not just a touchy-feely thing. That child has a father, friends, people, and they will have a response to this act. There are moments when I was interviewing drone pilots, and you can even find this because I think they were leaked by Snowden or Manning—those transcripts where pilots say, “Hey man, we’ve got to nail that bug splat. Who brings a kid to a firefight, should never do that. Ah, fucking bug splats.” You listen to this dialogue and you know that in the hands of an ISIS recruiter, that is bad for us.
One gentlemen said to me—and I know I’m overstating this, but I think your question is very important—“Well, the pilots have to dehumanize them, or they wouldn’t do their jobs.” I wanted to tear my hair out. No, if they dehumanize them, they’ll pull their trigger too easily, and we as a society will deal with the blowback. If we’re going to take human life, let’s really think it through, and that’s what I love about Guy’s script. He shows you the necessity of thinking through all the potential consequences, including not taking a life. Maybe we do have to take the life. I’m not presenting this as a pacifist. But it’s such a great question that I feel quite a responsibility to answer it well, and I’m not sure I am. Have you got what you need?
Capone: I think so.
GH: I’m sorry. I feel it’s such an important question. It’s important to humanize the victim.
Capone: If there’s one thing that should not be dehumanized, it’s killing somebody else.
GH: Exactly. And I hope that’s in balance, because Alan has such a great exit line when he says, “Never tell a soldier he doesn’t know the cost of war.” But then what follows is the real cost of war. There’s a cost to the soldier, there’s a cost to Aaron Paul, but there’s a loss of a life, and what that cost of war not only means from a touchy-feely, humanitarian point of view, but what it also means to the whole strategy. Does this mean 50 other moles pop up that we have to go whack? Or not? And believe me, the military are talking about this. It’s not just us touchy-feely artists. They really are talking about this, because it’s a strategic question as well as a humanitarian question. Thank you. I’m sorry if I overstated the answer, but thanks for a great interview.
