21ST CENTURY WESTERN

20 November

21ST CENTURY WESTERN

Sometimes your preconceptions can be pretty indelible. Even after sitting through every single lousy minute of neo-screwball disaster Down With Love, my opinion of the film is still coloured by the idea of what it could have been, what it needed to be, what gap in Hollywood's output its very existence highlighted. So much so, that I can't believe my own senses. I must have missed something. I'd like to see it again.

Conversely, here comes a film that rides roughshod over all that you expect from it. The sight of solemn-looking children sat on the roof of a train. A solemn-looking gangster sat on a sofa. An American director and a Spanish title. Unknown actors. A divisive political issue. This could be gruelling, righteous, condescending. It could be dull.

You could not accuse Cary Fukunaga of any of this after seeing Sin Nombre. Running at an extremely tight hour and a half, he makes every minute count. It is a thriller and a western, a genre film that doesn't shirk the realities of gang warfare and mass migration. It's nothing much like a debut. And it's the first of many; at least that's what Fukunaga was planning when he spoke to me in the summer.


Us
You've been to film school in New York and you've made short films – was making your first feature a big leap?

Fukunaga
I'd been told by other film students that making a feature was not like making five or six short films in a row. But I'd also worked on features as a member of the crew, and I'd shot doucmentary features, so I wasn't too worried about how to handle the schedule. I wasn't too worried about exhausting myself. Of course, by the end I looked like a POW and I'd lost about 10 pounds and wasn't sleeping.

Us
You could have chosen subject matter a little closer to home…

Fukunaga
It was less that than having to deal with freight trains and a couple of thousand extras. There were moments in the production when I was cursing myself for writing so many people into the scene.

Us
You had 'executive' assistance from none other than Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna. What was their involvement?

Fukunaga
They were able to create the partnership with Mexico. They're two smart guys, very recognisable, and we wanted to make this a co-production, not just to be a bunch of gringos showing up in Mexico and making a movie.

Us
Sin Nombre is to a degree based on a short film you made while studying at New York University. Why did you decide to tackle immigration?

Fukunaga
You're second year NYU, you're given these restrictions: 10 minute short film, and you can do whatever you want. It was the first time we were able to use dialogue and do whatever we wanted. And I wanted to do something that addressed what was happening globally, something important to what was going on in America in 2003.

Us
Sugar [shown at the Bath Film Festival on Monday] and Frozen River, also released in the UK this year, also deal with migration over US borders. Why is this an issue in the cinema of 2009, specifically?

Fukunaga
I don't know. I started this in 2004. If there's a confluence of various films maybe it's just a zeitgeist thing? Frozen River has a unique perspective – they're trying to get through Canada – and Sugar is about baseball, and how sport and athleticism change the dynamics of immigration. Ryan Fleck and Anne Boden [Sugar's directors] are actually good friends of mine. But I didn't go into this thinking I want to make an 'immigration film'. When I made my short film, I researched immigration through Central America – people riding on the freight trains, the gangs, the bandits and the police – and it sounded so foreign to what I though immigration was about. I wanted to explore it for more personal reasons rather than because I was trying to make  a statement of any kind.

Us
You approached Sin Nombre as a western.

Fukunaga
Something between Mad Max and a western. When I told my producer, she said, 'Don't tell the studio!' Not that I know the western genre well at all. Before film school I didn't really do any film studies and my lexicon of film knowledge is still growing. It wasn't until this year that someone explained to me the rules of film noir.

Us
What do you find attractive in westerns?

Fukunaga
When I think of westerns I think in terms of Sergio Leone's camera inflections and the vastness of John Ford's landcsapes. I wanted to show the changing landscape from Central America to the Texan border. I wanted to show the epicness of this long train snaking through the countryside with all these people on top. But I also wanted it to be 'under the microscope', for the camera to be very close to the people. Not heavily inflected like Leone, where you'd go from a wide profile shot to a really tight close-up on the eyes. I avoided really tight close-ups to make it more natural, but I did want the back-and-forth.

Us
Many of your actors weren't trained – what was your directing strategy when it came to their performances?

Fukunaga
Edgar Flores, who plays Casper, had no training. So I had to work with him on a more visceral level. If there was something in particular I wanted, I'd give him just one thing I wanted him to do. But I wouldn't give him two or three, that would complicate it. It wasn't that I didn't want non-actors, just that I wanted people who seemed realistic to me. One of the things that comes with spending so much time with gang members was that I now know when actors are trying to act like they're from the streets and they're not. And I needed kids from the streets to play these roles. Luis Peña is also from the streets. He's had a successful film career since then but he had something in his eyes, not a vacant look but an unemotional stare. It's hard to explain.

Us
Unusually, Sin Nombre has retained its Spanish title in the English-speaking world – why?

Fukunaga
It doesn't translate well. It means various things, especially in Mexico. Obviously you lose your name when you join a gang, but also when something is 'sin nombre', it's too bad to speak about.

Us
You're friends with Boden & Fleck – do you feel as if you're part of a community of young US filmmakers?

Fukunaga
Definitely. I don't know if you know Brad Rust Grey [Exploding Girl]? And So Yong Kim [In Between Days, Treeless Mountain]? They were my neighbours in Brooklyn, and we're all pretty tight. There's also Cruz Angeles, who was a few years ahead of my at NYU. And Sophie Barthes [Cold Souls]… The great thing is that we all make different films. I love their films, but they're very different from me. I wish I could be as prolific as some of them. I hope this is the beginning of something and not the high point of something.

Us
What are you working on?

Fukunaga
I'm writing now, a very different script. I'm probably going to do a big genre shift, and move into the folkloric/musical side of things. And when I say folkloric, I mean fairytales in the pre-Disney sense. Not always happy endings. Something musically driven. I had to make references when I was doing my pitch to Focus, and I said, 'the Grimm brothers for modern day, with neoclassical music'. Think of a lo-fi Guillermo de Toro without the million 0f dollars of FX. More of a Michel Gondry spirit, or Spike Jonze.

(Thanks are extended to Filmstar magazine, where parts of this interview were first published.)